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Audiobooks Narrated by Peter Kenny
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When we go for a walk, whether in the countryside or city, we pass through landscapes full of natural beauty and curiosities both visible and invisible - but though we might admire the view, or wonder idly about the name of a flower, we rarely have the knowledge to fully engage with what we see. When we do, our sense of place is expanded, our understanding deepened and we can discover richness in even the most everyday stroll.
John Wright has been leading forays around Britain for decades. As an expert forager, he shows people how to identify the edible species that abound - but he also reveals the natural history, stories and science behind our surroundings. Here, he takes us with him on eight walks: from verdant forests to wild coastlines, via city pavements, fields and rolling hills, he illuminates what can be found on a walk across any British terrain, and how you might observe and truly understand them, for yourself.
A mind-bending speculative thriller in which the sudden appearance of a mountain in the middle of the Pacific Ocean leads a group of scientists to a series of jaw-dropping revelations that challenge the notion of what it means to be human.
IF YOU EVER READ THIS
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DON’T COME HERE.
When a mountain mysteriously appears in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, a group of scientists are sent to investigate – and discover what is at the summit.
Eminent scientist, explorer and chronic loner Harry Tunmore is among those asked to join the secret mission – and he has his own reasons for joining the team beyond scientific curiosity…
But the higher the team ascend, the stranger things become. Time and space behave differently on the mountain, turning minutes into hours, and hours into days. Amid the whipping cold and steep dangers of higher elevation, the climbers’ limbs numb and memories of their lives before the mountain begin to fade.
What will they discover about themselves and their world as they rise? What, or who, will they discover at the top?
Framed by the discovery of Harry Tunmore’s unsent letters to his family and the chilling and provocative story they tell, Ascension considers the limitations of science and faith and examines both the beautiful and the unsettling sides of human nature.
She came to the throne in 1952 when Britain had a far-flung empire, sweets were rationed, mums stayed home and kids played on bombsites. Seventy years on, everything has changed utterly - except the Queen herself, ageing far more gracefully than the fractious nation over which she so lightly presides.
How did we get from there to here in a single reign? To cancel culture, anti-vaxxers and Twitter feeds? Matthew Engel tells the story - starting with the years from Churchill to Thatcher - with his own light touch and a wealth of fascinating, forgotten, often funny detail.
The white-hot conclusion to the Dominion of the Fallen trilogy by the multi-award-winning author . . .
The Great Houses of Paris-headed by Fallen angels and magicians-have coexisted in fragile peace. When a powerful explosion razes House Harrier, old alliances are torn apart, and a race begins to fill the power void.
Thuan, the beleaguered dragon head of House Hawthorn, finds a war on his doorstep. Aurore, once cast out by Harrier and almost beaten to death, seeks power to protect her family-and must venture back to her former home. And, in the ruins of House Harrier, Emmanuelle desperately tries to piece together her fragmented memories of the explosion.
But beneath House Harrier awaits a fiery magic that hungers for destruction. And it is time for Houses and Houseless to stand together-or be engulfed in flames . . .
A mage for the British royals matches wits with a power-mad old foe in a beguiling novel of enchantments and daring by Shannon Fay, author of Innate Magic.
London, 1958. By crafting magical outfits for his friend, Princess Katherine, cloth mage Paul Gallagher is getting ahead. It’s not a seamless path. Not since the Virtuis Party came to power. The far-right faction is using criminals to create a protective barrier around England. The enchanted uniforms the prisoners wear may beget a demand for mages, but using luckless convicts as tools for warmongering reactionaries isn’t Paul’s dream for cloth magic.
His road to success takes an even darker turn when the unexpected death of a member of the royal family plunges the country into chaos. The Virtuis Party is rising, its mysterious puppet master is gaining control, and Paul and his allies are prepared to do anything to protect the princess, the throne, and ultimately, the soul of the country. That means falling back on the innate magic Paul dreads using again. It’s illegal, dangerous, and so potent it can raise the dead.
But as the fate of the entire nation hangs by a thread, dire times call for extreme magic.
From debut author Shannon Fay comes the first novel in the enchanting Marrowbone Spells series featuring Paul Gallagher, a lower-class magician who aspires to high society through spells, wits, and irresistible charm.
Delightfully cheeky, unquestionably charming, and sometimes maddeningly naive, cloth mage Paul Gallagher is desperately trying to make a name for himself in a reimagined postwar London. But in a world where magic is commonplace, sewing enchanted clothes is seen as little more than a frivolous distraction. Paul is hiding a secret, however: he possesses a powerful—and illegal—innate magic that could help him achieve his wildest dreams.
Unfortunately, Paul confides in the wrong person—his latest crush, Captain Hector Hollister—and is drawn into a sinister plot that risks reigniting the machinery of war. To make matters worse, the pretty American gossip reporter Paul just met reveals her personal quest to expose a government cover-up may be related to Hollister’s magical goals. When Hollister threatens the life of Paul’s dearest friend, he realizes that his poor judgement has put not only his family and friends in danger, but also the whole world.
The only way to set things right may be for Paul to undergo the dangerous ritual to become Court Magician—the most powerful magician in the country. But is becoming part of the institution the best way to enact change in a terribly unjust society?
