Showing results by narrator "Peter Noble" in All Categories

Here at last is a history of England that is designed to entertain as well as inform and that will delight the armchair traveler, the tourist, or just about anyone interested in history. No people have engendered quite so much acclaim or earned so much censure as the English: extolled as the Athenians of modern times, yet hammered for their self-satisfaction and hypocrisy. But their history has been a spectacular one.

Vietnam became the Western world’s most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle. He portrays the set pieces of Dienbienphu, the Tet offensive, the air blitz of North Vietnam and less familiar battles such as the bloodbath at Daido.

For eight strangers in a Los Angeles hostel, even the other side of the world isn’t far enough. The craving for a new identity and the desire to start again is something they have in common. But they discover that it doesn't matter where you are or who you are - if you can't lay the past to rest, fate and coincidence have a way of catching up with you.

An assassin’s bullet. A deadly conspiracy. But who is calling the shots? When an attempted assassination sparks a chain reaction of explosive events across London, Britain’s elite security forces seem powerless to stop the chaos threatening to overwhelm the government. As the dark and deadly conspiracy unfolds, three strangers find their fates entwined: Joe Dempsey, a deadly military intelligence officer; Sarah Truman, a CNN reporter determined to get her headline; and Michael Devlin, a Belfast-born criminal barrister with a secret past.

GCHQ is the largest and most secretive intelligence organisation in the UK, and has existed for 100 years - but we still know next to nothing about it. In this ground-breaking book - the first and most definitive history of the organisation ever published - intelligence expert Richard Aldrich traces GCHQ’s development from a wartime code-breaking operation based in the Bedfordshire countryside into one of the world leading espionage organisations.

Assassin-for-hire Victor is in Bucharest, Romania, to kill two targets meeting to exchange stolen intelligence his client wants back. It should be a simple task - until he realises the second of his targets is a former ally. Even for a man of Victor's twisted morality, he's not prepared to kill someone to whom he owes his life. To atone for not completing the job, Victor agrees to take on the kind of dangerous assignment he would otherwise avoid. At a conference on international relations, he must identify and assassinate a killer just like him and remain unseen.

The Ultimate Horror Collection is a fully-indexed collection of over 60 classic horror stories, read by four Audie-winning narrators. Included here are stories by H.P. Lovecraft; Edgar Allan Poe; M.R. James; Oscar Wilde; Joseph Le Fanu; Bram Stoker; Mary Shelley; Robert Louis Stevenson; and Henry James.

The battle for Stalingrad became the focus of Hitler and Stalin's determination to win the gruesome, vicious war on the eastern front. The citizens of Stalingrad endured unimaginable hardship; the battle, with fierce hand-to-hand fighting in each room of each building, was brutally destructive to both armies. But the eventual victory of the Red Army, and the failure of Hitler's Operation Barbarossa, was the first defeat of Hitler's territorial ambitions in Europe and the start of his decline.

Captain Blite knows that someone, or something, is trying to kill him. But a device he possesses, known only as the dark diamond, won't let that happen.

The Red Army had much to avenge when it finally reached the frontiers of the Reich in January 1945. Political instructors rammed home the message of Wehrmacht and SS brutality. The result was the most terrifying example of fire and sword ever known, with tanks crushing refugee columns under their tracks, mass rape, pillage and destruction. Over seven million fled westwards from the terror of the Red Army. Antony Beevor reconstructs the experiences of those millions caught up in the nightmare of the Third Reich's final collapse.

Arimnestos is a farm boy when war breaks out between the citizens of his native Plataea and their overbearing neighbours, Thebes. Standing in the battle line for the first time, alongside his father and brother, he shares in a famous and unlikely victory. But after being knocked unconscious in the melee, he awakes not a hero but a slave. Betrayed by his jealous and cowardly cousin, the freedom he fought for has now vanished, and he becomes the property of a rich citizen.

A vibrant and powerful epic set against an alternate Bronze Age, this tale of gods, men and monsters, conspiracy and war, is a rich, compelling and original tale from a master of the historical and fantasy genres. The people caught up in toils of the gods are merely trying to survive. Victims of vicious whims, trapped by their circumstances or pushed beyond what the mortal frame can bear, a handful of god-touched mortals—a scribe, a warlord, a dancer and a child - are about to be brought together in a conspiracy of their own.

The shy, young Duke of Sale has never known his parents, Instead, his Grace Adolphus Gillespie Vernon Ware (Gilly for short) has endured 24 years of rigorous mollycoddling form his uncle and valet. But his natural diffidence conceals a rebellious spirit. So when Gilly hears of Belinda, the beautiful foundling who appears to be blackmailing his cousin, he absconds with glee. No sooner has he entered this new and dangerous world than is he plunged into a frenzy of intrigue, kidnap and adventure.

Bruno, Chief of Police in the charming French town of St Denis, is already busy with a case when the body of an undercover French Muslim cop is found in the woods, a man who called Bruno for help only hours earlier. But Bruno's sometime boss and rival, the Brigadier, doesn't see this investigation as a priority - there are bigger issues at stake. Bruno has other ideas. Meanwhile, a Muslim youth named Sami turns up at a French army base in Afghanistan hoping to get home to St Denis. One of Bruno's old army comrades helps to smuggle Sami back to France, but the FBI aren't far behind.

As a boy, Alexander dreamed of matching the heroic feats of Achilles. At 18 he led the Macedonian cavalry to a stunning victory against the Greeks. By 25 he had crushed the Persians in three monumental battles and was the master of the greatest empire the world had ever seen. Men began to call him a god. But behind the legend was another, more complex story.

The many voices of The Promise tell a story in four snapshots, each one centered on a family funeral, each one happening in a different decade. In the background, a different president is in power, and a different spirit hangs over the country, while in the foreground the family fights over what they call their farm, on a worthless piece of land outside Pretoria. Over large jumps in time, people get older, faces and laws and lives all change, while a brother and sister circle around a promise made long ago and never kept....

On July 12th, 1776, Captain James Cook, already lionized as the greatest explorer in British history, set off on his third voyage in his ship the HMS Resolution. Two-and-a-half years later, on a beach on the island of Hawaii, Cook was killed in a conflict with native Hawaiians. How did Cook, who was unique among captains for his respect for Indigenous peoples and cultures, come to that fatal moment? Hampton Sides' account of Cook's last journey both wrestles with Cook's legacy and provides a narrative of the titanic efforts and continual danger that characterised exploration in the 1700s.

In the early morning hours of 6th November 1943, SS Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, receives the coded message he has been waiting for, 'the Eagle has landed.' It was to become known as the most daring enemy mission of the entire war: Operation Eagle, Himmler's audacious plan to kidnap Winston Churchill on British soil. But, despite spectacular secrecy, there was to be no surrender without a fight. For in that remote corner of Norfolk, an elite unit is gathered together. Ready to do battle for a nation against the most ruthless taskforce ever assembled.

To make amends for past mistakes, the enigmatic assassin known only as Victor is now in servitude to the world's most dangerous criminal enterprise, the Russian Mafia. Although a hired gun without loyalties, Victor never picks a fight he cannot win so he intends to pay off his debt, however long it takes. Yet when his new employer is shot dead in London, Victor has both the means and the motive to make him the most likely suspect.

C.S. Lewis' famous work on the nature of love divides love into four categories: affection, friendship, eros and charity. The first three are loves which come naturally to the human race. Charity, however, the gift-love of God, is divine in its source and expression, and without the sweetening grace of this supernatural love, the natural loves become distorted and even dangerous.