Showing results by narrator "Nicholas Guy Smith" in All Categories

A man with a borrowed name steps from a flashy red sports car—also borrowed—onto the estate of his youth. But all is not as it seems. There is a new family living in the drafty old house: the Godleys, descendants of the late, world-famous scientist Adam Godley, whose theory of existence threw the universe into chaos. And this mystery man, who has just completed a prison sentence, feels as if time has stopped, or was torn, or was opened in new and strange ways. He must now vie with the idiosyncratic Godley family, and with a woman from his past who comes bearing an unusual request.

Many people will remember Eric Liddell as the Olympic gold medalist from the Academy Award-winning film Chariots of Fire. Famously, Liddell would not run on Sunday because of his strict observance of the Christian Sabbath, and so he did not compete in his signature event, the 100 meters, at the 1924 Paris Olympics. He was the greatest sprinter in the world at the time, and his choice not to run was ridiculed by the British Olympic committee, his fellow athletes, and most of the world press.

One old copy of the novel Rebellion sits in Lena Knecht’s tote bag, about to accompany her on a journey from New York to Berlin in search of a clue to the hand-drawn map on its last page. It is the brilliantly captivating voice of this novel—a first edition nearly burned by Nazis in May 1933—that is our narrator. Fast-paced and tightly plotted, The Pages brings together a multitude of dazzling characters, real and invented, in a sweeping story of survival, chance, and the joys and struggles of love.

Moscow’s support for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election has grown into the biggest political scandal of modern times. Its American players are well-known. In Shadow State, award-winning journalist and best-selling author Luke Harding reveals the Russians behind the story: the spies, hackers, and internet trolls. Harding charts how the Kremlin has updated Communist-era methods of influence and propaganda for the age of Facebook and Twitter, and considers the compelling question of our age: what exactly does Vladimir Putin have on President Trump?

Mr. Mani is a deeply affecting six-generation family saga, extending from 19th-century Greece and Poland to British-occupied Palestine to German-occupied Crete and ultimately to modern Israel. The narrative moves through time and is told in five conversations about the Mani family. It ends in Athens in 1848 with Avraham Mani's powerful tale about the death of his young son in Jerusalem. A profoundly human novel, rich in drama, irony, and wit.

The Crown and Key Society face their most terrifying villain yet: Gaios, a deranged demigod with the power to destroy Britain. To avenge a centuries-old betrayal, Gaios is hell-bent on summoning the elemental forces of the earth to level London and bury Britain. The Crown and Key Society, a secret league consisting of a magician, an alchemist, and a monster-hunter, is the realm’s only hope—and to stop Gaios, they must gather their full strength and come together as a team, or the world will fall apart.

London awakes one morning to find itself besieged by a sky full of floating icebergs. Destroyed oil rigs, mysteriously reborn, clamber from the sea and onto the land, driven by an obscure purpose. An anatomy student cuts open a cadaver to discover impossibly intricate designs carved into a corpse’s bones—designs clearly present from birth, bearing mute testimony to . . . what?

The year is 2113. In Jenna Strong’s world, ACID - the most brutal controlling police force in history - rule supreme. No throwaway comment or whispered dissent goes unnoticed - or unpunished. And it was ACID agents who locked Jenna away for life, for a horrendous crime she struggles to remember. But Jenna’s violent prison time has taught her how to survive by any means necessary. When a mysterious rebel group breaks her out, she must use her strength, speed, and skill to stay one step ahead of ACID and try to uncover the truth about what really happened.

When monster-hunter Malcolm MacFarlane comes across the gruesome aftermath of a ritual murder in a London church, he enlists the help of magician-scribe Simon Archer and alchemist extraordinaire Kate Anstruther. Studying the macabre scene, they struggle to understand obscure clues in the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics carved into the victim’s heart—as well as bizarre mystical allusions to the romantic poetry of William Blake. One thing is clear: Some very potent black magic is at work.

Arguably no other character in history has been so enduringly popular as Sherlock Holmes. From his first appearance in Arthur Conan Doyle's 1887 novella A Study in Scarlet, fans have loved reading and listening about him - and writers have loved writing about him. Here, Otto Penzler collects 83 wonderful stories about Holmes and Dr. John Watson, the majority of which will be new to listeners.

