Showing results by narrator "Matthew Spencer" in All Categories

Vampire hunter Remy Pendergast and his unexpected vampiric royal companions, Lord Zidan Malekh and Lady Xiaodan Song, are on the road through the kingdom of Aluria again after a hard-won battle against the formidable Night Empress. Xiaodan, severely injured and powerless, causes the trio to seek refuge at the mysterious Court of Wanderers. Meanwhile, Remy must confront his strange dreams of the Night Empress, a woman he has long suspected to be his own mother. As family secrets unravel, Remy must face a heart-wrenching choice between his parents' legacies and his own destiny.

Remy Pendergast is many things: the only son of the Duke of Valenbonne (though his father might wish otherwise), an elite bounty hunter of rogue vampires, and an outcast among his fellow Reapers. His mother was a subject of gossip even before she eloped with a vampire, giving rise to rumours that Remy is a half-vampire himself. Remy's whole life, his father has been shaping him into a weapon to fight for the kingdom of Aluria, though it barely tolerates him in return.

Learn the up-close and personal story of Call the Midwife as told by the cast and crew. Call the Midwife: A Labour of Love is a moving journey through the iconic series and features personal reflections, photos of fan-favourite moments and anecdotes and insights from co-stars, producers, technical crew and guests.

Drawing on their unrivalled access throughout the Labour party, the Times and Sunday Times investigative duo behind Left Out now present the explosive inside story of Labour’s transformation and general election under Starmer. This is the definitive telling of a momentous time for the party: either their election as the first Labour government since the Blair/Brown era, or a catastrophic mishandling of a huge lead in the opinion polls. Either way, the story centres on Starmer's relentless and single-minded pursuit of power, and on the inevitable turmoil and carnage.

Young married couple Heidi and Freddie just moved to Huntington Grove. All the neighbours see they are friendly and polite but why is one door in their house always locked? Across the street, Willow tries not to argue with her teenage daughter – even as her marriage is falling apart. And where does her husband really go each night, leaving the bed beside her cold?

In this ground-breaking and revelatory book, based on over three decades of research, migration expert Professor Hein de Haas destroys the myths that politicians, interest groups and media regularly spread about immigration. Comparing trends and perspectives from Western 'destination countries' (UK, US and Europe) as well as 'origin countries' in Asia and Africa, de Haas will equip listeners with essential knowledge on migration based on the best evidence and data.

Samson Kolechko has been assigned a most perplexing case - though it is mostly perplexing because it's hard to understand why selling the meat of one's own pig constitutes a crime. But apparently it does, and at the insistence of the Chekist secret police officer assigned to "reinforce" the Lybid police station, Samson does his diligent - if diffident - best. Yet no sooner has he got started than his live-in fiancée Nadezhda is abducted by striking railway workers who object to the census she's carrying out.

The Moonstone, a priceless yellow diamond, is looted from an Indian temple and maliciously bequeathed to Rachel Verinder. On her 18th birthday, her friend and suitor Franklin Blake brings the gift to her. That very night, it is stolen again. No one is above suspicion, as the idiosyncratic Sergeant Cuff and the Franklin piece together a puzzling series of events as mystifying as an opium dream and as deceptive as the nearby Shivering Sand.

Jump! reaches back into the long history of alarm about why we postpone or avoid what we take to be in our best interests, from the desert monks of 4th century Egypt to the medieval Christian philosopher Thomas Aquinas, from the ancient Greeks to Chinese and Hindu sources. Simon May argues that procrastination - unlike indolence, with which it is often confused - has blessings as well as dangers

In the decades before the First World War, the owners of the nation’s stately homes revelled in a golden age of glory and glamour. Nothing lay beyond their reach in a world where privilege and hedonism went hand-in-hand with duty and honour. This was a time when the ancestral seats of ancient nobility stood side-by-side with the fabulous palaces of Jewish bankers and Indian princes, when dukes and duchesses mixed with aristocratic society hostesses who had learned to dance in the chorus line and self-made millionaires who had been raised in the slums of Manchester and Birmingham.

