Showing results by narrator "Raphael Corkhill" in All Categories

Fairies steal a careless young man's diamond ring before he can propose; he must trick them into returning it before the engagement dinner that night. This short fantasy tale will appeal to fans of Neil Gaiman's Stardust and P.G. Wodehouse.

Born in Leipzig, Germany, into a Jewish family, Eddie Jaku was a teenager when his world was turned upside-down. On November 9, 1938, during the terrifying violence of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, Eddie was beaten by SS thugs, arrested, and sent to a concentration camp with thousands of other Jews across Germany. Every day of the next seven years of his life, Eddie faced unimaginable horrors in Buchenwald, Auschwitz, and finally on a forced death march during the Third Reich’s final days.

A World War I soldier writes a love note to his pregnant wife, puts it in a bottle and drops it in the English Channel. Decades later a fisherman finds it and delivers the message to the daughter the soldier never got to meet. Although this heart-warming tale is fiction, it is based on real-life events.

Living in New Zealand, Jack Gee thought he was safe. The isolated country had always provided a sense of security. When a virus begins to spread across the globe, he is on a hiking trip in the mountains, blissfully unaware. A message from his wife Dee alerts him to the viral threat that turns humans into apex predators with one purpose - to kill. The country collapses as Jack races to get home, and when he finally does make it out of the mountains he finds his peaceful life has been shattered. Banding with other survivors, they must quickly learn how to survive in this new world.

The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, post-apocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us - and in which we might just overcome the extraordinary challenges we face.

Still reeling from the chaos of their wedding, Evelyn and Richard arrive on a tiny Greek island for their honeymoon. It’s the end of the season and a storm is imminent. Determined to make the best of it, they check into the sun-soaked rooms of Villa Rosa. Already feeling insecure after seeing the “beautiful people,” the seemingly endless number of young models and musicians lounging along the Mediterranean, Evelyn is wary of the hotel’s owner, Isabella, who seems to only have eyes for Richard.

Fasten your falx knives and grab the reins of your quadriga: Rivals 2! More Frenemies Who Changed the World is the funniest look at people who benefited the world through their hatred. This audiobook has it all: death beams, chariot races, flaming costumes, ear-munchers, party fleas, and whatever the opposite of epic poetry is.... No fact is too bizarre, no segue too surreal, and no sequitur is too non for this riotous sequel.

Lemuel has never felt they belonged. Not in society, not even in their own family. Their days are filled with loneliness, a struggle to survive and a desperate search for connection–even if that connection is merely virtual. Now, a black-market hacker promises to open a new world for Lemuel. And it works–in ways no human has ever experienced. Lemuel finds a world of wonder, of possibilities and of danger–where their new virtual reality could mean the end of their physical reality. And what Lemuel discovers could change the fate of humankind–forever.

Billionaire investors. If we think of them, it’s with a mixture of awe and suspicion. Clearly, they possess a kind of genius - the proverbial Midas Touch. But are the skills they possess transferable? And do they have anything to teach us besides making money? In Richer, Wiser, Happier, William Green draws on interviews that he’s conducted over 25 years with many of the world’s greatest investors. As he discovered, their talents extend well beyond the financial realm.

In a country town, an arsonist is burning homes down. Their signature move is placing an identical model of the house on the front porch before setting the fire. But no one is there to witness this in the silence of each dark winter night. A happy couple is out celebrating their anniversary when they receive a chilling phone call—a recorded children's verse warning them their house is on fire and their children are gone. They race home to an inferno and missing children.

Jack Gee, hiking the New Zealand mountains, is blissfully unaware of the Hemorrhage virus sweeping the world. A desperate message from his wife, Dee, alerts him, and he must return to Hamilton. On the way, he is captured by flesh-eating Variants and taken to their meat locker. To escape, he will need to draw on all his experience as an outdoorsman, but first, he must find the will to survive. Surrounded by Variants, Dee is trapped in her Hamilton basement with a group of survivors. With Jack missing, and dwindling food supplies, she must leave the basement, her only defense a katana.

Terrified he may be going mad, he must keep the disturbing skill secret. But when it proves helpful in tracking his would-be killer, he has no choice but to embrace the newfound power. The retrocognition leads him to the house of a man recently deceased, where he encounters the clever and intriguing Miss Matilda Wren—who may be able to help him solve the many questions raised by the attack.

Thrump-O-Moto is a little wizard and apprentice hero who, though sometimes puzzled and afraid, knows that the mightiest forces in the universe always bow before the brave and good. By chance (and a bungled spell) he finds himself traveling not to the shores of Japan to visit his grandmother, but to the Australian outback where he stumbles upon Patricia sitting in the shade. Discovering that Patricia has been caught in the clutches of Nurk-u the Bad, the two of them set out on a noble quest to rescue her and defeat the evil wizard, finding the gifts of healing and courage in the process.

Perched on the North Sea, this port town—by turns legendary and mythological—is a place where Highland rebels and English authorities clash in a mortal struggle for survival and dominance. Among the fray is a lovely young widow who possesses rare and special gifts. A true beauty and trained physician, Isabella has inspired longing and mystery—and fury—in a great many men. Hunted by both the British government and Scottish rebels, she came to the Highlands in search of survival.

Garth Nix is renowned for his legendary fantasy works, but To Hold the Bridge showcases his versatility, as the collection offers 19 short stories from every genre of literature, including science fiction, paranormal, realistic fiction, mystery, and adventure. Whether writing about vampires, detectives, ancient spirits, or odd jobs, Garth Nix's ability to pull his readers into new worlds is extraordinary.

Well past his prime, Robert Fallon now fights the battles of politics to save the country he cherishes from civil war. It is 1832, and the high tariffs that protect northern industry are crippling the South. President Andrew Jackson thinks force is the answer to the South's threats of secession. Robert must pay a final-hour visit to Washington, as an appeal to Jackson and Congress to pass a compromise tariff before the country is torn apart.

London, 1883. The Veil between the living and dead has thinned. Violet-eyed mediums commune with spirits under the watchful eye of the Royal Speaker Society, and sixteen-year-old trans, autistic Silas Bell would rather rip out his violet eyes than become an obedient Speaker wife. After a failed attempt to escape an arranged marriage, Silas is diagnosed with Veil sickness—a mysterious disease sending violet-eyed women into madness—and shipped away to Braxton’s Finishing School and Sanitorium.

“Faced with the political disaster, I had to become France.” This was how Charles de Gaulle answered the call of history. One of the few French battlefield leaders to have distinguished himself in May 1940, he had become the undersecretary of state for national defense. But when the government rejected his calls to fight on and prepared to capitulate to Hitler, he escaped to London. There he instigated a resistance calling on “all the French who want to remain free to listen to me and follow me” in the legendary radio address of June 22.

When a half-drowned elf is found floating in the seas of the Blue Divide, an old mystery resurfaces. Thirty years ago, an elven prince led an expedition in search of a legendary magic said to be more powerful than any in the world. Of all those who set out on that ill-fated voyage, not one has ever returned. Until now. The rescued elf carries a map covered with mysterious symbols - and Walker Boh, the last of the Druids, has the skill to decipher them.

An American cult figure, Paul Bowles has fascinated such disparate talents as Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Truman Capote, William S. Burroughs, Gore Vidal, and Tobias Wolff. From “The Delicate Prey” to “Too Far from Home,” this definitive collection celebrates the Bowles’s masterful artistry in short fiction.