Showing results by narrator "Peter Noble" in All Categories

In his wide-ranging new book, Francis Young explores the role of occult traditions in the history of the island of Great Britain: Merlin's realm. He argues that while the great magus and artificer invented by Geoffrey of Monmouth was a powerful model for a succession of actual royal magical advisers (including Roger Bacon and John Dee), monarchs nevertheless often lived in fear of hostile sorcery while at other times they even attempted magic themselves.

Joining the ranks of The Hidden Life of Trees and H is for Hawk, an evocative memoir and ode to one of the most majestic living things on earth - the oak tree - probing the mysteries of nature and the healing role it plays in our lives.

Still mourning the losses of his beloved Penny Priddy and his surrogate father Professor Hikita, Buckaroo Banzai must also contend with the constant threat of attack from his immortal nemesis Hanoi Xan, ruthless leader of the World Crime League. To make matters worse, Planet 10 warrior queen John Emdall has sent her Lectroid legions against Earth with a brutal ultimatum. Or is her true target Buckaroo Banzai? As the apocalyptic threats continue to mount, only Buckaroo and his Hong Kong Cavaliers stand in the way of global destruction.

The starship Ariel is on a mission of the utmost secrecy, upon which the fate of thousands of lives depend. Though the ship is a mile long, its six crew are crammed into a space barely large enough for them to stand. Five are officers, geniuses in their field. The other is Will Kuno-Monet, the man responsible for single-handedly running a ship comprised of the most dangerous and delicate technology that mankind has ever devised. He is the Roboteer.

For as long as humans have existed, insects have been our constant companions. Yet we hardly know them, not even the ones we’re closest to: those that eat our food, share our beds, and live in our homes. Organizing his book alphabetically, Hugh Raffles weaves together brief vignettes, meditations, and extended essays, taking the listener on a mesmerizing exploration of history and science, anthropology and travel, economics, philosophy, and popular culture.

Bruno, Chief of Police in the charming French town of St Denis, is already busy with a case when the body of an undercover French Muslim cop is found in the woods, a man who called Bruno for help only hours earlier. But Bruno's sometime boss and rival, the Brigadier, doesn't see this investigation as a priority - there are bigger issues at stake. Bruno has other ideas. Meanwhile, a Muslim youth named Sami turns up at a French army base in Afghanistan hoping to get home to St Denis. One of Bruno's old army comrades helps to smuggle Sami back to France, but the FBI aren't far behind.

This new, updated edition of Culture Smart! Turkey reveals a nation in transition. Over the last two decades, living conditions have improved greatly and Turkey is now classified as a developed country with an emerging market economy. Viewed by many as a model for outward-looking Islam, it is a country with laws to protect against religious paternalism, where restaurants are open during the fast of Ramadan, and where headscarves or no scarves can be worn in universities, schools, and public offices.

In Left Behind, Collier examines how this one-size-fits-all, hands-off approach to economic policy has devastated areas and nations all over the world and made society vastly more unequal. With keen insight, he draws lessons from such disparate fields as behavioral psychology, evolutionary biology, and moral philosophy to explain how we can adapt to the needs of individual economies in order to build a brighter and fairer global future.

During a weekend spree in Cape Town, a young, rich Afrikaner fatally injures a teenage street girl with his Range Rover but is too drunk to know he has hit her. His companions - who do know - leave the girl to die. The driver's mother, a self-made mining magnate named Margot Le Roux, intends to keep her son in ignorance of his crime. Why should his life be ruined for a nameless girl who was already terminally ill? No one will care, and the law is cheap. But by chance, the case falls to the relentless Warrant Officer Turner of Cape Town Homicide.

Leo McKinstry tells the story of the remarkable plane from its designers to the first-hand testimonies of those brave pilots who flew it; he takes in the full military and political background but always keeps the human stories to the fore - to restore the Hawker Hurricane to its rightful place in history.

