Showing results by narrator "Peter Kenny" in All Categories

The Wopuld family built their fortune on a board game called Empire, now a wildly successful computer game. So successful, in fact, that the American Spraint Corp wants to buy the Wopulds out. Alban, who has been evading the family tentacles for the last few years, thinks Spraint should be treated with suspicion, but he also has other things on his mind. What, for example, drove his mother to take her own life?

A world that hangs suspended between triumph and catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers, frozen in the shadow of suicide terrorism and global financial collapse, such a world requires a firm hand and a guiding light. But does it need the Concern: an all-powerful organisation with a malevolent presiding genius, pervasive influence and numberless invisible operatives in possession of extraordinary powers?

Jelly has come to terms with two facts: one, having friends is hard, and two, trying to save Erafore with them may be a little bit harder to pull off. Ever since he entered the Aether, things have changed for him. As a Chosen One, it's his duty to save his world from the cruel caress of the Void. Part of that duty's to fight alongside his fellow Chosen Ones, but can he really handle the two others that the goddess Nia has selected to save Erafore? He will need every ounce of cunning and strength he can scrounge up; the forces of the Void won't tolerate this gathering of Chosen Ones.

Fields, Factories, and Workshops (1898) was one of Kropotkin's three most important texts (along with The Conquest of Bread and Mutual Aid - also available on Ukemi Audiobooks). Its subtitle - Industry Combined with Agriculture and Brain Work with Manual Work - indicates that although he starts from a Marxist standpoint, concerned with the exploitation of the wage-labourer and the inequality suffered by the majority of the social classes, he was equally concerned with the 'human needs of the individual’.

Suni Koudounas is enamoured with the wonders — and dangers — of the Far Wild. As a naturalist’s apprentice, she’s studied every book and expedition report about the miraculous wilderness. But when her mentor goes missing on expedition, Suni sets aside the Far Wild of ink and paper to venture after him into the primordial jungle. As the empire’s most beloved adventurer — or most successful raconteur — Senesio Suleiman Nicolaou doesn’t want much. Wealth beyond measure, fame beyond reason and a small kingdom somewhere warm should be about enough.

Theo Miller knows the value of human life - to the very last penny. Working in the Criminal Audit Office, he assesses each crime that crosses his desk and makes sure the correct debt to society is paid in full. But when his ex-lover is killed, it's different. This is one death he can't let become merely an entry on a balance sheet.

The cause of Alexander the Great's sudden death is no longer in doubt - it was murder. But by whom? As his former followers struggle for power, the bonds of family, friendship and political loyalties are tested to the limit. As is the strength of the formidable empire that Alexander had wrought. Never before has the Western world seen such turmoil, such a threat to civilisation. As battles rage, armies, cities and thousands of lives are destroyed by the ruthless scheming of those who would be king. Or queen.

In the late 20th century, the streets of Paris are lined with haunted ruins. The Great Magicians' War left a trail of devastation in its wake. The grands magasins have been reduced to piles of debris, Notre-Dame is a burnt-out shell, and the Seine has turned black with ashes and rubble and the remnants of the spells that tore the city apart. But those that survived still retain their irrepressible appetite for novelty and distraction, and the great houses still vie for dominion over France's once-grand capital.

It was the day my grandmother exploded. I sat in the crematorium, listening to my Uncle Hamish quietly snoring in harmony to Bach's Mass in B Minor, and I reflected that it always seemed to be death that drew me back to Gallanach. Prentice McHoan has returned to the bosom of his complex but enduring Scottish family. Full of questions about the McHoan past, present and future, he is also deeply preoccupied: mainly with death, sex, drink, God, and illegal substances.…

Babylon, 323 BC: Alexander the Great is dead, leaving behind him the largest empire the world has ever seen. As his final breaths fade in a room of seven bodyguards, Alexander refuses to name a successor. But without a natural heir, who will take the reins? As the news of the king's death ripples across the land, leaving all in disbelief, the ruthless battle for the throne begins. What follows is a tangled web of scheming and plotting, with alliances quickly made and easily broken, each rival with their own agenda.

