Showing results by narrator "Ian Porter" in All Categories

Information is everything in "Hard-Boiled Wonderland". A specialist encrypter is attacked by thugs with orders from an unknown source, is chased by invisible predators, and dates an insatiably hungry librarian who never puts on weight. In "The End of the World" a new arrival is learning his role as dream-reader. But there is something eerily disquieting about the changeless nature of the town and its fable-like inhabitants. Told in alternate chapters, the two stories converge and combine.

In Nocturnes, a sublime story cycle, Kazuo Ishiguro explores ideas of love, music and the passing of time. From the piazzas of Italy to the Malvern Hills, a London flat to the "hush-hush floor" of an exclusive Hollywood hotel, the characters we encounter range from young dreamers to cafe musicians to faded stars, all of them at some moment of reckoning. Gentle, intimate, and witty, this quintet is marked by a haunting theme: the struggle to keep alive a sense of life's romance, even as one gets older.

Then We Came to the End is about how we spend our days and too many of our nights. It is about being away from friends and family, about sharing a stretch of stained carpet with a group of strangers we call colleagues.

Three days that could change the world's political landscape....A man wakes up to find himself lying on the ground in a railway station, his mind stripped bare of all recollection. He has no idea how he got there. He does not even know his own name. Convinced he is a drunken down and out, it isn't until a newspaper report about a satellite launch catches his eye that he begins to suspect all is not what it seems....

Twain's retelling of his adventures in Europe, A Tramp Abroad exudes with the author's shrewd observations and highly opinionated comments on Old World culture, and showcases his unparalleled ability to integrate humorous sketches, autobiographical tidbits, and historical anecdotes in a consistently entertaining narrative. Cast in the form of a walking tour through Germany, Switzerland, France and Italy, A Tramp Abroad includes among its adventures a voyage by raft down the Neckar and an ascent of Mount Blanc by telescope, as well as the author's attempts to study art.

A classic of Mark Twain's non-fiction writing, this is a collection of anecdotes that Twain recorded during an ocean trip to Bermuda. Full of hilarious encounters and fascinating insights into the Bermuda of Twain's day, this is an essential component in the Twain catalogue.

Roughing It is a book of semi-autobiographical travel literature written by American humorist Mark Twain. He published in 1872 as a prequel to his first book, The Innocents Abroad. Roughing It is the hilarious record of those early years traveling from Nevada to California to Hawaii, as Twain tried his luck at anything and everything--and usually failed. Twain's encounters with tarantulas and donkeys, vigilantes and volcanoes, even Brigham Young, the Mormon leader, come to life with his inimitable mixture of reporting, social satire, and rollicking tall tales

Most of us would recognise a star leader by their charisma, emotional intelligence and public communication prowess. What is truly impressive but often overlooked is the silent work of leadership that garners real results. Exercising influence in a complex and global organisation - whilst also shaping and executing strategies across borders in a disruptive age - is the true mark of success as a leader. 

In July 1978, two bodies were discovered in the sea off Guatemala. They were found to be the remains of Chris Farmer and his girlfriend Peta Frampton, two young British graduates. Having been beaten and tortured, then thrown, still alive, into the sea, their bodies had been weighted down and dumped from the yacht on which they had been crewing. For nearly forty years, no one was charged with these brutal murders.

Set in a near-future America, an America that has borne two terms of a Trump presidency and is now in the first term of Donald’s daughter as president, Frank Brill, a retired small-town newspaper editor, lives in a world where the populist policies Trump is currently so keen to pursue have been a reality for some years and are getting even more extreme – an erosion of abortion rights, less and less gun control, xenophobic immigration policies.

Adam Brandt is used to dealing with all kinds of people - as a consulting psychologist with the Chicago Police Department he has faced his share of criminals. But Kassie Wojcek is like no one else he's encountered - 15 years old and burdened, she says, with a terrible gift: she knows how and when you will die. After claiming to 'feel' the horrific murder of the first victim, Kassie is caught up in the hunt for a sadistic serial killer terrorising Chicago, frightened that people will die without her help.

Bob Dylan is a singular figure defined by a lifetime of creative invention that has helped transform music, literature, pop culture, and even politics. This book provides a lively, accessible look at his art and music as seen by leading rock and pop critics and music scholars. The chapters are carefully integrated so that listeners can take quick dives into specific topics ranging from the Blues to religious faith, civil rights, and American literature.

This treasured historical satire, played out in two very different socioeconomic worlds of 16th-century England, centers around the lives of two boys born in London on the same day: Edward, Prince of Wales and Tom Canty, a street beggar. During a chance encounter, the two realize they are identical and, as a lark, decide to exchange clothes and roles--a situation that briefly, but drastically, alters the lives of both youngsters.

Hold the front page - it's Stop the Press, the comedy quiz where the points really matter! Recorded live in Edinburgh, each show sees well-known entertainers taking on keen newshounds in a bid to find out who knows more about their own specialist subject. Do these comedians, musicians, actors and writers have what it takes to stop the press? Joining quizmaster Grant Stott are two team captains, Good Morning Scotland host Gary Robertson and Britain's finest funnywoman, Jo Caulfield.

Presented as a translation by Jean Francois Alden of Joan of Arc's page and secretary the Sieur Louis de Conte's memoirs, Twain's Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc first appeared as a serial in Harper's Magazine beginning in April of 1895. It is a panorama of stirring scenes that recount Joan's childhood in Domremy, the story of her voices, the fight for Orleans, the splendid march to Rheims, and more.

Mark Twain’s classic travelogue The Innocents Abroad firmly established him as a writer and humourist of dazzling perspicacity. The story chronicles what Twain called his "Great Pleasure Excursion" on board the chartered vessel Quaker City through Europe and the Holy Land with a group of American travelers in 1867.

Across seven decades, Bob Dylan has been the first singer of American song. As a writer and performer, he has rewritten the national songbook in a way that comes from his own vision and yet can feel as if it belongs to anyone who might listen. In Folk Music, Greil Marcus tells Dylan’s story through seven of his most transformative songs. This is not only a deeply felt telling of the life and times of Bob Dylan, but a rich history of American folk songs and the new life they were given as Dylan sat down to write his own.

Drawing on interviews with veterans, many of whom have never gone on the record before, Ian Gardner follows up his epic trilogy about the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment in World War II with the story of the unit's reactivation at the height of the Vietnam War. This is the dramatic history of a band of brothers who served together in Vietnam and who against the odds lived up to the reputation of their World War II forefathers.