Showing results by narrator "Matthew Lloyd" in All Categories

A collection of strange, wonderful, sad, romantic, and weird tales about what happens when the underdog bites back. The latest book from the "master of wit and satire" - a collection of surreal, subversive, and satirical tales.

Grace Flynn has found the sword she has been longing for, the fabled blade of "Tristam". She has just one problem - it is locked away in the Tower of London. With the aid of the scoundrel Nereus Neptune she must enter a most heavily guarded place to reach her goal. Hopefully she fares better than the infamous Colonel Blood, who failed to rob the tower in 1671.

Companies that are thriving, not just surviving, are much more than a set of ruthlessly efficient and mechanistic processes. They are a social system operated by people for people. The quality of relationships, both inside and outside the organization, is a far more important driver of sustainable success or failure than the quality of its control systems. The head is important, but it is the heart that matters most.

A bewildering feature of so much contemporary political violence is its stunning impersonality. Every major city center becomes a potential shooting gallery; and every metro system a potential bomb alley. Victims just happen, as the saying goes, to "be in the wrong place at the wrong time". We accept this contemporary reality - at least to some degree. But we rarely ask: where has it come from historically? Killing Strangers examines how such violence became "unchained" from interpersonal relationships.

Only his daughter, Poppy, knows that behind his prickly exterior, Mitchell Fisher is deeply lonely. He may have sworn off romance, relishing his job cutting off the padlocks that couples fasten to his hometown’s famous ‘love story’ bridge...but underneath it all, he’s still grieving the loss of Poppy’s mum. Then one hot summer’s day, everything changes when Mitchell bravely rescues a woman who falls from the bridge into the river. He’s surprised to feel an unexpected connection to her, but then she disappears.

Should we wait for a personal word from the Lord, perhaps delivered by some mysterious process? Does God have anything to say about the daily matters that concern His people? Can the Bible be involved in helping us understand the will of God for our lives, considering that it was written when so much that is familiar to us was not dreamt of yet? The dangers of personal decision and guidance without considering our relationship with others, particularly the believing community, are raised. Tim Chester addresses the issues and provides clear, thoughtful biblical answers.

Investigating a web of international conspiracy and destruction, it's up to H to untangle the threads. Under the direction of the head of the Japanese Secret Intelligence Service and with the help of an alluring French special agent, H is drawn into perilous situations and sensual affairs in exotic locations. He must discover the link between a respected German billionaire philanthropist and a shadowy international assassin to prevent them from changing world history before it’s too late.

Behind the scenes of our spinning earth are keepers of the elements who make sure that tornadoes don't destroy cities, fires don't ravage forests, earthquakes don't decimate towns, and floods don't take out humanity. They wrestle with the natural elements to ensure that the world keeps spinning smoothly on its axis. Since the beginning of time, the sun has been fading, causing the elements to be more volatile and impossible for the keepers to control. Now they must enlist the help of one man, Finn, to help them bring the light back to the sun.

Step into the world of magic and mystery as we reveal the truth about ancient stone monuments, crop circles and the mystical lore surrounding amazing phenomena. Discover the real purpose and function of stone circles and how they are linked to the crop circle and UFO phenomena.

It began with a handful of East Berlin teens who heard the Sex Pistols on a British military radio broadcast to troops in West Berlin and it ended with the collapse of the East German dictatorship. Punk rock was a life-changing discovery: in an authoritarian state where the future was preordained, punk, with its rejection of society and DIY approach to building a new one, planted the seeds for revolution.

The long hidden heart of the Twisted Curse had been found, concealed in a realm that no angel can enter, where magic runs wild and time is just another direction. The Twisted Curse is the key to ending the Eternity War and it can only be broken by someone willing to traverse the depths of Faerie. Unfortunately, Mitch has other things on his mind.

Meet the hapless Jeremy: a man in his late 50s, he scrapes together a living in Paris by writing soft-core pornography under the saucy guise of "Nathalie Cray". When his all-but-estranged sister tells him their father is on his deathbed, Jeremy reluctantly travels back to his parental home in the depths of the English countryside. Confronted with a life that he had always been eager to escape, his return marks the start of an emotionally fraught journey into the family's checkered past.

First published in the Forum in 1889, In the Year 2889 was published in France the next year. A humorous and insightful look into a future society, the novella is now believed to be chiefly if not entirely the work of Jules Verne's son, Michel Verne, albeit continuing the work of Jules Verne by echoing many of his much-visited themes and ideas.

Life doesn't pick winners and losers. That's for the corporations to decide. And they picked Liam Argyle for a carefree life of fame and fortune as host of the world's most popular reality show competition. After two seasons of parading about the world's biggest victims on The Grass Is Greener, he's been forced to put a happy face on one tragedy too many - and he won't turn a blind eye to the horrors of the corporate dystopian world of the 2070s any longer. Now, Liam is out to destroy the very people who made him a star.

In 1353, Giovanni Boccaccio wrote The Decameron: 100 nested tales told by a group of young men and women passing the time at a villa outside Florence while waiting out the gruesome Black Death, a plague that killed more than 25 million people. Some of the stories are silly, some are bawdy, some are like fables. In March of 2020, the editors of The New York Times Magazine created The Decameron Project, an anthology with a simple, time-spanning goal: to gather a collection of stories written as our current pandemic first swept the globe.

Five young, western women buy souvenirs of their delightful trek…and unknowingly smuggle heroin into Singapore. They are immediately detained and arrested by authorities upon their entrance into the country. There appears to be no escape for the tissue trail women until medical researcher and wild country photographer Edward Thurston takes video footage of a high altitude salt caravan near the tissue trail and is inexplicably detained and interrogated.

Mo, the wealthy dictator of a volatile Middle Eastern country, enlists a ghostwriter to tell his story to the world and enshrine him in history as a glorious ruler. Inside Mo's besieged palace, the ghost forms an unlikely friendship with a wise and seemingly innocent Italian gardener who slowly reveals that the regime isn't all it appears to be. As a violent rebellion threatens all their lives, the ghost struggles to cope with a personal secret too painful to bear.

A vicar is disbelieving when two teenagers in his parish claim to have been given a message by the archangel Gabriel, but gradually changes his mind and decides he must do something about it.

A man who married young, and so never had the chance to sow his wild oats, suddenly breaks out when in his mid-30s - and becomes convinced he has stumbled on the secret of happiness.

Ten short stories by author Christopher J F Gibson. The author has here put together a kaleidoscope that often takes a wry look at ourselves.... Of course there are some stories that feature cats.