Showing results by narrator "Nicholas Bell" in All Categories

Alexandra has returned to the world after her captivity and is left with a heady mix of emotions. Strangely empowered, her feelings of pleasure and exhilaration are tinged with fear, but now she must reconcile the decisions of her past and how they may determine her future. Alexandra knows it is she alone who holds the key to the answers so desperately sought by both her lover, Jeremy Quinn, and her captors.

We all worry about what others think of us. We all long to succeed and fear failure. We all suffer - to a greater or lesser degree, usually privately and with embarrassment - from status anxiety. For the first time, Alain de Botton gives a name to his universal condition and sets out to investigate both its origins and possible solutions. He looks at history, philosophy, economics, art, and politics - and reveals the many ingenious ways that great minds have overcome their worries. The result is a book that is not only entertaining and thought-provoking - but genuinely wise and helpful as well.

Do you get stressed out behind the steering wheel? Would you like to transform your drive time into an opportunity to cultivate tranquility and calm? Dip into this selection of 10-minute mindfulness techniques and find the ones that best suit you.

One of the great, but often unmentioned, causes of both happiness and misery is the quality of our environment: the kind of walls, chairs, buildings, and streets we’re surrounded by. And yet a concern for architecture and design is too often described as frivolous, even self-indulgent. The Architecture of Happiness starts from the idea that where we are heavily influences who we can be - and argues that it is architecture’s task to stand as an eloquent reminder of our full potential.

In ancient Greece or Rome, philosophers were seen as natural authorities on the most pressing questions. However, since then, the idea of finding wisdom from philosophy has come to seem bizarre. Enter a university department today and ask to study wisdom, and you will politely but firmly be shown the door. The Consolations of Philosophy sets out to refute the notion that good philosophy must be irrelevant and gathers together six great philosophers who were convinced of the power of philosophical insight to work a practical effect on our lives.

We are never really taught how to make sense of the torrent of news we face every day, writes Alain de Botton (author of the best-selling The Architecture of Happiness), but this has a huge impact on our sense of what matters and of how we should lead our lives. In his dazzling new book, de Botton takes twenty-five archetypal news stories - including an airplane crash, a murder, a celebrity interview and a political scandal - and submits them to unusually intense analysis with a view to helping us navigate our news-soaked age.

When there is a violent murder at a historic Home Counties golf club, Superintendent John Lambert himself discovers the crime. For the first time in a long career, he finds himself conducting a murder inquiry among people he knows well. The victim is the chairman of the golf club and a prominent local businessman, and it is soon clear that the members of the Club Committee are the chief suspects. They are all prominent members of the local community, and Lambert is saddled with a Chief Constable who is uncomfortably aware of the fact.

Thousands of depressed little towns dot the vast plain where Cristiano Zena lives with his hard-drinking father, Rino. Unfocused urban sprawl with no centre to look to and nothing to look forward to. Rino Zena and his cronies, Danilo and Quattro Formaggi, are planning a ram raid on an ATM, using a converted tractor. The wary, adoring Cristiano sits in on their meetings, watching their half-baked plans unravel, and thinks about the unattainable Fabiana Ponticelli. He has no idea that something very, very bad is about to happen.

Life was going well for psychologist Alexandra Blake. Her career has taken off and she has been exploring her darkest sexual fantasies with her lover Jeremy Quinn. But her bliss is rudely interrupted when she is abducted in London, caught up in a dangerous struggle between unscrupulous corporations. Her captors want her to help them with their sexual experiments – pushing the boundaries of convention in the search for a drug to stimulate the female libido. But at what cost? How far will Alexandra be willing to go to satisfy her curiosity, both professional and personal?

This Christmas, Ann goes back home to Arlington, Texas, while juggling a big work pitch coming up next month, but an old fling may have a proposal of his own for her.

Many people spend hours every day commuting to and from work. This time can be spent reading, listening to music, people-watching or it can just be a moment to relax and not worry about driving. But it's also the perfect opportunity to meditate, and reset yourself in preparation for what awaits at the end of the journey. In Cool, Calm and Commuted, the bestselling author of Buddhism for Busy People offers a series of meditative exercises to transform your commuting experience.

A day like any other for security chief Tracy Waterhouse, until she makes a purchase she hadn’t bargained for. One moment of madness is all it takes for Tracy’s humdrum world to be turned upside down, the tedium of everyday life replaced by fear and danger at every turn. Witnesses to Tracy’s Faustian exchange in the Merrion Centre in Leeds are Tilly, an elderly actress teetering on the brink of her own disaster, and Jackson Brodie who has returned to his home county in search of someone else’s roots.

Ed is having a hard time - at work, in his love life and, well, generally. Then he meets an unlikely Buddhist - who drinks and smokes and talks his kind of language. Bit by bit, things begin to change...Ed doesn't always take Geoff's advice. Or, when he does he lapses at the crucial moment. His path to understanding is not a straight one, especially as life keeps throwing more and more 'stuff' at him. Often he fails - like most of us, in fact.

The Leader's Way takes leaders on a progressive path, first learning new techniques for themselves, then for their organizations, before applying them on a global scale to address such vital topics as poverty, sustainability, diversity, and environmental responsibility - all areas that are affected by the workings of the global marketplace.

In The Romantic Movement, Alain de Botton explores the progress of a love affair from first meeting to breaking up, intercut with musings on the nature of art of love. The relationship between Alice, an advertising executive, and Eric, a banker, is examined at every stage, supplemented by quizzes and commentary by a chorus of great philosophers, from Descartes to Plato to Aretha Franklin. The Romantic Movement will charm listeners and lovers alike with wit, insight, and intelligence.

Alain de Botton believes that philosophy can help people enjoy happier lives. And in his numerous best sellers, from Status Anxiety to The Art of Travel, his unique blend of erudition and self-help has reached an audience eager to listen. In On Seeing and Noticing, Alain de Botton takes everyday concerns such as expressing sadness or being romantic and dispenses advice and observations based on the works of some of history's greatest writers, artists and thinkers.

Despite the Bureau’s protests, Maxwell takes responsibility for the damage to the Library and is suspended from teaching. His replacement is Doctor Apinya, a distinguished magical archaeologist, who takes a keen interest in Kyra. To resurrect Ladder, Lily, Ruksy and Peter venture into the fairy tale book to secure enchanted wood and fall foul of the Witch of Crow Crag.

As the Purple Lotus begins to disrupt fairy and elf magic everywhere, the Bureau lose control of their magic, all except Kyra who is unaffected. Apinya pleads with Kyra to stop the Lotus by reclaiming her Orb Magic. When she refuses, Apinya plays her last card and reveals the truth about the disappearance of Kyra’s birth father.

On a hot day in July, the body of a 16-year-old girl is pulled from the river Main near Frankfurt. She has been brutally attacked and murdered, but no one seems to miss her and no one seems to know who she is. Investigations lead to a rural children's home in the mountains, and to a TV presenter whose research took her too close to the wrong people. As investigators Pia Kirchhoff and Oliver von Bodenstein dig deeper, they uncover a pit of evil and cruelty in the midst of a middle class idyll.

Alain de Botton was given unprecedented, unrestricted access to wander around Heathrow, one of the world’s biggest airports, having been appointed its Writer-in-Residence. He spoke with everyone from airline staff and senior executives to travellers passing through, and based on these conversations he produced this extraordinary account of life at an airport and what it says about modern existence.