Showing results by narrator "Theo Solomon" in All Categories

Stand Up Straight applies 10 simple but transformative lessons that every officer is taught during their time at the world-famous military academy. Modern and counterintuitive, with its lessons ranging from making your bed and ironing your shirt to achieving discipline, emotional intelligence, resilience and fast decision-making under pressure, the book draws on firsthand experiences from war as well as the leadership lessons taught at Sandhurst.

Tim and Abi have always been different from their peers. Precociously bright, they spend their evenings in their parents' attic discussing the macabre and unexplained, zealously re-reading books on folklore, hauntings and the supernatural. In particular, they are obsessed with photographs of ghostly apparitions and the mix of terror and delight they provoke in their otherwise boring and safe childhoods. But when Tim and Abi decide to fake a photo of a ghost to frighten an unpopular school friend, they set in motion a deadly and terrifying chain of events.

Raised in a brothel at the edge of a dying empire, a boy of no known origin creates his own identity. He is Sparrow, who sings without reason and can fly from trouble. His world is a kitchen, a herb-scented garden, a loud and dangerous tavern, and the mysterious upstairs where the ‘wolves’ – prostitutes and slaves from every corner of the empire – conduct their business.

Drawing on eighty-six interviews with key architects of this jazz renaissance and those who came before them—from Shabaka Hutchings, Nubya Garcia and Moses Boyd to Gilles Peterson, Courtney Pine and Cleveland Watkiss — Unapologetic Expression captures the radical spirit of a vital British musical movement.

With the Blitz over and London reeling from war, jazz musician Lawrie Matthews has answered England’s call for help. Fresh off the Empire Windrush, he’s taken a tiny room in south London lodgings, and has fallen in love with the girl next door. Touring Soho’s music halls by night, pacing the streets as a postman by day, Lawrie has poured his heart into his new home - and it’s alive with possibility. Until, one morning, he makes a terrible discovery.

On Thursdays, Nelson, Ashley and Mum head out to the bank. But not just any old bank - the food bank. With its shining tins and packets of food stacked from floor to ceiling, Nelson thinks it's the best kind of bank there is. But there's a thief in town, and the shelves of the food bank are getting emptier each day, leaving people hungrier than ever. For the sake of his family and everyone else's, Nelson needs to make them stop. But can he and his friends really be the ones to catch the bank robber?

A dinner party is held in the penthouse of a multimillion-pound development. All the guests are strangers - even to their host, the billionaire owner of the building. None of them know why they were selected to receive his invitation. Besides a postcode, they share only one thing in common - they've all experienced an unsettling occurrence within the building's walls. By the end of the night, their host is dead, and none of the guests will say what happened. His death remains one of the biggest unsolved mysteries - until now.

Frantz Fanon's urgent, dynamic critique of the effects of racism on the psyche is a landmark study of the Black experience in a white world. Drawing on his own life and his work as a psychoanalyst to explore how colonialism's subjects internalize its prejudices, eventually emulating the 'white masks' of their oppressors, it established Fanon as a revolutionary anti-colonialist thinker.

The Alpha Legion are devious beyond measure, but deceit is a double-edged sword. As the Indomitus Crusade pushes into the far reaches of the Ultima Segmentum, the warband known as the Serpent's Teeth encounter the fearsome Primaris Marines, and the Alpha Legion is faced with a choice – fade into the shadows, or adapt and strike back.

M. R. Carey's Rampart Trilogy is "an epic post-apocalyptic fable" (Kirkus), set in a future where nature has turned against us. Now, in the breathtaking final chapter, the world that was lost comes back to haunt those who survived - as Koli's journey comes to its astonishing close.

It is human instinct to sort and categorise. We are hardwired to discriminate and frame everything in binary black and white. It's how our brains work. Rather than reaching out to those who are different, we bond with those who are similar to ourselves. Rather than challenging our own thinking about the world, we endeavour only to confirm what we believe. The result is that the difference between polarised beliefs becomes ever greater. Dangerous possibilities arise. Black and White Thinking is an alarm call.

