Showing results by narrator "Kris Dyer" in All Categories

The world's 'Big Four' accountancy firms - PwC, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, and KPMG - have become a gilded elite. Up in the high six figures, an average partner salary rivals that of a Premier League footballer. But how has the seemingly humdrum profession of accountancy got to this level? And what is the price we pay for their excesses? Leading investigative journalist Richard Brooks charts the profession's rise to global influence and offers a gripping exposé of the accountancy industry.

Dachau, 1942. Emilie has been told she's here to nurse evil men. But the first patient she sees in the cold, dark room is hauntingly familiar. Her first love is not wicked. He couldn't be. What is he doing here? Emilie's heart stops as she takes in her childhood sweetheart hunched in a tattered prisoners uniform, the light lost from his face. Her new husband, Otto, said this was a camp for criminals. He should know, he's the doctor. But Danner would never have broken the law.

March 1557. Jack Blackjack is back in London and enjoying a sedentary life. After his treacherous voyage back to his beloved city the previous year, he desires nothing more than women, wine, beer and more women. But his new parish of St Helen's has different ideas for him. A week after first laying eyes on the tempting Miss Rachel Nailor, she turns up dead on the church vestry floor...and someone is trying to frame him for her murder! Rachel was a woman with many secrets. But was she murdered in a fit of lustful rage, or was it part of a wider political play?

August 1556. Jack Blackjack is on a simple mission: make it back home to his beloved London. It should be simple, right? Wrong. He's made it as far as Exeter, but before he can secure a fresh steed in that hellish city, he's faced with a dead priest, ruthless thieves, and a devious Dean who's determined to see the back of Jack. That suits Jack just fine - he wants to leave! So when wealthy merchant Wolfe, offers passage to London via sea, Jack jumps at the chance...and unwittingly into further danger!

Luigi Pirandello's extraordinary final novel begins when Vitangelo Moscarda's wife remarks that Vitangelo's nose tilts to the right. This commonplace interaction spurs the novel's unemployed, wealthy narrator to examine himself, the way he perceives others and the ways that others perceive him.

A shipload of migrant workers flees the pandemic-stricken UK, seeking a fresh start in Australia. For nine-year-old Cleary the journey promises adventure, for former nurse Billie it’s a chance to put a shameful mistake behind her, while struggling schoolteacher Tom hopes for a brighter future. But when a crew member is murdered and people start falling gravely ill, the Steadfast descends into chaos. Trapped on the ship, the trio must join forces to survive the journey and its aftermath.

When a bunch of misfit orphans all find themselves on a bus heading towards a new life, one called Afterlife, it wasn’t quite what they had in mind. But even fate can play games and five teens will soon find themselves asking even more questions than ever before. Questions about an uncertain future in this new world and the very first one on the top of that long list...what does the King of Heaven and Hell have in store for them?

In this wise and practical book, the Dalai Lama shows us how to place our working lives into the context of our lives as a whole. Rather than striving to find a role which suits us, we should allow our work to arise naturally from who we are - and what is most important to us. From here we reach a pathway that can lead us to true life fulfilment and purpose.

Once again, the teens were not only faced with a ton of unanswered questions after what had happened down in that cell of death, but on top of all that, they had classes to pass! But this wasn’t the only thing that faced this misfit bunch of teenagers, because they had new powers to control and inner demons to face, a blood oath to figure out, a mechanical bad ass named Gruen out for blood...and oh yeah, a Hell’s Ring to fight. Which meant that their first year at the Afterlife school was going to be interesting all right. In fact, it might just end up being...Hell on Earth!

August, 1558. As London is bustling with growing trade from foreign lands, and Queen Mary's health is once again a hot topic, Jack Blackjack has much to keep him busy. And that's before his new tenant - a Dutch merchant - disappears under a cloud of suspicion, quickly presumed murdered, and Jack's latest female companion's body is found mere streets from her dwelling place.

