Showing results by narrator "Steven Crossley" in All Categories

An elderly inventor, burning with manic creativity, tries to reconcile with his estranged gay son. A bereaved boy draws a thuggish classmate into a relationship of escalating guilt and violence. A genteel middle-aged woman, a longtime resident of a psychiatric hospital, becomes the confidante of a lovelorn teenaged volunteer. Told with Chekhovian restraint and compassion, and conveying both the sorrow of life and the courage with which people rise to meet it, You Are Not a Stranger Here is a triumph of storytelling.

At dawn one morning in 1933, an amateur dowsing team digging the banks of the Thames for precious metals unearths the body of a young woman with a missing toe and a priceless gold coin in her mouth. The case falls on Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard Joe Sandilands’ turf, but he’s been given another assignment - and a very high-profile one. London is hosting a historic global economic conference to try to solve the global Depression, and political tensions are running very high...

A talented healer, Merlin has traveled extensively, becoming a trusted advisor to rulers and kings the world over. But when Merlin finds his way back to Britain, he comes under the attention of the brutal war leader Uther Pendragon. Uther wants Merlin to use his powers for evil to help him conquer women and kingdoms alike, but when Merlin protests, the insatiable Uther threatens to eliminate anyone close to him, and thousands of lives are at risk.

Where is 'home'? For Amartya Sen home has been many places - Dhaka in modern Bangladesh, where he grew up; the village of Santiniketan, where he was raised by his grandparents as much as by his parents; Calcutta, where he first studied economics and was active in student movements and Trinity College, Cambridge, to which he came aged 19. Sen brilliantly recreates the atmosphere in each of these.

John Buchan takes us back to Edwardian Britain on the eve of the First World War in the modern thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps. An inexplicable murder drives the innocent Richard Hannay, on the run from a manhunt that never seems to end, to hide in remote Scottish moorland. Disguise and deception are his only weapons, as he struggles to decode the clues left by the murdered man to prevent the theft of naval secrets by an unfriendly foreign power.

Long ago, in a land by the sea, 12-year-old Aaron lives with his mother in the wooded countryside. Because the boy is mute, he depends on his mother completely. But when a sudden blizzard strands his mother in a distant town, Aaron finds himself alone for the first time in his life. Setting out in the snow to look for his mother, the boy embarks on a perilous, silent journey that will carry him to the eerie Half-a-Moon Inn. There, held captive by the sharp-eyed Miss Grackle, Aaron will discover her wicked powers.

Hal's parents refuse to consider a dog. Then they discover Easy Pets, a dog-rental agency. Terrier Fleck arrives on Hal's birthday, but when Hal discovers that his dog must be returned, he runs away. A large reward is offered for the missing boy, and soon they are being chased across the country. Helped by a travelling circus and sympathetic children from an orphanage, they race for their freedom.

This memorable, heartbreaking story opens in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1974, on the eve of a revolution. Yonas kneels in his mother's prayer room, pleading to his god for an end to the violence that has wracked his family and country. His father, Hailu, a prominent doctor, has been ordered to report to jail after helping a victim of state-sanctioned torture to die.

William Marble is in serious debt, struggling to keep his family afloat, and close to facing bankruptcy when an opportunity presents itself. His rich nephew visits one night, giving Marble the chance to slip poison into his drink. When Marble has all the money he has ever dreamed of, he thinks life will surely be easier for him. Instead, his troubles are just beginning, as things are about to get a whole lot worse. Slowly William’s family becomes caught in a dangerous web of fear, secrets, and blackmail.

Arnold Landon steps out with his lady friend, hunting for relics on the deserted dig site where he works. Before long, they stumble on something under a bridge. The mangled remains of Arnold’s fellow historian. His chest gapes open, his insides arranged in a pair of bloody wings. Arnold’s no expert, but he knows a blood eagle when he sees one—the handiwork of a berserker warrior. Mad with blood lust and out for vengeance.

