Showing results by narrator "Ben Allen" in All Categories

The planet of Kiln is where the tyrannical Mandate keeps its prison colony, and for inmates the journey there is always a one-way trip. One such prisoner is Professor Arton Daghdev, xeno-ecologist and political dissident. Soon after arrival he discovers that Kiln has a secret. Humanity is not the first intelligent life to set foot there. In the midst a ravenous, chaotic ecosystem are the ruins of a civilization, but who were the vanished builders and where did they go?

The Empire’s mighty imperial armies are marching on Collegium once more. They’ve learnt from past failures and this time their Empress will brook no weakness. Stenwold Maker’s aviators still dominate the skies, but their rule will soon be over. For the Empire has developed a terrifying aerial weapon to level the battlefield. Yet victory may be decided elsewhere. In an ancient forest, where Mantis clans pursue their own civil war, Empress Seda is seeking a lost power from the old world. 

The Wasp Empire’s armies are on the move – and the city of Tark will be first to feel their might. Salma and Totho prepare for battle, alongside their Ant-kinden brethren. And within Tark’s walls, they’ll face a force greater than any Lowlander has ever seen. Stenwold Maker predicted this threat, and the Empire's secret service now deems him too dangerous to live. So he’s to be eliminated, and his beloved city of Collegium destroyed. For if this centre of learning is lost, it will crush Lowland resistance.

On the Mongolian steppes a general in the People's Liberation Army stakes his career, and his life, on a GPS-free missile guidance system that will change the balance of power on the battlefield. In Bath a young Chinese woman has secured the affections of a young brainiac working on that very problem. In Leamington Spa a deep cover operative has given himself away. And in London Jonas Merrick watches all, assessing, planning. A moment, perhaps, for him to strike a blow to China's espionage network in the UK. One thing he does not see, however, is in Moscow.

This audiobook, read by Audie award-winning narrators, includes unabridged recordings of all Fyodor Dostoyevky's greatest works: 15 novels and novellas, 18 short stories, a short study of Dostoyevsky by Virginia Woolf, and two books of non-fiction - his Letters and European travel journal.

A shadow is falling over Collegium. Despite the tenuous peace, Stenwold Maker knows that the Empire will return for his city. Even as he tries to prepare for the resurgence of the black-and-gold army, a hidden threat is working against his people. Ships that sail from Collegium's harbour are being attacked, sunk by pirates. Some just go missing.

Ancient powers are waking. The war with the Wasp Empire has ended in a bitter stalemate, and Collegium has nothing to show for it but wounded veterans. Cheerwell Maker finds herself broken in ways no doctor can mend, haunted by ghosts of the past. Meanwhile, the powerful Wasp Empress is regaining control over those imperial cities that refused to bow to her.

Tynisa is on the run, but she cannot escape the demons of her own mind. Amidst the fragmenting provinces of the Dragonfly Commonweal, her past will at last catch up with her. Her father's ghost is hunting her down. At the same time, the Wasp Empire seeks to conquer the city of Khanaphes, the fallen jewel of the ancient world. Whilst Empress Seda's soldiers seek only conquest and prestige, she sees herself as the heir to all the old powers of history, and has her eyes on a far greater prize.

All is in turmoil as the world moves towards war. In Solarno, spies eye one another and ready their knives – while the people of Myna watch troops gather at its borders. Emotions run high as old fears reawaken. And in Collegium students argue politics, too late to turn the tide. At the heart of the Empire, new pilots complete their secretive training, generals are recalled to service and armies are readied to march. Their Empress, heir to two worlds, intends to claim her birthright. For nothing – either within the Empire or beyond it – will stand in her way.

In the office at MI5 where he works, they call Jonas Merrick 'the eternal flame'. It isn't a compliment. It's because he never goes out. He never goes undercover, never does surveillance, never goes with the teams that kick down the doors or seize the suspects off the street. He commutes into work and sits at his desk and then he goes home. But Jonas has qualities the hot-shots fail to notice: a steely concentration, a ruthless ability to focus and find the enemy hiding in plain sight.

