Showing results by author "Nick" in All Categories

Renowned naturalist and conservationist Nick Acheson spent countless hours observing and researching wild geese, transported through all weathers by his mother's forty-year-old trusty red bicycle. He meticulously details the geese's arrival, observing what they mean to his beloved Norfolk and the role they play in local people's lives—and what role the birds could play in our changing world.

In their acclaimed best seller The Challenger Sale, Matthew Dixon and his colleagues at CEB busted many longstanding myths about sales. Now they've turned their research and analysis to a new vital business subject - customer loyalty - with a new book that turns the conventional wisdom on its head. The idea that companies must delight customers by exceeding service expectations is so entrenched that managers rarely even question it. They devote untold time, energy, and resources to trying to dazzle people and inspire their undying loyalty.

Cold calling is painful and uncomfortable for every single salesperson on Earth. The average seller makes a couple dials, hits 6 voicemails, and gives up the moment a prospect hits them with a nasty objection. But every time you decide to pick up the phone in spite of the suck, you separate yourself from the folks who quit. That's when you get ahead on the leaderboard. Cold calling sucks. And that's why it works. While most books are a 400-page exercise in academia, we have 4 promises to make this the most actionable sales book you've ever heard of.

Superintelligence asks the questions: What happens when machines surpass humans in general intelligence? Will artificial agents save or destroy us? Nick Bostrom lays the foundation for understanding the future of humanity and intelligent life. The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. If machine brains surpassed human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become extremely powerful - possibly beyond our control.

A mysterious package reveals a deadly secret lurking in a couple’s new home. Feline fury is unleashed with deadly consequences when a burglary goes wrong. And detectives come face to face with the supernatural when their suspect reveals his power to summon a demon....

In Manchester, two hardened gang members on the run take Catherine Blake and her one-year-old son hostage at gunpoint. She is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Held in a Transit van, Catherine needs a plan fast. But it means diving into her captors’ risk-drenched world, and playing them at their own game. Catherine has been through cancer, miscarriages and five draining years of IVF in order to have her son Ethan. He is the most precious thing in the world. She may be terrified out of her wits, but she’d do anything to protect him. Anything, no matter the cost. Brace yourself.

This wildly entertaining account of the golden age of the action movie charts Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s carnage-packed journey from enmity to friendship against the backdrop of Reagan’s America and the Cold War. Revealing fascinating untold stories of the colourful characters who ascended in their wake, it tells the story of how the era of the invincible action hero who used muscle, martial arts or the perfect weapon to save the day began to fade.

It’s an ordinary Monday. Until everything changes forever. At 2:44 PM, a mysterious crack appears in the sky. Anyone unfortunate enough to look up is immediately struck blind. What’s worse, their mind is wiped clean, replaced with a vicious urge to kill anyone within reach.

A hilarious story in the nine-million-copy best-selling classic series from highly regarded author Nick Butterworth! Percy the park keeper and his animal friends are playing hide-and-seek in the park. The fox has found a great hiding place in Percy’s workshop but when he falls into a pot of Very Strong Glue, he soon finds himself springing into an embarrassingly sticky situation! Is there anything his friends can do to help? Percy and his animal friends have delighted readers around the world for over 30 years!

The Sick Bag Song chronicles Cave's journey with his band, the Bad Seeds, on a 22-day North American tour. Inspired by John Berryman's 'ream Songs, it is an epic exploration of inspiration, creativity, loss, love and death. The book blends poetry, lyrics, memories, musings, flights of fancy and journal entries. The Sick Bag Song began life scribbled onto airline sick bags acquired during the internal flights taken by Cave during the tour.

Each Roman Catholic parish compiles a Book of the Dead from the lists of departed loved ones submitted by parishioners. Printed on the front of the envelopes are three words: November Dead List. In this series, a young priest opens one such envelope and discovers not a list of the dead but a list of people he knows to be alive and members of his congregation. At first he thinks it's someone's idea of a joke. Then the people named start turning up dead.

Under a motorway flyover lies the body of a young man. Days earlier, he had been involved in an altercation with DCI Craig Gillard's pregnant partner Sam. Now he's dead... Meanwhile, something is brewing in the criminal underworld. Whispers of a big job have reached the Met's Flying Squad. Something is going to be stolen, and soon. Something worth 500m. But what? And where? And how does it relate to the body under the overpass? It should be a simple case: stop the burglary, crack the gang, find the murderer—but for Gillard, once again it's personal.

Big Pharma is more interested in profit than health. This was made clear as governments rushed to produce vaccines during the Covid pandemic. Behind the much-trumpeted scientific breakthroughs, major companies found new ways of gouging billions from governments in the West while abandoning the Global South. But this is only the latest episode in a long history of financializing medicine—from Purdue's rapacious marketing of highly addictive OxyContin through Martin Shkreli's hiking the price of a lifesaving drug to the 4.5 million South Africans needlessly deprived of HIV/AIDS medication.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Gnomon, written by Nick Harkaway, read by Ben Onwukwe. Near-future Britain is a state in which citizens are constantly observed and democracy has reached a pinnacle of 'transparency'. Every action is seen, every word is recorded and the System has access to thoughts and memories....

Maverick Hall has spent years trying to forget the chilling events of his thirteenth birthday in the summer of 1999. That fateful night, he and his best friends ventured through a seemingly innocuous tunnel on their bikes — a journey from which not all of them returned. Now, as an adult, Maverick is haunted by a sinister force that compels him to return to his old neighborhood, a place shadowed by secrets, deceit, and an unsettling sense of death. Drawn back against his better judgment, he must face the dark forces that have lurked in waiting, eager for his return.

Ruth’s childhood was a happy one, and her family—on her mother’s side—large and loving. But her father’s French origins have always remained a mystery. Now, with aged relatives beginning to die, Ruth decides to research her father’s family before it’s too late. When she discovers a series of long-lost cassettes, everything she thought she knew about them shatters. The tapes expose an unimaginable truth–an epic wartime story of hidden love and sacrifice, stretching back to occupied France.

When Catherine learns that she is dying, she remembers the words her husband once jokingly uttered and decides to leave him the ultimate posthumous gift: a time capsule containing photographs of their life together along with tape recordings in which she recounts every secret she ever kept, every unspoken thought whether loving or treacherous - the things they never said.

An emotional, thought-provoking, and refreshingly honest exploration of relationships, The Imperfection of Us will have your vision blurred by tears of sadness and laughter, desperate to find out what the future holds for feisty Dawn and sweet, reliable Rob. Oh, and Billy, of course. Let’s not forget Billy. Because Dawn certainly never has.

What do you do when the doctor says you could die at any moment? Well...after you’ve made a cup of tea, of course. Nathan James is young, successful and has the world at his feet. Unfortunately, he’s also about to die - which ruins things somewhat. And now he’s staring imminent death in the face, Nathan is having to rethink some of his life choices very hard. Then Nathan falls in love with a charming girl called Alison, which is a really stupid thing to do. Because how can you give your heart to someone when it might be about to stop?

In the annals of military history, the Western Front stands as an enduring symbol of the folly and futility of war. However, military Historian Nick Lloyd, reveals that the story is not, as so many assume, one of pointlessness and stupidity. Rather, it is an epic triumph against the odds. With a cast of hundreds and a huge canvas of places and events, Lloyd tells the whole tale, revealing what happened in France and Belgium between August 1914 and November 1918 from the perspective of all the main combatants - including French, British, Belgian, US and, most importantly, German forces.