Showing results by narrator "Steven Crossley" in All Categories

The Gordon Riots marked a crucial turning point in the fight for Catholic emancipation. Over the next 50 years, factions battled to reform the laws of the land. Kings George III and George IV refused to address the “Catholic Question,” even when pressed by their prime ministers. But in 1829, through the dogged work of charismatic Irish lawyer Daniel O’Connell and the support of the great Duke of Wellington, the watershed Roman Catholic Relief Act finally passed, opening the door to the radical transformation of the Victorian age.

In rural Devon, six-year-old Joanna Mason witnesses an appalling crime. Thirty years later the man convicted of the crime is released from prison. In Edinburgh, sixteen-year-old Reggie works as a nanny for a G.P. But Dr Hunter has gone missing and Reggie seems to be the only person who is worried. Across town, Detective Chief Inspector Louise Monroe is also looking for a missing person, unaware that hurtling towards her is an old friend, Jackson Brodie, himself on a journey that becomes fatally interrupted.

Pursuit of Truth by W. V. Quine is a classic of modern philosophy, the summation of one of the 20th century's greatest philosophers. The pursuit of truth is a quest that links observation, theory, and the world. Various faulty efforts to forge such links have led to much intellectual confusion. Quine's efforts to get beyond the confusion begin by rejecting the very idea of binding tocether word and thing, rejecting the focus on the isolated word.

Everything goes according to procedure when a patient, Isaac, is released into the community from a high-security mental health ward. But when the staff realizes that he was connected to a series of unexplained episodes of self-harm among the ward's patients, and furthermore that he was released in error, they call on Detective Jack Caffery to investigate and to track Isaac down before he can kill again.

Lady Philippa, the wife of Sir Aymer, a knight of the realm, disappears while travelling from her husband’s manor to Bampton. She and her maid are traveling in an enclosed wagon, while her husband, his grooms, and a squire are mounted. When the party arrives at Bampton Castle neither the lady nor her maid are within the enclosed wagon: They have simply vanished. As the disappearance may have happened while the travelers were on Lord Gilbert’s lands, his surgeon and bailiff, Hugh de Singleton, is assigned to discover what has happened to the lady. Has she been taken or has she fled?

Ramage, finally reunited with his beloved Sarah, hopes to spend at least a few quiet weeks with her. Instead, he is summoned by Admiral Nelson himself. His orders: Ramage is to join Nelson's fleet blockading the combined French and Spanish navies in the port of Cadiz. But Nelson's plan is not merely to blockade the enemy's fleet. He intends to confront it head-on in the biggest naval battle the world has ever seen.

Hugh of Singleton, fourth son of a minor knight, has been educated as a clerk, usually a prelude to taking holy orders. However, feeling no certain calling despite a lively faith, he turns to the profession of surgeon, training in Paris and then hanging out his sign in Oxford. A local lord asks him to track the killer of a young woman whose bones have been found in the castle cesspit. She is identified as the impetuous missing daughter of a local blacksmith, and her young man, whom she had provoked very publicly, is in due course arrested and sentenced at the Oxford assizes.

Why did democracy fall apart so quickly and completely in Germany in the 1930s? How did a democratic government allow Adolf Hitler to seize power? In this dramatic audiobook, Benjamin Carter Hett answers these questions, and the story he tells has disturbing resonances for our own time. Benjamin Carter Hett is one of America’s leading scholars of 20th-century Germany and a gifted storyteller whose portraits of the feckless politicians of the Weimar Republic show how fragile democracy can be when those in power do not respect it.

Sometimes, even the most proper young lady yearns for adventure. But when the very well bred Miss Sarah Clarke-Townsend impulsively takes the place of her pregnant twin, it puts her own life at risk. If the kidnappers after her sister discover they've abducted Sarah instead, she will surely pay with her life....

