Showing results by narrator "Stewart Cameron" in All Categories

Francis Croft, the greatest poet of his age, was mad. Harvey Lawson watched and protected him until his final suicide. From his solitary old age Harvey writes this brief account of their 20 years together and then burns all the papers to shut out an inquisitive world. The tautness and control that characterize Susan Hill's work are abundantly evident in The Bird of Night as she magnificently handles the heights and depths, the splendours and miseries of madness and friendship.

July 1805: Napoleon's army masses across the Channel - Britain is within hours of invasion and defeat. Only one thing stands in the way - an obscure government bureau of murky origins and shadowy purpose: The Comptrollerate General for Scrutiny and Survey. And, rescued from a shipwreck, his past erased, Tom Roscarrock is their newest agent.

Five thrilling tales of mystery, mayhem, and murder from an exceptional quintet of Edgar, CWA Dagger, and National Book Award winners.

Since the death of their mother in a hit-and-run accident, Violet and Jane have been living with Luke Grant, their great-grandfather and his partner Helena. One evening Violets boyfriend goes missing and is finally found badly injured and unconscious. The police investigation follows the suspects to the island of Madeira and uncovers a bizarre and unscrupulous scam...

In June 2015 Alberto Manguel prepared to leave his centuries-old village home in France's Loire Valley and reestablish himself in a one-bedroom apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Packing up his enormous, 35,000 volume personal library, choosing which books to keep, store, or cast out, Manguel found himself in deep reverie on the nature of relationships between books and readers, books and collectors, order and disorder, memory and reading.

Long neglected in world history, the Ottoman Empire was a hub of intellectual fervor, geopolitical power, and enlightened pluralistic rule. Yet, despite its towering influence and centrality to the rise of our modern world, the Ottoman Empire's history has for centuries been distorted, misrepresented, and even suppressed in the West. Now Alan Mikhail presents a vitally needed recasting of Ottoman history, retelling the story of the Ottoman conquest of the world through the dramatic biography of Sultan Selim I (1470-1520).

Fire is rarely out of the headlines, from large natural wildfires raging across the Australian or Californian countrysides to the burning of buildings such as the disasters of Grenfell tower and Notre Dame. Fire on these scales can represent a serious risk to human life and property. But the advent of fire made and controlled by humans also represented a crucial point in our evolution, allowing us to cook our food, forge our weapons, and warm our homes.

For centuries, the unique and astonishing geography of the Himalaya has attracted those in search of spiritual and literal elevation: pilgrims, adventurers, and mountaineers seeking to test themselves among the world's most challenging peaks. But far from being wild and barren, the Himalaya has been home to a diversity of indigenous and local cultures, a crucible of world religions, a crossroads for trade, and a meeting point and conflict zone for empires past and present.

Nobody knew it at that moment, but only three things stood in the way of the complete destruction of the Earth: one elderly parrot; one eight-year-old spelling mistake; and an intrepid young schoolgirl-turned-reporter.... Greta Zargo needs a big scoop if she's going to win the Prilchard-Spritzer Medal, the quite famous award for great reporting. But big scoops are in short supply in the quiet town of Upper Lowerbridge. But then, with a whoosh of unknown energy, a mysterious silver robot descends from the sky....

Who’d break in and leave the house untouched? When Michael and Hilda return from holiday to find two police officers awaiting them, a chaotic series of events ensues. The police have had an anonymous tip-off about child pornography being stored on Michael‘s computer. It’s easy to prove his innocence, but who would do such a thing and why? At the same time it becomes clear that someone was living in the cottage while they were away, and may still be returning.

To give and receive well may be the most human thing you can do-but it is also the closest you can come to divinity. So argues the great Roman Stoic thinker Seneca in his longest and most searching moral treatise, "On Benefits" (De Beneficiis). James Romm's splendid new translation of essential selections from this work conveys the heart of Seneca's argument that generosity and gratitude are among the most important of all virtues.

Responding to a desperate summons from the Doctor's future self, he and Peri find themselves on a sailing ship in 1492, where the crewmen are gripped by superstitious fear. They say the Devil walks among them, stalking and striking them down. Even though they have landed in paradise, they fear that 'El Diablo' himself will drag them over the edge of the world and into the depths of Hell.

It is for the entities known as Sleepwalkers to cross between dreams and hunt the nightmares that haunt sleeping minds. Theirs is a world of impossible vistas, where reason is banished and imagination holds sway: the connected worlds that all sleeping minds inhabit, and the doors that lead between. But tonight, one Sleepwalker has gone rogue. Abandoning her oath to protect the dreamscapes, she has devoted herself to another cause, threatening to unleash a nightmare older than man.

Human behavior is lopsided. When cradling a newborn child, most of us cradle the infant to the left. When posing for a portrait, we tend to put our left cheek forward. When kissing a lover, we tend to tilt our head to the right. Why is our behavior so lopsided and what does this teach us about our brains? How have humans always used this information to make our images more attractive and impactful? Can knowing how left-brain right-brain differences shape our opinions, tendencies, and attitudes help us make better choices in art, architecture, advertising, or even athletics?

A fascinating, comprehensive, accessible account of conodont fossils—one of paleontology's greatest mysteries. Simon J. Knell takes the listener on a journey through 150 years of scientific thinking, imagining, and arguing. Slowly the animal begins to reveal traces of itself: its lifestyle, its remarkable evolution, its witnessing of great catastrophes, its movements over the surface of the planet, and finally its anatomy. Today the conodont animal remains perhaps the most disputed creature in the zoological world.

Prague, 2015. Herbert Biely, aged hero of the Prague Spring, stands on the brink of an historic victory, poised to reunite the Czech and Slovak Republics 26 years after the Velvet Revolution. The imminent Czech elections are the final stage in realising his dream of reunification, but other parties have their own agendas and plans for the fate of the region. A shadowy collective, masked as the innocuous European Union Institute, will do anything to preserve the status quo.

Luke Russell discusses why some philosophers think that evil is a myth or a fantasy, while others think that evil is real. Along the way he asks whether evil is always horrific and incomprehensible or if it can be banal. Considering if there is a special psychological hallmark that sets the evildoers apart from the rest of us, Russell also engages with ongoing discussions over psychopathy and empathy, analyzing the psychology behind evildoing.

In the aftermath of the horrific trench warfare of the First World War, the poppy - sprouting across the killing fields of France and Belgium, then immortalized in John McCrae’s moving poem - became a worldwide icon. Yet the poppy has a longer history: as the telltale sign of human cultivation of the land, of the ravages of war, and of the desire to escape the earthly realm through Romantic opium dreams or the grim reality of morphine drips.

Set in and around the fictional Scottish town of Levenford and village of Tannochbrae during the inter-war years, the stories found here are heartwarming, funny and touching, full of fascinating characters and unforgettable encounters. Made famous by the much-loved adaptations for radio and television, the classic tales of Dr Finlay, his senior colleague Dr Cameron and their unruffled housekeeper Janet, remain as fresh and entertaining now as they were upon first publication.

Often described as a French counterpart to Sherlock Holmes, Lupin is often a force for good while operating on the wrong side of the law.