When a writer suffers a heart attack at the age of 50, he must confront his mortality in a country that is not his native home. Confined to a hospital bed and overcome by a sense of powerlessness, he reflects on the fragility of life and finds extraordinary meaning in the quotidian. In this affecting autobiographical novel, Semezdin Mehmedinovic explores the love he and his family have for one another, strengthened by trauma; their harrowing experience of the Bosnian war, which led them to flee for the United States as refugees; and more.

Fabrizio Collini is recently retired. He’s a quiet, unassuming man with no indications that he’s capable of hurting anyone. And yet he brutally murders a prominent industrialist in one of Berlin’s most exclusive hotels. Collini ends up in the charge of Caspar Leinen, a rookie defense lawyer eager to launch his career with a not-guilty verdict. As Leinen searches for clues he discovers a personal connection to the victim and unearths a terrible truth at the heart of Germany’s legal system that stretches back to World War II.

From the moment Karen Stannard comes striding in the door, Arnold Landon knows his workplace will never be the same. Now, he is saddled with a project he never wanted: the Ridgeway Viking Trust. Its shady leaders tell him there’s treasure buried in the rolling Northumberland Hills—they just need one more payout to reach it. But is there more to the Trust than meets the eye? Muck-raking journalist Alan Crickley seems to think so. He’s got the scent of corruption and he’s on the trail... Until the day he drives his car into a ditch, a stone’s throw from the dig.

Iran and Iraq served as the first WWII theater in which the US, the UK, and the USSR fought alongside each other. Historian Ashley Jackson charts the intense Allied military activity in Iran and Iraq and reveals how deeply the war impacted common people's lives. He also provides revelations about the true nature of Anglo-American relations in the region, the beginnings of the Cold War, and the continuing corrosive legacy of Western influence in these lands.

Spring, 1543. King Henry VIII is wooing Lady Catherine Parr, whom he wants for his sixth wife. Archbishop Cranmer and the embattled Protestant faction at court are watching keenly, for Lady Catherine is known to have reformist sympathies. Matthew Shardlake, meanwhile, is working on the case of a teenage boy who has been placed in the Bedlam insane asylum, before his terrifying religious mania leads to him being burned as a heretic.

After a decade living in England, Jeremy O'Keefe returns to New York, where he has been hired as a professor of German history at New York University. Though comfortable in his new life, and happy to be near his daughter once again, Jeremy continues to feel the quiet pangs of loneliness. Walking through the city at night, it's as though he could disappear and no one would even notice. But soon Jeremy's life begins taking strange turns.

Spring, 1549. Two years after the death of Henry VIII, England is sliding into chaos...The king, Edward VI, is 11 years old. His uncle Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, rules as Protector. Radical Protestants are conducting all-out war on the old religion, stirring discontent among the people. The Protector's prolonged war with Scotland is proving a disastrous failure. Worst of all, the economy is in collapse, inflation rages, and rebellion is stirring among the peasantry.

Paris, 1396. Scribe Christine de Pizan is shocked when the duke of Orleans' fools find a baby, wrapped in rags and covered in sores, abandoned in the palace gardens. Was there really a wicked plan to substitute the child for the queen's own baby daughter and blame the duchess of Orleans, Valentina Visconti? Who would commit such an evil act, and why?

In this Very Short Introduction, Georgios A. Antonopoulos and Georgios Papanicolaou uncover the reality of organized crime in our world today. Shining a light on the people involved in organized crime, Antonopoulos and Papanicolaou question whether the term "organized" is used to evoke the image, the operations, and power of a legitimate organization, such as a corporation. Discussing whether there are particular crimes that the label "organized crime" applies to, or if any crime can be organized, they also consider what happens when organized crime extends beyond borders.

Booker Prize-winning author Pat Barker is one of Britain's most powerful contemporary novelists. This eerie story of a troubled family in the north of England lets you experience the full force of Barker's original talent. Filled with startling images and incisive character studies, Another World reveals an uncanny reality where emotions and events from the past resurface in the present.