Showing results by narrator "Leighton Pugh" in All Categories

Brought to you by Penguin. In November 1943, with the outcome of the Second World War hanging in the balance, the Allies needed a new plan. The Americans' audacious suggestion to the Soviets was to open a second air front, with the US Air Force establishing bases in Soviet-controlled territory...

Named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews and Air Mail “A fascinating and instructive book . . . elegantly written and perceptive.” —Wall Street Journal “Kaleidoscopic . . . A fascinating exploration of individual agency that never loses sight of the larger context . . . Just the...

It's 1782. The 13-year-old daughter of a Venetian merchant family is lured naked from her bath by a stray cat and finds herself in the arms of Casanova - the legendary seducer of women. Twenty-five years later Cecilia is in Albania, now a portrait painter of some renown. Enter a young man from England, a troubled poet, looking for adventure at any price - a man who begins his affair with Cecilia.

Widely recognised as the most representative of Hardy’s Wessex novels. He evokes the dismal presence and menacing beauty of Egdon Heath – reaching out to touch the lives and fate of all who dwell on it. The central figure is Clym Yeobright, the returning ‘native’ and the story tells of his love for the beautiful but capricious Eustacia Vye.

Five haunting tales from Benedict Ashforth, the best-selling author of Abbot's Keep.

Johann Sebastian Bach today has a reputation as the Godfather of Western European music, as a fountainhead of classical music theory and the creator of some of the greatest works the world has ever produced. Better known as a keyboard virtuoso, Bach was not regarded as a genius in his day, so how did this headstrong and belligerent but ambitious young musician become so extremely productive? What were his influences? How did he end up in jail and what did he get up to in Café Zimmerman?

The explosive sequel to the bestselling The Turing Protocol asks a chilling question: what happens when the power to rewrite the past becomes a weapon? Nautilus is no ordinary machine. Created by Alan Turing during World War II, it can send messages eight weeks back in time—a discovery so...

'You will need plenty of tissues for this heart-breaking tale' The Sun 'An exceptional book. I devoured it in a couple of sittings' Reader review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Is holding on harder than letting go? Dan’s life has fallen apart at the seams. He’s lost his house, his job is on the line, and...

Jocelyn Pierston, a successful sculptor, is helpless in the face of "the well-beloved": the manifestation of perfect womanhood that seems to move like a will-o'-the-wisp from one acquaintance to the next. It shapes his whole life. Where his artistry involves permanence - cold stone objects - his heart is caught by ephemeral beauty. After years spent in London, a return to his rocky birthplace, the Isle of Slingers, sparks Pierston's extraordinary involvement with three generations of the Caro family.

Bloomsbury presents Nuclear Russia by Paul Josephson, read by Leighton Pugh. In the first cultural and political history of the Russian nuclear age, Paul Josephson describes the rise of nuclear physics in the USSR, the enthusiastic pursuit of military and peaceful nuclear programs through the...

The first of Kafka’s three great novels, The Man Who Disappeared (America) follows the picaresque adventures of Karl Rossman, who is banished to America following a family scandal. Upon his arrival, Karl immediately happens upon his uncle, and from there follows a pattern of wandering, adoption and expulsion as Karl marches inexorably on towards the interior of the continent. With its blitheness and comical moments, The Man Who Disappeared is perhaps the most charming of Kafka’s works.

What does it mean to be lucky? How might we mitigate the effects of bad luck and maximise those of good? Is there actually such a thing as ‘luck’—some force that intervenes between desire and its consummation, that impedes or hastens it? To answer these questions, David Flusfeder sets out on a search for the definition of luck. 

Eleventh-century Iceland. One night in the darkness of winter, two friends set out on an adventure but end up killing a man. Kjaran, a travelling poet who trades songs for food and shelter, and Gunnar, a feared warrior, must make a choice: conceal the deed or confess to the crime and pay the blood price to the family. But their decision leads to a brutal feud: one man is outlawed, free to be killed by anyone without consequence, the other remorselessly hunted by the dead man's kin.

Franz Schubert was regarded chiefly as a composer of domestic music, and during his all-too-brief life managed to publish only a quarter of his works. Without patronage and without ever becoming well known or a virtuoso, how did Schubert manage to achieve unprecedented expressivity in song composition, or to create his chamber, symphonic and piano masterpieces? And how did he reconcile the warring elements of his tempestuous personality?

Mr. Weston is a mysterious character - a wealthy man who has a reputation for selling a special kind of wine that has a unique and almost magical quality. The wine seems to bring out the hidden desires and darker sides of those who consume it, leading them to act in mysterious ways. Exploring ideas of greed, temptation, and the corrupting influence of power, Mr. Weston's Good Wine is a darkly comedic novel which critiques the fragility of human consciousness and explores the consequences of giving into our most base temptations.

A brilliant, fast-paced comedy about life behind the scenes in the film business and how to survive when your greatest fantasy comes true and threatens to wreck your perfectly ordinary life. After the movie, when the credits roll up you might see his name flash past - Joseph West - and think nothing of it. Not an actor, not a director, Joe is just one of the money men, kept at arms distance from the talent. Until one night in New York the talent comes calling.

*Introduced by Rory Stewart* What makes a person good? What does it mean to be evil? And what does it tell us about being human? Philosophers have been grappling with these questions for thousands of years, and they remain as vital as ever in our present moment. Here, in a selection of essays...

Embark on a breathtaking journey to uncover the secrets of life itself, from the author of the international bestseller, The Universe in Your Hand. In this immersive and mind-expanding book, acclaimed physicist Christophe Galfard takes you on an adventure like no other to answer the fundamental...

From acclaimed historian and author of Kremlin Winter and Blood on the Snow, a dramatic and expertly researched account of an extraordinary moment in Russia’s recent history: the August Coup. In the summer of 1991, a group of eight plotters came together to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachëv, then...

Imagine if The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy were a real, practical book about the mysteries of the universe . . . The Universe in Your Hand takes us on a wonder-filled journey to the surface of our dying sun, shrinks us to the size of an atom and puts us in the deathly grip of distant black...