Showing results by narrator "Julian" in All Categories

Known to mankind since prehistoric times, opium is arguably the oldest and most widely used narcotic. Opium: A History traces the drug's astounding impact on world culture - from its religious use by prehistoric peoples to its influence on the imaginations of the Romantic writers; from the earliest medical science to the Sino-British opium wars.

Coming of age, the impact of class, and familial and romantic love are the prevalent motifs, along with the instinct toward escape and subsequent nostalgia for home. Some of the stories are linked, and some carry O'Brien's distinct sense of the comical. In "A Rose in the Heart of New York", the single-mindedness of love dramatically derails the relationship between a girl and her mother while in "Sister Imelda" and "The Creature", the strong ties between teacher and student and mother and son are ultimately broken.

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead. There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack - who has already killed Bod's family…

Der große historische Roman über die Einigung Japans und den Aufstieg des Shōgunats — jetzt neu verfilmt als Blockbuster-Serie bei Disney+. Im Jahr 1600 strandet der englische Navigator John Blackthorne an der Küste eines Landes, das erst wenige Europäer erreicht haben: Japan. Blackthorne bleibt nur wenig Zeit, um sich in der fremden Sprache und Kultur zurechtzufinden. Und er muss seine Vorstellungen von Loyalität, Mut und Moral hinterfragen. Schon bald gerät er mitten hinein in den Machtkampf der japanischen Fürsten, der das Land zu zerreißen droht. Blackthorne tritt in den Dienst des faszinierenden Strategen Toranaga.

Best-selling author Michael Korda's Horse People is the story - sometimes hilariously funny, sometimes sad and moving, always shrewdly observed - of a lifetime love affair with horses, and of the bonds that have linked humans with horses for more than 10,000 years. It is filled with intimate portraits of the kind of people, rich or poor, Eastern or Western, famous or humble, whose lives continue to revolve around the horse. Korda is a terrific storyteller, and his book is intensely personal and seductive, a joy for everyone who loves horses.

Being a good lover isn't easy. With more freedom, knowledge, and body awareness, today's woman knows better than to settle for predictable, performance-based sex. Tantric Secrets for Men offers everything a man needs to know in order to satisfy a woman's physical, emotional, and spiritual yearnings. Employing the ancient secrets of physical ecstasy, men learn to transform rote sex into passionate lovemaking, pleasure into ecstasy, and partnership into union.

In this visionary Shortest History of Migration, Ian Goldin uncovers key moments of cultural exchange while carefully examining empire, slavery, and war. Throughout, we meet famous explorers (Zheng He), exiles (Pablo Neruda), and everyday people in extraordinary circumstances: a Jewish man saved by the Kindertransport, a Japanese gardener who blossomed in Mexico City.

Thomas Cromwell has long been reviled as a Machiavellian schemer who stopped at nothing in his quest for power. As Henry VIII's right-hand man, Cromwell was the architect of the English Reformation, secured Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon and plotted the downfall of Anne Boleyn, and upon his arrest, was accused of trying to usurp the King himself. But here Tracy Borman reveals a different side of one of the most notorious figures in history.

Repressed scholar Percival Endicott Whyborne has two skills: reading dead languages and hiding in his office at the Ladysmith Museum. After the tragic death of the friend he secretly loved, he's ruthlessly suppressed any desire for another man. So when handsome ex-Pinkerton Griffin Flaherty approaches him to translate a mysterious book, Whyborne wants to finish the job and get rid of the detective as quickly as possible. Griffin left the Pinkertons following the death of his partner, hoping to start a new life. But the powerful cult that murdered Glenn has taken root in Widdershins, and only the spells in the book can stop them.

Peter Singer is often described as the world's most influential philosopher. Now, in Ethics in the Real World, Singer shows that he is also a master at dissecting important current events in a few hundred words. In this book of brief essays, he applies his controversial ways of thinking to issues like climate change, extreme poverty, animals, abortion, euthanasia, human genetic selection, sports doping, the sale of kidneys, the ethics of high-priced art, and ways of increasing happiness.

