Showing results by narrator "John Lee" in All Categories

In September 1769, 3,000 people descended on Stratford-upon-Avon to celebrate the artistic legacy of the town's most famous son, William Shakespeare. Attendees included the rich and powerful, the fashionable and the curious, eligible ladies and fortune hunters, and a horde of journalists and profiteers. For three days, they paraded through garlanded streets, listened to songs and oratorios, and enjoyed masked balls. It was a unique cultural moment - a coronation elevating Shakespeare to the throne of genius. Except it was a disaster....

Detlev Schlichter makes the case for the inevitable failure of a paper money economy and tells us what that means for the future.

Picking up exactly where Playing Gods 1: Isolation left off, Playing Gods 2: Adaptation brings the zehuderan warriors Xriah and Vylis to the world of Gravios. A far cry from the last plane where the two battled, Gravios is an ocean world of cybernetically augmented humans and post-apocalyptic sea vessels. All land on Gravios has been completely submerged into the depths, the sea level elevated by the planet-swallowing marine creature known as the Grava.

The stench of death hangs over Happyville. When Flintlock rides into town, he sees windows caked in dust, food rotting on tables, and a forgotten corpse hanging at the gallows. The citizens of Happyville are dead in their beds, taken down by a deadly scourge, and Flintlock must stay put, or risk spreading the killer disease. His quarantine is broken by Cage Kingfisher, a mad clergyman who preaches the gospel of death.

Terry Prince is an ex-SAS professional occasionally hired by the Secret Services to do special 'jobs'. His latest mission seems straightforward enough: find and retrieve a top secret file, belonging to the Department of Internal Security, that has been leaked to a left-wing magazine. Arriving at the offices of Socialist Attack, he discovers the editor dead - and he himself suspected of murder. Falsely accused, he goes on the run from both the Internal Security Department and gangsters from London’s underworld.

A man named Adolphe visits Leroux at his office at the Morning Journal and delivers to him a chest that was bequeathed to him by his friend Theophraste Longuet. Leroux begins investigating its contents and relates the very strange experience of Longuet. While visiting a famous prison, Theophraste Longuet, a retired rubber stamp manufacturer, is possessed by the spirit of Cartouche, a criminal who plagued Paris in the 18th century.

Old Roger Melton has died, leaving behind one of the greatest fortunes in Europe. His arrogant relative Ernest Melton expects to be the heir, but, much to the family's surprise, Roger leaves his vast estate to his obscure young nephew, Rupert Sent Leger. But Rupert's newfound wealth comes with strange conditions attached, one of which is that he must inhabit the old castle of Vissarion in the remote Balkan nation known as the Land of the Blue Mountains.

In the early 17th century, Galileo broke free from the hold of ancient Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. He drastically changed the framework through which we view the natural world when he asserted that we should base our theory of reality on what we can observe rather than pure thought. In the process, he invented what we would come to call science. This set the stage for all the breakthroughs that followed - from Kepler to Newton to Einstein.

In 1951, Ervin Shane boarded a Greyhound headed to wherever the winter sun was warmer. A thousand miles later, a layover in a West Texas bus station and a chance browsing of the want-ads led him to curtail his journey and take up as the custodian of The Sunshine Motel - a neon-bathed oasis situated halfway between somewhere and somewhere else, offering wayfarers, “…clean sheets, a warm blanket and a soft pillow for those lost souls bound for nowhere in particular.”

Friends first and love forever. The time is long overdue for men to mature—to treat women with love, respect, dignity, and cherish them inside and out. He not only must find the right woman to spend his life with, but also must develop and maintain a healthy relationship with her. In order to do so, he must find the courage within himself to participate in a love so intimate that he must risk his very soul—and hers as well.

He is England's greatest knight, the man who saved the life of Alfred the Great and an entire kingdom from a Viking invasion. But when he is called back into service to combat a plague of monstrous beasts known as abominations, he meets a fate worse than death and is condemned to a life of anguish, solitude, and remorse. She is a fierce young warrior, raised among an elite order of knights. Driven by a dark secret from her past, she defies her controlling father and sets out on a dangerous quest.

What do some of our greatest thinkers, from physicist Brian Greene and futurist Kevin Kelly to inventor Dean Kamen, geneticist George Church, and filmmaker Tiffany Shlain, anticipate for our human-robot future? From present-day Facebook and Amazon bots to near-future 'intimacy' bots and 'the robot that stole my job' bots, best-selling American popular science writer David Ewing Duncan's Talking to Robots is a wonderfully entertaining and insightful guide to possible future scenarios about robots, both real and imagined.

Mike Nash is away on compassionate leave but that doesn't mean the criminals are going to take a break. Detective Clara Mironova and the Helmsdale team face a sudden increase in crime. Minor offences ranging from theft, shoplifting, and poaching, pale into insignificance when a violent turf war breaks out between rival drugs gangs. Soon they have to cope with three murders, including the shooting of a police officer killed on a routine call. Then a batch of deliberately contaminated heroin hits the streets, resulting in the deaths of three addicts and causing media panic.

DI Mike Nash stops a thuggish attack on a young landscape painter in Madrid. What's her secret? And is there a connection with her father's murder? The artist flees to England where she seeks Nash's protection. Mike Nash must unravel the mystery of her past and will find something darker and more evil than even he has encountered before. If he doesn't stop them, they will find her and destroy her.

You will not believe what you are reading - even though it all feels so real. Only a man like Smilin’ Jack could monetize civil war. After the infamous business tycoon launches a hit TV show that pits American and Confederate gladiators in brutal battles, his grisly spectacle draws the attention of psychopaths across the nation.

This engaging collection of seven classic children’s stories presented by Voices in the Wind Audio Theatre includes Alice In Wonderland, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Secret Garden, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Each story is performed by a full cast of award-winning voice actors enhanced by sound effects and music. Timeless classics that are sure to entice the imagination of the very young and the young at heart!

When Lieutenant Mark Wheeler of the South Carolina Police Department arrives at a possible murder-suicide, he realizes almost immediately things are amiss. The crime scene is brutal, but upon further investigation, he unveils a sadistic killer at play who will stop at nothing to get away. As the case unfolds, nothing can prepare Wheeler for the gauntlet of turmoil and trouble.

At first distant glance, the spherical object appeared nothing more innocuous than a shooting star. Yet, upon further observation, there was something unsettling about its descent. This was no natural free-fall. The year is 1953, and the citizens of the American rural town of Kingshire Falls are busy preparing for its centenary.

The year is 1988, and Dallas Stone returns for his most lethal case yet. When an ancient artefact is discovered by a meek-mannered librarian, little does he realize, he has released an evil, so powerful, the future of our civilization is at stake. The world’s best hope for survival rests with a disgraced police officer and a motley crew of misfits.

Wallowing in self-pity, Merrik Niles finds himself at the bottom of a bottle of brandy, straining the patience of anyone who might care about him. Shamed into shaping up, Merrik decides his bystanding days are over. He's going to rejoin the war effort against the cruel hunchback currently vying for the throne of Greymond. That's easier said than done. Along the way, Merrik must rescue himself and his companions from shipwreck, form an alliance with a sorceress who previously tried to murder him, infiltrate a city under siege, and concoct an unlikely plan to bring the war to a quick conclusion.