No catches, no fine print just unadulterated book loving, with your favourite books saved to your own digital bookshelf.
New members get entered into our monthly draw to win £100 to spend in your local bookshop Plus lots lots more…
Find out moreBrowse audiobooks narrated by Graham Halstead, listen to samples and when you're ready head over to Audiobooks.com where you can get 3 FREE audiobooks on us
In this installment of the Ask the Experts series, Chemistry, our professors, scientists, and researchers tackle reader questions about the substances that compose all matter, their properties, and how they interact and change. Queries range from elementary questions, such as why some elements change color over a flame, to how chemistry works in everyday life, to how certain substances affect the body and more.
Show moreA zombie apocalypse was a ridiculous idea to people who were making plans to survive the end of the world. Everyone thought it would be a nuclear war, but when a virus destroyed civilization and contaminated the environment, survivors were left to forage for food and shelter. This is the continuing story of a handful of survivors who came together by chance and discovered a network of government funded shelters built to ensure the survival of politicians and important people. From the coast of South Carolina and the historic city of Charleston to New Orleans and the oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, north to Columbus, Ohio and cities in between, civilization is in ruins. Shelters are discovered and inhabited, but survival now means fighting the evil that man can become, as well as the infected dead and the dangers of mutations in a runaway environment. The survivors fight to take back the world, but they find as long as there are living people, there will always be a fresh supply of the infected. The war may already be lost as mankind slowly vanishes.
Show moreAlex and friends return to a Wasteland in turmoil. The Raiders are scattered, the Exiles hunted, and the feuding Vegas gangs plot one another's destruction. Makara, head of the New Angels, has the difficult task of convincing disparate groups to work together before Emperor Augustus and his legions arrive. But while humanity fights amongst itself, the Great Blight prepares its final onslaught-and at the center of it all, there is a secret that could spell the end of the invasion. It is a revelation only Alex can discover, and it might cost him everything.
Show moreSam and Mason return to Fallen Crest for a camping trip. They head north, meeting up with a few friends from Roussou and enjoy a night of booze, some leapfrogging, and there's a small therapy session to air out some tension in the group. Empty chair, anyone? Enjoy a novella crossover between the Fallen Crest series and the Crew series!
Show moreIt is the ninth year of the zombie apocalypse. Zach and his group of survivors at Mount Weather are struggling with the effects of no manufacturing and the difficulties of reestablishing the United States of America. To add to the difficulties, President Stark's position as president is being challenged. If he loses in the upcoming election, what will happen to his right hand man, Zach Gunderson?
Show moreThe following books are included...'Children of the Streets' and 'Memos from Purgatory'
Show moreOne small step for a man. One giant leap for rock ‘n roll. NASA’s race with the Russians to land a man on the moon. The meteoric rise of the Beatles, considered by many to have revolutionized the music industry. In the postwar era, each stood as an unprecedented cultural watershed. Together they captured the heady zeitgeist of the 1960s, and ignited the imagination of— just about everyone on the planet. Into the Sky with Diamonds is an exhilarating account of these two global phenomena, as seen through the eyes of Dutch Richtman, a young, enterprising NASA engineer who manages to snag a front row seat to both. Dutch’s memoir takes us on the turbulent ride of breathtaking successes and harrowing failures that marked the early years of space travel—beginning with Projects Mercury and Gemini leading up to the Apollo program. We discover the thrills and sacrifices, personalities and politics involved in navigating these early space missions. And through Dutch’s fictional correspondence with buddy Mal Evans (a character true to the Beatles’ real-life roadie of the same name), we are introduced to a rock band of four working class lads from Liverpool who just happen to turn the music industry on its head and become the unwitting leaders of a youth movement for change. We witness it all: the band’s electrifying rise, their unforgettable debut on the Ed Sullivan show, the social, political, and religious controversies they generated, and their painful dissolution, as John’s fierce attachment to Yoko Ono forever alters the trajectory of the “Fab Four.” Now, in one sweeping fifteen-hour program, listeners get the highlights of these two cultural phenomena from an expert on all things ‘60s. Those who lived it will be rewarded with insider behind-the-scenes perspective and an abundance of fresh details. Those too young to remember will now never forget the tragedy and triumph that is NASA’s Race to the Moon and the Beatles’ ascent to superstardom. Lending relevancy and poignancy, this timely audio edition of Into the Sky with Diamonds coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of seminal events related to NASA (e.g. the Apollo 13 mission) and the Beatles (their break up, the release of their final album Let it Be as well as the documentary film of the same name). All the more exciting, the book can provide an entertaining, overarching historical background for Walt Disney’s long-anticipated The Beatles: Get Back, award-winning director Peter Jackson’s reworking of the documentary Let It Be.
