Showing results by narrator "Simon Prebble" in All Categories

A powerful ruler, an alluring young woman, a scandal that would rock the nation: Anne Boleyn’s life story sounds more like a juicy TV docu-drama than a chapter of English history. Although she is not of noble birth or even especially beautiful, Anne Boleyn manages to rise to the very pinnacle of the English aristocracy. Renowned for her extraordinarily vivid recreations of historical events, Carolly Erickson brings out the full fascinating story of the enigmatic Anne Boleyn.

In August of 1914, the British ship Endurance set sail for the South Atlantic. In October 1915, still half a continent away from its intended base, the ship was trapped, then crushed in the ice. For five months, Sir Ernest Shackleton and his men, drifting on ice packs, were castaways in one of the most savage regions of the world. Lansing describes how the men survived a 1,000-mile voyage in an open boat across the stormiest ocean on the globe and an overland trek through forbidding glaciers and mountains.

This acclaimed best seller from popular historian Alison Weir is a fascinating look at the Tudor family dynasty and its most infamous ruler. The Six Wives of Henry VIII brings to life England’s oft-married monarch and the six wildly different but equally fascinating women who married him. Gripping from the first sentence to the last and loaded with fascinating details, Weir’s rich history is a perfect blend of scholarship and entertainment.

"Every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding," says Ebenezer Scrooge. Mean old Scrooge despises Christmas until Christmas Eve, when a haunted voice from the past changes his life: overnight! Many know this story but few have experienced the true marvel of the tale.

The trials of Dr. Daniel Waterhouse and the Natural Philosophers increase one-hundred fold in an England plagued by the impending war and royal insecurities - as the beautiful and ambitious Eliza plays a most dangerous game as double agent and confidante of enemy kings.

James Allen's From Poverty to Power (1901) and As a Man Thinketh (1902) stand as seminal texts in the self-help genre that have served as sources of inspiration since their publication at the beginning of the 20th century. Loosely based in its principles around the Biblical proverb "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he," As a Man Thinketh asserts the powerful idea that belief is central to bringing about positive events in one's life.

Penelope Ashford, Portia Cynster's younger sister, has devoted her life to the care of orphans. But lately, her charges seem to be disappearing without a trace. Penelope enlists investigator Barnaby Adair to solve the mystery. Adair agrees, intrigued by both the case and by Penelope.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes are overshadowed by the event with which they close - the meeting of the great detective and Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime. When "The Final Problem" was first published, the struggle between Holmes and his arch nemesis, seemingly to the death, left many readers desolate at the loss of Holmes, but it also led to his immortality as a literary figure.

Summer, 1939. British journalist John Russell has just been granted American citizenship in exchange for agreeing to work for American intelligence when his girlfriend, Effi, is arrested by the Gestapo. Russell hoped his new nationality would let him safely stay in Berlin with Effi and his son, but now he's being blackmailed.

On the eve of the bloody Battle of the Somme, a group of English officers having a last drink before returning to the front make a promise to each other: if they survive the battle ahead - and make it through the war - they will meet in Paris a year after the fighting ends. They will celebrate their good fortune by racing motorcars they beg, borrow, or own from Paris to Nice. In November 1919, the officers all meet as planned, and though their motorcars are not designed for racing, they set out for Nice. But a serious mishap mars the reunion.

All six Bastable children - Dora, Oswald, Dicky, Alice, Noel and Horace Octavius - are ambitious adventurers, digging detectives and intrepid treasure seekers by nature. Unfortunately, the Bastable family is currently facing an uncertain financial future. When father takes ill, and his business partners abandon him, the six children team up in an effort to restore their family’s wealth. Although they devise some ingenious escapades, their efforts usually end up unprofitable but fun - and sometimes their digging gets downright dangerous.

The epitome of the chivalric novel, Ivanhoe sweeps listeners into Medieval England and the lives of a memorable cast of characters. Ivanhoe, a trusted ally of Richard the Lion Hearted, returns from the Crusades to reclaim his inheritance. Rebecca, a beautiful Jewish woman, is defended by Ivanhoe against a charge of witchcraft - but it is Lady Rowena who is Ivanhoe's true love. The success of this novel lies with Scott's skillful blend of historic reality, chivalric romance, and high adventure.

In No One Left to Lie to, a New York Times best seller, Christopher Hitchens casts an unflinching eye on the Clinton political machine and offers a searing indictment of a president who sought to hold power at any cost. With blistering wit and meticulous documentation, Hitchens masterfully deconstructs Clinton's abject propensity for pandering to the Left while delivering to the Right.

Governess Honoria Wetherby values her independence. She would rather travel the world than marry and give some man control of her life. Then, one stormy evening, fate changes all her plans. She stumbles upon a mortally wounded young man in the woods. When the stranger dies, she is trapped in a cabin with his body and with his newly arrived cousin, Devil, whom she soon learns is aptly named.

In a future wracked by environmental catastrophe and social instability, physicist John Renfrew devises a longshot plan to use tachyons - strange, time-traveling particles - to send a warning to the past. In 1962, Gordon Bernstein, a California researcher, gets Renfrew's message as a strange pattern of interference in an experiment he's conducting.

In which Daniel Waterhouse, fearless thinker and courageous Puritan, pursues knowledge in the company of the greatest minds of Baroque-era Europe -- in a chaotic world where reason wars with the bloody ambitions of the mighty, and where catastrophe, natural or otherwise, can alter the political landscape overnight.

A mysterious and sensual woman, shrouded in a heavy black veil, begs Gabriel Cynster to help protect her family's home from the unscrupulous man trying to steal it. Unable to resist a challenge, he agrees - but protection comes with a price. From one searing kiss to the next, the truth of her identity could be revealed, which could cost both of them everything -including their passion.

Declaring he needs to clear his conscience, a dying man walks into Scotland Yard and confesses that he killed his cousin five years earlier during the Great War. When Inspector Ian Rutledge presses for details, the man evades his questions, revealing only that he hails from a village east of London. With little information and no body to open an official inquiry, Rutledge begins to look into the case on his own. Less than two weeks later, the alleged killer’s body is found floating in the Thames, a bullet in the back of his head.

Only five still guard the borders between the worlds. Only five hold back what waits on the other side. Once the Oversight, the secret society that polices the lines between the mundane and the magic, counted hundreds of brave souls among its members. Now their number can be tallied on a single hand. When a drunkard brings a screaming girl to the Oversight's London headquarters, it seems their hopes for a new recruit will be fulfilled - but the girl is a trap, her appearance a puzzle the five remaining guardians must solve or lose each other, and their society, for good.

A chronicle of the breathtaking exploits of "Half-Cocked Jack" Shaftoe - London street urchin-turned-legendary swashbuckling adventurer - risking life and limb for fortune and love while slowly maddening from the pox...and Eliza, rescued by Jack from a Turkish harem to become spy, confidante, and pawn of royals in order to reinvent a contentious continent through the newborn power of finance.