Showing results by narrator "Ralph" in All Categories

Of The Lion of St. Mark, G.A. Henty wrote: "I have laid my story in the time not of the triumphs of Venice but of her hardest struggle for existence, when she defended herself successfully against the coalition of Hungary, Padua, and Genoa, for never at any time were the virtues of Venice, her steadfastness, her patriotism, and her willingness to make all sacrifice for her independence more brilliantly shown.

In these ten witty, dark and disturbing episodes some of Britain’s best comedians come together to perform simultaneously hilarious and unsettling stories that will have you gripped. Sticky situations on ski slopes, placating an unruly ghost, a boy stuck at the bottom of well and an unusual adventure weekend with romantic overtones - are just some of the scenarios from comedy writers Mark Maier and Daniel Maier (a long term collaborator of Charlie Brooker and Harry Hill).

T. E. Lawrence’s memoir of his involvement in leading a portion of the Arab revolt against the Ottoman empire during the first World War. The Ottomans had joined the side of Germany and the Central Powers in the war, and Britain hoped that a successful revolt would take them out of the war effort. Britain had also promised the Arabs that England would recognize a single Arab state. With the support of Emir Faisal and his tribesmen, T. E. Lawrence helped organize and carry out attacks on the Ottoman forces from Aqaba in the south to Damascus in the north.

All six episodes of the gloriously gritty comedy crime drama. Taggart meets A Touch of Cloth in this parody police procedural featuring DI Bob Boxer and his sidekick DC Shona Doberman. They're an unlikely couple of cops - he's grizzled, old-school and wears a cardigan; she's young, instinctive and wields a Blackberry. But together they tackle cases so tough, they'd make Frost flinch and Rebus run away....

The queen has been assassinated. The Enchantments are under attack. The plot is unfolding. And our lovers, Silence and Mars, Cassius and Elena, True and Farah, and Aramus and Ha-Lah, are forced to separate as treachery and civil war sweep Triton. Not to mention, the Beast is still a threat to every breathing being on the continent, and it is the destined warriors and witches who must stop him.

Flying dark, a plane carrying a team of mercenaries crash-lands on a remote snowy summit. When they come across a mazelike stone fortress, it’s no refuge from the wolves and the freezing wind. It’s more like a trap. What they discover can stop the heart—or worse. As terror takes a new shape, the real battle for survival begins in this unrelenting serialized novel from Academy Award–winning filmmaker and writer Guillermo del Toro.

Famine. Death. War. Pestilence. These are the harbingers of the biblical apocalypse, of the End of the World. In science fiction, the end is triggered by less figurative means: nuclear holocaust, biological warfare/pandemic, ecological disaster, or cosmological cataclysm. But before any catastrophe, there are people who see it coming. During, there are heroes who fight against it. And after, there are the survivors who persevere and try to rebuild. THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH will tell their stories. Edited by acclaimed anthologist John Joseph Adams and bestselling author Hugh Howey, THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH is a series of three anthologies of apocalyptic fiction. THE END IS NIGH focuses on life before the apocalypse. THE END IS NOW turns its attention to life during the apocalypse. And THE END HAS COME focuses on life after the apocalypse.

Lillian Burkhart could not be more different from her half-sister Wilhelmina. Suspecting that she is more like their wastrel father, she struggles against the wildness inside her, trying desperately to be the proper young woman that Miss Euphemia Darrow has reared her to be. But when she’s discovered walking barefoot in Hyde Park by none other than the grandson of the elderly dowager duchess who employs her as a companion, her failure is complete.

Amid the restless evil of Sanctuary, only the Horadrim, an ancient order of heroes and scholars, wield the knowledge needed to light the way for humanity. In the Book of Lorath, join Lorath Nahr, one of the last of the dwindling Horadrim, on a journey through Sanctuary's most powerful relics and the stories behind them. It is Lorath's hope that this volume will preserve his knowledge for all time . . . and pass it down to those who will inherit the fight against the Prime Evils.

