Showing results by narrator "Des Fitzgerald" in All Categories

The Bureau has to overcome some tricky magical graffiti while Imogen is worried because Darra has gone missing. At a sleepover at Lily’s, Kyra has a vision of Darra in trouble, then is magically snatched to a warehouse where she saves Darra from attack by a mysterious Cobra statue. With no idea what is happening, Kyra is chased by a fairy and an elf, and is shocked to find she is in Bangkok.

An old journal written by early 20th century Temple-seeker Magnus Sorenson leads Kyra and Darra to Thailand. After overcoming magical obstacles, Kyra and Darra find another Cobra Statue which delivers the Second Key to Kyra. Though Imogen knows Tayla is the graffiti artist, she keeps it from the Bureau and visits Tayla at her home where she learns why Tayla has no love for the magical world.

The discovery of a time travel device allows Kyra and Darra to travel back in time to steal Magnus’ second journal, but they’re captured and Magnus learns that Kyra is a Triling like himself. Magnus tries to persuade Kyra to join his quest for the Purple Lotus and use it to benefit Trilings, but Imogen comes to the rescue. When they return to the Library, Ruksy demands to know what is going on.

A hapless elephant keeper must do everything he can to save his failing zoo Terry Lyon, assistant head keeper of Southwood Zoo, trusts animals because most people think he’s a waste of space. But as the zoo lurches towards bankruptcy, his future looks bleak. As if managing hungry elephants and...

Brought to you by Penguin. A ghostwriter is locked in an interview room with a man who might be a murderer, in this gripping new mystery thriller from the #1 bestselling author of 56 Days and The Trap. The night Jack Smyth ran into flames in a desperate attempt to save his wife from their...

DS Lucas Walker is on leave in his hometown, Caloodie, looking after his dying grandmother. When two young German backpackers vanish from the area on their way to a ranch, he finds himself unofficially on the case. But why all the interest from the Federal Police, when they have probably just ditched the heat and dust of the outback for the coast? As the number of days the couple are missing climbs, DS Walker is joined by the girl's sister. A detective herself from Berlin, she is desperate to find her before it's too late.

Profoundly deaf since early childhood, Caleb has always lived on the outside - watching and picking up tell-tale signs people hide in a smile, a cough or a kiss. When a childhood friend is murdered, a sense of guilt and a determination to prove his own innocence sends Caleb on a hunt for the killer. But he can’t do it alone....

It’s Christmas Eve, and Lara anxiously anticipates the arrival of her sister, Cleo, so she can reveal a shocking family secret that has been haunting Lara since their mother’s death. By confronting revelations about their grandfather’s shameful past, Lara is hopeful that she and Cleo can make reparations and exorcise this ghost from their lives. The ghost, however, won’t be appeased so easily....

Alaric is a driven astrophysicist who’s only in Willow Creek so he can finish his book and give his twin daughters the chance to reconnect with their aunt. He doesn’t have time for the inconvenient attraction aroused by the sassy, always glass half full niece of his eccentric innkeeper. Farrah is in Willow Creek because it’s her last resort. She inherited partial ownership of the town's bed and breakfast and she's putting her life back together in the wake of the pandemic. She thinks her aunt’s houseguest is arrogant and annoying.

A male escort in pursuit of independence, no matter the cost. A dollar store cashier with an unhealthy fixation. And a married man whose double life promises to be his undoing. As their fates converge at the lonesome motel, the guest in Room 10 watches. Waits. Hungers. The darkness is her playground. The night is still young. And their nightmare is only just beginning....

What would the city of the future look like if we tried to build a better life from the ground up? And would anyone want to live there? Here, Des Fitzgerald takes us on an urgent, unforgettable journey into the future of urban life, from shimmering edifices in the Arizona desert to forest-bathing in Japan, and from rats in mazes to neuroscientific studies of the effects of our surroundings. Along the way, he reveals the deep-lying and often problematic roots of today's green city movement, and offers an argument for celebrating our cities as they are.

Trainee private investigator Lee Southern finds himself drawn into a web of danger and deceit as he investigates a series of bribery attempts targeting a wealthy entrepreneur. Under the expert tutelage of retiring PI Frank Swann, Lee uses all of his developing skills, instincts and cunning to get to the heart of a sordid mystery. As Lee delves deeper into the case and questions the intentions of those he's working for, he finds himself the target of increasingly ominous threats and several attempts on his life.

Author Joni B. Cole worries that Vlad the Impaler may be a distant cousin. She feuds with a dead medium. She thinks (or overthinks) about insulting birthday cards, power trips, and the real reason writers hate Amazon. And she wishes, really wishes, all those well-meaning people would stop talking about Guatemala. At once irreverent and thought provoking, Cole's collection is a joy ride through eclectic essays that arrive smack on that sweet spot between soul searching and social commentary, between humor and heft.

The Masters, dreadful and severe, rule the Red City and the lands far beyond it. By night, they politic and feast, drinking from townsfolk resigned to their fates. By day, the Masters must rely on their human servants, their Day Boys, to fulfill their every need and carry out their will. Mark is a Day Boy, practically raised by his Master, Dain. It’s grueling, often dangerous work, but Mark neither knows nor wants any other life.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 - December 21, 1940) was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his four novels—This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is The Night—depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. In this recording, Fitgerald reads from Shakespeare's Othello, John Keats' Ode to a Nightingale, and John Masefield's On Growing Old.

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 - November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was the youngest person to assume the presidency by election and the youngest president at the end of his tenure. Kennedy served at the climax of the Cold War, and the majority of his foreign policy concerned relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba.

"We choose to go to the Moon", officially titled the Address at Rice University on the Nation's Space Effort, is a September 12, 1962, speech by United States President John F. Kennedy to bolster public support for his proposal to land a man on the Moon before 1970. Kennedy gave the speech, largely written by presidential advisor and speechwriter Ted Sorensen, to a large crowd at Rice University Stadium in Houston, Texas.

President John F. Kennedy gave his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech on June 26, 1963, in West Berlin. It is one of the best-known speeches of the Cold War, and among the most famous anti-communist speeches. Twenty-two months earlier, East Germany had erected the Berlin Wall to prevent mass emigration to West Berlin. The speech was aimed as much at the Soviet Union as it was at West Berliners. The speech is considered one of Kennedy's finest, delivered at the height of the Cold War and the New Frontier.

On Tommy Llewellyn’s first birthday, his doting parents awoke in a home without baby blankets and bottles in the fridge, without the photos of their newborn once scattered about, and without any idea that the one-year-old sleeping in their home was their child. That’s because Tommy Llewellyn is a boy who, in the very cosmic sense of things, will never be remembered—stuck in a universal Reset that causes everyone to forget he exists when the clock strikes midnight on his birthday each year. 

I should have just kept ignoring my phone. Just like I've been doing for the last couple months. It's been a concerted effort, since my investigation skills are in demand after a string of high-profile cases. But I haven't been interested in more business. I've been more focused on other things. Too bad Serena Adams doesn't care what I want. Hell, she doesn't even want to hire me. She just wants me to know that three bodies are going to drop today. And that after the tally hits three . . . I'm next.