Action Adventure and Techno-Utopian Manifesto.
Book 3: Conflict is compelling and provocative — a romp through the alien landscape of our not-so-distant future. The balance is shifting. The Forward coalition is losing relevance, and the world is slipping through its fingers. But Nebulous and The Kin are still too weak to confront the old bulls, who, cornered and confused, are at their most deadly. Will the fantastic technologies emerging from the Klan Fabs bring utopia as the optimists claim, or only speed the planet towards its inevitable appointment with annihilation?
Cold wars are growing hot as governments lash out at what they don’t understand. Mankind’s million-year stint will finally take it to the brink of an abyss where oceans of darkness await above and below…The fast-paced action ricochets the reader between neon stained riots of urban flesh and idyllic tropical islands where humans and their BugNet companions have built a pan-species utopia.
Conflict crackles with the energy of an approaching storm as plutocrats and blue-eyed idealists face off across a planet bristling with micro-nukes, devilish bio-machines, and weaponized hallucinations.
The first two books in the Singularity's Children series.
Book one - Denial
Tense, intelligent science fiction packed with ideas.
Debt, wars, and inequality are pushing society toward collapse. It's a world desiccated by soulless algorithms, pacified beneath the battle suit's boot, and numbed by the bewitching voices of computational propaganda.
Singularity's Children is vivid world-building. The desperate lives of its characters draw the listener into a terrifyingly familiar world only a butterfly flap away.
Book two - Disruption
It takes us deeper into an action-packed riot of haves and have-nots; a vivid alternate future filled with Buddhist commandos, stolen Femto-tech, AI sages, and quantum consciousness.
A decade after economic collapse sent the world’s governments toppling like dominoes, the corporations are back on top. Their AI farms have relieved society of the drudgery of work, leaving behind a broiling underclass precariat. The Forward governments pacify their rabbles with computer-generated titillation while channelling legions of the desperate into overseas peacekeeping.
Subversive, fast-paced action. A provocative excursion into a near-future civilization struggling to survive the maelstrom of post-human forces its technology is unleashing.
ReImagination: to imagine anew; to form a new conception.
The 21st century is reaching middle age. Installations orbit the Earth, and synthetic intelligences rule the digital. The Forwards have destroyed the Mesh. The Thalassocracy of New Atlantis lies shattered, reeling from multiple atomic strikes.
Might the dreams of better times have been nothing more than naïve figments of wishful thinking?
As the BugNet begins to stir, a few believe there may be hope yet....
ReImagination is the final book in an epic story arc which hints at possibilities beyond cynical exploitation, gross inequality, and mass manipulation through industrialised persuasive technologies.
In this final extravagant, action-packed romp, we find out if Niato, the Nebulous Kin, and the internet of animals can carry this vision of a better world to all Singularity's Children.
Technology. Adventure. Hope.
The brand-new adventure from the beloved author of The Hundred Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared.
Victor Alderheim has a lot to answer for. Not only has he heartlessly tricked his young ex-wife, Jenny, out of her art gallery inheritance, but he has also abandoned his son, Kevin, to die in the middle of the Kenyan savanna.
It doesn’t occur to Victor that Kevin might be rescued and adopted by a Maasai medicine man, or that he might be expected to undergo the rituals expected of all new Maasai warriors – which have him running back to Stockholm as fast as you can say circumcision without anaesthetic.
Back in Stockholm, Kevin’s path crosses with Jenny’s – and they have an awful lot to talk about, not least a shared desire to get even with Victor. So it’s convenient when they run into a man selling revenge services, who has an ingenious idea involving Victor’s cellar, a goat, some forged paintings, four large boxes of sex toys, and a kilo of flour …
The gripping personal story of a Falklands Fighter Ace.
David Morgan, RAF officer and poet, relives his experiences during the Falklands War in this vivid memoir. On secondment to the Royal Navy when the Argentine invasion of the Falklands began and personally credited with shooting down two Argentine Skyhawks as well as enemy helicopters, Morgan was later awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. Here he recounts his involvement in the first British air-strike against Argentine positions around Port Stanley and describes being first on the scene when enemy jets bombed the landing ships SIR TRISTRAM and SIR GALAHAD. Including the author's heartfelt letters sent back to England to close family and friends, HOSTILE SKIES dramatically recalls what it was really like to fight, live and love during the Falklands War.
"Graphically told, this is the story of an intense and fraught conflict enacted on the edge of endurance. Gripping... " FLYPAST
Tobias Smollett, in his creation of the Scot Roderick Random, exposes the sheer incompetence and injustice of the Royal Navy, as well as the snobbery and hypocrisy prevalent in English middle-class society at the time. Set in the mid-18th century, this picaresque novel follows the life and adventures of Roderick, the eponymous hero who has been shunned by his gentleman father's family on the basis of the lowliness of his mother's family. Expelled from school, Roderick falls back on his natural wit and the support of his maternal uncle. Embarking on a global voyage, hindered by his naivete and with only a few friends to help him, he pursues the rich ladies of the world in order to rise into the high society from which he was rudely ejected. He ends up twice serving on British ships, latterly a warship onto which he is press-ganged. Where will his travels take him?
