Showing results by narrator "Alex" in All Categories

Today started off like every other: tedious letters, refilling the coffee machine, unjamming the printer. But then, just as I was about to clock off, for a girls’ night of pasta and wine with my best friends, big news: Michael Hunter is going to be my new boss. Gorgeous, smart, funny (maybe a little too confident) Michael, a.k.a. the man of my dreams.

Man-made climate change may have began in the last 200 years, but humankind has witnessed many eras of climate instability. The results have not always been pretty: once-mighty civilizations felled by pestilence and glacial melt and drought. But we have one powerful advantage as we face our current crisis: history. The study of ancient climates has advanced tremendously in the past 10 years, to the point where we can now reconstruct seasonal weather going back thousands of years and see just how civilizations and nature interacted.

Ariadne Vitalis is in trouble. She's betrayed her father—and his dangerous benefactor—and now she's left to rely on Olympus' questionable mercy. But in this city, mercy comes with a price. For Ariadne, that means a sham marriage to Dionysus. She has no choice but to agree, even if there's only one man she's ever wanted—a man she fears just as much as she desires. The Minotaur never had any illusions about Minos's plans. He was willing to get his hands dirty as long as the old man kept his word—at the end of their bloody work, the Minotaur would be given Ariadne as a reward.

Max, Lord Rotham, has been browbeaten by his mother, the Duchess of Davenmere, to marry her choice for him. The more he resists, the more she schemes to force the match upon him. He became connected with the beauty Hope Whitford when her and her sisters were entangled in a dangerous situation, and while he feels drawn to her, he is not ready to commit to a lifetime because of his mother. But is losing Hope worth spiting his mother?

Lord Edmund Knight has dedicated his life to rescuing unfortunates and prostitutes which he refers to as his doves. One of his rescues comes with more baggage than he bargained for, and he is forced to hide her at his brother's estate in far away Devonshire. Lady Isabella Hartmere was ruthlessly placed up for auction by her father to settle gaming debts, but is miraculously rescued by a vicar in the nick of time. As her father becomes desperate to find her, the situation becomes more dangerous by the minute.

Through the story of his own family's history as slave and plantation owners, Alex Renton looks at how we owe it to the present to understand the legacy of the past. When slavery was abolished across most of the British Empire in 1833, it was not the newly liberated who received compensation, but the tens of thousands of enslavers who were paid millions of pounds in government money. The ancestors of some of those slave owners are among the wealthiest and most powerful people in Britain today.

Summer, 1945. The war is over, and Germany has surrendered. Across Europe, the top surviving Nazis are being tracked down, arrested and imprisoned in a once-opulent Luxembourg hotel, on 24-hour suicide watch. Now, the Allies must decide what to do with them. After much deliberation, Britain, America, Russia and France agree that Hitler's high command must be formally tried. This will be an entirely new kind of trial, with utterly new charges: those of 'crimes against humanity' and 'genocide'. And before it can even take place, numerous crises and obstacles must be overcome.

Someone once told me that there's a fine line between love and hate. They forgot to mention how that line, once broken, can never be mended. Skylar Ames. My stepsister. The very embodiment of all I've ever desired. She'll forever hold my heart in her hands.

Eurydice Dimitriou has always been the innocent one, the sheltered one. No longer. She’s finally ready to step out of the long shadow cast by her mothers and sisters. After her ex broke her heart, she’s picking up the pieces in the lower city…with the help of Charon, a man she’s drawn to even as she’s not sure she has enough heart left to give.

Tragedy drove him into unwilling exile. Death demands his reluctant return. In the decade between, he has answered to many names and amassed a variety of secrets. Now the actor known to Paris as L'Inconnu must resume his real identity and become Francis Adrian Sinclair Devereux, Earl of Sarre...a man he no longer knows how to be and whose name, thanks to the malice of a friend turned enemy, remains tarnished by an old scandal. Revenge, so long avoided, slithers temptingly from the shadows.

When a young woman is brutally murdered in a back alley, the police quickly turn to Alex Lockerby to help them. Hampered by the fallout from his own secrets, Alex goes to work, only to find that the victim in this case had secrets of her own, starting with her identity. As Alex tries to trace the origins of the mysterious murder victim, a woman comes to his office, begging Alex’s help because she believes the new house she’s purchased is haunted. When Alex investigates the house, he finds that even it holds a secret, one that someone is willing to kill to keep.

Fitz Darcy—the scandalous younger son of Elizabeth and Mr Darcy—has inherited the very worst qualities of both of his parents. Like his mother, he is intelligent, whimsical, and restless, always searching for perfection in a world that lets him down. His pride, quick temper, and obstinacy are all his father, although he would hate to admit any resemblance. His twin brother, Will, meanwhile, is everything a Darcy should be—handsome, honest, and noble.

This is one of the defining novels of English writer Julian Barnes. An entertaining melange of stories starting with a contemporary account of the launch of Noah's Ark takes us into unexpected areas of human foibles, activities, and tendencies.

Rejected by all, he must learn to master the darkness within if he is to stop Mal’goroth from destroying humanity. Alone, he battles to control the malevolent magic that has consumed him as he searches for some way to turn his destructive new powers against the Dark Gods themselves. To win, he must somehow transform his own damnation into mankind’s salvation.

For better or worse, Wagner is the most widely influential figure in the history of music. Around 1900, the phenomenon known as Wagnerism saturated European and American culture. A mighty procession of writers, artists and thinkers felt his impact. Anarchists, occultists, feminists and gay-rights pioneers saw him as a kindred spirit. Then Adolf Hitler incorporated Wagner into the soundtrack of Nazi Germany and the composer came to be defined by his ferocious anti-Semitism. Neither apologia nor condemnation, Wagnerism is a work of intellectual passion.

At 14, Turtle Alveston knows the use of every gun on her wall; that chaos is coming and only the strong will survive it; that her daddy loves her more than anything else in this world. And he'll do whatever it takes to keep her with him. She doesn't know why she feels so different from the other girls at school; why the line between love and pain can be so hard to see; why making a friend may be the bravest and most terrifying thing she has ever done; and what her daddy will do when he finds out....

As the summer holidays start, scandal hits Downey House. The attraction between Maggie Adair, the fiery, committed English teacher at Downey House and David McDonald, a teacher at the local boys' school, has escalated - and now both are facing an uncertain future. The girls of Downey House - mercurial Fliss, glamorous Alice and shy, dependable Simone - are facing long summers at home. But the new term is not far away - and it will bring new pupils and lots of fresh new challenges....

Lord and Lady Sarre cordially invite you to spend Christmas at Sarre Park. Celebrate among old friends and, perhaps, a gate-crasher or two. There will be wassailers and kissing-boughs; music, dancing, and romance; laughter and some tears. And above all, expect the unexpected because at Christmas, anything can happen.

What if strategy could instead be clear, simple, bold, and even actually useful? That’s what No Bullsh*t Strategy is all about. It sweeps away all the garbled corporate nonsense and dry academic theorising to leave you with pure strategic sauce, which can be actioned right away. It’ll make you see your business in a totally new light, and effortlessly unlock insights you didn’t know you had in you. Even better, it makes strategy fun.

What's a spelled, violin-wielding thief-for-hire to do when parts of a poem that lead to a map to unknown treasure falls into her lap? Follow it, of course. After being shot while retrieving the first piece of the map, Finley knows she's going to need some help with the next piece. On the road to figuring out where the second piece of the map is, a tip points her in the direction of three men. Obsidian, the hamrammr, Stolas, the hellhound, and Verkor, the unseelie fae. Finley gets a little more than she bargained for when they meet.