Culture Smart! New Zealand provides essential information on attitudes, beliefs, and behavior in different countries, ensuring that you arrive at your destination aware of basic manners, common courtesies, and sensitive issues. These concise guides tell you what to expect, how to behave, and how to establish a rapport with your hosts. This inside knowledge will enable you to steer clear of embarrassing gaffes and mistakes, feel confident in unfamiliar situations, and much more!

Levi Bellfield is one of the most notorious British serial killers of the last fifty years - his name alone evokes horror and revulsion, after his string of brutal murders in the early 2000s. At 3:07pm on 21st March, 2002, Milly Dowler left her school in Surrey for the last time. Less than an hour later, she was to be abducted and murdered in the cruellest fashion, sparking a missing person investigation that would span months before her body was found.

Two sets of cousins, Boer and Brit, find their destinies inexorably intertwined in the politics and mayhem that led up to and encompassed the Anglo Boer War of 1899-1902. From Transvaal to Victorian England, the cousins form strong bonds that are tested on the battlefields of South Africa. Martin de Winter, nurtured to lead his country, Transvaal, into the 20th century, instead finds himself excelling as a gifted young general, fighting a desperate war to keep his nation from ruin, all the while being haunted by his love for a British woman.

Bruno Courreges is chief of police of the lovely town of St Denis in the Dordogne. His main wish is to keep the local people safe and his town free from crime. But crime has a way of finding its way to him. For 30 years, Bruno's boss, chief of detectives Jalipeau, known as J-J, has been obsessed with his first case. It was never solved and Bruno knows that this failure continues to haunt J-J. A young male body was found in the woods near St Denis and never identified. For all these years, J-J has kept the skull as a reminder. He calls him 'Oscar'.

On the moonless night of August 18th, 1942, a flotilla pushes out into the flat water of the Channel. They are to seize the German-held port of Dieppe and hold it for at least 24 hours, showing the Soviets the Allies were serious about a second front and to get experience ahead of a full-scale invasion. But confidence turned to carnage with nearly two thirds of the attackers dead, wounded, or captured. The raid—the Royal Air Force's biggest battle since 1940—was both a disaster and a milestone in the narrative of the war.

Their enemy seems unbeatable. But humanity is indomitable.... A Jain warship has risen from a prison five million years old, wielding a hoard of lethal technology. Its goal is to catch their old enemy, the Client, and it will destroy all who stand in its path.Humanity and the prador thought their mutual nemesis – the bane of so many races – was long extinct. But the Jain are back and Orlandine must prepare humanity’s defence. She needs the Client’s knowledge to counter this ancient threat. But is the enemy of your enemy a friend?

Laura Lensky's daughter has been missing for two years. For the police, it's a closed case - she wanted to run away - but for her mother and boyfriend, it's a different story. When Laura hires private investigator Ian Kennedy, it is a last-ditch attempt to find her daughter before she leaves for America. Drawn in by strange parallels to an obscure Celtic myth and his first almost unexplainable case, Ian takes the job. But his beliefs are about to be stretched to their limit - there are darker and more devious forces at work here than any of them imagined.

Drawing on insights from social psychology, moral philosophy and behavioural economics, as well as a range of illuminating case studies, world-renowned economist Paul Collier shares a galvanizing vision for a more inclusive, prosperous world.

Brought together first as enemies in the Anglo-Boer War and later as allies in the First World War, the remarkable and often touching friendship between Winston Churchill and Jan Smuts is a rich study in contrasts. In youth, they occupied very different worlds: Churchill, the rambunctious and thrusting young aristocrat; Smuts, the aesthetic, philosophical Cape farm boy who would go on to Cambridge. Both were men of exceptional talents and achievements, and between them the pair had to grapple with some of the 20th century's most intractable issues, not least of which was the task of restoring peace and prosperity to Europe after two of mankind's bloodiest wars.

In this compelling story of greed, chicanery and tarnished idealism, two Wall Street Journal reporters investigate a man who Bill Gates and Western governments entrusted with hundreds of millions of dollars to make profits and end poverty but now stands accused of masterminding one of the biggest, most brazen frauds ever.