Showing results by narrator "John Banks" in All Categories

For the Western allies, 11 November 1918 has always been a solemn date - the end of fighting which had destroyed a generation and a vindication of a terrible sacrifice with the total collapse of their principal enemies: the German Empire, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. But for much of the rest of Europe, this was a day with no meaning, as a continuing nightmarish series of conflicts engulfed country after country. In this highly original, gripping book, Robert Gerwarth asks us to think again about the true legacy of the First World War.

Gabriel Bell is a grumpy 44 - year old web journalist irritated by the accumulating disappointments in life. He and his girlfriend Ellie want to start a family, but Gabriel has so few sperm he can name them and knit them flippers. So it's IVF, which is expensive. Losing his job was bad enough, but getting run over and waking up to find himself in a therapy group run by angels really annoys him. In Gabriel's group are a professional killer and his last victim, as well as the woman whose car put Gabriel and herself in a coma.

Raised by his father in La Rochelle, France, Paul Plantavalu is known for his artistic nature, inquisitive mind and Christian faith. He also has an unshakeable love for his Muslim childhood friend, Alisha al Komaty. Courageous and outspoken, she returns Paul’s love. But their path is paved with obstacles: religion, war, political chaos and a mysterious enemy determined to destroy their family lines.

In the year 2093, human consciousness has expanded to the point that man can visit the past using a technique called 'mind-travelling'. Artist Edward Bush returns from a lengthy 'trip' to the Jurassic period to find the government overthrown by an authoritarian regime. Given his mind-travel experience, he is recruited by the new regime to track down and assassinate a scientist whose ideas threaten to topple the status quo. However, the job of an artist is not to take orders but to ask questions.

A heist story with a difference: Guardians of the Galaxy meets The Hobbit in this rollicking fantasy adventure. The dragons who once ruled over the land are dead. The motley crew that stole the dragons' gold and stumbled through a revolution are rich and praised as saviours. Everyone gets to live happily ever after, right? Well, it might have worked out that way if the dragons in Kondorra had been the only ones. If they hadn't been just the tip of the spear about to fall upon the whole world....

Charles Hayden has been fascinated by a strange Victorian fairy tale, In the Night Wood, since he was a child. When his wife, Erin - a descendant of the author - inherits her ancestor’s house, the couple decide to make it their home. Still mourning the recent death of their daughter, they leave America behind, seeking a new beginning in the English countryside. But Hollow House, filled with secrets and surrounded by an ancient oak forest, is a place where the past seems very much alive....

Science is always telling stories. Whether in the creation myths of evolution or the Big Bang, or in the eureka moments of science history, narrative just as much as metaphor is a key tool in the scientist's surprisingly literary toolkit. In this unique anthology, authors have collaborated with leading scientists, to bounce literary, human narratives against purely theoretical ones, alloying together real stories with abstract ones, to produce truly extraordinary results.

Although known to an audience of millions the world over for his portrayal of The Doctor's arch nemesis The Master in Doctor Who during the 1980s, Anthony Ainley had a prolific career which encompassed starring roles in Spyders Web and It's Dark Outside as well as appearances in renowned dramas such as The Pallisers, Elizabeth R, Nicholas Nickleby, and Upstairs, Downstairs....

Detective Matt Jackson has reached the end. His beloved wife, Polly, is the latest victim of 'NEON' - a serial killer who displays his victims in snaking neon lights - and he can't go on without her. Unable to take his life, Jackson hires a hitwoman to finish the job. But on the night of his own murder, he makes a breakthrough in the case, and at the last minute his hitwoman, Iris, is offered an irresistible alternative: help Jackson find and kill NEON in return for the detective's entire estate.

Connor Alasdair’s parents have never lied to him; they’ve always treated him like an adult and included him in family discussions. So why won’t they tell him about the strange red-haired man who keeps visiting their home? Why is his father lying about the monster in their back garden? And why are both parents so insistent that he stops asking questions? Yesterday 1990s suburbia held no terror for a 15 year-old boy.

These 16 short tales delve into realms of existential investigation, from dark horror and science fiction futures to fantastical flights of scientific wonder. Each story is a self-contained world of its own, a moment in time that illuminates a thought, a person, an experience or a curiosity.

Richard Atkinson was in his late 30s and approaching a milestone he had long feared - the age at which his father died – when one day he came across a box of old family letters gathering dust in a cupboard. This discovery set him on an all-consuming, highly emotional journey, ultimately taking him from the weather-beaten house of his Cumbrian ancestors to the ruins of their sugar estates in Jamaica....

History is written by the victors, and Rome had some very eloquent historians. Those the Romans regarded as barbarians left few records of their own, but they had a tremendous impact on the Roman imagination. Resisting from outside Rome's borders or rebelling from within, they emerge vividly in Rome's historical tradition, and left a significant footprint in archaeology.

Rock and Roll is Life is a vastly entertaining, picaresque and touching novel inspired by the excess and trajectories of the great '60s and '70s supergroups, and of the tales brought back from the front line by a very special breed of Englishmen who made it big in the States as the alchemists and enablers, as well as the old making way for the new in the era of the baby boomers. At its heart is one man's adventure, and the poignancy of the special relationships that dominate his life.

With enemies advancing on all sides and Cardinal Richelieu's health failing, France is at breaking point. Yet salvation may arrive in the most unlikely form.... Born into poverty and with terrible deformities, Sebastian Morra is a dwarf with the wit of Tyrion Lannister and three foot, four inches of brazen pluck.

The Juganet is a circle. The circle is a machine. The machine is a crossover point. The point is a paramagnetic intersection. That is where I must be. Not here... Eerie, unsettling and a benchmark production for children's television in the 1970s, Sky was created by Doctor Who stalwarts Bob Baker and Dave Martin as one of the run of outstanding children's dramas HTV produced in that decade.

I cannot go on like this. I feel such a burden to you. You are young and can start again. You deserve that chance. By the time you read this, I will be dead. Do not grieve for me, for I am now without pain. Yours truly forever, Monica. Monica suffers from chronic neuropathic pain. Every second of her life is spent in agony, and she is coping with it the best she can. However, there are whole years of her life which are a blur to her. But when she finds a suicide note, written in her handwriting, she begins to question everything.

George Simling has grown up in the city-state of Illyria, an enclave of logic and reason founded as a refuge from the Reaction, a wave of religious fundamentalism that swept away the nations of the 21st century. Yet to George, Illyria's militant rationalism is as close-minded and stifling as the faith-based superstition that dominates the world outside its walls. For George has fallen in love with Lucy. A prostitute. A robot. She might be a machine, but the semblance of life is perfect. And beneath her good looks and real human skin, her seductive, sultry, sluttish software is simmering on the edge of consciousness. To the city authorities robot sentience is a malfunction, curable by periodically erasing and resetting silicon minds. Simple maintenance, no real problem, it’s only a machine. But it’s a problem for George, he knows that Lucy is something more.