Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Historical

In this mighty follow-up to his number one best seller Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Man Booker winner Marlon James once again draws on a rich tradition of African mythology, fantasy and history to imagine a mythic world, a lost child, a 177-year-old witch, a deadly regal chancellor and a mystery with many answers.... Part adventure tale, part chronicle of an indomitable woman - the witch Sogolon - who bows to no man, this is an unforgettable exploration of power, personality and the places where they overlap, set in a world at once ancient and startlingly modern.

Mia is not sure what she is, but she isn't human. Smarter, stronger than her peers, all she knows are the rules: there can never be three for too long; always run, never fight. When she finds herself in Germany 1945, she must turn the Nazis' most trusted scientist with an offer: abandon the crumbling Nazi party, escape Germany with your life, come to work for the Americans building rockets. But someone is watching her work. An enemy who's smarter, stronger, and decidedly not human....

Oddny and Gunnhild meet as children in tenth century Norway, and they could not be more different: Oddny hopes for a quiet life, while Gunnhild burns for power and longs to escape her cruel mother. But after a visiting wisewoman makes an ominous prophecy that involves Oddny, her sister Signy, and Gunnhild, the three girls take a blood oath to help one another always. When Oddny’s farm is destroyed and Signy is kidnapped by Viking raiders, Oddny is set adrift from the life she imagined—but she's determined to save her sister no matter the cost.

When people go missing in the sleepy town of Smith’s Hollow, the only clue to their fate comes when a teenager starts having terrifying visions, in a chilling horror novel from national best-selling author Christina Henry.

The second novel in Erikson's stunning Tale of Witness trilogy, in which a god's bastard son cuts a bloody swathe through the forces of the Malazan Empire in order to take revenge on his father . . .

It is 1917, and while war wages across Europe, in the heart of London, there is a place of hope and enchantment. The Emporium sells toys that capture the imagination of children and adults alike: patchwork dogs that seem alive, toy boxes that are bigger on the inside, soldiers that can fight battles of their own. Into this family business comes young Cathy Wray, running away from a shameful past. The Emporium takes her in, makes her one of its own.

It is 1889 and The Scottish Play is coming home. But before the darling couple of London theatre, Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, take their acclaimed Macbeth to the Edinburgh stage terror treads the boards. A grisly message found smeared across the cobbles in blood, foretelling someone's demise. As the bloody prophecies continue to appear Edinburgh's own beloved pair - Detective 'Nine-Nails' McGray and Inspector Ian Frey - enter the scene.

Once there was a mermaid called Amelia who could never be content in the sea, a mermaid who longed to know all the world and all its wonders, and so she came to live on land. Once there was a man called P. T. Barnum, a man who longed to make his fortune by selling the wondrous and miraculous, and there is nothing more miraculous than a real mermaid. Amelia agrees to play the mermaid for Barnum and walk among men in their world, believing she can leave anytime she likes. But Barnum has never given up a money-making scheme in his life, and he's determined to hold on to his mermaid.

As the last true witches living in a city shifting from magic to industry, Marlinchen and her two sisters are little more than tourist traps as they treat their clients with archaic remedies and beguile them with nostalgic charm. Marlinchen spends her days divining secrets in exchange for rubles and trying to placate their tyrannical, xenophobic wizard father, who keeps his daughters sequestered from the outside world.

Meirionydd, 1783. Henry Talbot has been dismissed from his post at a prestigious London hospital. The only job he can find is as a physician in the backwaters of Wales where he can't speak the language, belief in myth and magic is rife, and the villagers treat him with bewildering suspicion. When Henry discovers his predecessor died under mysterious circumstances, he is determined to find answers.

It is 1097, and a traveller arrives in the great, walled city of Antioch with a vision of a beautiful and mysterious geometric design that will change the lives of all those who see it. Pilgermann is a mesmerising recreation of the world of the Crusades, following its unlikely hero and those he meets on a journey of picaresque horror across a Europe of hatreds, visions and a desperate wish for salvation.

Aya has gone missing after Kakos’ brutal attack on Dunmeaden. Will is desperately searching for her and is joined by Aidon, who’s on the run after showing his forbidden power during the battle. But what no one knows is that Aya has been abducted by the vengeful first saint, Evie, who plans to join Kakos and help destroy the gods who killed her 500 years ago. Aya must decide her true fate. Can she fulfil the prophecy and save the realm? Or should the gods pay for what they’ve done?

Daughter to a slave mother and a chieftain father, Brigid is caught between two worlds. When her father barters her to a brutal husband, her desperate prayers are heard by an ancient goddess, who sets her on a new path – helping other women, bending the new Christian faith to her will to build a sisterhood and sanctuary for all who are oppressed. But power has a price, and as Brigid rises to challenge kings and bishops, she must reckon with what she has become.

When Soviet magicians conjured an arcane wall to blockade occupied Berlin, the world was outraged but let it stand for the sake of peace. Now, after 10 years of fighting with spies instead of spells, the CIA has discovered the unthinkable.... The wall is failing. While refugees and soldiers mass along the border, operatives from East and West converge on the most dangerous city in the world to either stop the crisis or take advantage of it.

Meet Hetty Rhodes, a former conductor on the Underground Railroad who now uses her magic to solve crimes in her community in a post-Civil War world. As an escaped slave, Hetty Rhodes helped dozens of people find their own freedom north using her wits and her magic. Now that the Civil War is over, Hetty and her husband, Benjy, still fight for their people by solving the murders and mysteries that the white authorities won't touch.

Dating from at least a millennium ago, these are the earliest known Arabic short stories, surviving in a single, ragged manuscript in a library in Istanbul. Some found their way into The Arabian Nights, but most have never been read in English before. Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange has monsters, lost princes, jewels beyond price, a princess turned into a gazelle, sword-wielding statues and shocking reversals of fortune.

Aisling, a goddess in human form, was born to rule both domains and - with her twin, Anya - unite the Celts with the powerful faeries of the Middle Kingdom. But within medieval Ireland, interests are divided, and far from its shores greater forces are mustering. Both England and Rome have a stake in driving magic from the Emerald Isle. Jordan, the Vatican commander tasked with vanquishing the remnants of otherworldly creatures from a disenchanted Europe, has built a career on such plots.

Cailleach, goddess of winter, was not born to be a blight on humanity, but she became one. She would say with scorn that it was their own fault: mortals were selfish, thoughtless, and destructive, bringing harm to each other and the earth without cause or qualms. One day, Cailleach goes too far. Thousands die, lost to her brutal winter. In punishment, her mother Danu, queen of the gods, strips the goddess of her powers and sends Cailleach to earth, to live and die as the mortals she so despises, until she understands what it is to be one of them.

Grace has always wanted to be a ballerina, ever since she first peered through the windows of the Near North Ballet company. The elegance of the dance seemed transcendent to an immigrant child of the working poor, and so, when she is orphaned, it is to the ballet that she flees. Years later, Grace is on the verge of becoming the company's new prima ballerina - though she is beginning to realise that achieving her long-held dream may not be the triumph she once envisioned.

'Kid' Wolffe is an up-and-coming boxer in 1920s New York. An honest fighter's got little chance at success on the mob-controlled circuit—until ambitious lieutenant 'Hinky' Friedman starts making moves to take over her boss's business, and sees a use for the kid. Teitelstam is a struggling tattoo artist, whose natural talent for ink magic won't amount to much without formal training. So he's got no idea why Hinky would offer him 10 times what he's worth to come work for her.