Showing results by narrator "Samuel Roukin" in All Categories

The Viking Age - from 750 to 1050 saw an unprecedented expansion of the Scandinavian peoples into the wider world. As traders and raiders, explorers and colonists, they ranged from eastern North America to the Asian steppe. But for centuries, the Vikings have been seen through the eyes of others, distorted to suit the tastes of medieval clerics and Elizabethan playwrights, Victorian imperialists, Nazis, and more. None of these appropriations capture the real Vikings, or the richness and sophistication of their culture.

Hadrian Marlowe is newly a knight of the galaxy-spanning Sollan Empire: a hero who they say slew the alien Prince Aranata Otiolo in single combat; a man they say no man or xenobite can kill. Acting on the Emperor’s orders, Hadrian has come to the desert planet Thagura and driven off the Cielcin invaders, rescuing in the process the Lady Gadar Malyan, Baroness of that entire world. But not all the fighting is ended.

Trained from birth in swordplay and combat, a young knight named Siris has journeyed to the Dark Citadel with a single purpose: fight through the army of Titans to face the tyrannical God King in one-on-one combat. This was his father's sacred mission, and his father's before him, going back countless generations in an effort to free their people from enslavement.

It is one of the most well-known and well-loved fantasy epics of the twentieth century: the story of Elric, emperor of the dying kingdom of Melniboné. For a hundred centuries the Melnibonéans have ruled from the Dragon Isle of Imrryr. Now, after years of corruption and decadence, Elric’s amoral cousin Prince Yyrkoon, the brother of his beloved Cymoril, sets his eyes on the Ruby Throne. Elric must face his treacherous cousin not as a warrior but as a sorcerer king once again in league with the ancient gods of Melniboné, the Chaos Lords, and thus sealing his inexorable fate.

For DS Liam Kilshaw, a former marine who almost died on a mission gone wrong, returning to the sea was meant to help combat his PTSD. But when he’s called out with the lifeboat crew off the rugged Cornish coast at night, the dark danger of the waves comes crashing back. The body of a young man is floating in the water, and the zip-tie marks on his wrists show this is no tragic drowning—it’s murder.

At 18, Alexandra Wickham is presented to King George V and Queen Mary in an exquisite white lace and satin dress her mother has ordered from Paris. With her delicate blond looks, she is a stunning beauty who seems destined for a privileged life. But fate, a world war, and her own quietly rebellious personality lead her down a different path. By 1939, Europe is on fire and England is at war. From her home in idyllic Hampshire, Alex makes her way to London as a volunteer in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. But she has skills that draw the attention of another branch of the service.

Spices drove the early modern world economy, and for Europeans they represented riches on an unprecedented scale. Cloves and nutmeg could reach Europe only via a complex web of trade routes, and for decades Spanish and Portuguese explorers competed to find their elusive source. But when the Portuguese finally reached the spice islands of the Moluccas in 1511, they set in motion a fierce competition for control.

Crispin Marlowe grew up in his brother’s shadow, but Hadrian is gone, and his grandmother - the Duchess of Delos - is dying. Answering her summons, Crispin takes off on what should be a routine flight to the ducal palace from the castle at Devil’s Rest. But he is flying into a trap. There are whispers of treachery among the duchess’s many daughters, rumors of hidden knives in the planet’s court...if he can even make it there.

For thousands of years, the planet of Belusha has served the galactic Sollan Empire as its most notorious prison planet. It is here the very worst men in the Empire are locked away: murderers, traitors, deserters—each condemned to toil on the oil rigs and scrapyards of the planet in bitter cold, preyed upon both by the men of the Martian Guard set to watch over them, and by the Outborn reavers whose fathers escaped the work camps to scratch a living from the icy wilderness. It is a hard world. A desperate world. And it is here that Lorian Aristedes finds himself: alone; friendless; betrayed.

The sorcerer Alder fears sleep. The dead are pulling him to them at night. Through him they may free themselves and invade Earthsea. Alder seeks advice from Ged, once Archmage. Ged tells him to go to Tenar, Tehanu, and the young king at Havnor. They are joined by amber-eyed Irian, a fierce dragon able to assume the shape of a woman. The threat can be confronted only in the Immanent Grove on Roke, the holiest place in the world, and there the king, hero, sage, wizard, and dragon make a last stand.

