Showing results by narrator "Ralph Lister" in All Categories

This is collection of 18 crime stories with a diverse range of characters and scenarios, from guilt-ridden fraudsters to lovesick murderers.

What is poetry? If music is sound organized in a particular way, poetry is a way of organizing language. It is language made special so that it will be remembered and valued. It does not always work - over the centuries countless thousands of poems have been forgotten. This little history is about some that have not. John Carey tells the stories behind the world’s greatest poems, from the oldest surviving one written nearly four thousand years ago to those being written today. Carey looks at poets whose works shape our views of the world.

A new war has broken out.... Indian ships have invaded three British-held systems, and Indian troops have occupied British colonies, forcing Britain to choose between war and shame. The Royal Navy, battered by the fires of the First Interstellar War and desperately trying to recover from the terrifying casualties, must launch a counterattack and recover the colonies. For HMS Warspite - and a task force of British warships - the stakes have never been so high.

Forged for combat, the rock trolls have no equal. They train from birth, endure brutal conditioning, and mark their skin with every kill. They have become the very flesh of war, but their history of honor has been forgotten. Now a bounty has been issued, one which calls for the extermination of their race. To survive they must awaken to what they have lost, before their enemies begin to gather. Born in the midst of a bloody conflict, Tryton bears a heart of peace. His talent will command respect, but his nature is the true weapon.

In this second volume of the Gorean Series, Tarl Cabot finds himself transported back to Counter-Earth from the sedate life he has known as a history professor on Earth. Tarl finds that his name on Gor has been tainted, his city defiled, and all those he loves have been made into outcasts. He is no longer in the position of a proud warrior, but an outlaw for whom the simplest answers must come at a high price. He wonders why the Priest Kings have called him back to Gor, and whether it is only to render him powerless.

The Royal Navy never expected to fight a full-scale interstellar war. Everyone knew the Great Powers would never risk everything on armed conflict when there was plenty of room for everyone in outer space. But when a hostile alien force stumbles across humanity's handful of colony worlds, the Great Powers must set aside their differences and fight to preserve humanity from utter destruction.

The First Interstellar War is over, but the Royal Navy still has plenty of work to do. As Earth struggles to recover from the bombardment, Captain John Naiser is placed in command of HMS Warspite - an experimental heavy cruiser - and ordered to escort a squadron of colony ships to a star system of immense strategic importance. But as the crew struggle to survive hundreds of light years from Earth, they find themselves dealing with the legacy of the war.

In A History of the Bible, John Barton argues that the Bible is not a prescription to a complete, fixed religious system, but rather a product of a long and intriguing process, which has inspired Judaism and Christianity, but still does not describe the whole of either religion. Barton shows how the Bible is indeed an important source of religious insight for Jews and Christians alike, yet argues that it must be listened to in its historical context - from its beginnings in myth and folklore to its many interpretations throughout the centuries....

The daughter of Marlenus, the Ubar of Ar, is now a fugitive sought for betraying the Home Stone of her city. The price on her head could build fleets and hire armies. For years she has been hunted by legions of guardsmen and bounty hunters. Now, tricked by a former colleague, Talena has been captured and delivered to Lurius of Jad. Once her esteemed ally, Lurius is now eager to sell Talena’s blood for the gold of Ar. But the reward cannot be claimed until the prisoner is delivered.

In the depths of the Great War, with millions dead and no imaginable end to the conflict, societies around the world began to buckle. The heart of the financial system shifted from London to New York. The infinite demands for men and materiel reached into countries far from the front. The strain of the war ravaged all economic and political assumptions, bringing unheard-of changes in the social and industrial order.

Baker Street mice - beware! So far the twins are safe. They'll stay that way if you do what we say. We've decided to make your Baker Street cellar the headquarters for our gang. Everybody must be out in 48 hours. It's Basil's job to move you all out, just the way he moved you in. Better make it fast! And leave the furniture - we need it. This is the only warning you'll get. And listen - if you don't follow our orders, you'll never set eyes on those twins again!

