Showing results by author "Ian" in All Categories

In the 'fantasy' universe of the phenomenally bestselling Discworld series, everything runs on magic and common sense. The world is flat and million-to-one chances happen nine times out of ten. Our world seems different - it runs on rules, often rather strange ones. Science is our way of finding out what those rules are. The appeal of Discworld is that it mostly makes sense, in a way that particle physics does not.

These stories will transport you to the heart-breaking internecine conflict known as the Horus Heresy. Each one of these audio dramas is a stirring tale of a long, vicious war that rages on into the 41st Millennium. Some of Black Library's best-known names have crafted thrilling, revealing and sometimes surprising audio dramas that shed more light on the galaxy spanning conflicts of the Horus Heresy.

He is Fulgrim's champion, the Soulthief, and the Scion of Chemos. His name is whispered and cursed across both time and space, a peerless blademaster who even death cannot threaten. He is Lucius the Eternal, blessed by Slaanesh and the greatest swordsman of all the fell Legions imprisoned within the Eye of Terror. He's died a thousand times, but for Lucius the Eternal, there's something worse than death on the horizon unless he can control the forces that threaten to annihilate all that he has worked to build.

Imagine you could travel back to the 14th century. What would you see? What would you smell? More to the point, where are you going to stay? And what are you going to eat? Ian Mortimer shows us that the past is not just something to be studied; it is also something to be lived. He sets out to explain what life was like in the most immediate way, through taking you to the Middle Ages. The result is the most astonishing social history book you are ever likely to read: evolutionary in its concept, informative and entertaining in its detail.

In 1946, June and Bernard set off on their honeymoon. Fired by their ideals and passion for one another, they had planned an idyllic holiday, but in France they witness an event that alters the course of their lives entirely. Forty years on, their son-in-law is trying to uncover the cause of their estrangement and is led back to this moment on honeymoon and an experience of such darkness it was to wrench the couple apart.

What was it actually like to live in Elizabethan England? If you could travel to the past and walk the streets of London in the 1590s, where would you stay? What would you eat? What would you wear? Would you really have a sense of it being a glorious age? And if so, how would that glory sit alongside the vagrants, diseases, violence, sexism and famine of the time? In this book Ian Mortimer answers the key questions that a visitor to late 16th-century England would ask.

Hailed as the most compelling biography of the German dictator yet written, Ian Kershaw's Hitler brings us closer than ever before to the heart of its subject's immense darkness. From his illegitimate birth in a small Austrian village to his fiery death in a bunker under the Reich chancellery in Berlin, Adolf Hitler left a murky trail, strewn with contradictory tales and overgrown with self-created myths. One truth prevails: the sheer scale of the evils that he unleashed on the world has made him a demonic figure without equal in the 20th century.

If you could travel back in time, the period from 1660 to 1700 would make one of the most exciting destinations in history. It's the age of Samuel Pepys and the Great Fire of London, bawdy comedy and the libertine court of Charles II, Christopher Wren in architecture, Henry Purcell in music and Isaac Newton in science. In The Time Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain, Ian Mortimer answers the crucial questions that a prospective traveller to 17th-century Britain would ask.

An illegal immigrant is found murdered in an Edinburgh housing scheme: a racist attack or something else? Rebus is drawn into the case but has other problems: his old police station has closed, and his masters would rather he retire than stick around. As Rebus investigates, he must visit an asylum seekers' detention centre, deal with the sleazy Edinburgh underworld and maybe even fall in love.... Siobhan has problems of her own.

Here is the unforgettable 'Fletch', everyone's favourite criminal, making the most of his enforced stay at Her Majesty's Pleasure. Never a man to shrink from a challenge, even from behind bars, Fletch could manage anything from organising a win on the horses to buying a council flat in Mayfair. Amazing his cellmates and infuriating officialdom, Fletch, the Arthur Daley of penal servitude, always comes out on top. Starring Ronnie Barker with Brian Wilde, Richard Beckinsale and Fulton Mackay.

