Showing results by narrator "Sam" in All Categories

The story of a young illegitimate son of a Norman noble and the daughter of an English housecarl. Forced to be little more than a servant Robert fitz Malet shows the world and his half brothers that he has qualities which mark him as different. When he meets the famous troubadour, Taillefer, he becomes one of the most skilled swordsmen in Duke William's army as they prepare to invade England and claim the crown promised to him by King Edward.

Mr Salary is Nathan. Sukie moved in with him years ago because her mother was dead and her father was difficult, and she had nowhere else to go. Now they are on the brink of the inevitable. My love for him felt so total and so annihilating that it was often impossible for me to see him clearly at all. In Colour and Light, Aidan and Pauline watch a firework display together. They are almost strangers. But their stumbling connection pains Aidan more than any casual flirtation.

As it was in Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, and Othello, so it is in life. Most forms of private vice and public evil are kindled and sustained by lies. Acts of adultery and other personal betrayals, financial fraud, government corruption - even murder and genocide - generally require an additional moral defect: a willingness to lie. In Lying, bestselling author and neuroscientist Sam Harris argues that we can radically simplify our lives and improve society by merely telling the truth in situations where others often lie.

Three brothers are at the funeral. One lies in the coffin. Will, Brian and Luke grow up competing for their mother's love, but she is unable and unwilling to love all of them. As adults, the competition continues. One brother always has what another one wants - status, money, success, a woman, the love of a child, his mother's attention. But maybe there's a chance to even things up. Perhaps with one brother gone there would be more to go around. Which will it be?

Post-university life doesn’t suit Phyl. Time passes slowly living back home with her parents, working a zero-hour contract serving Japanese food to holidaymakers at Heathrow’s Terminal 5. As for her budding plans of becoming a writer, those are going nowhere. That is, until family friend Chris comes to stay. He’s been on the path to uncover a sinister think-tank, founded at Cambridge University in the 1980s, that’s been scheming to push the British government in a more extreme direction. One that’s finally poised to put their plans into action.

Ursula K. Le Guin was one of the most revered and influential writers of the 20th century. Her Earthsea books have sold millions of copies and been translated into numerous languages, while her trailblazing novel The Left Hand of Darkness was a landmark in feminist science fiction and ranks among the greatest SF novels of all time. This BBC collection brings together the magical radio retellings of both these seminal classics.

What is the best way to think about the world? How often do we consider how our own thinking might impact the way we approach our daily decisions? Could it help or hinder our relationships, our careers, or even our health? Thinking about thinking is something we rarely do, yet it is something science questions all the time. David Sumpter has spent decades studying what we could all learn from the mindsets of scientists, and Four Ways of Thinking is the result. Here he reveals the four easily applied approaches to our problems: statistical, interactive, chaotic and complex.

Mum makes plans for a summer down the coast, fixing up Grandpa’s old place in an effort to make ends meet. The beach, the swirling rockpools and the vast ocean offer new perspective and promise and Matthew as he strikes up a friendship with Bill, an old local who recognises a fellow ‘Saltwater Boy’ – and shows him how to find pippis and catch fish, and even make a few dollars from it. Bill becomes the paternal figure that Dad isn’t – wise and patient – but Bill isn’t welcomed in town, and Matthew begins to witness old rivalries, and buried truths, resurface.

Pirates didn't just break the rules, they rewrote them. They didn't just reject society, they reinvented it. Pirates didn't just challenge the status quo, they changed everyfuckingthing. Pirates faced a self-interested establishment, a broken system, industrial-scale disruption and an uncertain future. Sound familiar? Be More Pirate unveils the innovative strategies of golden age pirates, drawing parallels between the tactics and teachings of legends like Henry Morgan and Blackbeard with modern rebels like Elon Musk, Malala and Banksy.

For the millions of people who want spirituality without religion, Sam Harris’s new book is a guide to meditation as a rational spiritual practice informed by neuroscience and psychology. From bestselling author, neuroscientist, and “new atheist” Sam Harris, Waking Up is for the increasingly large numbers of people who follow no religion, but who suspect that Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Rumi, and the other saints and sages of history could not have all been epileptics, schizophrenics, or frauds.

Sometimes I whisper it over to myself: Murderess. Murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt along the floor.' Grace Marks. Female fiend? Femme fatale? Or weak and unwilling victim? Around the true story of one of the most enigmatic and notorious women of the 1840s, Margaret Atwood has created an extraordinarily potent tale of sexuality, cruelty and mystery.

It’s the summer of 2006 in Academy Award Winner Jamie Lee Curtis’ Letters From Camp, Season 2, and Mookie has reinvented herself from the "extremely annoying" and "overly personal"—their words—investigator who alienated the rest of the camp. Now she’s…well, she’s not sure yet, but it’s going to be cool beans.

Throughout the world, mental capacity is declining, especially among young people, while depression rates are rising dramatically. Meanwhile, one in forty men and women suffers from Alzheimer's, and the age of onset is falling rapidly. But the causes are not being eliminated, quite the opposite. Can this just be coincidence? The Indoctrinated Brain introduces a largely unknown, powerful neurobiological mechanism whose externally induced dysfunction underlies these catastrophic developments.

Self-made billionaire Sam Zell consistently sees what others don't. From finding a market for overpriced Playboy magazines among his junior high classmates, to buying real estate on the cheap after a market crash, to investing in often unglamorous industries with long-term value, Zell acts boldly on supply and demand trends to grab the first-mover advantage. And he can find opportunity virtually anywhere - from an arcane piece of legislation to a desert meeting in Abu Dhabi.

Best-selling author David Gillespie turns his attention to a phenomenon that damages businesses, seeds mental disease and discomfort and can bring civilisations to the brink of implosion - the psychopath. Psychopaths are often thought of as killers and criminals, but actually 5 to 10 percent of people are probably psychopathic without ever indulging in a single criminal act. These everyday psychopaths may be charming in the early stages of relationships or employment, but, Gillespie argues, their presence in your life is at best disruptive and at worst highly dangerous.

A belief in free will touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to think about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality—as well as feelings of remorse or personal achievement—without first imagining that every person is the true source of his or her thoughts and actions. And yet the facts tell us that free will is an illusion.

Episode Thirteen takes them to every ghost hunter's holy grail: the Paranormal Research Foundation. This brooding, derelict mansion holds secrets and clues about bizarre experiments that took place there in the 1970s. It's also famously haunted, and the team hopes their scientific techniques and high tech gear will prove it. But as the house begins to reveal itself to them, proof of an afterlife might not be everything Matt dreamed of.

Communication Skills Training is a collection of seven books that are designed to help you with every aspect of improving your communication skills, interpersonal relationships, becoming more charismatic and influential, and building confidence. The combination of the following seven books will help you achieve success and happiness in life.

This superlative collection of children's stories brings together a feast of fantastic fiction, read in full by a host of top narrators and with a comprehensive track listing for ease of listening. Comprising everything from fairytales for little ones to thrilling adventures for pre-teens, these unabridged readings are ideal for families to keep, treasure and dip into as their children grow.