Perched on the exterior of our delicate and intricate bodies, the skin is our largest and fastest growing organ. We see it, touch it and live in it every day. It's a habitat for a mesmerisingly complex world of micro-organisms, its physical functions are vital to our health and indeed our survival, and it's crucial to our sense of identity. Yet how much do we really know about it? Through the lenses of science, sociology and history, Dr Monty Lyman leads us on a journey through the comedy, tragedy and exquisite humanity of our most underrated and overlooked organ.

July 2015, Sevenoaks. 12-year-old schoolgirl Alice Johnson went missing while doing her paper round, her bag found discarded on the pavement. At 08.00, she was spotted standing in heavy rain at the side of the busy by-pass. At 11.00, she was seen talking to the driver of a black car in Tonbridge. After that, nothing. Alice was never found. Nine years later the body of another schoolgirl, Joleen Price, is pulled from a nearby lake and a local man named Vince Burns detained. Convinced that Burns is guilty in both cases, SIO Dave Armstrong calls in the Finder.

From the peak of Jeremy Corbyn's popularity and the shock hung parliament of 2017 to Labour's humbling in 2019 and the election of Keir Starmer, Left Out draws on unrivalled access throughout the party and to both leaders' inner circles to provide a blistering narrative exposé of the Labour Party during one of the most tumultuous and significant episodes in its history. It reveals a party riven by factionalism and at war over ideology, then incapacitated by crisis and indecision.

In a world where people slaughter the innocent without mercy or retribution, how can we have faith in humanity, or the future? Clem Glass, a photojournalist, returns from Africa to London convinced there is no hope for mankind. Yet after his sister falls ill and he takes her back to the West Country of their childhood, he cannot ignore the decency and kindness he encounters, or the pulse of goodness in his own heart. When news comes offering Clem the chance to confront the author of his nightmares, he must choose what sort of man to be.

In the first months of 2020 there was a spate of murders of Black sex workers in northern cities. One of them was Ella Bailey, last seen talking to a punter in an alley in Sheffield city centre, and although no trace of her was ever found, the punter, Michael Godley, soon confessed to all three murders. Five years later, as another sex worker is murdered in the same district, the bag Ella had been carrying with her reappears, hanging on the door handles of a café, and a local vagrant claims to have seen Ella sitting on a bench in a churchyard near the site of the murder.

Our modern conceptions of press and speech liberty, Dabhoiwala shows, were invented in Britain around 1700. The real history of freedom of expression is a story of countless fascinating men and women whose lives have shaped its principles and practices over the past 300 years – slaves and imperialists, poets and philosophers, plutocrats and revolutionaries. Ranging across Europe, North America and South Asia, and not neglecting other parts of the world, Dabhoiwala rejects celebratory platitudes about the past and present of free expression.

In The Diet Whisperer, Dr Paul Barrington Chell and Dr Monique Hope-Ross explain in simple terms why we are now struggling with our weight. And the answers are very surprising. They tell us why calorie counting is flawed and why exercise is not the answer. They dispel many long-held myths about weight loss and dieting, backing up their methods with up-to-date evidence-based medicine. In this remarkable book on wellness, the two doctors tell us exactly how to lose weight, lose it quickly and lose it forever.

An energy expert shows why hydrogen can fight climate change and become the fuel of the future. That may sound too good to be true, but as energy expert Marco Alverà explains, if we're going to heal the climate, we need to start thinking big. This audiobook is the blueprint for how to get us there. This is a guidebook for how to save the world and whether you are a policy maker, a business person, an activist, or simply curious, the message is this: there is hope, for us and our planet. The best part about hydrogen is that when you burn it, the only by-product is water.

Bournemouth 2008, the height of the financial crash. Don Bayliss, a timid and well-mannered accountant, vanishes after leaving his office before a scheduled meeting. His wife is both perplexed and distraught. His clothes are found discarded at the mouth of Poole Harbour. The Finder begins with the last sightings of Don on the day he went missing, hearing how he seemed in a hurry, somewhat distracted? He unearths a string of overlooked clues that lead him to face the unlikely friendships that Don had made and more.

Every one of our thoughts, actions, moods and decisions is shaped by a whole array of factors, most of which we don't pay any attention to. From culture, time and language to genetics, technology and the microorganisms living inside us—even our own unconscious routines and habits—it's clear that we aren't always in the driving seat. The good news is that by better understanding the external and internal forces at work, we can minimise their impact on our lives.