It's 2040. After decades of research, scientists of the European Union believe that they have at last conquered humankind's most pernicious foe: old age. For the first time, technology holds out the promise of not merely slowing the aging process but actually reversing it. The first subject for treatment is 78-year-old philanthropist Jeff Baker. After 18 months in a rejuvenation tank, Jeff emerges looking like a 20-year-old. And the change is more than skin deep. From his hair cells down to his DNA, Jeff is 20 - with a breadth of life experience.

Considered Keith Roberts' masterwork, this novel consists of linked short stories (six measures and a coda) of a 20th century in which the Roman Catholic Church controls the Western world, and has done so since Queen Elizabeth of England was assassinated in 1588. The Protestant Reformation never happened, and the world is kept in a Dark Age of steam-power transportation, with no allowance for electrical power, by a tyrannical Rome.

Captain Lord Ramage's honeymoon in France is interrupted by a sudden end to the Peace of Amiens. Finding themselves on unfriendly soil just hours before hostilities commence, Ramage and his bride elude the grasp of Napoleon's secret police.

Cambridge, 1924 in early summertime. May Balls, punting, flirting and dancing the tango are the preoccupations of bright young people, but bright young Detective Inspector John Redfyre finds himself mired in multiple murders. One morning, his dog discovers a corpse neatly laid on a tombstone in the graveyard adjoining St. Bede's College. An army greatcoat and well-worn boots suggest the dead man may have been a former soldier, though the empty bottle of brandy and a card bearing the words "An Invitation to Dine" on the victim ring a discordant note.

Alan, the beadle of the manor of Bampton, had gone out at dusk to seek those who might violate curfew. When, the following morning, he had not returned home, his young wife Matilda had sought out Master Hugh de Singleton, surgeon and bailiff of the manor. Two days later Alan’s corpse was discovered in the hedge, at the side of the track to St. Andrew’s Chapel. His throat had been torn out - his head was half severed from his body - and his face, hands, and forearms were lacerated with deep scratches.

Roderick Gordon & Brian Williams' Tunnels rose from its fanatical underground following to become a New York Times bestseller. In this eagerly anticipated sequel, Will Burrows plunges ever deeper into the subterranean Colony to find his father. But while he searches, the ruling overclass known as the Styx plots to unleash a plague on Topsoilers. Can Will rescue his brethren from total annihilation? Or will he be too busy saving his own skin?

Ramage hopes to enjoy a well-deserved leave when he receives new orders: Commission and take command of the Dido - a massive 74-gun ship that carries enough weight of metal to destroy a frigate in a single broadside, or sweep a ship's decks clear of men. Accompanied by the courageous crew of the Calypso, Ramage ventures to sea once again - bound for the West Indies where he faces the challenge of commanding this massive weapon of war.

New York Times best-selling author Ian McEwan's novels have inspired sweeping critical acclaim and won such prestigious awards as the Booker Prize for Amsterdam and the National Book Critics Circle Award for his modern masterpiece, Atonement. With Saturday, McEwan has crafted perhaps his most unique achievement to date.

In this sweeping philosophical work, Amartya Sen proposes that the murderous violence that has riven our society is driven as much by confusion as by inescapable hatred. Challenging the reductionist division of people by race, religion, and class, Sen presents an inspiring vision of a world that can be made to move toward peace as firmly as it has spiraled in recent years toward brutality and war.

Jack Caffery's newest case seems like a routine carjacking, a crime he's seen plenty of times before. But as the hours tick by and his investigation morphs into a nightmare, he realizes the sickening truth: the thief wasn't after the car, but the eleven-year-old girl in the backseat. Meanwhile, police diver Sergeant Flea Marley is pursuing her own theory of the case, and what she finds in an abandoned, half-submerged tunnel could put her in grave danger.

Doug Perkins doesn't dislike cats - he just isn't especially interested in them. But the struggling young London public relations firm Perkins and Tate can't afford to be choosy about the jobs they take. So when Doug is asked to do the PR for a glorified feline extravaganza called Cats Through the Ages, he doesn't hesitate. But it isn't long before he wishes he had hesitated. There are some very valuable cats on exhibit - even a few feline celebrities.