Showing results by narrator "Nigel Patterson" in All Categories

In the early 17th century, Britain took ruthless steps to deal with its unwanted citizens, forcibly removing men, women, and children from their homelands and sending them to far-flung corners of the empire to be sold off to colonial masters. This oppressive regime grew into a brutal system of human bondage which would continue into the 20th century. Drawing on firsthand accounts, letters, and official documents, Graham Seal uncovers the traumatic struggles of those shipped around the empire.

This book tells the stories of the Muslims, Christians, Jews and others who made a courageous stand against the mass slaughter of Ottoman Armenians in 1915, the first modern genocide. Foreigners and Ottomans alike ran considerable risks to bear witness and rescue victims, sometimes sacrificing their lives. Diplomats, humanitarians, missionaries, lawyers and other visitors to the Empire stood up, including Tolstoy's daughter, Alexandra; Raphael Lemkin, the jurist who first established genocide as an international crime; and the polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen.

Awakening to China's Rise provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of how Europe's major powers have responded to the re-emergence of China as a great power in world politics since the end of the Cold War. To do so, it puts forward a unique cross-regional comparison of how the major European powers (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom) have confronted Chinese assertiveness both in the Asia-Pacific and in Europe.

Carrying out wartime patrols from Malta with the famous "Fighting Tenth" Submarine Flotilla, HM Submarine Rugged has orders to disrupt Axis supply convoys. Deep in enemy waters, Rugged encounters deadly mines, depth-charges, and torpedoes! Hunted down by the remorseless destroyers of the Trapani First Eleven, the crew of Rugged, fast running out of oxygen and slowly poisoned by carbon dioxide, must call on every ounce of their reserve if they are to evade the enemy and escape with their lives.

With the answer to the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle in their hands, America is attacked on its own soil by the Blood King - an underworld figure so powerful his very existence is a mere myth: a man who coerces people at the highest levels of government and society.

It's 1940, and the London Blitz is raging. Bryan Hale and Bluebird Squadron fight on into the autumn of 1940, chasing down the new threat of 'Jabo' hit-and-run raids by bomb-laden enemy fighters over the capital's rooftops. Bryan's chance encounter in a London pub with Jenny, an acquaintance from his school days, starts them both down the road to a relationship that neither wants or can afford. But the deadly perils of London's Blitz ignite a passion that neither can resist.

Seriously Mum, What's an Alpaca? is the frank and charming story of a brave couple who risk everything to move to Spain to breed alpacas. Their intention is to make a living, but first they must negotiate their way through the Spanish property market, local characters, rogue builders and the worst weather Andalucía has seen for 100 years.

Alan and Lorna experience the joy, but also the heartbreak of alpaca breeding, picking up an assortment of stray animals on the way.

Sir Jack Drummond, with his wife, Lady Anne, and their 10-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, were on holiday on the French Riviera when they stopped to make camp just off the road near a farm called La Grand' Terre in Provence. The family was found murdered the next morning. More than two years later, the barely literate, 75-year-old proprietor of La Grand' Terre, Gaston Dominici, was brought to trial, convicted, and condemned to death by guillotine.

Everyone hates Fiona Methodist. Her war veteran father shot a young couple in broad daylight before killing himself. The engaged pair witnessed a robbery and were due to give evidence, but with all three dead, no one knows the true motive. For Fiona, it's destroyed her life. It's not just those who whisper behind her back or the friends who pretend she doesn't exist; it's the landlords who spot her name and say no, the job agencies who can't find her work. But Fiona knows her dad didn't do it.

Anna Applegate’s daughter, Michelle, drowned after a night out with a friend. Anna’s convinced Michelle’s death was deliberate, and that her boyfriend, sports star Jack Marsh, killed her. As Investigator Andrew Hunter begins to dig into the case, he quickly discovers Jack has a history of violence. And, with only his teammate for an alibi, Andrew is convinced Jack’s lying about where he was the night Michelle died. But Andrew has more to worry about than just finding out the truth about Michelle’s death because a former case is back to haunt him.

From Shanghai before and during the Second World War to US occupied Tokyo, and, finally, to the Middle East in the early 1970s, Ian Buruma's masterful novel about the intoxicating power of collective fantasy follows three star-struck men driven to extraordinary acts by their devotion to the same legendary woman. A beautiful Japanese girl born in Manchuria, Yamaguchi Yoshiko is known as Ri Koran in Japan, Li Xianglan in China, and Shirley Yamaguchi in the US, and her past is a closely guarded secret.

A Nazi war criminal believed to have been executed years ago is seen very much alive in Hamburg. When Lieutenant Hank Jefferson, US Navy, goes missing, the Admiralty, already troubled by disturbing rumors of Nazi resurgence, know just the man to find him.

On a routine patrol, HM Submarine Searcher strikes an unidentified moving object where no obstruction should have been and sinks to the bottom of the sea. Her Captain, Lieutenant Peter Sinclair, RN, is court-martialed.

As plants see it, humans are not the masters of the Earth but only one of its most unpleasant and irksome residents. They have been on the planet for only about 300,000 years ago (nothing compared to the three billon years of plant evolution) yet have changed the conditions of the planet so drastically as to make it a dangerous place for their own survival. It's time for the plants to offer advice.

Adam Park owes favors, and when an aid worker is murdered on the Greek island of Paramatra, one such favor is called in. Kai Pace's parents believe the investigation into their son's death is deeply flawed, and Adam is tasked with reviewing the police's conclusions and - if found wanting - identifying the real killer. On an island struggling to cope with the influx of refugees from war zones across the Mediterranean, Adam must battle corruption and ruthless smuggling gangs.

Crime reporter Mark Edwards and his colleague Danielle Green wade deep in red herrings and a twisting and turning plot as they seek to discover the terrible secret of a Nazi sadist who has continued his murdering ways in modern London. The story switches from a wartime transit camp in Czechoslovakia to contemporary Germany; from a London suburb to the Old Bailey, the world's most famous criminal court, where two men strive to claim that the other is the real Hans Schreiber.

Sergeant Jacob Knox leads the Head Knockers, a unit of scout-saboteurs in the war against the Dread Duke and his armies. They are the favorite squad among Captain Brighton's Stormwalkers, until an ambush by shapeshifters kills the Captain, half the company, and Knox's best men. Now the new Captain has new orders: he's sending the Head Knockers to investigate an abandoned village, the possible source of the attack.

We are all familiar with the "march of progress," the representation of evolution that depicts a series of apelike creatures becoming progressively taller and more erect before finally reaching the upright human form. Its emphasis on linear progress has had a decisive impact on public understanding of evolution, yet the image contradicts modern scientific conceptions of evolution as complex and branching.

When Adam is retained to confirm the veracity of a young heiress' family tree, it sounds like the simple case he needs to break the monotony of life on a Mediterranean island. But it soon becomes clear that others wish to stake a claim to the girl's fortune, sponsored by an organization with one foot in the occult. And something as inconvenient as a private investigator will not stand in their way.

Everyone in Oldtown had heard talk of the Reapers. Even though nobody had seen one in years, everyone whispered the tales: flying from rooftop to rooftop, stealing the souls of the unwary, letting their undead beasts hunt through the streets for any member of the community too reckless or fearless to heed the nightly curfew ... mysterious and terrifying, most feared to even mention them by name, lest they appear and gather your spirit away.