Show moreThe fascinating and little-known story of the Louvre, from its inception as a humble fortress to its transformation into the palatial residence of the kings of France and then into the world's greatest art museum More than 7,000 years ago, men and women camped on a spot called le Louvre for reasons unknown; a clay quarry and a vineyard supported a society there in the first centuries AD. A thousand years later, King Philippe Auguste of France constructed a fortress there in 1191, just outside the walls of a city far smaller than the Paris we know today. Intended to protect the capital against English soldiers stationed in Normandy, the fortress became a royal residence under Charles V two centuries later, and then the monarchy's principal residence under the great Renaissance king François I in 1546. It remained so until 1682, when Louis XIV moved his entire court to Versailles. Thereafter the fortunes of the Louvre languished until the tumultuous days of the French Revolution when, during the Reign of Terror in 1793, it first opened its doors to display the nation's treasures. Ever since-through the Napoleonic era, the Commune, two World Wars, to the present-the Louvre has been a witness to French history, and expanded to become home to a legendary collection, including such masterpieces as the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo.
Show moreIf you don't stand up to your fears, they will destroy you. When five kids are invited to a cemetery at midnight, they think it's just a prank. When they find a gravestone that instructs them to dig up a grave, they think it's just a joke. It's no joke. An evil force is unleashed - a force that takes the shape of their worst fears. Once these fears are released, they won't go away. Not without a fight. . . .
Show moreThe fourth book in our Ask the Experts series, The Environment tackles questions about the world around us. In this book, our experts field queries on the weather, natural disasters, natural resources, climate change, and unusual phenomena.
Show moreIn a world of unrelenting change and unprecedented challenges, we need organizations that are resilient and daring. Unfortunately, most organizations, overburdened by bureaucracy, are sluggish and timid. In the age of upheaval, top-down power structures and rule-choked management systems are a liability. They crush creativity and stifle initiative. As leaders, employees, investors, and citizens, we deserve better. We need organizations that are bold, entrepreneurial, and as nimble as change itself. Hence this book. In Humanocracy, Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini make a passionate, data-driven argument for excising bureaucracy and replacing it with something better. Drawing on more than a decade of research and packed with practical examples, Humanocracy lays out a detailed blueprint for creating organizations that are as inspired and ingenious as the human beings inside them. Critical building blocks include: Motivation: Rallying colleagues to the challenge of busting bureaucracy Models: Leveraging the experience of organizations that have profitably challenged the bureaucratic status quo Mindsets: Escaping the industrial age thinking that frustrates progress Mobilization: Activating a pro-change coalition to hack outmoded management systems and processes Migration: Embedding the principles of humanocracy-ownership, markets, meritocracy, community, openness, experimentation, and paradox-in your organization's DNA If you've finally run out of patience with bureaucratic bullshit . . . If you want to build an organization that can outrun change . . . If you're committed to giving every team member the chance to learn, grow, and contribute . . . . . . then this book's for you. Whatever your role or title, Humanocracy will show you how to launch an unstoppable movement to equip and empower everyone in your organization to be their best and to do their best. The ultimate prize: an organization that's fit for the future and fit for human beings.
Show moreCrossing years and continents, the harrowing story of the road to reunion for two Syrian brothers who—despite a homeland at war and an ocean between them—hold fast to the bonds of family. “The Road from Raqqa had me gripped from the first page. I couldn’t put it down.”—Christy Lefteri, author of The Beekeeper of Aleppo The Alkasem brothers, Riyad and Bashar, spend their childhood in Raqqa, the Syrian city that would later become the capital of ISIS. As a teenager in the 1980s, Riyad witnesses the devastating aftermath of the Hama massacre—an atrocity that the Hafez al-Assad regime commits upon its people. Wanting to expand his notion of government and justice, Riyad moves to the United States to study law, but his plans are derailed and he eventually falls in love with a Southern belle. They move to a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee, where they raise two sons and where Riyad opens a restaurant—Café Rakka—cooking the food his grandmother used to make. But he finds himself confronted with the darker side of American freedoms: the hardscrabble life of a newly arrived immigrant, enduring bigotry, poverty, and loneliness. Years pass, and at the height of Syria’s civil war, fearing for his family’s safety halfway across the world, he risks his own life by making a dangerous trip back to Raqqa. Bashar, meanwhile, in Syria. After his older brother moves to America, Bashar embarks on a brilliant legal career under the same corrupt Assad government that Riyad despises. Reluctant to abandon his comfortable (albeit conflicted) life, he fails to perceive the threat of ISIS until it’s nearly too late. The Road from Raqqa brings us into the lives of two brothers bound by their love for each other and for the war-ravaged city they call home. It’s about a family caught in the middle of the most significant global events of the new millennium, America’s fraught but hopeful relationship to its own immigrants, and the toll of dictatorship and war on everyday families. It’s a book that captures all the desperation, tenacity, and hope that come with the revelation that we can find home in one another when the lands of our forefathers fail us.
Show more