The Master and Margarita is one of the most famous and best-selling Russian novels of the 20th century, despite its surreal environment of talking cats, Satan and mysterious happenings. Naxos AudioBooks presents this careful abridgement of a new translation in an imaginative reading by the charismatic Julian Rhind-Tutt. With War and Peace and Crime and Punishment among the Naxos AudioBooks best-sellers, this too promises to be a front title.

In Wild Tongues Can’t Be Tamed, bestselling and award-winning authors as well as up-and-coming voices interrogate the different myths and stereotypes about the Latinx diaspora. These fifteen original pieces delve into everything from ghost stories and superheroes, to memories in the kitchen and travels around the world, to addiction and grief, to identity and anti-Blackness, to finding love and speaking your truth. Full of both sorrow and joy, Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed is an essential celebration of this rich and diverse community.

Czechoslovakia, 1935: Viktor Kosárek, a newly trained psychiatrist who studied under Carl Jung, arrives at the infamous Hrad Orlu Asylum for the Criminally Insane. The facility is located in a medieval mountaintop castle surrounded by forests, on a site that is well known for concealing dark secrets going back many centuries. The asylum houses six inmates - the country's most treacherous killers - known to the terrified public as the Devil's Six. Viktor intends to use a new medical technique to prove that these patients share a common archetype of evil, a phenomenon he calls The Devil Aspect.

Described as the 'most beautiful princess in Europe', and a woman 'capable of arousing profane passion', this is the story of a woman whose life combined privilege and tragedy, love and riches, conviction and courage, humanity and inhumanity.

Join in the adventure with Sugarlump the rocking horse when a unicorn grants his every wish, help the Singing Mermaid escape the circus and return to her seaside home, join Josephine and her extraordinary new shoes for an action-packed adventure and much more! This magical collection features seven much-loved stories from the best-selling picture-book partnership of Julia Donaldson and Lydia Monks, creators of What the Ladybird Heard.

The Pharmacist of Auschwitz is the little-known story of Victor Capesius, a Bayer pharmaceutical salesman from Romania, who, at the age of 35, joined the Nazi SS in 1943 and quickly became the chief pharmacist at the largest death camp, Auschwitz. Based in part on previously classified documents, Patricia Posner exposes Capesius's reign of terror at the camp, his escape from justice, and how a handful of courageous survivors and a single brave prosecutor finally brought him to trial for murder 20 years after the end of the war.

Introverted scholar Percival Endicott Whyborne wants nothing more than to live quietly with his lover, ex-Pinkerton detective Griffin Flaherty. Unfortunately, Whyborne's railroad tycoon father has other ideas, namely hiring Griffin to investigate mysterious events at a coal mine. Whyborne, Griffin, and their friend Christine travel to Threshold Mountain, a place of dark legend even before the mine burrowed into its heart.

First published in 1952, Herbert and Eleanor Farjeon’s Kings and Queens has attained the status of a children’s classic. The charming poems, each one dedicated to a different king or queen, tell the story of the 41 English monarchs from William I to Elizabeth II in a humorous and charming way that has delighted generations of children and their parents.

Duddy - the third generation of a Jewish immigrant family in Montreal - is combative, amoral, scheming, a liar, and totally hilarious. From his street days tormenting teachers at the Jewish academy to his time hustling four jobs at once in a grand plan to "be somebody", Duddy learns about living - and the lesson is an outrageous roller-coaster ride through the human comedy.

The Weight of Glory features nine memorable addresses C. S. Lewis delivered during World War II. Considered by many to be his most moving address, the title essay, "The Weight of Glory," extols a compassionate vision of Christianity and includes lucid and compelling discussions on forgiveness and faith. "On Forgiveness," "The Inner Ring," and the other much-quoted pieces display Lewis's breadth of learning and spiritual insight that have made him the most influential Christian of the twentieth century.