Lady Anne Deveril doesn’t spook easily. A woman of lofty social standing known for her glacial beauty and starchy opinions, she’s the unofficial leader of her small group of equestriennes. Since her mother’s devastating plunge into mourning six years ago, Anne voluntarily renounced any fanciful notions of love and marriage. And yet, when fate puts Anne back into the entirely too enticing path of Mr. Felix Hartford, she’s tempted to run…right into his arms.

Magic marked Miles Singer for suffering the day he was born, doomed either to be a slave to his family's interest or to be committed to a witches' asylum. He went to war to escape his destiny and came home a different man, but he couldn't leave his past behind. The war between Aeland and Laneer leaves men changed, strangers to their friends and family. Even after faking his own death and reinventing himself as a doctor at a cash-strapped veteran's hospital, Miles can't hide what he truly is.

Long months have passed since Siris and the God King, enemies betrayed together, were left to rot in the prison at the Vault of Tears. Their true enemy - the Worker of Secrets, creator of the Infinity Blade itself - now reigns. Upon finally obtaining freedom, Siris must unravel plots that seem to make no sense, lead a rebellion with no direction, and fight against the division within his very heart. The secrets unraveled will dig backward in time toward the origins of the deathless and the true nature of the world itself....

Mary Firth is a Stormsinger: a woman whose voice can still hurricanes and shatter armadas. Faced with servitude to a deathless pirate lord, Mary offers her skills to his arch-rival in exchange for protection—and, more importantly, his help in sending the pirate to a watery grave. But Mary's dreams are dark and full of ghistings, spectral creatures who inhabit the ancient forests of her homeland and the figureheads of ships.

LONDON, 1891. Elizabeth Whittle and William Grant enjoy scalping London’s bourgeoisie, taking on the personas of grand spiritist Cerulia Trent and her agent to connect the living and the dead. When a detective arrives, sniffing out fraud with a scientifically minded spiritualist society, the duo decides to take one last job before escaping to the continent. However, their final séance ends horrifically … and soon Lizzie isn’t Lizzie anymore.

Step by step, mile by mile, his body and mind heal. In this lyrical, vulnerable, and breathtaking memoir, J. M. Thompson, now a successful psychologist, retraces the path that led him from despair to wellness, detailing the chilling childhood trauma that caused his depression, and the unorthodox treatment that saved him. Running Is a Kind of Dreaming is a luminous literary testament to the universal human capacity to recover from our deepest wounds.

Samuel and Mary are thriving as privateers on the Winter Seas. As they navigate the complexities of their growing bond, in a world that would see Mary as chattel to be traded, the pair are forging a better way to live, under the sails of Hart. But when their latest prize brings tales of Benedict’s capture by Mereish forces, they must make an impossible choice: to serve their nation or save Samuel’s brother. Thrust into a mission of intrigue and infiltration, they seek to break into the most secure prison on the Mereish Coast.

Catherine Wynne's introduction reappraises the stories by looking at Conan Doyle's medical background and its influence on the creation of the famous detective.

In the wake of the events of Black Tide Son, Hart flees into pirate-infested waters to shelter on the island where former rogue James Demery and the Fleetbreaker, Anne Firth, now rule. Reeling from their discoveries about the truths of the Mereish-Aeadine war, Mary and Sam hover on the precipice of a terrible, world-altering choice—they can stay silent and maintain their good names, or they can speak out, and risk igniting total war across the Winter Sea.

Meet Caltro Basalt. He's a master locksmith, a selfish bastard, and as of his first night in Araxes, stone-cold dead. They call it the City of Countless Souls, the colossal jewel of the Arctian Empire, and all it takes to be its ruler is to own more ghosts than any other. For in Araxes, the dead do not rest in peace in the afterlife, but live on as slaves for the rich. While Caltro struggles to survive, those around him strive for the emperor's throne in Araxes' cutthroat game of power.