Showing results by author "-" in All Categories

Part One, The Fellowship of the Ring, introduces us to Frodo Baggins. With his uncle Bilbo having mysteriously disappeared, Frodo finds himself in possession of a simple gold ring that has great and evil power. It is the Ruling Ring, taken long ago from the Dark Lord, Sauron, who now seeks to possess it again. Frodo must do everything he can to prevent this, and with the help of Gandalf the wizard and a band of loyal companions he begins a perilous journey across Middle-earth.

One Thursday lunchtime the Earth gets unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. For Arthur Dent, who has only just had his house demolished that morning, this seems already to be more than he can cope with.

A collection of BBC radio full-cast dramatisations of Jane Austen's six major novels. Jane Austen is one of the finest writers in the English language, and this volume includes all six of her classic novels. Mansfield Park: on a quest to find a position in society, Fanny Price goes to live with her rich aunt and uncle. Northanger Abbey: young, naïve Catherine Morland receives an invitation to stay at the isolated Gothic mansion Northanger Abbey.

The ratings and views are off the chart. The fans just can't get enough. The dungeon gets more dangerous each day. But in a grinder designed to chew up and spit out crawlers by the millions, Carl and Princess Donut need to work harder than ever just to survive. They call it the Over City. A sprawling, once-thriving metropolis devastated by a mysterious calamity. But these streets are far from abandoned. An undead circus trawls the ruins. Murdered prostitutes rain from the sky. An ancient spell is finally ready to reveal its dark purpose.

Great minds have long sought to understand the relationship between music and mathematics. Both involve patterns, structures, and relationships. Both generate ideas of great beauty and elegance. Music is a fertile testing ground for mathematical principles, while mathematics explains the sounds instruments make and how composers put those sounds together. Understanding the connections between music and mathematics helps you appreciate both, even if you have no special ability in either field....

The British Classics Collection: Volume One is a century-spanning collection of 24 classic works of fiction and poetry by British authors, read by a cast of incredible narrators including Stephen Fry, Joanne Froggatt, Jason Isaacs, Adjoa Andoh, and many more. Included here are stories by some of the greatest writers of all time, including Charles Dickens; Emily Brontë; Jane Austen; Thomas Hardy; George Eliot; D.H. Lawrence; George Orwell; and Mary Shelley, amongst a host of others.

The national identity has been forged in the furnace of war. From the medieval kingdom of Rus battling against a Scandinavian princes and Mongol emperors, to its own empire-building conflicts in 19th-century Asia, to the formative wars of the 20th century which saw Russia pitch from Tsarist empire to communist state and defender against Nazism, all these conflicts stained the lands of Russia red with blood. A weak post-Cold War Russia then turned to Putin, who created a new mood for martial triumphalism which led directly to the Ukrainian war.

Following a convention in the Scottish Highlands, eight social media influencers vanish without a trace, leaving their followers–and families–in a state of shock, and the police clueless as to their whereabouts. And then, the livestreams begin. Broadcast live from their squalid underground cells, the young influencers are forced into a sadistic battle for survival. With each livestream, their captor pits them against each other in a twisted competition for likes. The influencer with the fewest positive reactions faces a gruesome end–live on camera.

The passionate and tragic story of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff is one of the high points of 19th-century Romantic literature. In the relationship of Cathy and Heathcliff, and in the wild, bleak Yorkshire Moors of its setting, Wuthering Heights creates a world of its own, conceived with a disregard for convention and an instinct for poetry and the darkest depths of the human soul in torment.

Be warned! Awful animals lurk inside. These 10 tales of the world’s craziest creatures will have you shaking with laughter. You’ll never look at pets in the same way again! Marvel at Houdini, the magician’s rabbit. Take a trip around the world with Zoom, the supersonic tortoise. Gasp at the chaos created by Griselda, a grizzly bear with a big secret. And run for your lives! It’s Furp, the monstrous goldfish!