Days before the birth of his first son, writer and academic John M. Hull started to go blind. He would lose his sight entirely, plunged into darkness, unable to distinguish any sense of light or shadow. Soon, he had forgotten what his wife and daughter looked like. In Notes on Blindness, John reveals his profound sense of loss, his altered perceptions of time and space, of waking and sleeping, love, and companionship. With astonishing lucidity of thought and no self-pity, he describes the horror of being faceless, and asks what it truly means to be a husband and father.

When terrorists try to shoot down a plane carrying Libyan prince Ibrahim al-Senussi, it is clear that someone wants him dead. But the CIA has its own plot for the prince: Now that Qaddafi has been overthrown, al-Senussi is their best bet to set up a constitutional monarchy and stem the Islamist tide in Libya. The CIA, which needs Malko as much as he needs them, sends the Austrian aristocrat to Cairo to learn more about al-Senussi’s plans by seducing his companion, a ravishing British model.

The Chalet des Anglais should be the ideal locale for recently widowed Oxford don Emily to begin cutting through the fog of her grief. With no electricity, running water, or access by car, the rustic chalet nestled at the foot of the snow-topped Alps should afford Emily space to heal. Joining her will be a collection of friends from the university, as well as other fellows, graduates, and undergraduates.

In 1979 Stefan Hertmans became obsessed with a rundown townhouse in Ghent. The previous owners were mentioned only in passing during the acquisition, and it wasn’t until the new millennium, long after he had sold the house, that he came across a memoir by the owner’s son Adriaan Verhulst, a distinguished history professor and a former teacher of Hertmans’, which revealed that his father was a former SS officer.

In 11th-century France, Vigdis Adelaïs, a young woman from a prosperous Christian family, falls in love with David Todros, a rabbi’s son and yeshiva student. To be together, the couple must flee their city, and Vigdis must renounce her life of privilege and comfort. Pursued by her father’s knights and in constant danger of betrayal, the lovers embark on a dangerous journey to the south of France, only to find their brief happiness destroyed by the vicious wave of anti-Semitism sweeping through Europe with the onset of the First Crusade.

traders call the office “the goldfish bowl” because its walls are all glass. There is no privacy, not even for office manager Gerald Lomax. And so it is that everyone in the office watches him die. when his first wife, Jane, passed away. Married for six years, their life seems blissful until the day she brings a kitchen knife to his office and stabs him to death in broad daylight. It is an open-and-shut case, but Jennifer pleads innocence, claiming that it wasn’t she who stabbed him - she was possessed by his ex-wife, Jane....

It’s 1942 in Nazi-occupied Paris. Mori Rothstein, an art dealer and expert in master paintings from Rococo to Realism, has been sought after for his expertise, by every major museum in the world. Also seeking his knowledge is Reichmarshall Hermann Goering. As his friends and fellow Jews disappear one by one, Mori struggles to protect his family by cooperating with the Germans to catalog stolen paintings for the Fuhrer’s museum.

Though much of his early life remains a mystery, Blackbeard most likely began his life as Edward Teach in the sailing port of Bristol, England. He began his career as a hired British sailor during Queen Anne's War. He eventually settled in the Bahamas under Captain Benjamin Hornigold who taught the young sailor to go "a-pirating." Soon enough, Blackbeard was commanding his own fleet and stealing ships around the Caribbean and up and down the Eastern seaboard. The legend of Blackbeard has influenced pirate legend and lore for more than 300 years.

In New Jersey, Parviz Amritzar is mourning for his family - killed by a US airstrike back in Pakistan - and vowing revenge against his adoptive country. He devises a plan to shoot down Air Force One and gets a lucky break when he reaches a terrorist contact who knows how he can obtain a surface-to-air missile from the Russians. When the CIA picks up on the rumors of this plot, they call on Malko Linge to carefully observe the would-be terrorist. But as soon as Malko thinks he has a handle on the situation, everything changes.

During the perils of World War II in Alexandria, Egypt, two people from different worlds will find their way back to each other time and time again, their love a beacon for their survival. After the war, James and Yvette establish roots in England hoping for a new beginning, until a tragic event drives a wedge between them and the path back to each other is one they both must be brave enough to face. Decades later, and ten years after his wife’s death, James moves to the English village of Upton seeking change.