Showing results by narrator "Stewart Crank" in All Categories

Marianna Sinclair has lived years in England, separated from her family and regarded only as an unpaid servant to her aunt and uncle. She is overjoyed when her brother comes to collect her, returning her to Scotland. Yet, her thrill is quickly diminished when she learns she's to wed the son of a local landowner, the detestable Walter Ramsay. But even this is overshadowed as her traveling party is pursued by a fierce Highlander army. Her dismay becomes outright fear when her own brother abandons her while he makes his escape.

Colonialism: A Global History interprets colonialism as an unequal relationship characterized by displacement and domination and reveals the ways in which this relationship has been constitutive of global modernity.

I guess trying to catch the bus with your laces undone isn’t such a smart decision after all… One fatal collision later, and I’m facing my judgment. As it turns out, I’ve been a lazy sob, and my short, uneventful life of playing games and getting up late wasn’t worth much. And so I don’t qualify to move on to the afterlife. I try to argue to the goddess in front of me that I do have skills, that it was hard work playing those simulation and management games. But she will not concede. In the end, I manage to get the benefit of the doubt, and a wager is made.

Jamie MacKenna is haunted by the fact that he was prevented from returning to save his men-at-arms and the lass who'd freed them. With greater fervor, he thrusts himself into the war for Scottish freedom alongside the valiant warrior, William Wallace. More than a year later, he stumbles upon Ada Moncriefe in the Scottish Highlands. His guilt induces him to offer her marriage, and despite the tormenting passion that rages between them, he vows never to love her. As the sun sets on Wallace's fight for Scottish independence, Ada and Jamie must learn to forgive and open themselves to love.

Once upon a time, Monroe Sinclair was Brodan Adair's best friend, but now he's a stranger and one of Hollywood's leading men . . . It took Monroe Sinclair eighteen years to return home to Ardnoch after a fateful night that devastated her friendship with Brodan Adair. Only a daughter's guilt could lure her back to the Highlands and the assumption that Brodan Adair rarely ever sets foot in their hometown. She can handle seeing the rest of the Adairs so long as she can avoid her ex-best friend and the only man she's ever loved.

For more than a decade, while the First War of Scottish Independence rages, fierce warrior Conall MacGregor has dreamed of the revenge he will have against the man who robbed him of his family and home. To this end, he abducts the daughter of his enemy, hoping to force a marriage and reclaim what is rightfully his. He has no idea that the stubborn lass will turn his world upside-down, and that he will be the one held captive.

Following the coronation of Charles III, Scotland’s most revered artefact, ‘The Stone of Destiny’ arrives at its long-term home in Perth Museum. Desperate to rebuild his shattered credibility, Gill is working hard on several stories along the Firth of Forth. But he’s presented with a problem when the discovery of an ancient inscription in a ruined church throws question marks against the authenticity of The Stone. On the trail of an age-old story, Gill finds himself opposed by someone prepared to kill to prevent the truth from being revealed.

The prophet Al Mustafa has lived in the city of Orphalese for 12 years and is about to board a ship that will carry him home. He is stopped by a group of people with whom he discusses topics such as life and the human condition. The book is divided into chapters dealing with love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, houses, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.

Alec MacBriar crashes into the cottage of a healer and drops his wounded captain onto the table, commanding that the woman save his friend. Katie Oliver is terrified of the giants in her small home, but has no choice but to comply, hoping only to tend the wounded man and send them on their way, praying they cause no trouble to her or her son.

On the run from the horrid man to whom her father has betrothed her, Maggie Bryce is caught in a wild winter storm, forced to take refuge in a highland cave.

While Arran Adair might have followed the call of wanderlust in his younger years, it isn't the reason he stayed away from Ardnoch. Home now, desperate to put the sins of his past behind him, and rebuild his life in the Scottish Highlands, Arran could never have predicted Eredine Willows. The Ardnoch Estate Pilates instructor is a complicated mystery and one Arran can't help but want to solve.

