Showing results by narrator "Napoleon Ryan" in All Categories

The rebellion is over, Scotland has its rightful king, and the battlefields lie still - for now. Fleance, son of Banquo, has brought a new dawn to Scotland, and in the process become a very different man from the lowly huntsman who rode north to save his country. A generation has passed since Macbeth, but still there are evil forces at work across the land. Civil war is imminent, and there are traitors at the castle gates. The witches who foresaw Fleance's rise to power are watching and scheming once again.

Thirty years ago, the Iron Wolves held back mud-orc hordes at the Pass of Splintered Bones, and led a brutal charge that saw the sorcerer Morkagoth slain. Now, a new terror stalks the realm. Orlana the Changer has escaped from the Chaos Halls and is building an army, twisting horses, lions and bears into terrible, bloody hunters, summoning mud-orcs from the slime and heading north to battle the mighty region of Vagandrak where, it's said, the King has gone insane.

Christopher Rowe has no idea who he is. After being shipwrecked in Devonshire, he wakes up alone, his memories gone. Villagers tell him he was possessed by an unseen evil, and only became conscious after being visited by the local witch. As Christopher tries to get his bearings, he realizes his current state may be far from coincidence. Dark events have been happening in this corner of Britain - village children are disappearing without a trace. There are whispers that the malevolent ghost of the White Lady has returned to steal the children away, one by one, and consume their souls.

While recovering at his uncle's estate from wounds sustained in the Sudan, Jack Cameron - a loyal Scottish captain in the British army - is haunted by the words of a dying officer: one of her majesty's Black Dragoons is aiding the slavers they were sent to suppress. But how will he uncover the traitor without sending the culprit to ground?

In an age clouded by legend, Gawain was one of King Arthur's greatest knights. When he awakens centuries after the fall of Camelot, he faces his most daunting quest yet - the search for his missing companions. His hope is that Tamsin Greene, the alluring historian at Medievaland Theme Park, can help him. Then he senses the magic within her. Gawain will now have to trust a witch - and his own heart - to rouse the knights of the Round Table and save humanity from a faery onslaught.

In this fresh and provocative view of a seven-million-year evolutionary journey, Finlayson demonstrates the radical implications for the interpretation of fossils and technologies and shows that understanding humans within an ecological context provides insights into the emergence and spread of Homo sapiens worldwide.

James is exactly what you'd expect from one of London's most promising, young town planners. He's cautious, respected by colleagues and performs well in team meetings. But while James understands the glitter and grime of the city better than almost anyone, he hasn't actually experienced much of it. And, as he watches his university friends blossom bewilderingly into rich and successful adults, he has the nagging sense that he has somehow fallen by the wayside.

With rapid globalization, the world is more deeply interconnected than ever before. While this has its advantages, it also brings with it systemic risks that are only just being identified and understood. Rapid urbanization, together with technological leaps, such as the Internet, mean that we are now physically and virtually closer than ever in humanity's history. We face a number of international challenges - climate change, finance, pandemics, cyber security, and migration - which spill over national boundaries.

In 1926 the British government was worried about revolution. Two million people are about to go on strike and class warfare is about to erupt. Tom Hankey is caught between his love for Judy, a bright young thing, and Kate, a fireball agitator. Brought home from Oxford by his father, Tom volunteers to drive a train in the General Strike. When the train is ambushed, Tom is thrust into the darkest and most threatening regions of English politics.

Ranging in age from six to 40, 38 sons and daughters of lesbians offer brief essays that could be valuable to like offspring, as well as to relatives and friends trying to understand the problems such children face. Homophobia, visited upon the children as well as their mothers, is the most commonly cited concern; some younger contributors feel isolated from their peers, and a couple of boys endure rejection from radical lesbian acquaintances.

Mint-addicted aliens. Talking horses. Little girls in wheelchairs who get the chance to pilot starships. Odd little jade carvers who save the last great Mayan city by magic. A sexy wolf girl who saves a teddy bear boy and her clown boyfriend's heart. A famous director who cloned herself and now is dying of cancer, only she's raised her clone like a normal child. Guys at the end of the world who discover they're not the world's greatest poet, they're about as bad as it gets.

Behold the Rolling Stones: run-ins with the law, chart-topping successes, and now the World's Greatest Continually Operating Rock and Roll Band. 50 Licks tells the story of the Stones, right from its very origins. On July 12, 1962, London's Marquee Club debuted a new act, a blues-inflected rock band named after a Muddy Waters song-the Rolling Stones. They were a hard-edged band with a flair for the dramatic, styling themselves as the devil's answer to the sainted Beatles.

Hailed as the prophesied messiah of the vampyre, Aleric seemed destined for glory - until, like many of his brethren, he was captured by the sorceress Enora. Imprisoned, he is now forced to fight in the arena for her amusement. To end Enora's reign of terror, Aleric must escape and find the alchemist behind her power, though that may mean unleashing Pythia, the Lady of Serpents - and Aleric's old enemy, the seductress who ended his mortal life.

When Charlton Foyle is stranded on an unknown island in the Pacific, he finds himself facing the challenge of a lifetime. This isolated land is inhabited by goat-like homanids, large, semi-intelligent birds, the descendants of degenerate pirates from a century earlier, and the remnants of an ancient race of men with powers to forecast the future via their strange metal mirrors. There he also finds another recent exile - a young, beautiful French woman named Marcelle, who is quickly capture by the pirate leader.

After rescuing Pythia, the creature who turned him into a vampire, Aleric follows her back to the land of the Saracens. There, they must raise an army, for Aleric's lost love, Enora, has become the Queen of the Wastelands. Aided by her minions and her legions of wolves, she has begun the quest to call the Dark Madonna from beyond the Veil into the world of man. To stop the end of all, Aleric must become what he was destined to be - the Messiah of the Damned - and lead the undead in a final battle against the Mother of Darkness.

Firmly rooted in modern archaeological discoveries about Bronze Age cultures, The Shattered Horse paints a vivid picture of a decaying golden age seen through the eyes of the survivors of Trojan War. At the center of the story is Prince Astyanax: heir to the Trojan kingdom, marked for death as a child by the Greek conquerors, escaping, perhaps by divine intervention, and doomed, perhaps, to repeat history.