The Finance Collection is a wide-ranging collection of 6 classic works focused on the building of wealth, economics, and critiques of capitalism itself. Including works by authors as diverse as James Allen, George Samuel Clason, Adam Smith, and Karl Marx

Paris in the aftermath of the Great Magicians War. Its streets are lined with haunted ruins, Notre-Dame is a burnt-out shell, and the Seine runs black, thick with ashes and rubble. Yet life continues among the wreckage. The citizens retain their irrepressible appetite for novelty and distraction, and The Great Houses still vie for dominion over France's once grand capital. House Silverspires, previously the leader of those power games, now lies in disarray.

In a tradition that runs from R. M. Williamson’s Bits from an Old Bookshop in 1904 to Jen Campbell’s Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops in 2012 (with George Orwell’s 1936 Bookshop Memories in between), here is the latest and perhaps most complete attempt to classify people who shop in bookstores. It does take all kinds. Employing something like Linnaean taxonomic groups, there’s the Expert (divided into subspecies from the Bore to the Helpful Person), the Young Family (ranging from the Exhausted to the Aspirational), and more.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, unique tales inspired by traditional literary forms appeared frequently in socialist-leaning British periodicals, such as the Clarion, Labour Leader, and Social Democrat. Based on familiar genres, these stories were meant to entertain readers of all ages - and some challenged the conventional values promoted in children’s literature for the middle class. Acclaimed critic and author Michael Rosen brings together more than 40 of the best and most enduring examples of these stories in one beautiful volume.

Now aged seven and on the cusp of a class change, Peter desires to live a quiet life in his home village until he comes of age. Unfortunately, Erryn, desiring access to his thoughts and memories, has other plans. When a routine trip to the forest almost turns deadly, Peter ends up where no child is supposed to be: hunting monsters in the town dungeon.

London, 1958. By crafting magical outfits for his friend, Princess Katherine, cloth mage Paul Gallagher is getting ahead. It’s not a seamless path. Not since the Virtuis Party came to power. The far-right faction is using criminals to create a protective barrier around England. The enchanted uniforms the prisoners wear may beget a demand for mages, but using luckless convicts as tools for warmongering reactionaries isn’t Paul’s dream for cloth magic.

Every year the Stevens family pack their things and enjoy two weeks’ holiday in Bognor Regis. Their journey starts at home in Dulwich, where everyone takes pride in fine-tuning holiday preparations, from marshalling helpful neighbours to carefully boarding the emptiest train carriage. The family always stay in “Seaview”, an increasingly shabby boarding house, complete with ageing landlady Mrs Huggett.

Rome, AD 41. Caligula has been assassinated and the Praetorian Guard have proclaimed Claudius Emperor – but his position is precarious. His three freedmen, Narcissus, Pallas and Callistus, must find a way to manufacture a quick victory – but how? Pallas has the answer: retrieve the Eagle of the Seventeenth, lost nearly 40 years before. Who but Vespasian could lead a dangerous mission into the gloomy forests of Germania?

This groundbreaking new collection addresses the burning issue of how we interpret history today. What stories are told, and by whom, who should be celebrated, and what rewritten, are questions that have been asked recently not just within the history world, but by all of us. Featuring a diverse mix of writers, both bestselling names and emerging voices, this is the history book we need NOW.

Shaun Bythell owns The Bookshop, Wigtown - Scotland's largest second-hand bookshop. It contains 100,000 books, spread over a mile of shelving, with twisting corridors and roaring fires, and all set in a beautiful, rural town by the edge of the sea. A book-lover's paradise? Well, almost... In these wry and hilarious diaries, Shaun provides an inside look at the trials and tribulations of life in the book trade, from struggles with eccentric customers to wrangles with his own staff, who include the ski-suit-wearing, bin-foraging Nicky.