Showing results by narrator "Simon Vance" in All Categories

Chloe's quest to escape the Oracle's prophecy leads her to a magus with a secret: the eldren are not the only race to use magic in warfare. An ancient power is rediscovered, and a forgotten people will return. Meanwhile, cursed by his birth, Dion tries to forge a new life at sea, away from both the eldren and his former life in Xanthos, but the one thing he can't leave behind is his heritage.

In 1897, at the age of 50, Bram Stoker was touring manager to the actor Henry Irving and was enjoying a modest success as a journalist and writer. Publication in that year of Dracula was to bring him international and lasting fame.

The Oxford Inklings tells the story of the friendships, mutual influence, and common purpose of the Inklings - the literary circle which congregated around C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Meeting in pubs or Lewis' college rooms, they included an influential array of literary figures. They were, claimed poet and novelist John Wain, bent on 'the task of redirecting the whole current of contemporary art and life'. Tolkien and Lewis expert Colin Duriez unpacks the Inklings' origins, relationships, and the nature of their collaboration.

Lorelei Aurelius is the smartest inquisitor in the mountain city of Ancris. When a mysterious tip leads her to a clandestine meeting between the Church and the hated Red Knives, she uncovers a plot that threatens not only her home but the empire itself. The trail leads her to Rylan Holbrooke, a notorious thief posing as a dragon singer. Rylan came to Ancris to solve the very same mystery she stumbled onto. Knowing his incarceration could lead to the Red Knives achieving their goals, Lorelei makes a fateful decision: she frees him.

Agnes Manteo now bears her father’s sentient Djao sword, along with a terrible revelation - the gods are charlatans, ancient sorcerers who draw their strength from the suffering of humanity. She and her Syraeic companions have but one duty: to track down those pretenders and end their reign of cruelty and lies, no matter the cost. To that end, the magical blade - mighty, single-minded Szaa’da’shaela - won’t allow any wavering of their commitment. But the empire is in turmoil with the sudden passing of its undying queen.

Ten years ago, Mary Morstan’s father, an officer in an Indian regiment, vanished. Four years later, elegant pearls began to arrive, six in total, and now she holds an invitation to meet her mysterious anonymous benefactor. As Miss Morstan shares this peculiar tale with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, she urges the detectives to accompany her. Her only clues to her father’s disappearance: a map of a fortress with the names of four strangers and an assertion that she’s been dreadfully wronged.

“If there’s ever been a more complex and compelling hero in crime fiction than Inspector Rutledge, I can’t think of one.”—Jeffery Deaver In one of his most puzzling cases, Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge must delve deep into a dead man’s life and his past to find a killer...

This magnificent novel, sequel to The Warden and second in the Chronicles of Barsetshire, satirizes the struggle for ascendancy among the clergy of a cathedral city. The contest is between the outgoing church authorities led by Archdeacon Grantly and the newcomers led by Mrs. Proudie and her protégé, the ambitious Mr. Obadiah Slope. Each wishes to become the dominant voice in the quiet diocese of Barchester, and they contend for the newly vacant post of warden of Hiram's Hospital.

Hurlbut's Story of the Bible has its roots in the old custom of parents telling their children stories from scripture. One of those parents who kept this custom particularly alive and meaningful was Dr. Jess Lyman Hurlbut. Like many great works of literature, the stories that make up this book were told and retold innumerable times before being set down on paper.

When genealogist Jefferson Tayte is hired to prove the identity of a black sheep in his client’s family tree, he unwillingly finds himself drawn into a murder investigation with nothing more to go on than a 150-year-old letter and a connection to a legendary ruby that has been missing for generations. As more letters are mysteriously left for him, Tayte becomes immersed in a centuries-old tale of greed, murder and forbidden love that takes his research from the wilds of the Scottish Highlands to the colour and heat of colonial India. A dark secret is buried in Jaipur. But why is it having such deadly repercussions in the present?

When Calouste Gulbenkian died in 1955 at the age of 86, he was the richest man in the world, known as 'Mr Five Per Cent' for his personal share of Middle East oil. The son of a wealthy Armenian merchant in Istanbul, for half a century he brokered top-level oil deals, concealing his mysterious web of business interests and contacts within a labyrinth of Asian and European cartels, and convincing governments and oil barons alike of his impartiality as an 'honest broker'. Mr Five Per Cent reveals Gulbenkian's complex and many-sided existence.

A ranger’s duty. The rotten heart of a king. Rebellion spilled from the blood of family. Rew, the king’s ranger, accepted a role on the far edge of the realm to avoid the morass of intrigue and betrayal that bleeds from the heart of the kingdom. His only desire is to shoulder the burden he’s taken, to protect the village of Eastwatch, and to monitor the wilderness beyond. When three youths are arrested for petty theft in the village and beg for his help, Rew’s oldest friend insists he take responsibility for them.

They say when the demons come, you either fight or you die.The Black Dogs know this all too well. For three hundred years, the warrior priests have sacrificed their lives to keep the island nation of Abios safe from the flesh-eating Nostros, while the rest of the world fell under the demons' savagery. However, an armada now stands poised to invade mankind's last bastion.

A blade fit for a hero. An army for a tyrant. A reckoning long awaited, and a tale reaching its end. The riveting conclusion to the Wolf of the North trilogy.

Following The Black Elfstone comes the second book in the triumphant four-part conclusion to the Shannara series, from one of the all-time masters of fantasy. Tensions in the Four Lands are high. The mysterious force that laid waste to Paranor has revealed a more human face. While some gain a new understanding of the invaders and what they are after, others continue their existing quests even as the peril rises. For what looked to be a formidable invading force proves only the forerunner of a much vaster army - one that is now marching against the Four Lands in all its fury.

Lady Wetherby had a big, soft heart, and she hated hurting her fellows. As a rule, when she had bad news to impart to any one, she administered the blow so gradually and with such mystery as to the actual facts that the victim, having passed through the various stages of imagined horrors, was genuinely relieved, when she actually came to the point, to find that all that had happened was that he had lost all his money.

Desil has spent his life training, but a promise to his mother has kept him from using his abilities for anything worthwhile. Now all he does is help his mother manage her tavern as his father rests in a grave. Desil knows there's at least one other mage somewhere in this territory who can do what he can; they share a connection through their magic, although they've never met. He stays up nights wondering what they might be able to accomplish together.

Unscrupulous financial speculator Ferdinand Lopez, aspiring to marry into respectability and wealth, has society at his feet, with well-connected ladies vying with each other to exert influence on his behalf. Even Lady Glencora, the wife of Plantagenet Palliser, prime minister of England, supports the exotic imposter. Palliser, respectable man of power and inherited wealth, is appalled by the rise of this man who seemingly appeared out of nowhere.

Dion, now king of Xanthos, is finally in command of the naval fleet he's always dreamed of. But his hopes for peace are jeopardized when King Palemon, in dire need of ships to rescue his starving people from the frozen wastelands of the north, invades the Salesian city of Malakai. Too weak to confront Dion directly, Palemon turns to magic: mysterious copper chains from the lost civilization of Aleuthea, which have the potential to control dragons...and Dion.

In this brilliant book, Francis Wheen, the author of the most successful biography of Karl Marx, tells the story of Das Kapital and Marx's 20-year struggle to complete his unfinished masterpiece. Born in a two-room flat in London's Soho amid political squabbles and personal tragedy, the first volume of Das Kapital was published in 1867 to muted praise. But after Marx's death, the book went on to influence thinkers, writers, and revolutionaries.