In the latest volume of his celebrated series of Time Traveller's Guides, Ian Mortimer turns to what is arguably the most loved period in British history: the Regency (a.k.a. Georgian England). Bookended by the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 and the death of George IV in 1830, this is the age of Jane Austen and the Romantic poets, the paintings of Constable and the gardens of Repton, the sartorial elegance of Brummell and the poetic licence of Byron, Britain's military triumphs at Trafalgar and Waterloo and the threat of revolution and the Peterloo massacre.

Rebus is juggling four cases trying to nail one killer - who might just lead back to the infamous Bible John. And he's doing it under the scrutiny of an internal inquiry led by a man he has just accused of taking backhanders from Glasgow's Mr Big. As if this wasn't enough, there are TV cameras at his back investigating a miscarriage of justice, making Rebus a criminal in the eyes of a million or more viewers. Just one mistake is likely to mean an unpleasant and not particularly speedy death or, worse still, losing his job.

Struggling through another Edinburgh winter Rebus finds himself sucked into a web of intrigue that throws up more questions than answers. Was the Lord Provost's daughter kidnapped or just another runaway? Why is a city councillor shredding documents that should have been waste paper years ago? And why on earth is Rebus invited to a clay pigeon shoot at the home of the Scottish Office's Permanent Secretary?

Learn more about legendary characters from the ranks of the xenos and the Traitor Astartes, including Ahriman of the Thousand Sons, Fabius Bile of the Emperor's Children, Asurmen of the Craftworld Aeldari and more. Explore these fan-favourite characters as written by Black Library stalwarts including Aaron Dembski-Bowden, John French and Guy Haley.

Few, if any, 20th-century political leaders have enjoyed greater popularity among their own people than Hitler did in the decade or so following his rise to power in 1933. The personality of Hitler himself, however, can scarcely explain this immense popularity or his political effectiveness in the 1930s and '40s. His hold over the German people lay rather in the hopes and perceptions of the millions who adored him. Based largely on the reports of government officials, party agencies, and political opponents, Kershaw's study charts the creation, growth, and decline of the Hitler myth.

It is August in Edinburgh and the Festival is in full swing... A brutally tortured body is discovered in one of the city's ancient subterranean streets and marks on the corpse cause Rebus to suspect the involvement of sectarian activists. The prospect of a terrorist atrocity in a city heaving with tourists is almost unthinkable. When the victim turns out to be the son of a notorious gangster, Rebus realises he is sitting atop a volcano of mayhem - and it's just about to erupt.

Atop the hierarchy of Australian bushrangers sits Ned Kelly–the ultimate outlaw–and just below him, the tragic figure of Ben Hall, who joined a gang led by a man whose name today is less well known, but in his time was much more famous than any other: Frank Gardiner. Mastermind of the largest gold robbery in Australia’s history, Gardiner led an extraordinary life, the full telling of which is long overdue. In a tough country and among a group of tough men, Gardiner was the toughest of them all.

Once there were three worlds, each with their own human species. Then, fleeing out of the void came a fourth species, the Charon. Desperate, on the edge of extinction, they changed the balance between the worlds forever. Karan, a sensitive with a troubled heritage, is forced to steal an ancient relic in repayment of a debt. It turns out to be the Mirror of Aachan, a twisted, deceitful thing that remembers everything it has ever seen.

When his daughter Samantha calls in the dead of night, John Rebus knows it's not good news. Her husband has been missing for two days. Rebus fears the worst - and knows from his lifetime in the police that his daughter will be the prime suspect. He wasn't the best father - the job always came first - but now his daughter needs him more than ever. As he leaves at dawn to drive to the windswept coast - and a small town with big secrets - he wonders whether this might be the first time in his life where the truth is the one thing he doesn't want to find....

Richard Ainsworth's French B&B has been taken over by a production company shooting a historical film at the Château de Valençay. But everything grinds to a halt with the sudden passing of an actor under suspicious circumstances.