Showing results by narrator "Adams Sims" in All Categories

For graduate student Jeremy Freirs, citified, cynical, yet prone to daydreams, summer is the time to shed a few pounds and finally get some reading done for a course on Gothic literature. He's picked just the right place: the small, secluded village of Gilead, New Jersey, only 90 minutes from Manhattan but, with its antique customs and clannish traditions, seemingly centuries away. For farmers Sarr and Deborah Poroth, young members of Gilead's fundamentalist community, the summer threatens a conflict between their passionate natures and the stern dictates of their faith.

United States of Japan is set in a gripping alternate history where the Japanese Empire rules over America with huge robots. Is resistance possible in the form of subversive video games? Decades ago, Japan won the Second World War. Americans worship their infallible emperor, and nobody believes that Japan's conduct in the war was anything but exemplary. Nobody, that is, except the George Washingtons, a group of rebels fighting for freedom.

Flapping Eagle is a young Axona Indian gifted with immortal life after drinking an elixir from his wayward sister. But after 777 years of sailing the world's seas, he becomes weary of life and sets out to find the mystical Calf Island, a place where his fellow immortals have gathered and created their own version of the human race. But Calf Island is a strange place - like its inhabitants, it is both blessed and cursed.

'They think I hurt someone. But I didn't. You hear? Coz people are gonna be telling you all kinds of lies. I need you to know the truth.' Joe hasn't seen his brother for 10 years, and it's for the most brutal of reasons. Ed is on death row. But now Ed's execution date has been set, and Joe is determined to spend those last weeks with him, no matter what other people think....

Roderick Hudson and Rowland Mallet are like two sides of the same coin: while the whimsical and egotistical Roderick recklessly follows his passions in the name of art, altruistic Rowland lives with restraint and measure. The two are bound together almost immediately when Rowland is shown a striking bronze statuette in his cousin's garden, which moves him to meet and support its creator, Roderick. They abandon their provincial New England lives for Rome, where the young sculptor perfects his craft and flourishes among Italy's great masters.

Russian President Petrov is determined to restore his country’s dominance on the world stage at any price. In order to develop deadlier nuclear weapons, he recruits Ilana Rabinovich, a beautiful but lethal scientist, to infiltrate the Mossad and steal their research. What no one expects is for the Israelis to then assign her an even more dangerous mission of their own: to penetrate the US nuclear facilities in the deserts of Los Alamos. If the information falls into the wrong hands the results could be devastating. Especially as in the Hindu Kush, ISIS soldiers are also plotting to acquire nuclear weapons. It’s up to CIA agent Curtis O’Connor to stop them before it’s too late.   

Moving between Oxford, New York, Washington, Geneva and Burkina Faso, The Kennedy Moment is story of ordinary people from different countries drawn into a global conspiracy. Out of their forgotten ideals and midlife frustrations comes the audacious idea. Suggested in the first instance as a joke, it is a joke that none of them can forget. At a second get-together, this time in New York, they devise their plan.

Self-made American millionaire Christopher Newman arrives in Paris brimming with hope and optimism, excited to experience the culture and, hopefully, find the perfect woman to become his wife. After a chance encounter with American expatriate friends, his attention is drawn to Madame de Cintré, 25-year-old widowed daughter of the late Marquis de Bellegarde. Having fallen on hard times, the centuries-old aristocratic family permits Newman's courtship to proceed; however, they later persuade the widow to break off her engagement to the nouveau-riche businessman.

A blistering rebuke of religious hypocrisy, Elmer Gantry is the story of a charismatic and manipulative social climber who rises to power within his church, despite his insincerity. Though he preaches against immorality and temptation, Reverend Dr Elmer Gantry can’t seem to give up his own vices, and he leaves a trail of broken people behind him in his pursuit of pleasure and power, betraying anybody and doing anything to get ahead.

Dr Rick Tower is a mild-mannered English professor easing into middle-age at a medium-sized New England college. A genial blur, he thinks. Even his vices are unremarkable. But it wasn’t always like this. Not until they changed his name, altered his looks and told him: ‘pretend you were never different’. Because, decades earlier after a very bad day at high school, he was committed to a secret government facility with three other kids, Cat, Jack and Stephanie, each special in their own way. Tested, tutored and trained, this extraordinary quartet were then told to save the world.

