Showing results by narrator "Simon Vance" in All Categories

The Small House at Allington introduces Trollope's charming heroine, Lily Dale, to the Barsetshire scene. Lily is the niece of Squire Dale, an embittered old bachelor living in the main house on his property at Allington. He has loaned an adjacent small house rent free to his widowed sister-in-law and her daughters, Lily and Bell. But the relations between the two houses are strained, affecting the romantic entanglements of the girls.

Publius Quinctilius Varus, a Roman politician, is summoned by the Emperor, Augustus Caesar. Arminius, a prince of the Cherusci, is playing a deadly game. He serves in the Roman army, gaining Roman citizenship and an officer's rank, and learning the arts of war and policy as practiced by the Romans. An epic battle is brewing, and these two men stand on opposite sides of what will forever be known as the Battle of the Teutoberg Forest---a ferocious, bloody clash that will change the course of history.

When Lawrence Anthony learned that the northern white rhino, living in the war-ravaged Congo, was on the very brink of extinction, he knew he had to act. If the world lost the sub-species, it would be the largest land mammal since the woolly mammoth to go extinct. In The Last Rhinos, Anthony recounts his attempts to save these remarkable animals. The demand for rhino horns in the Far East has turned poaching into a dangerous black market that threatens the lives of not just these rare beasts, but also the rangers who protect them.

The untold history of the surprising origins of the "gig economy" - how deliberate decisions made by consultants and CEOs in the '50s and '60s upended the stability of the workplace and the lives of millions of working men and women in postwar America.

When South African conservationist Lawrence Anthony was asked to accept a herd of "rogue" wild elephants on his Thula Thula game reserve in Zululand, his common sense told him to refuse. But he was the herd's last chance of survival: they would be killed if he wouldn't take them. In order to save their lives, Anthony took them in. In the years that followed he became a part of their family. And as he battled to create a bond with the elephants, he came to realize that they had a great deal to teach him about life, loyalty, and freedom.

When the Iraq war began, conservationist Lawrence Anthony could think of only one thing: the fate of the Baghdad Zoo, caught in the crossfire at the heart of the city. Once Anthony entered Iraq, he discovered that hostilities and uncontrolled looting had devastated the zoo and its animals. Working with members of the zoo staff and a few compassionate U.S. soldiers, Anthony defended the zoo, bartered for food on war-torn streets, and scoured bombed palaces for desperately needed supplies.

Threatened by an Elloryan invasion reinforced by the Ancients, the sanctuary Ember and Max sought in DormaSai after Kael’s burial is at its end. A civil war rages in Cethos, and the threat of Wildland tribal attacks in the Blood Kingoms is imminent. They can offer no help to their Southern neighbors, leaving DormaSai as all that stands in the Ancients’ way. When the peace conclave crumbles and the Ancients are forced from DormaSai by unexpected allies, Ember and Max turn their attention to preparing for the Ancients’ inevitable return.

In one of his most puzzling cases, Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge must delve deep into a dead man’s life and his past to find a killer determined to keep dark secrets buried.

On a road trip through Africa, two English people - Bobby, a civil servant with a guilty appetite for African boys; and Linda, a supercilious "compound wife" - are driving back to their enclave after a stay in the capital. But in between lies the landscape of an unnamed country whose squalor and ethnic bloodletting suggest Idi Amin's Uganda. And the farther Naipaul's protagonists travel into it, the more they find themselves crossing the line that separates privileged outsiders from horrified victims.

These dramatic and atmospheric tales are based on the Scandinavian myth cycle, one of the greatest and most culturally significant stories in the world. From the creation of the nine worlds to the final battle of Ragnarok, listeners will pore over the enthralling exploits of all-powerful Odin, mighty Thor and his hammer, and Loki, the infamous trickster. In this stunning anthology, the strange world of ancient magic, giants, dwarfs, and monsters is unforgettably imagined.

A landmark short story collection that put the more character-based New Wave science fiction on the map, Dangerous Visions won several prestigious awards and was nominated for many others. This now-classic anthology includes thirty-three stories by thirty-two award-winning authors, over half of whom have won multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards.

Marty Strauss, a gambling addict recently released from prison, is hired to be the personal bodyguard of Joseph Whitehead, one of the wealthiest men in the world. The job proves more complicated and dangerous than he thought, however, as Marty soon gets caught up in a series of supernatural events involving Whitehead, his daughter (who is a heroin addict), and a devilish man named Mamoulian, with whom Whitehead made a Faustian bargain many years earlier, during World War II.

A riveting story of World War II and the courage of one young woman as she is drafted into Churchill's overseas spy network, aiding the French Resistance behind enemy lines and working to liberate Nazi-occupied Paris.

In A Suspension of Mercy, a masterpiece of noir fantasy, Highsmith revels in eliciting the unsettling psychological forces that lurk beneath the surface of everyday contemporary life.

William Trevor is truly a Chekhov for our age, and a new collection of stories from him is always a cause for celebration.

Explorer and inventor, soldier and poet, archaeologist and diplomat, Richard Francis Burton (1821-90) was the most versatile and remarkable man of his age. But he was foremost an adventurer: "an adventurer in the intellectual and the spiritual as well as the physical world". The pioneering traveler in Central Africa who was the first European to see Lake Tanganyika was also the translator of The Arabian Nights and the secret translator of Eastern sex manuals like The Perfumed Garden.

One of the world's 50 living autistic savants is the first and only to tell his compelling and inspiring life story and explain how his incredible mind works. Worldwide, there are fewer than 50 living savants, those autistic individuals who can perform miraculous mental calculations or artistic feats. (Think Dustin Hoffman's character in Rain Man.) None of them has been able to discuss his or her thought processes, much less write a book. Until now.

The new Chinese ambassador to the United States, Tiger Tang, meets with President Roosevelt one day after the attack on Pearl Harbor. For the next four years, China and the US will be wartime allies, but the charming, sophisticated ambassador may be playing his own treacherous game.

Best-selling author William Boyd—the novelist who has been called a “master storyteller” ( Chicago Tribune) and “a gutsy writer who is good company to keep” ( Time)—here gives us his most entertaining, sly, and compelling novel to date. The novel evokes the tumult, events, and iconic faces of our time as it tells the story of Logan Mountstuart—writer, lover, and man of the world—through his intimate journals. It is the “riotous and disorganized reality” of Mountstuart’s 85 years in all their extraordinary, tragic, and humorous aspects.

Young Tess Durbeyfield attempts to restore her family's fortunes by claiming their connection with the aristocratic d'Urbervilles. But Alec d'Urberville is a rich wastrel who seduces her and makes her life miserable. When Tess meets Angel Clare, she is offered true love and happiness, but her past catches up with her and she faces an agonizing moral choice.