Showing results by narrator "John Lee" in All Categories

Here is the tale of a family dealing with the death of their father, of a son who goes to law for his inheritance, a son who agonizes over his father's deathbed confession, a daughter who falls in love, a daughter who becomes involved in the abolition movement, and a daughter sacrificing herself for her husband.... Except that everyone in the story is a dragon, red in tooth and claw.

Gabriel Oak is only one of three suitors for the hand of the beautiful and spirited Bathsheba Everdene. He must compete with the dashing young soldier Sergeant Troy and the respectable, middle-aged Farmer Boldwood. And while their fates depend upon the choice Bathsheba makes, she discovers the terrible consequences of an inconstant heart.

In a rare and gorgeous departure, beloved novelist Alice Hoffman weaves a web of tales, all set in Blackbird House. This small farm on the outer reaches of Cape Cod is a place that is as bewitching and alive as the characters we meet. These interconnected narratives are as intelligent as they are haunting, as luminous as they are unusual. Inside Blackbird House more than a dozen men and women learn how love transforms us and how it is the one lasting element in our lives.

The UFS Phoenix is on a mission to find a lost data-core that may contain the secret to defeating the alo-deepynine alliance. But the means to find the data-core is hidden deep in tavalai space, in a highest-security vault where the tavalai's manipulative State Department keep all their most treacherous secrets. To recover it, Phoenix must pull off the most daring heist the Spiral has ever seen.

In this edition, we hear, translated into modern English, 20-some tales, told in the voices of knight and merchant, wife and miller, squire and nun, and many more. Some are bawdy, some spiritual, some romantic, some mysterious, some chivalrous. Between the stories, the travelers converse, joke, and argue, revealing much about their individual outlooks upon life as well as what life was like in late 14th-century England.

Most of us recognize that climate change is real yet we do nothing to stop it. What is the psychological mechanism that allows us to know something is true but act as if it is not? George Marshall’s search for the answers brings him face to face with Nobel Prize-winning psychologists and Texas Tea Party activists; the world’s leading climate scientists and those who denounce them; liberal environmentalists and conservative evangelicals. What he discovers is that our values, assumptions, and prejudices can take on lives of their own, gaining authority as they are shared.

Charged to uncover the secrets of an ancient tower, the Hunter's journey takes him into the lands known to the outside world as "Ghandia", a realm harsh yet beautiful, filled with mysteries lost to time and marvels yet to be discovered. There, he is drawn into bloody conflict between the people who call the vast plains their home and the cruel Vassalage Consortium, masters of the flesh trade. But more than human enemies lurk in the shadows.

Tovak, a pariah amongst dwarves, an outcast, bears the burden of his people’s disdain and his family’s disgrace. And yet, through many trials and tests, he has managed to stubbornly prove himself in battle time and time again, and shown his courage in selflessly risking life and limb. Though not everyone accepts him, he has been chosen by his god as a holy warrior, a paladin in service to Thulla. Meanwhile, the Horde is on the march and intent upon taking back the valley. A battle will soon be at hand, the likes of which Tovak can hardly imagine.

AD 1440, Brittany. Scores of children have gone missing from the countryside around Nantes. The commoners know who is to blame. But they dare not speak up, for they suspect their very own lord, the marshal of France and lieutenant-general of Brittany, the Baron Gilles de Rais. As Richard investigates the monstrous crimes, he is haunted by the recent crushing defeats at the hands of an insane French peasant girl called Joan of Arc. But what is the strange connection between the Maiden of Orleans and the depraved Baron de Rais?

In A Conspiracy of Paper, Weaver investigates a crime of the most personal sort: the mysterious death of his estranged father, a notorious stockjobber. To find the answers, Weaver must contend with a desperate prostitute who knows too much about his past, relatives who remind him of his alienation from the Jewish faith, and a cabal of powerful men in the world of British finance who have hidden their business dealings behind an intricate web of deception and violence. Relying on brains and brawn, Weaver uncovers the beginnings of a strange new economic order.

Two skeletons are discovered in Lamentation Tarn, a mountain lake. Talented detective Mike Nash and his team have little evidence with which to work, until a surprising discovery prompts them to contact law enforcement agencies in Eastern Europe.

Planning the invasion of Normandy, the Allies knew that decoding the communications of the Nazi high command was imperative for its success. But standing in their way was an encryption machine they called Tunny (British English for “tuna”), which was vastly more difficult to crack than the infamous Enigma cipher.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson has long been interested in the relationships between humans and animals, and he’s always been aware that there was something very special in our bond with dogs. No other animals love us in quite the same way as dogs love us. And it is mutual. Is it possible that we developed our capacity for love, sympathy, empathy, and compassion because of our long association with dogs?

When a sacret woman's rite in the ancient city of Rome is infiltrated by a corrupt patrician dressed in female garb, it falls to Senator Decuis Caecilius Metellus the Younger, whose investigative skills have proven indispensable in the past, to unmask the perpetrators. When four brutal slayings follow, Decius enlists the help a notorious and dangerous criminal.

Answers and vengeance are so close that Absalom Scryne can almost taste them. Perhaps if his consciousness had been transferred to a pair of shoes instead of a hat, he would've had the necessary tongue to do so . . . Having made it through the Badlands by the skin of his crooked yellow teeth, Ig the kobold celebrated the achievement by blowing everyone up. Now, separated from the unhygienic scalp of his apprentice, Absalom must navigate the pitch-black underworld.

Knowledge is power. That would be the motto of Lander University, had it not been snatched up and used to death by others long before the school was founded. For while Lander offers a full range of courses to nearly all students, it also offers a small number of specialty classes to a very select few. Lander is home to the Hero Certification Program, a curriculum designed to develop student with superhuman capabilities, commonly known as Supers, into official Heroes.

Most classical authors and modern historians depict the ancient Greek world as essentially stable and even static, once the so-called colonization movement came to an end. But Robert Garland argues that the Greeks were highly mobile, that their movement was essential to the survival, success, and sheer sustainability of their society, and that this wandering became a defining characteristic of their culture.

Caius Julius Caesar, now Dictator of Rome, has decided to revise the Roman calendar, which has become out of sync with the seasons. As if this weren’t already an unpopular move, Caesar has brought in astronomers and astrologers from abroad, including Egyptians, Greeks, Indians, and Persians. Decius is appointed to oversee this project, which he knows rankles the Roman public: "To be told by a pack of Chaldeans and Egyptians how to conduct their duties towards the gods was intolerable."

In the spring of 1918, German forces broke through Allied lines in a last-ditch attempt to overcome their enemies. To hold back this tide, inexperienced young men from France, Britain, the United States, Australia, and Canada were sent into war. What was it like to be an eighteen-year-old and sent to the frontlines in the First World War? Frederick James Hodges was one of these young men and his book, Men of 18 in 1918, provides insight into the ordeals of an ordinary soldier who left Britain as a teenager but returned as a man having witnessed the full horrors of war.

Decius Caecilius Metellus is moving up in the world. He's won some money and glory fighting pirates in the Mediterranean and expects a speedy election to the office of praetor. That all changes when a man he's never seen before publicly accuses him of corruption. Decius and his powerful family of Rome's leading politicians scramble to prepare a defense. However, the day of the trial they are greeted with a strange surprise on the steps of the courthouse: the corpse of the man who made the accusation. Now Decius is up against a much more serious charge of murder.