Showing results by narrator "Steven Crossley" in All Categories

Ridmark Arban was once a Swordbearer, a knight of renown. Now he is a branded outcast, stripped of his sword, and despised as a traitor. But he alone sees the danger to come. Calliande awakens in the darkness, her memories gone, and creatures of terrible power hunting her. For she alone holds the secret that can save the world...or destroy it utterly. The secret of the Frostborn.

Fell continues the story begun in The Sight, a story of wolves, dark magic, and an epic struggle between age-old forces. The black wolf Fell now travels alone, padding through the foreboding woods of Transylvania. But then he receives a message from his old eagle friend Skart, and it seems that fate has set Fell's paws on a dangerous path and that grave challenges await him.

Secret agent Mr. Adolph Verloc operates from a seedy Soho shop, where he deals in pornography and espionage. Idle, treacherous, and self-righteous, he makes the life of his wife, Winnie, one of silent misery. When Verloc is assigned to plant a bomb at Greenwich Observatory, his plans go terribly awry, and his family has to deal with the tragic repercussions of his actions. Joseph Conrad's dark satire on English society, while rooted in the Edwardian period, remains strikingly contemporary.

Howards End is a beautifully subtle tale of two very different families brought together by an unusual event. The Schlegels are intellectuals, devotees of art and literature. The Wilcoxes are practical and materialistic, leading lives of "telegrams and anger". When the elder Mrs. Wilcox dies and her family discovers she has left their country home - Howards End - to one of the Schlegel sisters, a crisis between the two families is precipitated that takes years to resolve.

In The Moon and Sixpence, Charles Strickland is a respectable London stockbroker who decides in middle age to abandon his wife and children and devote himself to his true passion: art. Strickland's destructive desire for self-expression takes him first to Paris to learn the craft of painting, and finally to Tahiti in the South Pacific. The Moon and Sixpence remains a complex and engaging novel echoing Maugham's own struggles between artistic expression and public respectability.

Stuart Jamieson's story is the story of four decades of advances in heart surgery. Taut, elegantly crafted, and ever-attentive to the patients for whom he was the last best chance, Close to the Sun is an adventurous, riveting account based on the experience of over 40,000 heart surgeries, where everything was on the line every moment in the O.R. 

Sometime in the not-too-distant future...unbeknownst to Earth, the galaxy is home to a number of spacefaring societies. This confederation enforces a strict protocol forbidding any contact with civilizations that have not yet achieved both a substantial spacefaring capability and sufficient maturity to control the technology explosion before triggering their own extinction. 

The year is 2130. The first-ever expedition is sent to Mercury to search for the cause of an unknown source of electromagnetic radiation that can destroy spaceships passing by the planet. Thought to be inhospitable and lifeless, the surface of Mercury provides startling surprises for the crew that endanger their lives and challenge their established notions of what it means to be a sentient being. And some of the crew members have their own separate agendas.  

John Parrington draws on the latest research on the human brain to show how it differs strikingly from those of other animals in its structure and function at a molecular and cellular level. And he argues that this 'shift', enlarging the brain, giving it greater flexibility and enabling higher functions such as imagination, was driven by tool use, but especially by the development of one remarkable tool - language.  

This collection includes four book-centered mystery novellas from four masters of the craft: The Scroll, Reconciliation Day, The Compendium of Srem, and The Mysterious Disappearance of the Reluctant Book Fairy. 

This book will help you appreciate the timeless wisdom of the oldest form of Buddhism in existence, understand what it means to be a Buddhist, recognize the key practices and traditions of Theravada Buddhism, and avoid faux pas in conversation - both in traveling and personal relationships. Access the world's religions through this entry in this series of simple guides that provide concise, accessible introductions to the world's major religions. 

Trapped in a London laboratory during a worker uprising in 1924, ex-artillery officer and physics instructor Jeremy Tuft awakens 150 years later - in a neo-medieval society whose inhabitants have forgotten how to build or operate machinery. Not only have his fellow Londoners forgotten most of what humankind used to know, before civilization collapsed, but they don't particularly care to re-learn any of it. Though he is at first disconcerted by the failure of his own era's smug doctrine of Progress, Tuft eventually decides that post-civilized life is simpler, more peaceful.

"The Chimes" focuses on Trotty, a poor elderly messenger who is filled with gloom over reports of crime and immorality in the newspapers. After losing faith in society, Trotty follows a call to the church bell tower, where he encounters goblins that teach him - and listeners - lessons in the form of visions about the mistreatment of the lower class in society. This story of social awakening inspires listeners to treat everyone with fair kindness.

Charles Marlow is a steamboat captain on the River Thames near Gravesend, England. He and his crew work for an ivory trading company. One day he recounts to his fellow crew the story of his life and how he became a captain for the steamboat company. The focus of his story involves the journey Marlow undertook to the outer reaches of the company's operations. Here he tells of his wild encounters with Mr. Kurtz, a man with a great reputation for bringing in the most ivory for the company.

James owns a shipping fleet, half a London gaming house, and is a ruthlessly effective spymaster. He is seldom self-indulgent… except when it comes to the indomitable beauty who was once his wife. Laurel gave James her heart, until she saw him perform an act of shocking violence before her...

Someone is trying to kill leading British Shakespearean actor, husband, father, ladies' man, and soon-to-be knight of the realm Winstanley Fortescue. The actor, rehearsing his starring role in the forthcoming play Serpent in the Heather, is conked on the head backstage. He falls off a ladder and lands on the resident pest-control officer, Montmorency D. Mousa (otherwise known as Monty), the company cat. When Fortescue comes to, he finds, to his horror, that he has become trapped in Monty's body.

Reggie and Midge, genteel husband and wife who live in what was the family's more or less stately home, are now the reluctant managers of Chortlesby Manor Hotel, an English country inn of no particular distinction. But even this transformation will not solve their financial problems. The possibility of succor comes instead in a transatlantic phone call from Midge's old classmate, Victoria, who is arranging "mystery tours" of the English countryside for American visitors and wants to use Chortlesby Manor as one of the locales of her staged murders.

Doug Perkins; his partner, Gerry; and their cat, Pandora, have one job to do: spin gaffes into gold. But this cozy little London PR agency - a better environment for Pandora than profits - is about to be involved in a disastrous affaire dentaire. Endicott Zayle, dentist to the rich and famous - as well as to Doug and Gerry - has a problem of royal proportions. He just killed a beautiful woman with an experimental anesthetic. Or did he?

A trip to London turns deadly...until a cat helps foil a nearly purrfect crime. Larkin's Luxury Tours Number 79 is a traveler's nightmare. The problems started in Zurich, when one of the group died under mysterious circumstances. Now the remaining tour members have landed in London, tight lipped, fearful, and ready to ask for their money back. It's up to Doug Perkins of PR firm Perkins and Tate to restore their spirits.

Doug Perkins doesn't dislike cats - he just isn't especially interested in them. But the struggling young London public relations firm Perkins and Tate can't afford to be choosy about the jobs they take. So when Doug is asked to do the PR for a glorified feline extravaganza called Cats Through the Ages, he doesn't hesitate. But it isn't long before he wishes he had hesitated. There are some very valuable cats on exhibit - even a few feline celebrities.