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

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 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.

Ten remarkable women. One remarkable era. In the Tudor period, 1485 to 1603, a host of fascinating women sat on the English throne. The dramatic events of their lives are told in The Turbulent Crown: The Story of the Tudor Queens.

A life of Matilda - empress, skilled military leader, and one of the greatest figures of the English Middle Ages.

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.

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.

Elizabeth Bennet may be a heroine, but by defying some of the most powerful mages in England, she has made enemies who will stop at nothing to embroil her in scandal. So when she is accused of endangering the Royal Mages through her reckless actions, she no longer knows who to trust. Even the gentleman she loves is taking their side. It seems the only person who believes her is the captive French mage who is imprisoned in the cellar at Netherfield.

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.

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.

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.

Elizabeth and Darcy are finally settling down at the Netherfield Royal Mages Academy when a mysterious flare of magic sends them scampering to discover what is happening. But they are soon left with more questions than answers. Why has Elizabeth's sister Lydia gone missing? Who is the mysterious gentleman they encountered at an inn? And more importantly, why have they been summoned to London to attend to the Prince Regent himself? As Elizabeth and Darcy grapple with the revelations, they find themselves caught up in a web of deception that could lead to the downfall of the Kingdom itself.

From emperors to empresses, poets to prostitutes, slaves to plebs, ancient Rome was a wealth of different experiences and expectations-nowhere more so than around the subject of sex and sexuality. The image of ancient Rome that has come down to us is one of sexual excess: emperors gripped by perversion partaking in pleasure with whomever and whatever they fancied during weeklong orgies.

Charles Lutwidge Dodson, a professor of mathematics at Magdalen (Maudlin) College, Oxford, originally wrote these charming children's stories for young Alice, the daughter of his friend, Henry George Liddell, the dean of Christ Church. After publication, these children's books rapidly became popular with adults because of the extraordinary mixture of rationalism and fantasy, irony, and absurdity viewed through the looking glass of a child's dreams.

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 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 this intimate history of the extraordinary Black Plague pandemic that swept through the British Isles in 1665, Evelyn Lord focuses on the plague's effects on smaller towns, where every death was a singular blow affecting the entire community. Lord's fascinating reconstruction of life during plague times presents the personal experiences of a wide range of individuals, from historical notables to common folk. The Great Plague brings this dark era to vivid life through stories of loss and survival from those who grieved, those who fled, and those who hid to await their fate.

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.

One of ancient Rome's most significant legacies is a legal framework for hereditary slavery. Under the Roman principle that would come to be known as partus sequitur ventrem (the offspring follows the womb), enslaved women bore enslaved children regardless of the identity of the child's father. For centuries, across the globe, this legal doctrine was invoked to justify control over enslaved women's reproductive labor.

In the 1980s, countries across Asia stunned the world with meteoric economic growth—but when eyes turn to Africa today, it is often to lament corruption, violence, and poverty rather than to scout the next developmental frontrunners. Yet some African nations, even in the face of challenging geography and the crippling legacies of colonialism, have found remarkable success.

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.