Showing results by narrator "Noble Noble" in All Categories

Sometimes, the questions can be more interesting than the answers. The Search in Extraterrestrial Intelligence [SETI] has recently hotted up, with a whole new wave of research going to show that we will always be fascinated by what we don't understand. Was 'The Wow Signal' a radio transmission from deep space? Or was it the resonating frequency of a passing comet? Often, it can feel as if professional explainers of all stripes want to put an end to anything mysterious in life.

Hunter Tanner is a prospect for the Kings of Men MC. The club president, King, shocked Hunter with the news that he is Hunter’s biological father. King was the only man who had ever kept Hunter safe, and he’d taken King’s attention the wrong way - only to be devastated to learn they were related. Now he’s pissed off. Hunter’s identical twin, Forrest, offers him a chance to get away from New Gothenburg, so Hunter takes a vacation to stay at the Exotic Virtue in New York City.

The mercurial, self-mythologizing novelist and journalist Joseph Roth, author of the twentieth-century masterpiece The Radetzky March, was the finest observer and chronicler of his age. Endless Flight travels with Roth from his childhood in the town of Brody on the eastern edge of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to an unsettled life spent roaming Europe between the wars, including spells in Vienna, Paris, and Berlin. His decline mirrored the collapse of civilized Europe: in his last decade, he opposed Nazism in exile from Germany, his wife succumbed to schizophrenia, and he died an alcoholic.

The Gate of Ice is the only way in or out of the mountain—at least that's supposed to be true. There's a second gate, a smuggler's gate dug in secret over decades by a Southcaver named Yale. The Southcaver dwarves might not be the most reputable in the mountain, but they have a certain tenacity and rebellious streak that Yale depends on. Topaz, a Southcaver smelter's daughter, decides to accept proposals of marriage. She doesn't anticipate getting mixed up with the existence of the Second Gate, much less the fate of the whole mountain.

The protector of the land is dead. A blood plague infests the soil and sea, eldritch angels vie for dominion over hearts and souls, and holy war boils between four gunpowder empires. The line between truth and falsehood, the righteous and the wicked, hope and annihilation is buried deep beneath blood-soaked sand.

Dynasty of Death is a moving saga of two families, the epic struggle between two brothers, and the legacy their guns will leave the world as mighty enemy nations gear up for battle.

We have to keep our mate bond a secret to stop the war from escalating, which sounds simple at first, but then the mental and physical bond between us gets stronger. And stronger. Until the itch to stay by his side grows into a need, and keeping my hands off of him becomes a battle I can no longer win.

Over nine hundred years have passed since song and hammerfall rang beneath the snows of Ice-Cloak. The remnants of the dwarves live in exile in the human kingdoms, eking out their survival as itinerant tinkers and farriers. The young dwarf-maid Tourmaline dreams of better things than mending pots for the humans. When horror strikes her caravan, she and a desperate band of dwarves escape into the wild north in pursuit of a fool's hope.

Two lieges—King Lanius, who is of royal blood, and King Grus, the usurper—now share the throne of Avornis. The former wields no real power, kept impotent by the regents surrounding him. The latter mans the battle lines, determined to protect the kingdom from a fearsome, immortal god who was expelled from heaven. To the north, the city-state Chernagor is being torn asunder by a savage civil war that threatens to spill past the border at any moment. Catastrophe looms for Avornis and even two kings united may not be strong enough to save her.

The bustling army base at Vindolanda lies on the northern frontier of Britannia and the entire Roman world. In just over twenty years time, the Emperor Hadrian will build his famous wall. But for now defences are weak as tribes rebel against Rome, and local druids preach the fiery destruction of the invaders. It falls to Flavius Ferox, Briton and Roman centurion, to keep the peace. But it will take more than just a soldier's courage to survive life in Roman Britain.

Written in Greek by the only Roman emperor who was also a philosopher, without any intention of publication, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius offer a remarkable series of challenging spiritual reflections and exercises developed as the emperor struggled to understand himself and make sense of the universe. While the Meditations were composed to provide personal consolation and encouragement, Aurelius also created one of the greatest of all works of philosophy: a timeless collection that has been consulted and admired by statesmen, thinkers, and readers throughout the centuries.

With Germany in the World, award-winning historian David Blackbourn radically revises conventional narratives of German history, demonstrating the existence of a distinctly German presence in the world centuries before its unification—and revealing a national identity far more complicated than previously imagined.

Detectives Ruth Lake and Greg Carver, introduced in the electrifying Splinter in the Blood, must stop a serial killer whose victims are the centerpiece of his macabre works of art. While Britain is obsessed with the newest hit true-crime television show, Fact, or Fable? detectives Ruth Lake and...

After fleeing the Black Estate and the man that broke her heart, Elsie finds herself in the crosshairs of religious fanatics. They’re fed up with greedy kings and corrupt courts, and they want retribution. The wicked must be punished. A smart woman would leave when she’s given the chance, but escaping would mean leaving her little sister behind—again. Conflict becomes chaos and Elsie is trapped. Doomed by the terrible sacrifice she made for her family ten years earlier. There is blood on her hands and the devout believe there is only one way to cleanse such evil. Fire.

More than four centuries ago, the Scepter of Mercy was lost to the king of Avornis, and each subsequent liege has promised—and failed—to return the powerful talisman to its rightful home. Now, young Lanius, the only surviving son of King Mergus, rules, though he is considered illegitimate and must abide by the decisions of regents. Still, the legacy of the missing scepter ultimately belongs to him.

What is the terrible secret at the heart of The King in Yellow? The forbidden play’s second act is said to drive all those who read it mad. And the sinister text casts its shadow of dread over Robert W. Chambers’s collection of weird, supernatural stories of the same name. Threaded with elements of fantasy, science fiction, the supernatural, and gothic horror, this cult classic continues to inspire the imagination of artists - from H. P. Lovecraft to the writers of HBO’s True Detective - and delight connoisseurs of the macabre.

From the North Pole to your own backyard, these tales will transport young listeners to a world of wonder and joy. Meet a brave little reindeer, a grumpy gingerbread man with a heart of gold, and even a magical wreath that decides to explore the town! Each story is filled with humor, heart, and the true spirit of Christmas.

Dead Souls, Gogol's epic poem in prose, is widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th-century Russian literature. We follow Chichikov, a dismissed civil servant turned conman, through the countryside in pursuit of his shady enterprise as he arrives in the provincial town of 'N' and begins visiting various landowners to make each a strange and ghostly offer.

Summer, 1522. In a wave of pomp, Henry VIII's court welcomes the Imperial emperor, Charles V. Anthony Blanke, the son of the king's late 'black trumpet', John Blanke, is called to Hampton Court by his former employer, Cardinal Wolsey. The cardinal is preparing a gift for King Henry: a masque of King Arthur and the Black Knight. Anthony is to take center stage.

In From Darwin to Derrida, evolutionary biologist David Haig explains how a physical world of matter in motion gave rise to a living world of purpose and meaning. Natural selection, a process without purpose, gives rise to purposeful beings who find meaning in the world. The key to this, Haig proposes, is the origin of mutable “texts”―genes―that preserve a record of what has worked in the world. These texts become the specifications for the intricate mechanisms of living beings.