Showing results by narrator "Ciaran Saward" in All Categories

When Monkey is sent into space by a team of scientists, he thinks everything will be smooth sailing. But not everything goes according to plan, and soon Monkey's spaceship crash-lands in a forest, disrupting the peaceful atmosphere. Convinced that he has discovered a new world, power-mad (but mostly incompetent) Monkey claims the forest as his own and determines that all other animals must be banished, including his soon-to-be nemesis, Bunny. As Bunny gathers reinforcements and goes head-to-head with the gadget-obsessed Monkey, hilarious hijinks ensue.

The Soviet Union is gone, but its ghostly traces remain, not least in the material vestiges left behind in its turbulent wake. What was it really like to live in the USSR? What did it look, feel, smell, and sound like? In The Soviet Century, Karl Schlögel, one of the world's leading historians of the Soviet Union, presents a spellbinding epic that brings to life the everyday world of a unique lost civilization. A museum of—and travel guide to—the Soviet past, The Soviet Century explores in evocative detail both the largest and smallest aspects of life in the USSR.

Through extensive research, expert sourcing and interviews with insiders, Britain’s most celebrated investigative biographer, Tom Bower, has unearthed a succession of revelations that give surprising insight into the reality of ‘Brand Beckham’. Exploring the couple’s relationship, and the truth about their football and fashion careers, their finances and their new life in Miami, The House of Beckham unravels the extraordinary reality of the business-savvy cultural icons to tell an engrossing, often astonishing story of money, sex and power.

Find out what Conrad (and especially Vicky) get up to when they’re not cracking the big cases in this collection of novellas from Mark Hayden’s King’s Watch universe: Byways, the less travelled roads of magick.

Fortunes rise and fall in Wilbur Smith's tale of warring siblings and illegal diamond trading, The Diamond Hunters. The Van Der Byl Diamond Company, willed by its founder to his son Benedict, his sister Tracey and their estranged foster brother Johnny Lance, turns out to be a bequest of hatred. For it is couched in such terms as to offer Benedict the instrument of destruction of his bitterest rival. 'Destroy Johnny' is the old man's implacable message. And so, consumed with envy for Johnny, Benedict sets out in ruthless pursuit of this goal.

Conrad Clarke, former RAF pilot and alleged gangster, gets a text – and a visit – from The Allfather. Odin has a challenge for Conrad: Sign up to protect England from wild magick and get a commission in the King’s Watch. All he has to do is find a missing witch. Simple. Conrad never could resist a challenge. Before you can say “Ragnarok”, he’s plunged into a world of gods, mages, witches, dwarves, and one very aggressive giant mole.

Emily dreams of one day owning a house where her son, Josh, and the little one on the way can grow up, but when her husband, Aidan, insists on leaving his lucrative job as a luxury car salesman, she senses something more is afoot - even while she harbours a secret of her own. What is Aidan hiding, and will it jeopardize their young family’s future?

People often think of imagination as something used only in creative endeavours. In fact, we use imagination constantly as we reminisce, anticipate, plan, daydream, read, create imagined worlds. The truth is we live in the here and now much less than we tend to think. Imagination isn’t the exception in our daily lives; it’s our default setting. Yet only now are we beginning to understand exactly how it works. From hallucination to sleepwalking, from REM sleep to delusions, neurologist Adam Zeman brilliantly guides us through the latest scientific studies in the world of the imagination.

When auctioneer Felicia Grant’s best friend, Stamford Mayor Cassandra Lane, talked her into helping with the town’s annual Georgian Fair, she expected the worst she’d have to endure was the corset. But when the fair’s headline speaker turns up dead in the hook-a-duck pool, and more murders follow in quick succession, she finds herself investigating a serial killer for the second time in less than a year – and this time the stakes are even higher.

Naira and Tarquin have found a new home on Seventh Cradle. But the peace they’ve built is short-lived as mysterious assailants ambush the settlement and Naira is haunted by visions of a monstrous future. Catastrophe strikes when Tarquin uncovers a plot to bring about the end of the universe. As humanity races against the clock to prevent their extinction, old secrets come to light and loyalties fracture, and Naira realizes she may be the key to saving the world—or ending it.

From an unmissable voice in epic fantasy comes the final novel in a trilogy where guilds clash, magic fuels machines, and an all-out war has consumed an empire.

Aboard the SS Campari, all is not well. For Johnny Carter, the Chief Officer, the voyage has already begun badly; but it’s only when the Campari sails that evening, after a succession of delays that he realises something is seriously wrong. A member of the crew is suddenly missing and the stern-to-stern search only serves to increase tension. Then violence erupts and suddenly the whole ship is in danger. Is the Campari a victim of modern day piracy? And what of the strange cargo hidden below the decks?

Conrad and Mina take a time-out from trouble in Spain. It’s their own little Garden of Eden, until a Tarot reader tells him that his troubles have barely begun. Expelled from Paradise, Conrad and the team have to chase the trail of a new source of Alchemical Gold. A source that already has Dwarves, Gnomes, and human Mages at each other’s throats.

Naira and Tarquin have escaped vicious counter-revolutionaries, misprinted monsters, and the pull of a dying planet. Now, bound together to find the truth behind the blight that has been killing habitable planets, they need to hunt out the Mercator family secrets. But, when the head of Mercator disappears, taking the universe’s remaining supply of starship fuel with him, chaos breaks loose between the ruling families. Naira’s revolution must be put aside for the sake of humanity’s immediate survival.

Torwyn burns as Sanctan Egelrath tightens his grip on power. The Draconate Ministry has gathered its forces, determined to eradicate the Guilds, but Rosomon Hawkspur still stands in their way. Her only hope could lay with Lancelin Jagdor, sent to gather allies in their struggle against the usurper. Can even the greatest warrior in Torwyn hope to succeed with so many adversaries determined to stop him? Tyreta returns home with newfound strength and mysterious sorcerous abilities, only to discover it is not the land she left behind.

Genius inventor Skunky has just designed a brand-new creation ... a robot called Metal Eve! She needs to learn everything there is to know about life, so it's probably not the best idea that she's surrounded by Bunny, Monkey, Weenie, Pig and the gang. The only thing she's going to learn from them is that life in the Woods is very, very silly indeed!

A personal portrait of a fascinating people, a sideways history, and an entertaining travelogue, Why the Dutch Are Different is the story of an Englishman who went Dutch. And loved it.

He was the sexy, gorgeous-as-hell older stranger with piercing blue eyes fixated on me. Annoyed. The perfect candidate for a holiday fling. You’re hired. It was my final summer of fun before I moved to London to start my trainee contract at Madison Legal, London's most elite law firm. Three of the steamiest nights of my life…until it ended in heartbreak.

After discovering he's the long-lost son of the murdered Wolf King and leading a revolt against the tyrant King Leopold the Lion, Drew Ferran must rule over a kingdom in disarray. But the former shepherd has mixed feelings about taking his place on the throne. In the wake of a vicious attack by Leopold's son, Prince Lucas, Drew seizes the opportunity to flee his obligations in pursuit of the renegade prince.

Through the fascinating account of their quest, Mark Pilkington reveals the long history of UFOria and its parallels in little-known tales from the murky worlds of espionage, psychological warfare, and advanced military technology. Along the way he discovers that the truth about flying saucers is stranger and more complex than either the ufologists or debunkers would have us believe.