London, 1556. Hal Westmecott, one of the city's most feared executioners, reckons Jack Blackjack owes him a favour - and now he's come to collect his dues. Hal has ordered Jack to track down his long-lost son. But when Jack's search draws him to the attention of a ruthless nobleman, a dead priest's vengeful brother and finally to a bloodstained body in a filthy lodging house, he comes to realise he is an unwitting pawn in a mesh of schemes dreamed up by the most powerful people in England. Just who is a friend, who is a foe - and will Jack escape with his life intact?

Even before Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, private companies were exploiting space via communication satellites - a sector that is seeing exponential growth in the internet age. In human spaceflight, too, commercialisation is making itself felt. Billionaire entrepreneurs Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson have long trumpeted plans to make space travel a possibility for ordinary people and those ideas are inching ever closer to reality.

For centuries, Ferdinand Magellan has been celebrated as a hero: a noble adventurer who circumnavigated the globe in an extraordinary feat of human bravery, a paragon of daring and chivalry. Now, renowned historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto draws on extensive and meticulous research to conduct a dazzling investigation into Magellan's life, his character and his ill-fated voyage. He shows that Magellan did not attempt—much less accomplish—a journey around the globe, and that in his own lifetime, the explorer was abhorred as a traitor, reviled as a tyrant and dismissed as a failure.

Mars is back. Suddenly everyone - from Elon Musk to Ridley Scott to Donald Trump - is talking about going to the Red Planet. When the Apollo astronauts walked on the Moon in 1969, many people imagined Mars would be next. However NASA’s Viking 1, which landed in 1976, was just a robot. The much-anticipated crewed mission failed to materialise, defeated by a combination of technological and political challenges.

Who volunteers? Why? What are you willing to do? This title presents the hilarious, heartwarming adventures of a volunteering cynic. Do the feel-good rewards commensurate with the time and effort involved? When Seb Hunter accidentally picks up the phone to a charity Fundraiser one day, he faces a moment of reckoning. It isn't so much that he lacks a social conscience; but he can no longer assuage it by buying the odd copy of the Big Issue and eating Fairtrade chocolate.

Sabine and Rory Sugar seem like a perfectly respectable family to their new neighbours. They’re popular and friendly, their two teenage boys quiet and courteous. But when Rory starts staying late at work, and Sabine thinks she sees her son, Leo, in the woods apparently fighting with a girl, their seemingly perfect lives start to fall apart. And when the girl is reported missing and the police turn up asking awkward questions, Sabine must decide whether to lie to protect her son, or risk Leo being arrested on suspicion of abduction.

Economics may seem like a modern field, but its object of study is ancient. Resources have been exchanged and distributed since the dawn of history, and the economies that arose from those transactions were more complex than you might expect. In this panorama of the development of trade and industry, Economist columnist Philip Coggan tracks the development of the world economy starting with the first obsidian blades that made their way from Turkey to what is now the Iran-Iraq border 7,000 years before Christ, and ending with the Sino-American trade war that we are in right now.

Carolyn Kirby's stunning debut takes the listener on a heart-breaking journey through Victorian Birmingham and questions where we first learn violence: from our scars or from our hearts. Birmingham, 1885. Born in a gaol and raised in a workhouse, Cora Burns has always struggled to control the violence inside her. Haunted by memories of a terrible crime, she seeks a new life working as a servant in the house of scientist Thomas Jerwood. Here, Cora befriends a young girl, Violet, who seems to be the subject of a living experiment. But is Jerwood also secretly studying Cora?

'The scar drew her whole face sideways, and even in profile, with the hideous thing turned away, her face was horribly lopsided, skin, features and all, dragged away from the bone. She was a beautiful girl, a white and golden girl, like moonlight on daisies, a month ago.' And yet the men still hover around her, more out of curiosity than lust, and none more so than the wildly seductive, dangerous funny man Honeybuzzard; lithe as a stick of liquorice, he is the demonic puppet master at the swirling centre of the tale.

It's often said that when tragedy strikes, the victims were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. But not Harry and Alice French. Assaulted by masked men looking for a mysterious package and a man named Renshaw, Alice and Harry manage to convince them that there has been a terrible mix-up. But nothing prepares Alice and Harry for the web they find themselves trapped in after their assailants leave. Especially as Alice hasn't been completely honest.