Suzuki is just an ordinary man until his wife is murdered. When he discovers the criminal gang responsible, he leaves behind his life as a maths teacher and joins them, looking for a chance to take his revenge. What he doesn't realise is that he's about to get drawn into a web of unusual professional assassins, each with their own agenda.

 Ten Days That Shook the World is John Reed's phenomenal firsthand account of the October Revolution, leading up to the storming of the Winter Palace and the assumption of power by the Bolsheviks in 1917.  

The Scarlet Letter is one of the great classics of American literature. Set in the harsh Puritan environment of 17th-century Boston, it describes the plight of Hester Prynne, an independent-minded woman who stands alone against society. Having given birth to a child after an illicit affair, she refuses to name the father and is forced to wear the letter "A", for Adulteress, embroidered on her dress. 

In house in a wood, Ada and her father live peacefully, tending to their garden and the wildlife in it. They are not human, though. Ada was made by her father from the Ground, a unique patch of earth with birthing and healing properties. Though perhaps he didn’t get her quite right. They spend their days healing the local human folk - named Cures - who visit them, suspiciously, with their ailments. When Ada embarks on a relationship with a local Cure named Samson, she is forced to choose between her old life with her father and a new one with her human lover. 

Sweden, 1942—Two old friends meet. They are cousins. One is Prince George, Duke of Kent, brother of the King of England. The other is Prince Philipp von Hessen, a committed Nazi and close friend of Adolf Hitler. Days later, the Prince George is killed in a plane crash in the north of Scotland. The official story is that it was an accident—but not everyone is convinced. There is even a suggestion that the Duke's plane was sabotaged, but with no evidence, Cambridge spy Tom Wilde is sent north to discover the truth . . .

Harry and Charlie are teenagers whose lives are shaped by a society that's shifting around them. He is a lonely Brit in his first term at a Las Vegas high school. She is an unlikely friend who gets accused of mixing a batch of explosives that blew up a football player. The two of them are drawn together at a time when gene editing technology is starting to explode. With a lab in the garage anyone can beat cancer, enhance their brain to pass exams, or tweak a few genes for that year-round tan and perfect beach body. But in the wrong hands, cheap gene editing is the most deadly weapon in history.

This big-canvas international spy thriller marks the beginning of a brilliant new direction for Rory Clements. 1936. Europe is in turmoil. The Nazis have marched into the Rhineland. In Russia, Stalin has unleashed his Great Terror. Spain has erupted in civil war. In Berlin, a young Englishwoman evades the Gestapo to deliver vital papers to a Jewish scientist. Within weeks she is found dead, a silver syringe clutched in her fingers.

In Bunker, acclaimed urban explorer and cultural geographer Bradley Garrett explores the global and rapidly growing movement of 'prepping' for social and environmental collapse, or 'Doomsday'. From the 'dread merchants' hustling safe spaces in the American mid-West to eco-fortresses in Thailand, from geoscrapers to armoured mobile bunkers, Bunker is a brilliant, original and never less than deeply disturbing story from the frontlines of the way we live now: an illuminating reflection on our age of disquiet and dread that brings it into new, sharp focus.  

More than half a century ago, the naturalist Farley Mowat accepted an assignment to investigate why wolves were killing Arctic caribou. Mowat’s account of the summer he lived in the frozen tundra alone – studying the wolf population and developing a deep affection for these wild creatures (who were no threat to caribou or man) – is today celebrated as a classic of nature writing, at once a tale of remarkable adventure and an indelible record of the myths and magic of wolves.

When horror-obsessed Riley Lawrence and his group of college friends arrive in the small town of Carousel for their Centennial Celebration, the few decrepit cars parked in the street don’t scare them. But when they enter a locked building, an animatronic usher hands them each a ticket, and the lights dim, Riley realizes they’ve entered the inescapable patchwork of a horror movie set. And they’ve each been assigned an archetype—Scholar, Athlete, Eye Candy, Final Girl—to play out as the curtains rise.