Showing results by narrator "Justin Avoth" in All Categories

From Stoics to existentialists, in philosophy and literature, discussion of the philosophy of life—of love and death, of courage, fortitude and wisdom—challenges us all to think about what kinds of life are truly worth living. In this summation of a lifetime thinking and writing about this great question, A. C. Grayling explores with clarity and depth the ideas that each of us must use in answering it for ourselves.

Olivia: 22 years old. No history of running away. Last seen on CCTV, entering a dead-end alley. And not coming back out again. Missing for one day and counting. Julia is the detective heading up the case. She knows what to expect. A desperate family, a ticking clock, and long hours away from her children. But Julia has no idea how close to home it's going to get. Because her family's safety depends on one thing: Julia must NOT find out what happened to Olivia—and must frame somebody else for her murder.

The ancient Roman empire was the supreme arena, where emperors had no choice but to fight, to thrill, to dazzle. To rule as a Caesar was to stand as an actor upon the great stage of the world. No biography invites us into the lives of the Caesars more vividly or intimately than that by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, written from the centre of Rome and power, in AD 121. Placing each Caesar in the context of the generations that had gone before, and connecting personality with policy, Suetonius injected flesh and blood into their stories.

Goïmron gathers a small band of trusted companions, and they set off to find Tungdil and save Girdlegard from the mysterious Albae. But the story's only half-over. Brabandor's on the trail of something extraordinary; Rodana is trying to change her fate, and Klaey remains an unknown quantity: his lust for power is unparalleled, and he'll do anything to get it. And the most worrying question of all . . . will their quest, change Goïmron himself?

When Lena helps her teenage daughter gather sounds for her media studies project, she doesn't expect her boom-microphone to pick up a conversation between her neighbours, the Morgans. And she’s certain they are planning a crime. Her family and friends tell her that she must have misheard. After all, the Morgans are a well-respected, upstanding couple in their early sixties. They’ve never been in trouble with the law. Yet Lena can’t stop thinking about it. Because what if she hasn’t misheard? What if she can prevent something awful happening?

The world's population is soaring, creating overcrowded cities and an economic crisis. And in the UK, breaking point has arrived. A growing number of people can no longer afford to start families let alone raise them. But for those desperate to experience parenthood, there is an alternative. For a monthly subscription fee, clients can create a virtual child from scratch who they can access via the metaverse and a VR headset. To launch this new initiative, the company behind Virtual Children has created a reality tv show.

Ever since its publication in 1651, Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan has unsettled and challenged how we understand the World. Condemned and vilified by each new generation, Hobbes' cold political vision continues to see through any number of political and ethical vanities. In his wonderfully stimulating book The New Leviathans, John Gray allows us to understand the World of the 2020s with all its contradictions, moral horrors and disappointments through a new reading of Hobbes' classic work.

Mastering kung fu, as learned from China's legendary Shaolin monks, teaches that it empowers your life and interactions, applicable personally and professionally. Beyond physical strength, the mindset overcomes challenges. In this book, Bernhard Moestl unveils the Shaolin 'mind power' principle, the monks' source of energy. Through thirteen principles, he guides handling stress and demands, bringing vitality to life anywhere, no monastery required.

A beautiful discovery outside the window of her underwater home prompts the reclusive E. to begin a correspondence with renowned scholar Henerey Clel. The letters they share are filled with passion, at first for their mutual interests, and then, inevitably, for each other. Together, they uncover a mystery from the unknown depths, destined to transform the underwater world they both equally fear and love. But by no mere coincidence, a seaquake destroys E.'s home, and she and Henerey vanish.

A whirlwind of unrepentant nihilism charged with raw, colloquial language that shocked the listeners of its day, Journey to the End of the Night is a bitter symphony of violence, human cruelty, greed and chaos. Based on the author’s life, Journey follows the antihero Bardamu, Céline’s alter ego, in a relentless adventure that pulls us further and further into an endless night.

