Showing results by narrator "Ric Jerrom" in All Categories

Five haunting tales from Benedict Ashforth, the best-selling author of Abbot's Keep.

Mourinho is both a sumptuous celebration of The Special One's managerial career so far, and an enigmatic insight into his unique brand of football wisdom and philosophy. In the legendary manager's very first audiobook, and in his own images and captions, José Mourinho charts the peaks and troughs of the opening 15 years of what has been a stellar rise to the summit of the global game.

In the 1660’s Jamaica was an uneasy island, occupied by Spain but settled by the English and French. When Admiral of the Brethren, Ned Yorke, a brave, loyal Buccaneer, learns that Spain is mounting a Caribbean fleet perhaps to protect the treasures of Spanish ships, or carry an army to Jamaica, he vows to find out the truth. Yorke’s audacious attacks on Spanish camps reveal all and the Buccaneers must fight a bloody, desperate battle to try and hinder them.

Josephine Short was a woman with a secret or two. When her great-nephew’s wife, Janet Wakefield, gets a call from the Berebury Nursing Home, she’s taken aback. Not only does it come as a surprise to hear that her husband’s estranged great aunt has passed away, but more surprising is the fact she had been living locally for some years. Janet is sure that her husband Bill was the last of Josephine’s close family. But then a young man approaches her at the funeral and introduces himself as Josephine’s grandson....

Every generation has looked up from the Earth and wondered at the beauty of the moon. 50 years ago, a few Americans became the first to do the reverse - with the whole world watching through their eyes. In this short but wide-ranging book, Oliver Morton explores the history and future of humankind's relationship with the moon. A counterpoint in the sky, it has shaped our understanding of the Earth from Galileo to Apollo. Its gentle light has spoken of love and loneliness; its battered surface of death and the cosmic. 

Soldiers is a very personal gathering of sparkling, gripping tales by many writers, about men and women who have borne arms, reflecting best-selling historian Max Hastings’ lifetime of studying war. It rings the changes through the centuries, between the heroic, tragic and comic; the famous and the humble. The nearly 350 stories illustrate vividly what it is like to fight in wars, to live and die as a warrior, from Greek and Roman times through to recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ravenna, 50BC. Caesar’s forces stand upon the borders of Gaul and Italy. The prospect of a civil war grows ever likelier each day. But for the veteran soldier Lucius Oppius, this may be one conflict too far. With a new lover, he is tempted to end his long military career - and start a new life. But can any man truly be free of his past and who he is? In Rome, Cicero attempts to secure a peace. Against him, a powerful faction in the Senate is bent upon destroying Caesar, for personal and political reasons.

A triumph of narrative, empathy and research, as gripping in its handling of individual witnesses to the war - those doomed to struggle with bombing, rationing, exhausting work and above all the absence of millions of family members - as of the gigantic military, social, technological and economic forces that swept the conflict along. It is the definitive account of a drama which reshaped our country.

Andrea Pirlo is one of the finest footballers of his generation - a World Cup and Champions League winning playmaker who has redefined his position at the base of midfield, and one of the most deadly free-kick takers the game has known. This is his story, in his words. It is written with a level of humour and insight which confound his image as a dead-eyed assassin on the field of play.

With reference to the ideas of a Yale professor who first identified the theory and to the writings of George Orwell from whose ‘newspeak’ the word was adapted, Booker sheds new light on the remarkable – and worrying – effects of ‘groupthink’ and its influence on our society. Booker defines the three rules of groupthink: the adoption of a common view or belief not based on objective reality; the establishment of a consensus of right-minded people, an ‘in group’; and the need to treat the views of anyone who questions the belief as wholly unacceptable.

Great Contemporaries profiles towering figures ranging from Franklin Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Lawrence of Arabia and Leon Trotsky to Charlie Chaplin, H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling and George Bernard Shaw. Written in the decade before Churchill became prime minister, the essays in Great Contemporaries focus on the challenges of statecraft at a time when the democratic revolution was toppling older regimes based on tradition and aristocratic privilege.

In My Life in Football Keegan tells the story of his remarkable rise through the sport, from the Peglers Brass Works reserve team in Doncaster to helping Liverpool become the kings of Europe, winning a Bundesliga title with Hamburg and captaining England. Keegan was recognised around the world as one of the sport's genuine superstars and remains the only Englishman to win the Ballon d'Or twice....

"Brother, do not try to follow me once you have read this. No good can come of it..." When Clifford Fox QC receives a desperate letter from his estranged younger brother, Simon, he departs his comfortable Yorkshire home to locate him. The letter outlines the harrowing events that have led Simon to the very edge of sanity.

Charles II returns from exile bringing with him unease to the Spanish Main. In this vivid description of seventeenth-century buccaneers, Ned Yorke, the leader and hero of the swashbuckling band are depended upon for the defense of Jamaica, fighting with captured Spanish guns. Daring raids on the Spanish seem inevitable, as Yorke sets out on the high seas to distant adventures on behalf of the King and his own honor.

Will knows a secret. Somewhere in the forest, behind the abbey where he lives, is a grave. And beneath the snow lies something he thought could never die.But Will is not alone in knowing the truth behind the Crowfield Curse. Hidden in the dusk, someone else is watching...A spooky, suspenseful story for older children from acclaimed author Pat Walsh, The Crowfield Curse was shortlisted for the Times Children’s Fiction Competition.

It is the 1650s, and Spain considers the Caribbean its own private sea, but England, Holland, and France conspire to battle for freedom on the oceans. Set in days littered with the plunder of piracy, Ned Yorke, a loyal royalist living in Barbados, has a small vessel and devoted crew, and together they sail, hunted by roundheads and Spaniards, determined to pay whatever the price for freedom from tyranny. What transpires is a colorful, dramatic retelling of historical events surrounding the capture of Jamaica and the infamous raid on Santiago.

In old Greece a fragile balance of power was continually disturbed by wars. Then, from the late third century, the military and diplomatic power of Rome successively defeated and dismantled every one of the post-Alexandrian political structures. The Hellenistic period (c. 323-30 BC) was then one of fragmentation, violent antagonism between large states and struggles by small polities to retain an illusion of independence. Yet it was also a period of growth, prosperity, and intellectual achievement.

Britain, 55 BC: Julius Caesar’s invasion of the wild and mineral-rich land is becalmed, a stalemate exists between the forces of Rome and Britain. But the standard bearer of the Tenth Legion, Lucius Oppius, is about to display a depth of courage that will change the course of the invasion - and history. Encamped upon the south coast Caesar, admiring the courage and skill of his standard bearer, orders Oppius to accompany a native British archer and go behind enemy lines.

Rome, 51 BC: The centurion Lucius Oppius has left the battlefields of Gaul to venture to Rome. But he is about to discover the capital of the Empire can be every bit as dangerous as its provinces. Under orders from Caesar to secure an item of intelligence that will help him become a Consul again, Oppius is manipulated into taking part in a gladiatorial contest. The soldier must not only fight his enemies in the arena however. Marcus Porcius Cato warns "Caesar’s Champion" that victory inside the arena will bring death outside of it.

Pharsalus, 48 BC: The battle will decide the fate of a civil war and empire. Caesar's forces are outnumbered, but he believes his veterans will not be outmatched. For one veteran, the centurion Lucius Oppius, the battle will be about revenge rather than glory. Oppius has vowed to avenge his father's death. His enemy is Flavius Laco - a former gladiator and an agent of Pompey the Great. Against the backdrop of one of Ancient History's most momentous battles two soldiers will wage their own personal war.