Why do obviously intelligent people believe things in spite of the evidence against them? Will Storr has travelled across the world to meet an extraordinary cast of modern heretics in order to answer this question. He goes on a tour of Holocaust sites with David Irving and a band of neo-Nazis, experiences his own murder during 'past-life regression' hypnosis, takes part in a mass homeopathic overdose, and investigates a new disease affecting tens of thousands of people - a disease that doesn't actually exist.

Liverpool: a suburban crime family grips a whole city with fear. And their ambition reaches further still. Galicia: an entire community waits on the windswept edge of Europe for the delivery of four tonnes of cocaine, brought across the ocean in an almost unbelievable craft. London: Jonas Merrick, grey and quiet, alone in a small office, seems an unlikely character to be tasked with bringing down an international drug network. But while Jonas's colleagues regard him as scratchy, fastidious, old, he is also ruthless, cunning and brutally pragmatic.

The Lowlands’ city states have lived in peace for decades, hailed as bastions of civilization. Yet that peace is about to end. A distant empire has been conquering neighbours with highly trained soldiers and sophisticated combat techniques. And the city states are its desirable new prize. Only the ageing Stenwold Maker – spymaster, artificer and statesman – foresees the threat, as the empires’ armies march ever closer. So it falls upon his shoulders to open the eyes of the cities’ leaders.

Achaeos the seer has finally tracked down the stolen Shadow Box. But he has only days before this magical artefact will be lost to him forever. Meanwhile, the Empire's dread forces are mustering for their next great offensive. Stenwold and his followers have only a short time to gather allies, before the enemy's soldiers march again – to conquer everything in their path. If Stenwold cannot hold them back, the hated black and gold flag will fly over every city in the Lowlands before the year's end.

The Empire has vanquished its enemies at last, but at a terrible price. With her chief rival cast into the abyss, Empress Seda must face the truth of what she’s unleashed in her hunger for power. Now the Seal has been shattered, the ancient Worm stirs towards the light for the first time in a thousand years. Already it is striking at the surface, consuming everything in its voracious path. Unchecked, it will ravage the world.

He is a record collector and a connoisseur of vinyl, hunting out rare and elusive LPs. His business card describes him as the Vinyl Detective, and some people take this more literally than others. For example, the beautiful, mysterious woman who wants to pay him a large sum of money to find a priceless lost recording on behalf of an extremely wealthy yet shadowy client. And so begins a painful and dangerous odyssey in search of the rarest jazz record of them all....

Uctebri’s long search for the Shadow Box is finally over. Now the vampiric sorcerer can begin his dark ritual. The Wasp-kinden’s emperor believes this will grant him immortality, but Uctebri has his own plans - for the emperor and the empire. The mighty Wasp armies are on the march. And now war is imminent, spymaster Stenwold can finally separate allies from false friends. For the empire won’t stop until a black and gold flag hangs over Collegium, Stenwold's home city. 

Countries die. Sometimes it’s murder, sometimes it’s by accident, and sometimes it’s because they were so ludicrous they didn’t deserve to exist in the first place. Occasionally they explode violently. A few slip away almost unnoticed. Often the cause of death is either ‘got too greedy’ or ‘Napoleon turned up’. Now and then they just hold a referendum and vote themselves out of existence. This is an atlas of nations that fell off the map. 

As Tess traces the sunrise over the floodplains, light that paints the house a startling crimson, she yearns for the comforting chaos of life as it once was. Instead of Max and Sonny tracking dirt through the kitchen - Tess and Richard's 'rainbow twins' - Tess absorbs the quiet. The nights draw in, the soil cools and Richard fights to get his winter crops planted rather than deal with the discussion he cannot bear to have. Secrets and vines clamber over the broken red bricks and although its inhabitants seem to be withering, in the damp, crumbling soil - Sonny knows it - something is stirring.

This audiobook, read by Audie award-winning narrators, includes unabridged recordings of Fyodor Dostotevsky's two finest works of non-fiction.