Anna Walsh had a dream life - according to everybody else. She lived in New York, had a long-term boyfriend, and had The Best Job In The World working as a highly successful beauty PR. So why did she decide to take a flamethrower to the lot? Because now she's back Dublin, living with her parents. She's undeniably forty-eight, with no partner, no job, and no direction. Anna's lost her purpose. She needs a new challenge to help her fall back in love with life again. When an opportunity arises to solve a PR crisis in the tiny town of Maumtully, Anna leaps at the chance.

By the blessing of the Omnissiah was the Mars Triumphant born – from the forges of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the mighty Baneblade super-heavy battle tank comes to bring death and destruction to the foes of the Imperium. As part of the Paragonian 7th Company, Honoured Lieutenant Marken Cortein Lo Bannick commands the venerable war machine in a bitter war against the orks in the Kalidar system. As the campaign grinds on it begins to take its toll upon his crew, and old clan prejudices from the regiment's home world arise once more. In a war which cannot be won by force of arms alone.

Former Met police officer Jodie ‘Nosey’ Parker is working a trial period as an auxiliary Detective Sergeant with the Penstowan police force. But living and working alongside DCI Nathan Withers – while still trying to grow her catering company – brings its own challenges, especially when Jodie’s attention is quickly taken up by the suspicious drowning of a local fisherman.

In Ta-Nehisi Coates's keenly anticipated new book, The Message, he explores the urgent question of how our stories – our reporting, imaginative narratives and mythmaking – both expose and distort our realities. Travelling to three resonant sites of conflict, he illuminates how the stories we tell – as well as the ones we don’t – work to shape us.

As organizations shift from monolithic applications to smaller, self-contained microservices, distributed systems have become more fine-grained. But developing these new systems brings its own host of problems. This expanded second edition takes a holistic view of topics that you need to consider when building, managing, and scaling microservices architectures. Through clear examples and practical advice, author Sam Newman gives everyone from architects and developers to testers and IT operators a firm grounding in the concepts.

"Jack and the Beanstalk", read by Lenny Henry
"Goldilocks and the Three Bears", read by Sheridan Smith
"Puss in Boots", read by Lenny Henry
"Snow White", read by Sheridan Smith. Here are four fantastic stories, full of magic and fun, that young children are sure to love!

Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College―Violet included. But Threshing was only the first impossible test meant to weed out the weak-willed, the unworthy, and the unlucky. Now the real training begins, and Violet’s already wondering how she’ll get through. It’s not just that it’s grueling and maliciously brutal, or even that it’s designed to stretch the riders’ capacity for pain beyond endurance. It’s the new vice commandant, who’s made it his personal mission to teach Violet exactly how powerless she is–unless she betrays the man she loves.

Tom Novak is a troubled soul with a dark and bloody past. A former refugee, Royal Marine and member of the elite Special Reconnaissance Regiment, he now finds himself struggling with the deadening routine of day-to-day policing. When he is deployed undercover to infiltrate a gang of people traffickers, things go badly wrong. Faced with an impossible choice, his cover is blown, and he finds himself on the run from the Serbian mafia and even his fellow police colleagues.

Fresh from solving not one but two murders at London landmarks, tour guide Diana Bakewell is apprehensive when a typo forces her to take two groups on two very different tours. The first group are bridge afficionados, in London to cram in as many bridges as they can cross in Chartwell and Crouch’s vintage Routemaster bus. The second is a group of Bridget Jones fans keen to explore the locations from the book and films. But then as they’re crossing the iconic Tower Bridge, a mysterious death plunges both groups into chaos.

The long-awaited audio edition of Peter Kay’s best-selling autobiography, The Sound of Laughter, including two completely new and exclusive bonus chapters. Grab a brew and some good-for-dipping biscuits and listen to Peter take a trip down memory lane, including his first-ever driving lesson, his Bolton childhood, the numerous jobs he held, right up until he found fame in the world of comedy.