Showing results by narrator "Simon Shepherd" in All Categories

In The Incurable Romantic, Frank Tallis recounts the extraordinary stories of patients who are, quite literally, madly in love: A woman becomes utterly convinced that her dentist is secretly infatuated with her and drives him to leave the country; a man destroys his massive fortune through trysts with more than 3,000 prostitutes - because his ego requires that they fall in love with him; a beautiful woman's pathological jealousy destroys the men who love her.

Arthur Bannister has been unexpectedly accepted into Shiverton Hall, which, as it turns out, is an incredibly spooky school, full of surprises. And it is just as well that Shiverton Hall has made its offer, because Arthur had a horrible time at his previous school, and was desperate to leave. Timely indeed... but Arthur has no time to worry about the strange coincidence. He is too busy trying to make head or tail of Shiverton Hall, dogged as it is by tales of curses and bad fortune.

In the respectable seaside town of Flaxborough, the equally respectable councillor Harold Carobleat is laid to rest. Cause of death: pneumonia. But he is scarcely cold in his coffin before Detective Inspector Purbright, affable and annoyingly polite, must turn out again to examine the death of Carobleat's neighbour, Marcus Gwill, former prop. of the local rag, the Citizen. This time it looks like foul play, unless a surfeit of marshmallows had led the late and rather unlamented Mr Gwill to commit suicide by electrocution. ('Power without responsibility', murmurs Purbright.)

When Iranians overthrew their monarchy, rejecting a pro-Western shah in favor of an Islamic regime, many observers predicted that revolutionary turmoil would paralyze the country for decades to come. Yet 40 years after the 1978-79 revolution, Iran has emerged as a critical player in the Middle East and the wider world, as demonstrated in part by the 2015 international nuclear agreement. In Iran Rising, renowned Iran specialist Amin Saikal describes how the country has managed to survive despite ongoing domestic struggles, Western sanctions, and other serious challenges.

Are you paid what you deserve by your clients? This book will save you a fortune - and maybe even make you a fortune. Using proven strategies that can be applied to your business today, it will help you discover: how to confidently hold your price, how to say "no" to clients while improving your relationship, how to negotiate higher fees and prices, and how to handle unrealistic timescales and budgets. Why Do Smart People Make Such Stupid Mistakes? is a practical negotiation guide to more profitable client relationships for marketing and communication agencies, sales teams, and professional service people.

It is 1993 and Thomas Penmarsh has lived in Finisterre, the house by the sea, all his life, sleeping each night in the room with the barred window. He's only 48 but has been an old man since one evening in 1967 when he lost everything he valued. However, now his controlling mother has died and he is master of the house. When Esmond, his cousin and childhood confidant, comes to live with him, Thomas is overjoyed - Esmond always looks after him. But is Esmond all that he seems?

In this manifesto, the author takes a leap of faith. It is a faith in Lost Causes. He asserts that today, architectonic reason has fallen into ruins. As soon as architecture leaves the limits set to it by architectonic reason, no other path is open to it but the path to aestheticism. This is the wrong path contemporary architecture has taken. In its reduction to a pure aesthetic object, architecture negatively affects the human sensorium.

The Inner Consultation, Second Edition sets out the author’s thoughts on how consulting skills, and methods of teaching them, have evolved in the 17 years since the book’s first publication. It also develops the theme of "curiosity" as the key requirement for patient-centered consulting and provides a practical consultation model with five checkpoints to work to, advice for developing skills, and suggestions for doctors to ensure they know the cues in the consultation that require their full attention.

It started with a cash drop by an English spy in occupied Paris in 1944. Reserved for Resistance groups during the war, the money reached Émilien Amaury, an advertising executive, who was tasked to help France return to a free press once liberated. He soon launched a newspaper empire that—unbeknown to him—would own the rights to run what would become one of the greatest sporting events in history.

