Showing results by narrator "Geoffrey Howard" in All Categories

In this landmark study of Italy from the 14th through the early 16th centuries, Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt chronicles the rise of Florence and Venice as powerful city-states, the breakup of the medieval worldview that came with the rediscovery of Greek and Roman culture, and the new emphasis on the role of the individual. All these, Burckhardt explains, went hand in hand with the explorations of science and the more naturalistic depiction of the world in art and literature.

In this remarkable novel, Mauriac brings his extraordinary talent for probing the inmost core of the human character to what is arguably the most exciting theme in the world: the battle for the human soul. In all of literature there can be few more appalling studies of a soul devoured by pride and avarice, corroded by hatred.

A dinner party at an English mansion with some stuffy, not-very-close friends is not exactly Jude's cup of tea. But the practically mummified torso of a woman found in the cellar is much more up Jude's alley. Once again, the two middle-aged women from Fethering, Jude and her reluctant neighbor, Carole, find themselves embroiled in another puzzling whodunit.

In the rich turbulence of English history, one day stands magnificently apart: June 15, 1215, the day of the signing of the Magna Charta. On this day, the first blow for English freedom was struck and forever affected the Western world. Here is the story of three true men, Stephen Langton, Williams Marshall, and Hubert de Burgh, whose heroic deeds are set against those of the ever deceitful and crafty King John.

It isn't the rain that upsets Carole Seddon during her walk on the West Sussex Downs. It isn't the dilapidated barn in which she is forced to seek shelter. No, what upsets her is the human skeleton she discovers there, neatly packed into two blue fertilizer bags.

Young Otto is born into a warring household in a lawless age. Having no mother, he is sent by his father, a valiant robber baron, to be safely raised by the monks until the age of 12. But when he returns, gentle Otto can no longer escape the bitter blood feud between his father and the rival house of Trutz-Drachen. He is kidnapped by the rival family and his hand is cut off, to be replaced forever by a silver one. Can his brave father and his captor's kind daughter, Pauline, help him escape?

The story of K - the unwanted land surveyor who is never to be admitted to the Castle and yet cannot go home - seems to depict, like a dream from the deepest recesses of consciousness, an inexplicable truth about the nature of existence. A perpetual human condition lies at the heart of this labyrinthine world: dualities of certainty and doubt, hope and fear, reason and nonsense, harmony and disintegration.

A shot rang out. The Arabs surged forward under a savage fusillade of heavy fire. Nearer and nearer they came, shouting with hate and blood-lust. Geste rushed up and down his side of the roof, pausing only long enough to load his rifle and fire into the shrieking mob below, hoping to trick the Arabs into believing the fort was heavily manned.

Joseph K. is an Everyman. His inconsequence makes doubly strange his arrest by an officer of the court, made with no formal charges or explanation. Disoriented and consumed with guilt for a "crime" he does not understand, Josef K. must justify his life to a "court" with which he cannot communicate. Through the court's relentless bureaucratic proceedings and absurd juxtapositions of different hypotheses of cause and effect, the whole rational structure of the world is undermined.

Steven Scott is relatively new to horses. A successful, wealthy inventor, he takes up horse racing as a hobby - a hobby that soon brings him winner after winner under the inspired guidance of his trainer, Jody Leeds. Currently both their reputations are wrapped up in a beautiful black hurdler named Energise. But just when Steven is winning at both women and horses, he discovers deceit in his own stables. Termination of the troublemaker marks Steven for his own termination - and much sooner than he can imagine...

A colleague's suicide. Pedophiles. A missing child. A serial killer. You never know your luck, muses Rebus. Driven by instinct and experience, he searches for connections, against official skepticism. But at night, unsoothed by whiskey, Rebus faces his ghosts, and the prospect of his daughter's possibly permanent paralysis. Soldiering through dank, desperate slums and the tiny flats of the Scottish chic, Rebus uncovers a chain of crime, deceit, and hidden sins.

Edward Lincoln is a worldwide celebrity who plays impossibly daring detectives on the big screen. But in reality he is an ordinary man currently stuck in an extraordinary spot. Nerissa, his ailing godmother, had pleaded with him to travel to South Africa to investigate whether someone was tampering with her racehorses. He could not refuse her.

When English agent Gene Hawkins told his boss he'd forego his vacation to search for millionaire Dave Teller's prized missing stallion, he didn't know his retainer would include the attention of his boss's beautiful teenage daughter - or Teller's seldom sober wife. He also didn't know that a trail from London to New York to Las Vegas to California would lead eventually to murder.

It was just before Summertide, the time when the twin planets, Opal and Quake, would orbit closest to their sun, subjecting both - Quake in particular - to vast tidal forces. It was to be the most violent Summertide ever, creating something that only happened every 350,000 years. Planetary Administrators Hans Rebka and Max Perry had no choice but to go to Quake - risking their lives to protect the others - and to learn, just maybe, the secret of Summertide and the Builders.

Set in Malaya, Almayer's Folly is Joseph Conrad's first novel. In it, he charts the decline of a Dutch merchant after a 25 year struggle against overwhelming odds. Though married to a bitter and hateful Malayan wife, Almayer refuses to accept the financial ruin which he has precipitated. Instead, he dreams of fantastic wealth and a return to the civilization of his youth, accompanied by his loving daughter, Nina.

The Romanovs provides the answers, describing in suspenseful detail the dramatic efforts to discover the truth. Pulitzer Prize winner Robert K. Massie presents a colorful panorama of contemporary characters, illuminating the major scientific dispute between Russian experts and a team of Americans, whose findings, along with those of DNA scientists from Russia, America, and Great Britain, all contributed to solving one of the great mysteries of the twentieth century.

2012 marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of C. S. Lewis’s classic, Mere Christianity. Having sold over half a million copies in the UK alone, his overview of Christianity has been imitated many times, but never outdone. Mere Christianity brings together Lewis’s legendary broadcasts from the war years; talks in which he set out simply to ‘"explain and defend the belief that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times."

Charles Paris has landed a dual role in a lavish West End musical: onstage as a bit player, offstage as an undercover sleuth. The production's nervous backers fear that someone is trying to kill the play. The ultimate showstopper would be to eliminate the star.

Under Western Eyes, Joseph Conrad's novel of political treachery and oppression, of betrayal, guilt, and intrigue, begins with a bomb that kills its intended target, a hated Russian minister of police, along with a number of innocent bystanders. A young student named Razumov hides the perpetrator, then betrays him and becomes a spy among his exiled comrades. He faces a moral dilemma from which there is no escape.

Written at various times and under various influences, the four stories contained in Within the Tides are linked by Conrad's treatment of loyalty and betrayal. They range in setting from the Far East via 18th-century Spain to England. The tone shifts from the tragic inevitability of "The Planter of Malata" and the pathos of "Because of the Dollars" to the gothic "The Inn of the Two Witches" and the grim humor of "The Partner." Experimental in form, they represent yet another branch of Conrad's search for moral truth.