Showing results by narrator "Steven Crossley" in All Categories

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.

Framed by the historical journey and teachings of the Buddha, Siddhartha's Brain shows how meditative and Buddhist practices anticipated the findings of modern neuroscience. Moving from the evolutionary history of the brain to the disorders and neuroses associated with our technology-driven world, James Kingsland explains why the ancient practice of mindfulness has been so beneficial to and so important for human beings across time.

In 1519, the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortés first met Montezuma, the Aztec emperor, at the entrance to the capital city of Tenochtitlan. This introduction - the prelude to the Spanish seizure of Mexico City and to European colonization of the mainland of the Americas - has long been the symbol of Cortés' bold and brilliant military genius. Montezuma, on the other hand, is remembered as a coward who gave away a vast empire and touched off a wave of colonial invasions across the hemisphere. But is this really what happened?

Dr Thomas Bond, Police Surgeon, is still recovering from when Jack the Ripper haunted the streets of London - and a more malign enemy hid in his shadow. Bond and the others who worked on the gruesome case are still stalked by its legacies, both psychological and tangible. Now the bodies of children are being pulled from the Thames, and Bond is about to become inextricably linked with an uncanny, undying enemy.

How can Christianity touch the imagination of our contemporaries when ever fewer people in the West identify as religious? Timothy Radcliffe argues we must show how everything we believe is an invitation to live fully. God says, ‘I put before you life and death: choose life’. Anyone who understands the beauty and messiness of human life - novelists, poets, filmmakers and so on - can be our allies, whether they believe or not. The challenge is not today’s secularism but its banality.

This fourth adventure finds Will Burrows deep in the “land of the second sun”, reunited with his long-lost father. While Will attempts to decode the cryptic messages scrawled across the land’s three mysterious temples, an army of darkness begins its march. And all the while, the Rebeccas continue their relentless pursuit of Will, determined to destroy him once and for all.

The largest invasion fleet ever assembled sailed for fortress Europe, aiming to bulldoze its way onto Nazi shores. At its vanguard went a few hundred elite forces soldiers. The Royal Navy warship carrying them-a former passenger ferry transformed for battle-bore the iconic winged dagger emblem carved on its prow, plus the motto 'Who Dares Wins,' painstakingly fashioned with the most rudimentary tools by Sergeant William 'Bill' Deakins, the foremost explosives expert on board and a Royal Engineer by trade.

J.M. Coetzee is not only one of the most acclaimed fiction writers in the world, he is also an accomplished and insightful literary critic. In Late Essays, a thought-provoking collection of 22 pieces, he examines the work of some of the world's greatest writers - from Daniel Defoe and Samuel Beckett to Irene Nemirovsky and Goethe. Challenging yet accessible, literary master Coetzee writes these essays with great clarity and precision, offering listeners an illuminating and profound analysis of a remarkable list of writers and their works.

The evolution of the Arab empire is one of the supreme narratives of ancient history, a story dazzlingly rich in drama, character, and achievement. In this exciting and sweeping history - the third in his trilogy of books on the ancient world - Tom Holland describes how the Arabs emerged to carve out a stupefyingly vast dominion in a matter of decades, overcoming seemingly insuperable odds to create an imperial civilization.

In this remarkable dual biography of the two great lovers of the ancient world, Adrian Goldsworthy goes beyond myth and romance to create a nuanced and historically acute portrayal of his subjects, set against the political backdrop of their time. A history of lives lived intensely at a time when the world was changing profoundly, this audiobook takes listeners on a journey that crosses cultures and boundaries, from ancient Greece and ancient Egypt to the Roman Empire.

In this sixth and concluding book of the Tunnels series, the Styx and their cohorts of deadly Armagi have swept across England, leaving death and devastation in their wake. It seems nothing can stop them now. Only a miracle can save the day and, in the inner world at the centre of the earth, Will and Elliott might just have stumbled upon one as they uncover ancient secrets that are fundamental to al human and Styx life.

Great Britain, 1923: When Detective Inspector John Redfyre is invited to attend the annual St. Barnabas College Christmas concert in his Aunt Henrietta's stead, he is expecting a quiet evening. But he arrives to witness a minor scandal: Juno Proudfoot, the trumpeter of the headlining musical duo, is a woman, and a young one at that - practically unheard of in conservative academic circles. When she suffers a near-fatal fall after the close of the show, Redfyre must consider whether someone was trying to kill her.

In 1910, 11-year-old Iris Villarca lives with her father at Rawblood, a lonely house on Dartmoor. Iris and her father are the last of their name. The Villarcas always die young, bloodily. Iris knows it's because of a congenital disease that means she must be strictly isolated. Papa told her so. Forbidden to speak to other children or the servants, denied her one friend, Iris grows up in solitude. But she reads books. And one sunlit autumn day, beside her mother's grave, she forces the truth from her father. The disease is biologically impossible. A lie to cover a darker secret.

A rickshaw driver dreams of being a Bombay movie star; Indian diplomats, who as childhood friends hatched Star Trek fantasies, must boldly go into a hidden universe of conspiracy and violence; and Hamlet's jester is caught up in murderous intrigues. In Rushdie's hybrid world, an Indian guru can be a redheaded Welshman, while Christopher Columbus is an immigrant, dreaming of Western glory. Rushdie allows himself, like his characters, to be pulled now in one direction, then in another.

The lieutenant is summoned by the Admiralty and given command of the brig Triton. But like the rest of the Navy, Triton's crew has mutinied. Sympathizing with some of their complaints, Ramage also knows that if he fails to deliver three sealed dispatches to admirals off Brest and Cadiz, and in the Caribbean, he will become a convenient scapegoat.

Augustus Caesar rules Imperial Rome at the height of its power, as the Roman Empire stretches across the known world. Cassius, son of one of her most powerful families, is the personification of Rome's imperial strength: wealthy, popular, a war hero with a decorated military career, he hides a secret. After his nerve is broken in Germany, the thought of genuine armed combat is enough to send him into a cold sweat of fear and shame.

A New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today best-selling author, Mary Jo Putney has won two RITAs and two Romantic Times Career Achievement Awards. In No Longer a Gentleman, the gentleman in question, Grey Sommers, is conducting a bit of light espionage in France when a dalliance with a government official’s wife gets him thrown into a dungeon. Enter beguiling spy Cassie Fox, sent to free the suffering lord - and perhaps to liberate his heart.

The magnificent civilization created by the ancient Greeks and Romans is the greatest legacy of the classical world. However, narratives about the "civilized" Greek and Roman empires resisting the barbarians at the gate are far from accurate. Tony Spawforth, an esteemed scholar, author, and media contributor, follows the thread of civilization through more than six millennia of history. His story reveals that Greek and Roman civilization, to varying degrees, was supremely and surprisingly receptive to external influences, particularly from the East.

Thirteen authors, including Gail Z. Martin, David Gerrold, and Jonathan Maberry, come together to pen short stories innovating Sherlock Holmes, adapting and revolutionizing the iconic character. Sherlock Holmes is one of the most iconic and lasting figures in literature. His feats of detection are legendary, and he continues to capture audiences today in stories, movies, and on TV. In this new anthology, authors present the celebrated detective in more than a dozen different, wildly entertaining new ways.