Showing results by narrator "Jack Wynters" in All Categories

The Tao Te Ching (or Daodejing, in pinyin) is a classic Chinese Taoist text dating from at least the fourth century BC. According to tradition it has its origins even earlier, around the sixth century BC. The title may be translated as Instruction Regarding the Way of Virtue. Consisting of 81 short sections in a poetic style, the text ranges widely in content, from practical advice to universal wisdom, embracing politics, society and the personal.

Almost a century after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, Kaiser Wilhelm II is still viewed as either a warmonger or a madman, as the hundred-year-old propaganda posters remain fixed in the general consciousness. Was he, though, truly responsible for the catastrophe of the First World War, or was he in fact a convenient scapegoat, blamed for a conflict which he desperately tried to avoid?

Goethe’s two-part dramatic work, Faust, based on a traditional theme, and finally completed in 1831, is an exploration of that restless intellectual and emotional urge which found its fullest expression in the European Romantic movement, to which Goethe was an early and major contributor. Part I of the work outlines a pact Faust makes with the devil, Mephistopheles, and encompasses the tragedy of Gretchen, whom Faust seduces.

The ghostly little monk of Foulridge and the giant apparition from Heaton Norris are just two of the denizens of the North-West you might not care to meet on a dark, stormy evening. But for those intrepid souls whose hearts quicken at the thought of eerie footsteps and muffled groans Peter Underwood has assembled an impressive collection of traditional legends.

First published in 1971, Gazetteer of British Ghosts was the result of a quarter of a century of study and on-the-spot investigations by one of the leading authorities on haunted houses. The first comprehensive guide to the ghost population of the British Isles, it covers a subject that still fascinates and, at the same time, still terrifies. The ghosts of Britain are numerous, and in this book (catalogued and placed in alphabetical order) are well over 200 accounts of ghostly happenings, ranging from the legendary to the factually presented and the scientifically investigated.

Pastiche story from H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds from the perspective of H.M.S. Thunder Child’s Royal Navy crew. The year is 1898, and the story unfolds through the eyes of an ironclad crew and a land-based war office clerk Mister Albert Stanley. Gradually, everyone moves toward the dreadful outcome as the strange alien tripods rampage around Victorian Britain.

Jack the Ripper still causes a shudder, synonymous as it is with violent murder and mutilation. But also of mystery and speculation, for the gruesome series of killings in London's East End in that horrific autumn of 1888 have never been finally solved. The identity of the Ripper, his motives, and his association have been the subject of endless discussion and speculation since Victorian times. Suspects have been as varied as a Jewish slaughter man and the Duke of Clarence.

Paul Dirac (1902 - 1984) was a brilliant mathematician and a 1933 Nobel laureate whose work ranks alongside that of Albert Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton. Although not as well-known as his famous contemporaries Werner Heisenberg and Richard Feynman, his influence on the course of physics was immense. His landmark book, The Principles of Quantum Mechanics, introduced that new science to the world and his "Dirac equation" was the first theory to reconcile special relativity and quantum mechanics.

David Hume (1711-1776) was the most important philosopher ever to write in English as well as a master stylist. This volume contains his major philosophical works. A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–1740), published while Hume was still in his twenties, consists of three books on the understanding, the passions, and morals.

The Divine Comedy is Dante's record of his visionary journey through the triple realms of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. This, the first epic of which its author is the protagonist and his individual imaginings the content, weaves together the three threads of classical and Christian history, contemporary Medieval politics and religion, and Dante's own inner life including his love for Beatrice, to create the most complex and highly structured long poem extant.

London 1925: Ex-boxer Harry Stubbs goes undercover, working in a mental institution to investigate an epidemic of madness. Bizarre deaths occur at the asylum, seemingly linked to an occult power. As he starts to unravel the mystery, Harry’s grip on his own sanity becomes increasingly precarious. Who is behind the killings? What are the strange new treatments doing to the patients? Why can Harry not get any reply from his handlers? To get answers, Harry must to venture into the borderland between magic and science, sanity and madness, and face the Master of Chaos....

1916. Britain is deep in the grip of the Great War, spilling the best of its blood in Flanders' fields. Morale at home is low. But one thing is certain: war minister Lord Kitchener will see things through. So when Kitchener is assassinated by the IRA, how will the public react? How will British troops at the Front take it? It's up to MI5 to handle the situation, and quickly. Lieutenant Chris Hubert's suggestion of lookalike Colonel Henry Farmer staves off the announcement of Kitchener's death.

Existentialism is the literary cri de coeur resulting from the realization that without God, everything good, true, and beautiful in human life is destined to be destroyed in a pitiless material cosmos. Theodore Dalrymple and Kenneth Francis examine the main existentialist works, from Ecclesiastes to the Theatre of the Absurd, each man coming from a different perspective. Francis is a believer, Dalrymple is not, but both empathize with the struggle to find meaning in a seemingly meaningless universe. This book is part literary criticism, part philosophical exploration....

The hilarious tale of the UK Independence Party's journey from rags to riches and back again from a front-line activist. Paul Oakley had five minutes of fame at a Young Conservative conference when he ripped up a copy of the Maastricht Treaty at the end of his speech attacking John Major's European policy. He stood for the Tories in the 2005 general election but failed to lie convincingly enough to be added to the A-list of candidates when David Cameron became party leader. So in 2011 he renounced his Tory membership in a fit of pique and joined UKIP.

Mankind is on the brink of extinction. A deadly plague sweeps the globe like a tsunami, causing the dead to rise and prey on the living. While one brother fights his way home through the horrors and confusion of a savage landscape from the meat grinder that is Iraq, the other finds himself as the leader of a ragtag band of survivors striving to survive against the onslaught of the dead.

Gwendolyn Lambert's family was reduced to penury after her father was disgraced and killed in a duel. Gwen and her invalid mother survive on a mere pittance in the city of Bath. Her mother's cousin, the Dowager Duchess of Loring, is determined to see Gwendolyn taken care of and restored to her rightful place, but she does not have any use for society after her family was treated ill by them. But the savvy dowager has a few tricks up her sleeve, including her handsome and charming grandson. Unfortunately, she did not count on him being sent to America.

For more than three decades, Yugoslavia's history played out in the life of one man. That man was Josip Broz Tito. The fictional autobiography of a regime insider, K. Balej's thoroughly researched novel provides a revealing insight into the emergence and functioning of the Yugoslav socialist system from the time of the Vienna Congress in 1815 to Tito's own death in 1980. It is an immersive exploration of the changing nature of Tito's power and the fascinating symbiosis of man and state that Tito represents.

On an ordinary Friday afternoon, a gunman gains entry to Whites Chambers in Manchester. His job is to find a particular barrister. But which one? The barristers work hard defending and prosecuting the unfortunate beings who find themselves at the mercy of the English criminal legal system. But when professional lines between them and Manchester’s organised criminal gang are crossed, it can only lead to trouble.

Step into a world which is both magically fictitious and shockingly real, to follow the lives of Tamsin, Ellie, Arun, and Charlie; a refugee, native, occupier, and economic migrant. Watch them grow up during a halcyon past, an everyday present, and a dystopian future. And be prepared to be amazed. Inspired by the occupations of Palestine, Kurdistan, and Tibet, and by the corporate occupation of the west, Occupied is a haunting glance into a society which is too familiar for comfort. It truly is a unique piece of literary fiction.

The world is dead. The army of walking corpses have conquered all before them and only small pockets of humanity remain. As the cities slowly crumble, the survivors are facing their first winter in the new order while an immense horde of festering un-dead surrounds their walls, threatening their continued safety.