Showing results by narrator "Jennifer M Dixon" in All Categories

It was just a stroll on the hill - until the mist came down. In Murder on the Tor, the third Exham on Sea mystery, clues to a present-day crime lead baker and chocolatier Libby Forest back into the historic past of mysterious Glastonbury, a place of myth and legend where truth merges with fable. With the enormous Carpathian Sheepdog, Bear, at her side, she sets out to unravel the mystery and bring the killer to justice.

Behind the locked doors of three mansions in London's exclusive Kensington Palace Gardens neighborhood, the British Secret Service established a highly secret prison in 1940: the London Cage. Here recalcitrant German prisoners of war were subjected to "special intelligence treatment." The stakes were high: the war's outcome could hinge on obtaining information German prisoners were determined to withhold. After the war, high-ranking Nazi war criminals were housed in the Cage, revamped as an important center for investigating German war crimes.

The respectable ladies of the Knitters' Guild plan to spring a surprise on the quiet cathedral city, but murder isn't part of the scheme. The last thing Libby Forest needs is another investigation into a mysterious sudden death. There's enough on her plate already. The fast-growing cake and chocolate business takes all her time, her apprentice has problems, and even Bear, her beloved dog, is determined to create havoc. She'd like to leave detection to the police, but the prime suspect begs for help, and once more, Libby takes on the role of amateur sleuth.

The season of Epiphany is in full swing at Gwenafwy Abbey when 10 new nuns from a convent in Los Angeles join the community of Anglican sisters in Wales. The arrival of the new nuns brings something else to the Abbey - a bit of unexpected notoriety. Claire Pennoyer, an ambitious young reporter for the Church Times, interviews the new sisters for a feature story. Murder is the last thing on anyone's mind when Claire is found dead on the beach, her mobile phone in the sand.

As the euphoria of Armistice Day in 1918 quickly subsided, there was no denying the carnage that the Great War had left in its wake. Grief and shock overwhelmed the psyche of the British people - but from their despair, new life would slowly emerge.

The historical Merlin was no rough magician: he was a learned figure from the cutting edge of medieval science and adept in astrology, cosmology, prophecy, and natural magic, as well as being a seer and a proto-alchemist. His powers were convincingly real—and useful, for they helped to add credibility to the "long-lost" history of Britain which first revealed them to a European public. Merlin's prophecies reassuringly foretold Britain's path, establishing an ancient ancestral line and linking biblical prophecy with more recent times. Merlin helped to put British history into world history.

Everyone knows the dead woman under the lighthouse, but no one seems to know why she died. What brought the folk-rock star back to Exham on Sea after so many years? Who wanted her dead? Does the key to her murder lie in the town, or far away across the Atlantic? Libby Forest arrives in Exham to build a new life making cakes and chocolates, and discovers a talent for solving mysteries, helped by Bear, an enormous Carpathian sheepdog, and a cast of local characters.

In Brainwashing, Kathleen Taylor brings the worlds of neuroscience and social psychology together for the first time. In elegant and accessible prose, and with abundant use of anecdotes and case-studies, she examines the ethical problems involved in carrying out the required experiments on humans, the limitations of animal models, and the frightening implications of such research. She also explores the history of thought-control and reveals how it persists all around us, from marketing and television to politics and education.

The Despensers were a baronial English family who rose to great prominence in the reign of Edward II (1307-27) when Hugh Despenser the Younger became the king's chamberlain, favorite, and perhaps, lover. He and his father Hugh the Elder wielded great influence, and Hugh the Younger's greed and tyranny brought down a king for the first time in English history and almost destroyed his own family. The Rise and Fall of a Medieval Family tells the story of the ups and downs of this fascinating family from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries.

In the fall of 1947, an eighty-four-year-old woman receives an extraordinary invitation. Within is the end of a long journey seeking vindication for a husband who gave his life to the service of the Royal Navy and received, in return, ingratitude. Thus begins the story of Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine. Victoria, the eldest daughter of Princess Alice and Prince Ludwig of Hesse, was born in April 1863.

Combining searing personal accounts of battles and betrayals with moving portraits of the ordinary Afghans who were caught up in the conflict for more than a decade, The Wrong Enemy is a sweeping account of a war brought by American leaders against an enemy they barely understood and could not truly engage.

Elizabeth Bennet is stunned when someone from the Royal Mage Academy comes to her peaceful country home to take her away. She is even more bewildered when she is commanded to marry a powerful gentleman by the name of Fitzwilliam Darcy. She has always dreamed of marrying for love, and an arranged marriage with an arrogant stranger was never part of her plans.

Winters in the World is a beautifully observed journey through the cycle of the year in Anglo-Saxon England, exploring the festivals, customs, and traditions linked to the different seasons. Drawing on a wide variety of source material, including poetry, histories, and religious literature, Eleanor Parker investigates how Anglo-Saxons felt about the annual passing of the seasons and the profound relationship they saw between human life and the rhythms of nature.

In AD 60/61, Rome almost lost the province of Britain to a woman. Boudica, wife of the client king Prasutagus, fomented a rebellion that proved catastrophic for Camulodunum (Colchester), Londinium (London), and Verulamium (St. Albans), destroyed part of a Roman legion, and caused the deaths of an untold number of veterans, families, soldiers, and Britons. Yet with one decisive defeat, her vision of freedom was destroyed, and the Iceni never rose again. Boudica: Warrior Woman of Roman Britain introduces listeners to the life and literary importance of Boudica.

Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) was a man of many talents - a sculptor, painter, architect, writer, and scholar - but he is best known for Lives of the Artists, which singlehandedly established the canon of Italian Renaissance art. Before Vasari's extraordinary book, art was considered a technical skill, and artists were mere decorators and craftsmen. It was through Vasari's visionary writings that Raphael, Leonardo, and Michelangelo came to be regarded as great masters of life as well as art, their creative genius celebrated as a divine gift.

The Tale of Pigling Bland - written by Beatrix Potter describing the adventures of the pig of the title and how his life changes upon meeting a soul mate, in much the same way that Potter's life was changing at the time the book was published.

Viruses are big news. From pandemics such as HIV, swine flu, and SARS, we are constantly being bombarded with information about new lethal infections. In this Very Short Introduction, Dorothy Crawford demonstrates how clever these entities really are. From their discovery and the unravelling of their intricate structures, Crawford demonstrates how these tiny parasites are by far the most abundant life forms on the planet.

Zoologist Jo Wimpenny turns a critical eye to Aesop's fables to discover whether there is any scientific truth to their portrayal of the animal kingdom. She brings the tales into the twenty-first century, introducing the latest findings on the most fascinating branches of ethological research—the study of why animals do the things they do. In each chapter she interrogates a classic fable and a different topic—future planning, tool use, self-recognition, cooperation and deception—concluding with a verdict on the veracity of each fable's portrayal from a scientific perspective.

Elizabeth and Darcy dream of a peaceful life together in idyllic Pemberley, but when rumors start circulating that Napoleon intends to invade the Kingdom by sea, they are sent with a group of Royal Mages to the coast of Kent to discover the truth. But the truth is hidden under multiple layers of uncertainty, and they soon suspect they have been lured into a trap. Faced with danger and betrayal, Elizabeth and Darcy must depend on each other to survive. Will their circumstances bring them closer together, or tear them apart?

The rose is bursting with meaning: Over the centuries, it has come to represent love and sensuality, deceit, death, and the mystical unknown. Today the rose enjoys unrivalled popularity across the globe, ever present at life's seminal moments.