Hundreds of cycles have passed in Girdlegard since Tungdil Goldhand vanished. The dwarf Goïmron works as a gem carver in the city of Mallenias Watch. He is particularly fascinated by the old times, the great times of the five dwarf tribes, and so spends his spare time searching the markets for records and artefacts for clues about their proud history. And then Goïmron comes across an extraordinary book. The wealth of detail it contains leaves no doubt that the book must have been written by the heroic Tungdil Goldhand himself. But, impossibly, the last entry seems to be recent.

Florence, New Year’s Day 1557. As dawn breaks, a painter is discovered lying on the floor of a church, stabbed through the heart. Above him, the paintings he laboured over for more than a decade. At his home, a hidden painting scandalously depicting Maria de Medici, daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Florence, as a naked Venus. Who is the murderer? Who is behind the painting? As the city erupts in chaos, Giorgio Vasari, the great art historian, is picked to lead the investigation.

Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were a Sixties supercharged couple in an era of supercharged couples. As a pairing they were fantasy figures, impossibly desirable. Liz supple and soft, in perfumes and furs - yet with something demonic and lethal about her. Dick, in turn, with his ravaged, handsome face, looked as though lit by silver moonlight - poised to turn into a wolf. Roger Lewis uses this glamorous and damaged pair as the starting point to tell the story of an age of excess.

Europe is racing towards the future. Steam travel is the emblem of progress; industry and invention are creating ever greater wealth and ever greater deprivation; and on an autumn day in 1895 a young woman determined to make her mark on history boards the Granville to Paris Express with a bomb.

After the end of the Cold War, neoliberalism, with its belief in the virtues of markets and competition, seemed to have triumphed. Communism had been defeated – and Friedrich Hayek, the spiritual father of neoliberal economics, had just about lived to see it. But in the decades that followed, Hayek’s disciples knew that they had a problem. The rise of social movements, from civil rights and feminism to environmentalism, were now proving roadblocks in the road to freedom, nurturing a culture of government dependency, public spending, political correctness and special pleading.

This superb account of the siege emphasises the crucial importance of the siege while at the same time putting it in a far wider context. While seen as a climactic battle between the West and the East, it was also much more nuanced than that – both sides had many other interests and priorities beyond Malta. Suleiman the Magnificent had conquered and subsumed regions from Hungary to the Persian Gulf; Philip II was building an empire in America and Asia.

Former correspondents E. and Henerey, accustomed to loving each other from afar, did not anticipate continuing their courtship in an enigmatic underwater city. When their journey through the Structure in E.'s garden strands them in a peculiar society preoccupied with the pleasures and perils of knowledge, E. and Henerey come to accept—and, more surprisingly still, embrace—the fact that they may never return home. A year and a half later, Sophy and Vyerin finally discover one of the elusive Entries that will help them seek their siblings.

Under the orders of Ireheart, now High King of the dwarves, a small delegation is sent to search for Tungdil Goldhand, the true High King, who many believe dead. Against all odds, Tungdil has survived his mission to the terrifying realm of Phondrasôn. But is he truly the legendary hero of the dwarves, or an impostor at the heart of a deeper conspiracy?

In these four dialogues, Plato develops the Socratic belief in responsibility for one's self and shows Socrates living and dying under his philosophy. In Euthyphro, Socrates debates goodness outside the courthouse, Apology sees him in court, rebutting all charges of impiety, in Crito, he refuses an entreaty to escape from prison, and in Phaedo, Socrates faces his impending death with calmness and skillful discussion of immortality.

In 1978 the Bulgarian author and dissident Georgi Markov was assassinated by a poisoned umbrella on Waterloo Bridge in London. His murder is the most iconic killing in almost five decades of the Cold War, and no one has ever been prosecuted for it. The Umbrella Murder reveals the real architect and hit man behind this spectacular killing: a spy code-named Piccadilly who worked for the Bulgarian secret service and the KGB, who has been hiding for more than forty years.