"Something is murdering my men." Thus reads the message received from a Nazi commander stationed in a small castle high in the remote Transylvanian Alps. Invisible and silent, the enemy selects one victim per night, leaving the bloodless and mutilated corpses behind to terrify its future victims. When an elite SS extermination squad is dispatched to solve the problem, the men find something that's both powerful and terrifying. Panicked, the Nazis bring in a local expert on folklore - who just happens to be Jewish - to shed some light on the mysterious happenings.

What started out as a couple of blog posts blossomed into a following of over 1,000,000 people who have all read and been touched by Mowry's stories. The most extraordinary thing he found when writing about his experiences is that the most common comment about his work is OMG that's me. You are telling my story. I don't feel so alone now.

With the death of his ally, Farahi Alaku, Ruka - Godtongue - is alone. Or not exactly...The island prince Kale Alaku now haunts his mind, rattling within his once peaceful Grove, promising revenge and growing every moment in power. Meanwhile, the Pyu isles are in chaos; the coastal kingdom of the Tong is still Ruka’s enemy; and every day that passes brings the empire closer to destroying his dream of a new world for his people. Once again, the son of Beyla will need the strength of his dark twin, Bukayag.

Dead if he loses - damned if he wins. The time has finally come for Darren to face his arch enemy, Steve Leopard, and fight for control of the night. One of them will die. The other will become the Lord of the Shadows …and destroy the world.

After the tragic death of their eleven-year-old son, Adam and Ella are fighting to keep their family from falling apart. Then comes an opportunity that seems too good to be true. They win a competition to live for free in a breathtakingly beautiful mansion on the Cornish Lizard Peninsula. There’s just one catch: the house is supposedly haunted. Despite misgivings, the chance to start afresh is too tempting to pass up. Adam, Ella, and their surviving son, Henry, move into Fenton House. But as the house starts to reveal its secrets, they come to suspect that they may not be alone.

Ruka, called a demon at birth, is a genius. Born malformed and ugly into the snow-covered wasteland of the Ascom, he was spared from death by his mother's love. Now he is an outcast, consumed with hate for those who've wronged him. But to take his vengeance, he must first survive. Across a vast sea in the white-sand island paradise of Sri Kon, Kale is fourth and youngest son of the Sorcerer King. As the first prince ever forced to serve with low-born marines, Kale must prove himself and become a man, or else lose all chance of a worthy future, and any hope to win the love of his life.

The alien virus has begun its offensive, punching through the human defences and sending advance elements to threaten Earth itself. HMS Invincible and her crew, having barely returned from their last mission, are thrown into a desperate mission to strengthen the inner line of defences before the virus can smash them too and destroy the human race. The stakes have never been so high. Defeat means the end of everything.

On her maiden voyage, HMS Warspite discovered Vesy, a world populated by primitive aliens, aliens whose culture had already been twisted and warped by human refugees from the First Interstellar War. Now, Captain John Naiser and his crew spearhead a diplomat mission to the alien homeworld, hoping to ease them into the galactic mainstream.

Once upon a time, in a parallel universe, there existed the continent of Triton.... Our four warriors and four witches, destined mates, have begun their adventure, knowing the fate of their world is at stake, but not having any idea there are other factions plotting against them. Now they face political intrigues, religious zealotry, father against son, wife against husband, a mother’s plotting, a sister’s envy, grief, betrayal, and despair as the prophesied journey across the sands of Firenze into the lush green of Wodell.

The Bible is the central book in Western culture, yet extraordinarily there is no proper history of it. This exceptional work, by one of the world's leading Biblical scholars, provides a full account of how the different parts of the Bible came to be written; how some writings which were regarded as holy became canonical and were included in the Bible, and others were not; what the relationship is of the different parts of the Bible to each other; and how, once it became a stable text, the Bible has been disseminated and interpreted around the world.

“One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug.” With this startlingly bizarre sentence, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young traveling salesman who, transformed overnight into a giant, beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. Rather than being surprised at the transformation, the members of his family despise it as an impending burden upon themselves.