Sim's Uncle Emmett is missing and on the run from the ruthless Council of Keys. Sim and his cousin Jeopardy are determined to find him. Their search takes them through a hidden door in time to Viking Norway and a desperate mission across land and sea to stop the legendary Gjallerhorn - said to herald Ragnarök, the end of the world - from falling into the wrong hands.

Kai lives in a mixed-race family on a rural council estate in Somerset, where he and his three older sisters have three different dads and his mum is being led into crack addiction by his petty-thief father. He idolises his dad, adores his friend, Saffie, and the school rabbit, Flopsy, and is full of ambition to be the fastest runner in Middledown Primary. He and Saffie build a secret world of friendship in the school garden.

The final part in the story that started with Gifts, and the tale of Gry Barre of Roddmant and Orrec Caspro of Caspromant, two children with extraordinary powers. They play a part in Voices too, the sequel to Gifts, in which Memer, a girl who has grown up in a captured city, is part of the people's fight for freedom. And now, in Powers, we have the conclusion to Ursula Le Guin's beautifully written, powerful and moving story of the Western Isles, a tale that will leave every listener begging for more.

Dante loves nothing more than scoring goals on the football pitch then racing to Shimmer & Shine to ace his pas de chats. But when his football friends start to tease him for his passion, Dante struggles to find the confidence to keep doing the two things he loves most. Will encouraging Miss Diamond to enter their class into a dance competition be just what Dante needs to prove how fantastic dance can be? Will their adaptation of Beauty and the Beast win over his friends? Or will Dante have to put his own modern spin on things to truly shine?

Just outside the city - any city, every city - is a grand, spacious but affordable apartment building called The Beresford. There’s a routine at The Beresford. For Mrs May, every day’s the same - a cup of cold, black coffee in the morning, pruning roses, checking on her tenants, wine, prayer and an afternoon nap. She never leaves the building. Abe Schwartz also lives at The Beresford. His housemate, Sythe, no longer does. Because Abe just killed him. In exactly 60 seconds, Blair Conroy will ring the doorbell to her new home and Abe will answer the door.

What will the future hold for those who are left? Koli has come a long way since being exiled from his small village of Mythen Rood. In his search for the fabled tech of the Old Times, he knew he'd be battling shunned men, strange beasts and trees that move as fast as whips. But he has already encountered so much more than he bargained for. Now that Koli and his companions have found the source of the signal they've been following - the mysterious "Sword of Albion" - there is hope that their perilous journey will finally be worth something.

Lucky is incredibly unlucky. Locked away and imprisoned for a crime he cannot remember committing, Lucky is now more comfortable with the four walls of his prison than the sky outside. That is, until he's ripped free from his prison and swept out into the ocean. . . and rescued by The Dreamer. The Dreamer is no ordinary ship; it's a vessel filled with outcasts, each with their own mysterious past and unique abilities. Soon Lucky discovers a hidden world of magic, treachery, and destiny. Bound by fate, Lucky finds himself inexplicably linked to Gabe, the kind-hearted son of the captain.

Winston Smith works in the Ministry of Truth—or Minitrue as it is called in Newspeak—where he alters newspapers and reports to follow the arbitrary dictates of Big Brother’s propaganda. Beneath his outward conformity, however, Winston dreams of sharing his treasonable thoughts and breaking through the loneliness in which he lives. Thus he takes his first dangerous steps, writing a diary of his doubts and then falling in love with a woman of the Party, the beautiful and brave Julia.

An immersive anthology of stories examining home and belonging, with an introduction from former Waterstones Children’s Book Prize category winner Sharna Jackson, Happy Here features stories and poems by 10 Black British authors exploring themes of family, friendship, laughter, magic and peril - in different genres and styles, but all about joy.