Showing results by narrator "Ralph" in All Categories

Distinguished British man of letters J. R. Ackerley hardly thought himself a dog lover when, well into middle age, he came into possession of a German shepherd named Tulip. To his surprise, she turned out to be the love of his life, the “ideal friend” he had been seeking in vain for years. My Dog Tulip is a bittersweet retrospective account of their 16-year companionship, as well as a profound and subtle meditation on the strangeness that lies at the heart of all relationships.

Laurie Lee was a poet, novelist and screenwriter renowned for his bestselling autobiographical trilogy Cider With Rosie, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and A Moment of War. Among the best loved memoirs in the English language, the books chart Lee’s life from his boyhood summers in a remote Cotswold village to joining the Republican International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. Included here are dramatisations of the first two volumes, alongside a specially written radio play and four fascinating interview programmes.

This bundle includes Basil and the Lost Colony, Basil and the Big Cheese Cook-Off, Basil and the Royal Dare, and Basil and the Library Ghost.

Meet Captain James Benjamin Hook, a witty, educated Restoration-era privateer cursed to play villain to a pack of malicious little boys in a pointless war that never ends. But everything changes when Stella Parrish, a forbidden grown woman, dreams her way to the Neverland in defiance of Pan's rules. From the glamour of the Fairy Revels to the secret ceremonies of the First Tribes to the mysterious underwater temple beneath the Mermaid Lagoon, the magical forces of the Neverland open up for Stella as they never have for Hook.

What has been awakened is unbound. The Boy is getting his first taste of freedom. As their comrades fall, fear threatens to consume the survivors in chapter four of The Boy in the Iron Box. Liev’s plan: get his men out of this ancient stone prison, take their chances with the wolves, and descend the summit at first light. But in this snowbound hell, there’s soon to be a frightening new twist to survival.

On the desolate Essex marshes, a young girl named Fritha arrives at a remote lighthouse seeking help from its lonely inhabitant: Philip Rhayader, a crippled artist who has established a bird sanctuary on his land. The girl brings to him a wounded snow goose, which the gentle Philip takes under his care. Soon a friendship blossoms as he and Fritha nurse the bird back to health, though as the years pass, Fritha visits the lighthouse only when the snow goose is there. Then the outbreak of World War II draws Philip away from his home to help in the war effort - and suddenly Fritha has a new reason to return to the lighthouse.

Trapped in the form of the knight who supposedly slew him, the dragon Tzavalantsaval - with a loathsome goblin steward as his only true ally - struggles to navigate the Kirresci royal court and humanity itself, even as politics and intrigues he scarcely understands push the southern kingdoms ever nearer to open war.

Chaos! That is what greets Miss Calliope St. James when she enters the household of her prospective employer, Lord Winn Hamilton, the Earl of Montgomery. The newly appointed guardian for his nieces and nephew, he’s clearly a man who has no idea what to do with children…and they are children who clearly know when the adults in charge haven’t a clue what they’re doing. But he is handsome. Terribly, temptingly handsome, even when he’s maddening.

With his health failing, Pol Cissert takes refuge in a monastery dedicated to magic, healing, and swordsmanship. As a disinherited prince, he thinks his troubles are behind him, so he can concentrate on learning magic and getting his body repaired. He soon finds that his sanctuary isn't the protection he hoped for.

A startling and powerful journey to the very core of India's illegal bookmaking industry that exposes the scale of corruption and the match-fixing that now runs rife throughout world cricket. For several years Ed Hawkins made friends with India's illegal bookmakers - men who boast turnover of hundreds of millions of dollars per cricket match - as well as the corruption officers of the International Cricket Council who are trying to shut them down. It's a shady world and rumours abound. But then Hawkins receives a message that changes everything and he decides it is time to expose the truth behind match-fixing.

In 49 BC, in the city of Massilia (modern-day Marseille), on the coast of southern Gaul, Gordianus the Finder's beloved son Meto has disappeared - branded as a traitor to Caesar and apparently dead. Consumed with grief, Gordianus arrives in the city amid a raging civil war, hoping to discover what happened to his son. But when he witnesses a young woman fall from a precipice called Sacrifice Rock, he becomes entangled in discovering the truth.

Presence describes a fictional story about Jesus’ ongoing physical appearances to three people in a small mid-western town. Under the promise that they may never tell anyone about their experiences, each one meets with Jesus personally and engages the issues in their relationship with him and in everyday life. Jesus leads them personally, and then, collectively, into the experience of community and discovery of scripture’s invitation to abundant life through adoption and transformation.

In the summer of 1968, the year of the Prague Spring with a Cold War winter, Oxford students James Borthwick and Eleanor Pike set out to hitchhike across Europe, complicating a budding friendship that could be something more. Having reached Southern Germany, they decide on a whim to visit Czechoslovakia, where Alexander Dubcek's "socialism with a human face" is smiling on the world.

Witch hunters Horskram and Adelko have foiled a wizards’ plot to conquer their homeland, but the mastermind remains at large. Now they face a race against time to find him, as he raises a superhuman army of Wadwos bent on conquest of the Free Kingdoms. Accompanied by five of the best swords in the land - and the feckless squire Vaskrian - the two Argolians must brave the enchanted Argael forest and seek the elusive Earth Witch to have any chance of locating Horskram's mortal foe Andragorix.

If a disaster occurred would you be prepared? Could you feed and defend your family? Do you hope for the best but want to be ready for the worst? We live in uncertain times. The threat of disaster - both man-made and natural - looms ever present. Could you depend on yourself if you had to? Could you take care of your family? This book on SHTF prepping will teach why it's important to be ready, what you need to do to get prepared, what types of items and supplies you'll need after a disaster, and offers plans for both short-term and long-term survival.

When Queen Elizabeth was excommunicated by the Pope in 1570, she found herself in an awkward predicament. Now England's key markets would be closed to her Protestant merchants. To complicate matters, the staunchly Catholic king of Spain was determined to destroy her, bolstered by the gold pouring in from the New World. In a bold decision with far-reaching consequences, Elizabeth set her sights on the East.

In A Gladiator Dies Only Once, the second collection of his award-winning stories featuring Gordianus, Saylor more than meets his own high standards. Set between the events of his novels RomanBlood and Catilina’s Riddle, these nine stories of previously untold adventures from the early career of Gordianus - when his adopted son, Eco, was still a mute boy and his wife, Bethesda, was but his slave - will delight Saylor’s many fans while illuminating details of the ancient world like no other writer can.

In Vagabonds of Gor, book 24 of the Gorean Saga, Cabot, and his friend, Marcus, of Ar's Station, who have been spying for Ar in the Cosian encampments, now seek the long-inert forces of Ar, to report acquired intelligence to their commander, Saphronicus, who proves to be of the treasonous party of Ar. Cabot and Marcus are placed under arrest, as spies. Primary forces of Ar, largely inactive in recent months, are now to pursue Cosian forces withdrawing from Ar's Station, through the vast Vosk delta to the sea.

Quillifer has risen high at court. The butcher’s son is now a lord, and now is the confidential agent of the state, the caretaker of the kingdom’s secrets, and the secret lover of the young and brilliant Queen Floria. He finds himself surrounded by perils. The nobles are at odds with one another, but united in despising Quillifer. Someone has brought deadly poison into court, and Quillifer fears the Queen may be the intended victim. Another assassination plot is aimed at Quillifer himself, and an enemy nation has landed troops intending to topple Floria by force.

Two years after her brilliant and schizophrenic brother Mark's tragic suicide, Jenny Krantz discovers six voice messages that he left specifically for her.