Showing results by narrator "James Langton" in All Categories

Many who visit the valley are overwhelmed by its majesty. Some wish they never had to leave. One didn't: a hiker whose decomposing corpse is discovered by an unsuspecting tourist. But this strange, incomprehensible murder is only the edge of the darkness that hovers over a small rural village and its tight-lipped residents, who guard shattering secrets of sordid pasts and private shames. Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks knows that both the grim truth and a cold-blooded killer are hiding here....

It’s 1876, and Charles Lenox has just given up his seat in Parliament after six years, primed to return to his first love, detection. With high hopes he and three colleagues start a new detective agency, the first of its kind. But as the months pass, and he is the only detective who cannot find work, Lenox begins to question whether he can still play the game as he once did.Then comes a chance to redeem himself, though at a terrible price: a friend, a member of Scotland Yard, is shot near Regent’s Park.

Through a particularly ill-fated series of events, couch potato Maeve Kelly, an elementary school teacher whose mother always assured her curvy girls shouldn't waste their time trying to be fit, has been forced to sign up for the Other Half, Bath's springtime half marathon. The training is brutal, but she must disprove her mother and collect pledges for her aunt's beloved charity. What Maeve doesn't know is just how vicious some of the other runners are.

Miss Abigail Abbott desperately needs to disappear - permanently - and the only person she trusts to help her do that is Lord Stephen Wentworth, heir to the Duke of Walden. Stephen is brilliant, charming, and - when he needs to be - absolutely ruthless. So ruthless that he proposes marriage instead of "murder" to keep Abigail safe. Stephen was smitten the instant his sister introduced him to Abigail. When she accepts his courtship of convenience, he also discovers she kisses like his most intimate wish come true.

At the center of the book is a poignant love triangle: the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev; the Spanish prima donna Pauline Viardot, with whom Turgenev had a long and intimate relationship; and her husband Louis Viardot, an art critic, theater manager, and republican activist. Together, Turgenev and the Viardots acted as a kind of European cultural exchange - they either knew or crossed paths with Delacroix, Berlioz, Chopin, Brahms, Liszt, the Schumanns, Hugo, Flaubert, Dickens, and Dostoyevsky, among many other towering figures.

Duncan Wentworth once tried his hand at rescuing a damsel in distress long ago, and he's vowed he'll never make that mistake again. Yet when he comes across a stranger in the poacher-infested woods of his estate, decency compels him to offer the lady aid. Matilda is whip-smart, she can read Duncan's horrible penmanship, and when she wears his reading glasses, all Duncan can think about is naughty Latin poetry.

Over a hundred years have passed since a group of violent killers went on the rampage, murdering innocent victims for fun. But even back then, sorcerer Nate Garrett, aka Hellequin, knew there was more to it than simple savage pleasure—souls were being stolen. Nate's discovery of the souls' use, and of those supporting the group's plan, made him question everything he believed.

In this “jewel of a novel” (The Observer), Hilary Byrd flees his demons and the dark undercurrents of contemporary life in England for a former British hill station in south India. Charmed by the foreignness of his new surroundings and by the familiarity of everything the British have left behind, he finds solace in life’s simple pleasures, travelling by rickshaw around the small town with his driver Jamshed and staying in a mission house beside the local presbytery where, after a chance meeting, the Padre and his adoptive daughter Priscilla take Hilary under their wing.

In this groundbreaking new biography, based on more than 10,000 hitherto unavailable letters and diary entries, best-selling author Niall Ferguson returns to his roots as a financial historian to tell the story of Siegmund Warburg, an extraordinary man whose austere philosophy of finance offers much insight today.

A dedicated man is dead in the Yorkshire dales---a former university professor, wealthy historian, and archaeologist who loved his adopted village. It is a particularly heinous slaying, considering the esteem in which the victim, Harry Steadman, was held by his neighbors and colleagues---by everyone, it seems, except the one person who bludgeoned the life out of the respected scholar and left him half-buried in a farmer's field.

In the 1930s, as official government expeditions set their sights on conquering Mount Everest, a little-known World War I veteran named Maurice Wilson conceives his own crazy, beautiful plan: He will fly a plane from England to Everest, crash-land on its lower slopes, then become the first person to reach its summit — completely alone.

A married couple on holiday in Venice are caught up in a sinister series of events. A lonely schoolmaster is impelled to investigate a mysterious American couple. A young woman loses her cool when she confronts her father's old friend on a lonely island. A party of British pilgrims meet strange phenomena and possible disaster in the Holy Land. A scientist abandons his scruples while trying to tap the energy of the dying mind.

In this fascinating history spanning continents and centuries, historian David Wootton offers a lively defense of science, revealing why the Scientific Revolution was truly the greatest event in our history. The Invention of Science goes back 500 years in time to chronicle this crucial transformation, exploring the factors that led to its birth and the people who made it happen. Wootton argues that the Scientific Revolution was actually five separate yet concurrent events that developed independently.

London, 1855. A young and eager Charles Lenox faces his toughest case yet: A murder without a single clue. Slumped in a third-class car at Paddington Station is the body of a handsome young gentleman. He has no luggage, empty pockets, and no sign of identification on his person. And putting together the clues to the mystery of the man's identity only raises more questions, when Lenox discovers that the crime has a significant connection to America.

In what promises to be a breakout in Charles Finch's best-selling series, Charles Lenox travels to the New York and Newport of the dawning Gilded Age to investigate the death of a beautiful socialite.

Inspector Duff works with the Scotland Yard. He is called in to investigate a mysterious murder that occurred at a famous local London hotel. He finds himself wishing for the assistance of his old friend, Charlie Chan, who now resides in Hawaii. The plot thickens when one of the suspects is found dead at a further stop on the trip.

In The Day the Revolution Began, N. T. Wright once again challenges commonly held Christian beliefs, as he did in Surprised by Hope. Demonstrating the rigorous intellect and breathtaking knowledge that have long defined his work, Wright argues that Jesus' death on the cross was not only to absolve us of our sins, it was actually the beginning of a revolution commissioning the Christian faithful to a new vocation - a royal priesthood responsible for restoring and reconciling all of God's creation.

A peaceful demonstration in the normally quiet town of Eastvale ended with 50 arrests---and the brutal stabbing death of a young constable. But Chief Inspector Alan Banks fears there is worse violence in the offing. For CID superintendent Richard "Dirty Dick" Burgess has arrived from London to take charge of the investigation, fueled by professional outrage and volatile, long-simmering hatreds.

Since the day he hatched, Owl dreamed of becoming a real knight. He may not be the biggest or the strongest, but his sharp nocturnal instincts can help protect the castle, especially since many knights have recently gone missing. While holding guard during Knight Night Watch, Owl is faced with the ultimate trial—a frightening intruder. It’s a daunting duel by any measure. But what Owl lacks in size, he makes up for in good ideas.

September 1907. George Dillman sets sail from Liverpool to New York on the Lusitania's maiden voyage. Posing as a passenger, Dillman is in fact an undercover detective hired by the Cunard Line to keep an eye out for petty crimes. But after some uneventful days aboard, the ship’s blueprints are stolen and then a body is found. As Dillman works to get to the bottom of the crimes, he makes an unusual friend, first-class passenger Genevieve Masefield, and the two uncover secrets aboard the ship that prove explosive.