From Plato to Plutarch, Shakespeare to Churchill, Machiavelli to Melville, Jane Austen to Carl Jung, Pericles to Peter Drucker and many more - here are the best leadership ideas of the past 25 centuries. You don't need a big title or a business degree in order to lead with impact. What you need is practical wisdom: the insight, judgment and strength of character that all great leaders have but that most business schools and corporate workshops don't teach.

Just after 10 o’clock on Thursday, 7th May 2015, Nick Robinson stared down the lens of camera five in the BBC’s Election Night Studio to explain to millions the significance of an exit poll that shocked the country and heralded an earthquake in British politics. That moment was a personal milestone for the BBC’s political editor, who had been discharged from hospital just hours earlier following weeks of treatment for cancer and the loss of his voice after surgery.

What are the benefits of owning a dog on health and well-being? Why does a problem dog behave as it does and how can owners deal with unwanted behavior? How do dogs communicate with humans and each other? The Psychology of Dog Ownership explores the nature of our unique relationship with dogs and its effect on our mental and physical welfare. The book uses psychological learning theory to examine dog behavior and highlights the importance of determining between typical dog behavior and behavior disorders that need treatment.

The Blitz changed the landscape of the city. Many famous landmarks were hit, including Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament, the Tower of London - even the Imperial War Museum. Some areas, such as Stepney, were so badly damaged that they had to be almost entirely rebuilt after the war. But it wasn't just the city's physical landscape that was transformed.

This audiobook delivers the fascinating account of one Western family’s time living and working in China. Told through a series of letters, China from the Inside: Letters from an Economist presents insights into the society and economy of a country that is often opaque to outsiders and poorly understood. The author’s expertise as an economist and the family’s efforts to integrate into Chinese society furnish a vivid and unique account.

At the war's end, Churchill and his colleagues left the chamber and locked the door behind them and the War Rooms remained there, untouched and little known, until the early 1980s. Today, those historic chambers are on display as the Churchill War Rooms exhibit. With Secrets of Churchill's War Rooms, you can go behind the glass partitions that separate the War Rooms from the visiting public, bringing listeners closer than ever before to where Churchill not only ran the war but won it.

Net curtains twitch furiously, and neighbours have observations to make to Chief Inspector Purbright and Sergeant Love about the inhabitants of 14, Beatrice Avenue. Nice Gordon Periam, the mild-mannered tobacconist, and his rather less nice (in fact a bit of a bounder) lodger Brian Hopjoy had apparently shared the house amicably. But now neither man is to be found, and something very disagreeable seems to be lurking in the drains.... Then a couple of government spooks turn up, one with an eye for the ladies - the drama is acquiring overtones of a Bond movie!

Tuesday nights have suddenly turned quite ridiculously noisy in the country town of Chalmsbury, where the good folk are outraged at having their rest disturbed. It begins with a drinking fountain being blown to smithereens - next the statue of a local worthy loses his head, and the following week a giant glass eye is exploded. Despite the soft-soled sleuthing of cub reporter Len Leaper, the crime spate grows alarming.

Britain's private, fee-paying schools are institutions where children from affluent families have their privileges further entrenched through a high-quality, richly resourced education. There is an irrefutable link between private schools and life's gilded path: private school to top university to top career. Engines of Privilege contends that, in a society that mouths the virtues of equality of opportunity, fairness and social cohesion, the educational apartheid separating private and state schools deploys our national educational resources unfairly and inefficiently.

Bethan and Harry see the ghost: a pale figure floating over the water, one finger pointing downwards. Local legend says that she is Hettie Daynes, an ancestor of their family, who vanished over 100 years ago. If so, what does she want?

Dame Beryl Bainbridge was one of the best loved and most recognisable English novelists of her generation. She was shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, and her critically acclaimed novels The Dressmaker (1973), The Bottle Factory Outing (1974), An Awfully Big Adventure (1990), Every Man for Himself (1996) and Master Georgie (1998) confirmed her status as one of the major literary figures of the last 50 years.