Underhill is my ruthless mother. Her realm is my deadly home. The brutal creatures here are both foe and friend. But the group of fae that just attacked me? They’re all foe. Dragged from my game of hide-and-seek with a dragon, and my home of twenty-one years, I’m thrust into a weak, ugly realm. Earth. Something is taking the fae children of the Irish court, and an Oracle has declared I must find them. Nope. Not my problem. Bye. Except a three-year-old girl they suspect is the next Queen of All Fae was taken too.

"It’s a preposterous plan. Still, if you do get up it, it’ll be the hardest thing that’s been done in the Himalayas." Thus spoke Chris Bonington when Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker presented him with their plan to tackle the unscaled West Wall of Changabang - the Shining Mountain - in 1976. Bonington’s was one of the more positive responses; most felt the climb impossibly hard, especially for a two-man, lightweight expedition.

In this engaging life of the 20th century's most self-consciously learned dictator, Geoffrey Roberts explores the books Stalin read, how he read them, and what they taught him. Stalin firmly believed in the transformative potential of words and his voracious appetite for reading guided him throughout his years. A biography as well as an intellectual portrait, this book explores all aspects of Stalin's tumultuous life and politics.

George Brisbane Scott Douglas (1856-1935), the Scottish poet and writer, published the book Scottish Fairy and Folk Tales in 1901. The literary genres of the book include comic, literary, nursery, and animal stories plus fairy tales of mythic creatures like the brownies, bogles, kelpies, and mermaids. Classified, tabulated, and scientifically labelled, these imaginative narratives are related in vernacular language, and have a timeless appeal to adults and children alike. Amongst the most popular stories are "The Fox’s Stratagem", and "The Bee and the Mouse".

Meggie Hope thinks herself quite clever, though she's never once stepped foot outside her home, Muirfield Hall. She is, in fact, no match for the intoxicating charms of Gabriel Jamison, her own betrothed. She cannot ever wed him, of course. She is afflicted with a curse that says that any man who seeks her hand will meet death before he weds her, unless there is love. When suitors begin falling prey to the curse, and Meg's father won't listen to reason and betroths her yet again, this time to Gabriel Jamison, she runs away rather than be held responsible for another's demise.

It was Daisy's birthday, and Adam had the perfect gift for his fiancée. A dozen red roses? Jewellery? A weekend in Paris? Nope.... A set of bathroom scales. Sadly, Adam's poor judgement goes way beyond god-awful gifts. He's been cursed by a lack of common sense. Now, he's about to make the worst decision of his life and stands to lose the love of his life. Enter Mungo Thunk: an odd little man who claims he can fix Adam's thinking once and for all. Can Adam really trust the mysterious stranger's bizarre brand of therapy, or will he come to rue the day he met Mungo Thunk?

Having narrowly averted an (under)world war, Cat Crawfield wants nothing more than a little downtime with her vampire husband, Bones. Unfortunately, her gift from New Orleans’ voodoo queen just keeps on giving—leading to a personal favor that sends them into battle once again, this time against a villainous spirit.

Fae games will change you . . . but their love will ruin you. At least, that's what my mother told me. My mother had three rules: 1. Never make a bargain with a fairy. 2. Never enter the Waywoods on a hunting day. 3. Never give the High Fae princes a reason to notice you. But even when I followed all the rules, the royal fae still took my family from me. So in one night I broke all three rules, and brought the kingdom to their knees.

1989 heralded a unique prospect for an enduring global peace, as harsh ideological divisions and conflicts began to be resolved. Now, three decades on, that peace has been lost. With war in Ukraine and increasing tensions between China, Russia, and the West, great power politics once again dominates the world stage. But could it have been different? Richard Sakwa shows how the years before the first mass invasion of Ukraine represented a hiatus in conflict rather than a lasting accord—and how, since then, we have been in a 'Second Cold War'.