On the morning of April 26, 1986, Europe witnessed the worst nuclear disaster in history: the explosion of a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Soviet Ukraine. Dozens died of radiation poisoning, fallout contaminated half the continent, and thousands fell ill. In Chernobyl, Serhii Plokhy draws on new sources to tell the dramatic stories of the firefighters, scientists, and soldiers who heroically extinguished the nuclear inferno. He lays bare the flaws of the Soviet nuclear industry....

Utopia Avenue is the strangest British band you’ve never heard of. Emerging from London’s psychedelic scene in 1967, Utopia Avenue released only two LPs during its brief, blazing journey from the clubs of Soho and drafty ballrooms to Top of the Pops and the cusp of chart success, and on to glory in Amsterdam, prison in Rome, and a fateful American fortnight in the autumn of 1968. David Mitchell’s captivating new novel tells the unexpurgated story of Utopia Avenue. Can we change the world in turbulent times, or does the world change us?

Weakened by events in Darujhistan, the Malazan Empire teeters on the brink of anarchy. In the vast dominion of Seven Cities, in the Holy Desert Raraku, the seer Sha'ik gathers an army around her in preparation for the long-prophesied uprising named the Whirlwind. Unprecedented in its size and savagery, it will embroil in one of the bloodiest conflicts it has ever known: a maelstrom of fanaticism and bloodlust that will shape destinies and give birth to legends....

Follow the long, bloody journey of Ruka, son of Beyla, through the islands of Pyu and the frozen wastes of the Ascom. See the return home of Ratama Kale Alaku, the "Sorcerer-Prince", and the terrifying rise of his "miracles". Before the end, a shocking history will unravel, ancient connections unfold, and all will learn the cost of unleashing the Kings of Ash.

Kanderon Crux has fallen. The traitors who brought the powerful sphinx down have fled with plagues and other magical weapons stolen from Skyhold's Vault, intending to use them against the Havath Dominion, no matter the cost to the rest of the Ithonian continent. Havath teeters on the edge of collapse after their failed invasion of Skyhold, and the nations and monsters of Ithos circle like vultures. The Dominion has no interest in going down without a fight, however, and there are few depths they're unwilling to sink to for survival.

Victorian philosopher William James had a theory about emotion and behavior: It isn’t that our feelings guide our actions (feel happy and you will laugh). On the contrary, it is our actions that guide our emotions (laugh and you will feel happy). This led James to a remarkable conclusion: "If you want a quality, act as if you already have it." Roused by James’s astonishing discovery, renowned psychologist and best-selling author Richard Wiseman confirms James’s principle and shows how the self-help genre has for too long put the cart before the horse in trying to help us take control of our lives.

The major land power in the northern latitudes of known Gor has long been the imperium of mighty Ar. Against her hegemonies on the continent, plans by her major enemies, the maritime ubarates of Cos and Tyros, have been carefully drawn to involve attack from without and subversion from within. Cabot, once of Earth, is drawn into these intrigues.

In this, the 12th book in the famous Gor series, the fight for survival on the primitive, Earthlike world, Gor, continues with a ferocity that matches the rest of the series. On Gor, there are three different kinds of beings that are labeled beasts: There are the Kurii, a monster alien race that is preparing to invade Gor from space; the Gorean warriors, who fight with viciousness almost primitive in its blood lust' and then there are the slave girls of Gor, lowly beasts for men to do with as they see fit, be it as objects of labor or desire.

The Second Interstellar War - pitting humans and their Tadpole allies against an enigmatic alien empire - appears to have stalemated. Neither side can push through to the other's core systems without risking substantial losses, neither side can gain a decisive advantage. But when a brilliant human scientist invents a way to jump across the stars without a gravity tramline, an opportunity arises to strike the enemy in their undefended rear. It is an opportunity that cannot be allowed to pass.