Showing results by narrator "Peter Noble" in All Categories

The Hundred Years’ War is over and newly-knighted Sir John Hawkwood is headed for France to make his fortune as a freebooter. Violence and extortion are rife, and the freebooters will stop at nothing to capture the Papal City of Avignon. This is only the beginning. Italy beckons, and with it, yet more battles against rival mercenaries, powerful cities and the Papal State.

The Technician, the Theocracy has been dead for 20 years, and the Polity rules on Masada - but it is an order that the rebels of the Tidy Squad cannot accept, and the iconic Jeremiah Tombs is top of their hit list. Tombs, meanwhile, has escaped his sanatorium. His insanity must be cured, because the near-mythical hooder, called 'the Technician', that attacked him all those years ago did something to his mind even the AIs fail to understand.

In this hilarious, fascinating and insightful expose, industry insider Peter Smith reveals the massive blunders and dodgy dealings taking place around the world as private companies and public-sector bodies buy goods and services. A recent report showed that over 90 per cent of procurement projects fail. So, why are so many billions wasted on ineptitude, mismanagement and, in some cases, fraud?

John Aviemore, still mourning the death of his wife, fears he’s heading for another breakdown. In an abandoned cottage, he faces a mystery that grows more terrifying every night. And he’s trapped there. Trapped in the place where worlds overlap. Trapped in the Blurred Lands. A disappearing city, a curse that unravels minds and a caged, power-hungry god. John’s only chance of escape lies with an ancient family secret and a character straight out of a fairy tale.

June 1554. Professional assassin Jack Blackjack has been dispatched to the palace of Woodstock, where Queen Mary's half sister, Princess Elizabeth, is being kept under close guard. Jack's employer has reason to believe that a spy has been installed within the princess' household, and Jack has been ordered to kill her. Jack has no choice but to agree. But he arrives at Woodstock to discover that a murder has already been committed.

Criminal investigator Thomas Ravnsholdt—better known as Ravn—is on leave from Copenhagen’s special crime unit following the brutal murder of his wife. Wracked with guilt over her death, Ravn has withdrawn to a ramshackle houseboat with only his grumpy Old English Bulldog to keep him company. But his self-imposed exile ends when a friend asks him for help finding a young woman who disappeared without a trace a few years earlier. The investigation brings Ravn back to his former workplace and the underworld he’d hoped to leave behind.

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.

The idea that people are basically driven by individualism and economic incentives and that prosperity and good societies come from top-down leadership has dominated politics for the last 30 years (from some perspectives, much longer). This book shows that the age of homo economicus and centralisation is coming to an end. Instead, Collier and Kay argue that community and mutuality will be the drivers of successful societies in the future - as they are already in some parts of the world.

Ecko: Rising is a unique genre-bending fantasy sci-fi epic following a savage, gleefully cynical anti-hero. After awakening in a dimension-jumping inn to find himself immersed in his own sardonic fantasy world, Ecko strives to conquer his deepest fears and save the world from extinction. Ware is the publicist and event organiser for cult entertainment retailer Forbidden Planet. She has worked closely with a wide-range of genre authors and has been immersed in the science-fiction and fantasy community for the past decade.

Summer, 1522. In a wave of pomp, Henry VIII's court welcomes the Imperial emperor, Charles V. Anthony Blanke, the son of the king's late 'black trumpet', John Blanke, is called to Hampton Court by his former employer, Cardinal Wolsey. The cardinal is preparing a gift for King Henry: a masque of King Arthur and the Black Knight. Anthony is to take center stage.

Beyond Good and Evil confirmed Nietzsche's position as the towering European philosopher of his age. The work dramatically rejects the tradition of Western thought with its notions of truth and God, good and evil. Nietzsche demonstrates that the Christian world is steeped in a false piety and infected with a 'slave morality'. With wit and energy, he turns from this critique to a philosophy that celebrates the present and demands that the individual imposes their own 'will to power' upon the world.

James Allen's literary essay and book As a Man Thinketh was originally published in 1903. The book is written in terms of responsibility assumption, which is a doctrine that any person has complete responsibility for the events that happen to them. Every situation you are in is because of your choice, no other outside factors. Allen's book takes this thought and acts as a guide for an individual to lead a more full and happy life, by using the power of thought to change one's life through a better attitude.

One Hundred Years of Solitude meets The Kite-Runner in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. On the third day of Ramadan, the village wakes to find the severed heads of nine of its sons stacked in banana crates by the bus stop. One of them belonged to one of the most wanted men in Iraq, known to his friends as Ibrahim the Fated. How did this good and humble man earn the enmity of so many? What did he do to deserve such a death?

One seeks judgment, another faces damnation and one man will have his revenge.... Thorvald Spear is losing his mind as he drowns in dark memories that aren't his own. Penny Royal, rogue artificial intelligence, has linked Spear with the stored personalities of those it's murdered. And whether the AI seeks redemption or has some more sinister motive, Spear needs to destroy it. He feels the anger of the dead and shares their pain.

The Bugatti Type 57 Atlantic was called the most beautiful car of all time. Only four of them were ever built. A California museum paid $37 million for one; Ralph Lauren bought another; a third was smashed by a train at a level crossing. The fourth disappeared in France during World War II. It was the car used by British racing ace William Grover Williams, twice winner of the French and Monaco Grand Prix, who became an undercover agent in occupied France.

Fred awoke to find that a snake was watching him and that there was an aeroplane in the trees. It was on fire. Being on fire was a quality it shared with much of the surrounding jungle. After crashing hundreds of miles from civilisation in the Amazon rainforest, Fred, Con, Lila and Max are utterly alone and in grave danger. They have no food, no water and no chance of being rescued. But they are alive, and they have hope. As they negotiate the wild jungle, they begin to find signs that something - someone - has been there before them.

18th century—England is at war with the French. The East India Company is at risk of losing its trade routes. Tom Batrick arrives in London. For the past ten years, he's worked his way up the ranks on ships patrolling Canadian waters. Now, at the request of the East India Company, he is to captain the merchant ship Warley.

In his acclaimed, award-winning novels Alex and Irène, Pierre Lemaitre created an unforgettable character in Police Commandant Camille Verhoeven. Now, in Camille, the final volume in Lemaitre's internationally best-selling trilogy of "meta-meta detective" novels ( The New York Times), Verhoeven faces his most harrowing case yet, and the ultimate reckoning for the diminutive yet tenacious protagonist.

In this insightful and politically powerful essay, Orwell attempts to evaluate non-violence as a method of political leverage outside of the unique circumstances in which Gandhi successfully deployed his method. He discusses the particular context that gave Satyagraha political force: the struggle for national self-determination in colonial India, and looks to Gandhi’s method as a reference for what he feels is a necessary discussion of alternative methods of political resistance.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Six Minutes in May by Nicholas Shakespeare, read by Peter Noble. London, May 1940. Britain is under threat of invasion and Neville Chamberlain’s government is about to fall. It is hard for us to imagine the Second World War without Winston Churchill taking the helm, but in Six Minutes in May Nicholas Shakespeare shows how easily events could have gone in a different direction.