Showing results by narrator "Simon Vance" in All Categories

A tale of mystery, adventure, and political intrigue, this conclusion to Dumas’ swashbuckling musketeer saga is based on the true story of a masked prisoner who dwelled in the Bastille during the Louis XIV’s reign and whose identity remains in question to this day.

Bond reluctantly finds himself recruited into a dangerous mission involving an equally dangerous and treacherous alliance of agents from the CIA, the KGB, and Israel's Mossad. The team dubbed "Icebreaker" waste no time double crossing each other, as they try to root out the leader of the murderous National Socialist Action Army, Count Konrad von Gloda, a one time SS officer, who now perceives himself as the New Adolf Hitler.

Buon appetito! Everyone loves Italian food. But how did the Italians come to eat so well? The answer lies amid the vibrant beauty of Italy's historic cities. For a thousand years, they have been magnets for everything that makes for great eating: ingredients, talent, money, and power. Italian food is city food. Delizia! is much more than a history of Italian food. It is a history of Italy told through the flavors and character of its cities.

The vampire world is in crisis – their kind have been proliferating out of control and, thanks to technologies undreamed of in previous centuries, they can communicate as never before. Roused from their earth-bound slumber, ancient ones are in thrall to the Voice: which commands that they burn fledgling vampires in cities from Paris to Mumbai, Hong Kong to Kyoto and San Francisco. Immolations, huge massacres, have commenced all over the world. Who – or what – is the Voice?

The Challenge of Jesus poses a double-edged challenge: to grow in our understanding of the historical Jesus within the Palestinian world of the first century, and to follow Jesus more faithfully into the postmodern world of the 21st century.

Renowned guitarist Steve Howe tells his own story in his own words, often unflinchingly as he recounts times of triumph and torment amidst the cream of the UK's prog rock bands. Best known for his work with Yes, a group prone to sudden upheavals, and AOR supergroup Asia, Steve Howe's passage through these and other bands is a roller coaster ride of constant touring, tense recording sessions, and frequent trips to all corners of the globe.

Linbury goes green and Jennings and Darbishire want to do their bit for the environment. Given the simple task of distributing leaflets, what could go wrong? But when Darbishire’s shoelace refuses to stay tied, Jennings, using his usual initiative, removes the rubber band holding the leaflets together and performs an emergency shoelace repair. All seems fine, until a gust of wind hurls the leaflets over Marina Gardens.

When the news first began to trickle out of China about a new virus in December 2019, risk-averse financial markets were alert to its potential for disruption. Yet they could never have predicted the total economic collapse that would follow in Covid-19's wake, as stock markets fell faster and harder than at any time since 1929, currencies across the world plunged, investors panicked and even gold was sold off.

Max and Alissa have a fairy tale life - newlywed, madly in love and enviously rich. Then Max is brutally stabbed to death at their home and Alissa, miraculously, escapes with her life. But why was she spared? The hunt for the killer begins, uncovering a number of leads - was Max's incredible wealth the motive? Had his shady business practices finally caught up with him? Or was it a stalker with a dangerous obsession?

Jon and his allies are far from home. An unstoppable force is coming, and a play for the crown has left their army broken. A choice must be made to side with the lesser of two evils. Will the ends justify the means? How much will have to be sacrificed to ensure some semblance of a future for Lycast? One thing is for certain. Jon and his allies must use everything available to them to get through this, and even then it might not be enough. To take on everyone who opposes their king means mysteries must be uncovered. It means Jon’s people must regain the strength they lost.

Falstaff is both a comic and tragic central protagonist in Shakespeare's three Henry plays. He is companion to Prince Hal (the future Henry V), who loves him, goads him, teases him, indulges his vast appetites, and commits all sorts of mischief with him. Award-winning author and esteemed professor Harold Bloom examines Falstaff with the deepest compassion and sympathy and also with unerring wisdom. He uses the relationship between Falstaff and Hal to explore the devastation of severed bonds and the heartbreak of betrayal.

From the New York Times best-selling author Candice Millard, this is the gripping true story of one dramatic - and emblematic - year in the early life of Winston Churchill. At the age of 24, Winston Churchill believed that to achieve his ambition of becoming Prime Minister, he must do something spectacular on the battlefield. Although he had put himself in real danger in colonial wars in India and Sudan and as a journalist covering the Spanish-American War in Cuba, glory and fame had eluded him.

In the summer of 2000, Jane Steare received the phone call every mother dreads. Her daughter Lucie Blackman - tall, blonde and 21 years old - had stepped into the vastness of a Tokyo summer and disappeared forever. That winter, her dismembered remains were found buried in a desolate seaside cave. Her disappearance was mystifying. Had Lucie been abducted by a religious cult? Who was the mysterious man she had gone to meet?

Elena lived a life of casual and intense physical and emotional relationships, with scores to settle and goals to achieve - until someone, lying in wait along the route she ran every morning, bludgeoned her to death. Unwilling to turn the killing over to the local police, the university calls in New Scotland Yard. Thus, Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and his partner, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, enter the rarefied world of Cambridge University, where academic gowns often hide murderous intentions.

In this major and wholly original contribution to military history, John Keegan reverses the usual convention of writing about war in terms of generals and nations in conflict, which tends to leave the common soldier as cipher. Instead, he focuses on what a set battle is like for the man in the thick of it.

In this terrifying novel from the phenomenally successful Anne Rice, the illustrious vampire Lestat makes a Faustian pact with devil. Satan has come to New Orleans with an enticing proposition. Under the name Memnoch, this lord of darkness takes Lestat on a tour through the boundaries of space and time, offering an alternative and personalised account of the Bible, exploring the events which shaped our world.

When the body of a mysterious woman is found to be carrying the phone number of James Bond, Bond is called in by M to help the investigation. But before he can even reach headquarters he is nearly run off the road in a high-speed motorway chase. Someone wants Bond dead.

Elliot Carver - the ultra-rich media mogul - has found a way to "create" news and broadcast it all over the world as it happens. Now he has devised the ultimate plan: to start a war between Great Britain and China. The conflict will reach every television in the world and garner the highest ratings in history. A man who can start a war anytime and anywhere he pleases - and then profit from it - will be the most powerful man in the world. But Carver didn't count on James Bond.

Once a member of the king's personal guard, Guillot dal Villevauvais spends most days drinking and mourning his wife and child. He’s astonished - and wary - when the Prince Bishop orders him to find and destroy a dragon. He and the Prince Bishop have never exactly been friends, and Gill left the capital in disgrace five years ago. So why him? And, more importantly, how is there a dragon to fight when the beasts were hunted to extinction centuries ago by the ancient Chevaliers of the Silver Circle?

Listeners can set sail for adventure with this full-length retelling of the live-action Disney film. They'll follow every swashbuckling step as a brave young man teams up with a high-seas scoundrel to rescue the woman he loves from the clutches of a band of cursed pirates.