Showing results by narrator "Jeff Harding" in All Categories

William Gibson was writing fiction when he predicted the internet. And as his stories bled into reality, he became one of the first to report on the real-world consequences of cyberspace's growth and development. Now, with the dust settling on the first internet revolution, comes Gibson's first collection of nonfiction - essays from the technological and cultural frontiers of this new world. 

This sharp and engaging collection of essays by leading governmental scholar Cass R. Sunstein examines shifting understandings of what's normal and how those shifts account for the feminist movement, the civil rights movement, the rise of Adolf Hitler, the rise of gun rights, the response to COVID-19, and changing understandings of liberty. Prevailing norms include the principle of equal dignity, the idea of not treating the press as an enemy of the people, and the social unacceptability of open expressions of racial discrimination. 

Spotting a face in a crowd is so easy, you take it for granted. But how you do it is one of science's great mysteries. And vision is involved with so much of everything your brain does. Explaining how it works reveals more than just how you see. In We Know It When We See It, Harvard neuroscientist Richard Masland tackles vital questions about how the brain processes information - how it perceives, learns and remembers - through a careful study of the inner life of the eye.

Sam never knew his parents. In fact, he’s never met another human - or seen a sunrise, smelled a flower or eaten a regular meal. All of that is about to change. It’s night in the desert, but he doesn’t feel the cold. There is a building ahead. Other people will be inside. His heart skips a beat as he takes a step forward, the rocks crunching under his bare feet. He has dreamed of this moment for as long as he can remember. But that which can be found can just as easily be lost again. It would have been better had Sam’s arrival gone unnoticed.

There is no turning back.... Detective John Morrigan arrives at what appears to be a routine homicide in a botched armed robbery. However, as a key witness to the murder is herself violently killed less than 24 hours later, Morrigan discovers that someone very dangerous is responsible. As the Detective follows the trail, it leads him into a tangled web of duplicity stretching from the heart of his police department all the way to the upper echelons of political power.

In the frozen wilderness of Alaska, a cabin is readied for the winter. Jonesy and Lisa, with their loyal dog Lad, have been preparing their home to avoid a repeat of their horrific first year living apart from civilisation. They survived that. They’ll survive this. But then the strangers arrive. Two people who are even more desperate to survive, who have clawed their way through hell to reach Jonesy and Lisa, and who will drag them back down there with them. And out in the forest, that other cabin waits for someone to return.

At 40, Patty Bigelow thought she'd finally figured life out. Then her wayward sister Leila abandons her child, Tanya, on Patty's doorstep. The aunt and troubled niece slowly learn to live together, with the help of Dr Alex Delaware's counseling. Now, 15 years later, Tanya is back in Alex's office. Patty has died and left Tanya with a chilling legacy: a deathbed confession that her aunt murdered a man years earlier.

Discovering that reason is the defining feature of our species, we named ourselves the “rational animal”. But is this flattering story itself rational? In this sweeping account of irrationality from antiquity to today - from the fifth-century BC murder of Hippasus for revealing the existence of irrational numbers to the rise of Twitter mobs and the election of Donald Trump - Justin Smith says the evidence suggests the opposite.

Drawing on new interviews and previously hidden police and intelligence files, Reckless finally reveals the full corruption of America’s Camelot. ‘Reads like James Ellroy’– Daily Telegraph ‘JFK didn’t hesitate to employ deception, espionage and covert action’ – Timothy Naftali...

Black-ops legend Chris Wren has hunted the 'Pinocchios' for months, a hacker group stalking innocents on the dark Internet — including Wren's own kids. Now two anti-Pinocchio activists are dead in Detroit, and that's just the beginning.

New technologies are an investment minefield. Putting money behind them means taking a risk on unproven ventures, often from inexperienced (and potentially unscrupulous) developers. While some will lead the investor to fantastic gains, many others turn out to be mere bubbles – a flimsy veneer...

Gene Keiller, a young politician with a reputation to enforce finds his world shattered when he meets a beautiful woman at a party; a woman with a terrifying and secret past. The Sphinx describes a horrifying legacy connected to ancient Egypt, brought to life by Masterton in typically violent fashion. It's fast-paced, brutal and complemented by Egyptian legends.

A murder at sea, a killer below deck? BELOW DECK meets KNIVES OUT in this breathless voyage into murder and mayhem on the high seas… Howie Temple is down on his luck and desperate for cash. Once an action movie star, he now lives off a crumbling reputation. On his way to film a new reality TV...

On a remote island estate, a billionaire investor sells his air freight company to a mysterious new owner. The purchaser is none other than the President of Russia, Gennadiy Gryzlov. The Russians will use these private planes to secretly transport dangerous cargo into the United States. The inept American president Stacy Anne Barbeau has failed to account for the Russian threat. But others have been vigilant and will not leave America defenseless.

From a centuries-old building on a narrow street in the heart of London, a firm known as the System, the world's most lucrative and least-known cartel, maintains a stranglehold on the world's diamonds. The company selects the stones a customer can buy and decides how much he must pay for the privilege. One dealer is tired of the game, and so he sets out to destroy the System forever.

Los Angeles, 1958: a city on the make. A boomtown at the edge of a new era ripe for plunder. Lieutenant Dave Klein: in turn a lawyer, bagman, slum landlord, mob killer. Klein stands at the centre of a complex web of plots where violence and death will intersect, a power in his own small corner of hell. Then the feds announce a full-out investigation into local police corruption, and everything goes haywire. Klein's been hung out as bait, 'a bad cop to draw the heat', and the heat's coming from all sides.

While his masterpiece On the Road languished on the desks of unresponsive editors, Kerouac turned to Buddhism, and in 1953 began writing reading notes on the subject intended for his friend Allen Ginsberg. As his Buddhist study and meditation practice intensified, what had begun as notes evolved into a vast, all-encompassing work of nonfiction into which he poured his life, incorporating poems, haiku, prayers, journal entries, fragments of letters, ideas about writing, sketches, and more.

'Last Of the Giants is the mad, funny, dark and often painful story of a lost band from a now-distant time' CLASSIC ROCK MAGAZINE INCLUDES BRAND NEW CHAPTER COVERING GUNS N' ROSES EPIC WORLD TOUR 'Any story about Guns is worth reading. But when the author is Mick Wall it's absolutely essential'...

Help your child progress in their reading journey with this fantastic set of 20 original stories. From an out-of-control snowball to a runaway foal, exotic world tales to familiar fairy tales, there is a wide range of subject to help ignite a child's passion for reading. These short, highly...

Help your child progress in their reading journey with this fantastic set of 18 original stories. From a wild safari adventure to a Viking stowaway's journey, a prince who never gives up to a magical dolphin rescue , there is a wide range of subject to help ignite a child's passion for reading...