Showing results by narrator "Steven Crossley" in All Categories

After his father dies, David Balfour is told to go to his uncle for his inheritance. But the uncle has no intention of letting the riches go - so he plots to kill Balfour, ultimately arranging for him to be kidnapped as a slave bound for the American colonies. Balfour's future looks bleak - until he witnesses a shipwreck and befriends the lone survivor, a rugged Highlander named Alan Breck Stewart. Together, they plan their rebellion - and the fight back home to claim Balfour's inheritance.

This book will help you appreciate the significance of Japan's own religion in everyday life, recognize the key traditions and festivals of the Shinto year, understand what you will see at Shinto shrines and in Shinto rituals, and gain insights into the controversies surrounding Shinto politics and nationalism.

Charles Mason (1728-1786) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733-1779) were the British surveyors best remembered for running the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland that we know today as the Mason-Dixon Line. Here is their story as re-imagined by Thomas Pynchon, featuring Native Americans and frontier folk, ripped bodices, naval warfare, conspiracies erotic and political, and major caffeine abuse. We follow the mismatched pair - one rollicking, the other depressive; one Gothic, the other pre-Romantic.

The Navy has its new submarines and must discover what to do with them. They cannot fall back upon Nelson as a precedent, and Their Lordships of the Admiralty are at a loss to create a strategy. Gilbert Maltravers is given a new E Class boat and sent off to the Mediterranean, in the hope that...

In this imaginative novel rooted in the rich soil of early-nineteenth-century German Romanticism, beloved New York Times bestselling author Gregory Maguire twins an origin legend of the famous Nutcracker with the life of Drosselmeier, the toymaker who carves him. Gregory Maguire’s novels have...

British soldier Peter Lennox, a POW in an Italian prison camp, is still fighting his own war. An artist in civilian life, his hands bear the scars of wounds received during his capture at the fall of Tobruk, and he suspects he will never paint again. The only thing that sustains him is plotting his escapes, no matter how many times he is recaptured. But in September 1943 the Italians surrender to the Allies, and Lennox is free.

Rasselas and his companions escape the pleasures of the "happy valley" in order to make their "choice of life". By witnessing the misfortunes and miseries of others they come to understand the nature of happiness and value it more highly. Their travels and enquiries raise important practical and philosophical questions concerning many aspects of the human condition, including the business of a poet, the stability of reason, the immortality of the soul, and how to find contentment.

Listen to this captivating memoir by Wilhelm Johnen who flew his first operational mission in July 1941, having completed his blind-flying training. In his first couple of years he brought down two enemy planes. The tally went up rapidly once the air war was escalated in spring 1943, when Air Marshal Arthur Harris of the RAF Bomber Command began the campaign dubbed the Battle of the Ruhr.

Harry Day was a national literary treasure, revered for his poetry, novels and plays. But his personal life remained something of a mystery. When Adam Downing, a young journalist, is appointed as his official biographer, he finds that Harry's life holds an abundance of secrets. Adam is torn...

When award-winning journalist Nick Davies decided to break Fleet Street's unwritten rule by investigating his own colleagues, he found that the business of reporting the truth had been slowly subverted by the mass production of ignorance.

Pursuit of Truth by W. V. Quine is a classic of modern philosophy, the summation of one of the 20th century's greatest philosophers. The pursuit of truth is a quest that links observation, theory, and the world. Various faulty efforts to forge such links have led to much intellectual confusion. Quine's efforts to get beyond the confusion begin by rejecting the very idea of binding tocether word and thing, rejecting the focus on the isolated word.

His daily discontent is nothing compared to the affliction of hearing loss, which is a constant source of domestic friction and social embarrassment. In the popular imagination, he observes, deafness is comic, as blindness is tragic, but for the deaf person himself it is no joke. It is through his deafness that Desmond inadvertently gets involved with a young woman whose wayward and unpredictable behavior threatens to destabilize his life completely.

They proved their bravery fighting for His Majesty’s Secret Service and were rewarded with brides of great beauty and breeding. But one member of the Bastion Club has remained a bachelor - until now. "Christian, I need your help. There is no one else I can turn to…L.” When Christian Allardyce, sixth Marquess of Dearne, reads those words, his world turns upside down. Lady Letitia Randall is a woman like no other, and the day he left her behind to fight for king and country was the most difficult of his life.

Hal's parents refuse to consider a dog. Then they discover Easy Pets, a dog-rental agency. Terrier Fleck arrives on Hal's birthday, but when Hal discovers that his dog must be returned, he runs away. A large reward is offered for the missing boy, and soon they are being chased across the country. Helped by a travelling circus and sympathetic children from an orphanage, they race for their freedom.

Has something indeed happened to evangelical theology and to evangelical churches? According to David Wells, the evidence indicates that evangelical pastors have abandoned their traditional role as ministers of the Word to become therapists and "managers of the small enterprises we call churches". Along with their parishioners, they have abandoned genuine Christianity and biblical truth in favor of the sort of inner-directed experiential religion that now pervades Western society.

The Naval Service of the Honorable East India Company, popularly known as the Bombay Marine, operated in romantic areas in perilous times. From the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea, from Calcutta to Canton, the Company ships were famous for their speed and daring. The "Bombay Buccaneers" who sailed them were the stuff of legend. For Percival Merewether, 1806 would be a year to remember.

Brought to you by Penguin. The second Jackson Brodie novel (after Case Histories): literary crime from the prizewinning, number-one bestselling author of Big Sky and Transcription. It is summer, it is the Edinburgh Festival. People queuing for a lunchtime show witness a road-rage incident - a...

In a moment of recklessness, Gervase Tregarth, sixth Earl of Crowhurst, swears he’ll marry the next eligible lady to cross his path. Cloistered at his ancestral castle in Cornwall, with nary a suitable woman for miles, he never expects he’ll have to fulfill his pledge, at least not until the London season begins. But then he meets his neighbor, the very appealing Madeline Gascoigne.

Years of secret service to the Crown have taught Gervase the value of always having a loophole - there will be no wedding if he and Madeline are not compatible in every way.

Three cell phones ring in an opulent London suite. The calls go unanswered, because their recipients are dead. Earlier that night, four old friends and lovers meet for a reunion dinner. Miko and Robert haven't seen each other in 10 years; Miko hates Robert for the money he's made with shady ethics. Unbeknownst to Miko, his wife, Veera, also slept with Robert the last time everyone was together. Robert's young trophy wife, Elise, has no old grudges to bear, but will be swept up in the murderous fray.

An "invitation to dine" quickly loses a letter as DI John Redfyre returns for his second investigation in the hallowed halls of Cambridge academia. Cambridge, 1924 in early summertime. May Balls, punting, flirting and dancing the tango are the preoccupations of bright young people, but bright...