Showing results by narrator "Michael Page" in All Categories

From Robert Ferguson comes a comprehensive and thrilling history, based on the latest scholarship, that offers the definitive portrait of the Vikings.

In Washington, D.C., on a night full of rain, a woman is struck down and killed by a hit-and-run driver. But she is not just any woman - she is the assistant to the head of the secret White House department known only as the Basement. And she had secrets of her own. In the Virgin Islands, former president Jake Cazalet receives a warning. He is recuperating on a diving trip after successfully helping Sean Dillon and the rest of the "Prime Minister's private army" defeat an Al Qaeda operation in London.

Before the sun can set on Jack Drummond’s career as a pilot in the British Navy, he must complete one final flight - a weapons drop over Tibet to aid guerilla fighters in their border dispute with the Red Chinese. But before he can complete the job, his plane and supplies are burned, stranding him in the Himalayas. Now, with his plane grounded, he must deliver a Tibetan leader’s son to safety over land. With the advancing Chinese enemy hot on his heels, Drummond’s final mission becomes a suspense-filled struggle for survival across the world’s most rugged terrain.

In The Long Hangover, Shaun Walker provides new insight into contemporary Russia and its search for a new identity, telling the story through the country's troubled relationship with its Soviet past. Walker not only explains Vladimir Putin's goals and the government's official manipulations of history, but also focuses on ordinary Russians and their motivations. He charts how Putin raised victory in World War II to the status of a national founding myth in the search for a unifying force to heal a divided country, and shows how dangerous the ramifications of this have been.

Rejecting fragmented histories of nations in the making, this bold revision surveys the shared institutions that bridged difference and distance to bring stability and meaning to the far-flung empire. By supporting new schools, law courts, and railroads along with scientific and artistic advances, the Habsburg monarchs sought to anchor their authority in the cultures and economies of Central Europe. A rising standard of living throughout the empire deepened the legitimacy of Habsburg rule.

All that stands between the advancing army of trolls and the endangered fortress of Phylangan is a coalition force led by Alfadas, human hero and protector. He’s amassed his own legion of swordsmen, elves, and ragtag thieves to stave off the enemy. And the next move they make could be the most dangerous one of all. Those Alfadas has left behind are more vulnerable than ever - including his star-crossed elven love; their newborn child; and Queen Emerelle herself, who remains comatose and is powerless to safeguard her compromised kingdom.

All the delightful and bizarre inhabitants of Wonderland are here: the White Rabbit and the Cheshire Cat, the hooka-smoking Caterpillar and the Mad Hatter, the March Hare and the Ugly Duchess... and, of course, Alice herself - growing alternately taller and smaller, attending demented tea parties and eccentric croquet games, and observing everything with clarity and rational amazement.

This magnificent novel - which secured for its author the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature - is now available to contemporary American audiences. Although it is set in the early 20th century, it recalls both Iceland's medieval epics and such classics as Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter. And if Bjartur of Summerhouses, the book's protagonist, is an ordinary sheep farmer, his flinty determination to achieve independence is genuinely heroic and, at the same time, terrifying and bleakly comic.

In The Vanquished, a highly original and gripping work of history, Robert Gerwarth asks us to think again about the true legacy of the First World War. In large part it was not the fighting on the Western Front that proved so ruinous to Europe's future but the devastating aftermath, as countries on both sides of the original conflict were savaged by revolutions, pogroms, mass expulsions, and further major military clashes.

The Imperial Merchant Ship Chathrand is the last of her kind. Six hundred years old, the secrets of her construction long forgotten, the massive vessel dwarfs every other sailing craft in the world. It is a palace with sails, a floating outpost of the Empire of Arqual. And it is on its most vital mission yet: to deliver a young woman whose marriage will seal the peace between Arqual and its mortal enemy, the secretive Mzithrin Empire.

An assembly of family, friends, lovers, and enemies are ensnared by the long-running court case Jarndyce and Jarndyce. For orphan Esther Summerson, it might lead to the truth of her parentage. The arrogant Lady Dedlock fears the legal tangle could expose her secret. For the malevolent solicitor Mr. Tulkinghorn, the costly dispute is a gainful opportunity. As for John Jarndyce, Esther’s guardian and master of Bleak House, it’s a chance to correct the past. When questions of inheritance become a trigger for murder, the sharp-eyed Inspector Bucket enters the fray.

Putin and the Russians have suffered too many killings of their own people in the past. Now they want the whole of the "prime minister's private army" wiped out, including Blake Johnson and Charles Ferguson. Somebody is after them: Blake; Harry Miller; his sister, Monica; Harry Salter; and Billy. The only people spared are Roper and Dillon. After surviving a car bomb, Ferguson heads a desperate search to uncover the perpetrator.

Full of illuminating anecdotes drawn from memoirs, correspondence, and government documents, The British in India weaves a rich tapestry of the everyday experiences of the Britons who found themselves in “the jewel in the crown” of the British Empire. David Gilmour captures the substance and texture of their work, home, and social lives, and illustrates how these transformed across the several centuries of British presence and rule in the subcontinent, from the East India Company’s first trading station in 1615 to the twilight of the Raj and Partition and Independence in 1947.

On October 31, 1517, an unknown monk nailed a theological pamphlet to a church door in a small university town and set in motion a process that helped usher in the modern world. Within a few years, Luther's ideas had spread like wildfire. His attempts to reform Christianity by returning it to its biblical roots split the Western Church, divided Europe, and polarized people's beliefs.

After a century of civil strife in Rome and Italy, the poet Virgil wrote The Aeneid to honor the emperor Augustus by praising Aeneas, Augustus's legendary ancestor. As a patriotic epic imitating Homer, The Aeneid also set out to provide Rome with a literature equal to that of Greece.

Lemuel Gulliver, English surgeon turned ship captain, embarks on four fantastic voyages, each a clash with strange beings and cultures - from the eccentric to the odious. Island by island, he meets the savage but tiny Lilliputians, the hideous Yahoos, a stable of talking horses, a race of decrepit immortals, and the ghosts of Julius Caesar and Homer.

This novel is indeed a morality tale about the hazards of egotistical self-indulgence. Dorian Grey's pact with evil allows his portrait to take on his many sins and degradations while his physical appearance remains youthful. Over the years as he becomes cruel and vicious, even murderous, Dorian's young and perfect body is no longer enough to salvage his deteriorating mind and morality. Will justice and good prevail?

Thasha's wedding is hours away. It is a wedding that will both fulfill the promise of a mad god's return and see her murdered. Pazel has thwarted the sorcerer who would bring back the god but both sides now face deadlock. Can Thasha be saved? Can the war between two Empires be stopped?

Irish militant Michael Ryan wants to finance war in his homeland--and a sinister pact with the New York Mafia will make his dreams a savage reality. Former IRA enforcer Sean Dillon now works for the British government. His mission: retrieve the gold by any means necessary--and finish Ryan's bloody plot before it gets off the ground.

Even after the legendary evacuation from Dunkirk in June 1940 there were still large British formations fighting the Germans alongside their French allies. After mounting a vigorous counterattack at Abbeville and then engaging a tough defense along the Somme, the British were forced to conduct a second evacuation from the ports of Le Havre, Cherbourg, Brest, and St. Nazaire. Case Red captures the drama of the final three weeks of military operations in France in June 1940.