Showing results by narrator "Jonathan Oliver" in All Categories

When 17-year-old Isabelle Mattias, the privileged daughter of an artist and a dead rock star, disappears from her college in the middle of the night, Chief Superintendent Andrew Fenwick arrives to investigate. As unsettling hints of an abusive past surface, Fenwick grows ever more concerned for Isabelle's safety. Is it too much to hope that the girl is still alive? And meanwhile, Inspector Louise Nightingale is preoccupied with her own investigations into the identity of a serial rapist.

From the introduction by Jonathan Santlofer: "Like film, literature has been no stranger to marijuana and hashish, going back to Charles Baudelaire's 1860 Artificial Paradises, in which the French poet not only describes the effects of hashish but postulates it could be an aid in creating an ideal world.

The gothic tale of Frankenstein and his construction of a human being who runs amok has, with the help of numerous films, become one of the most vivid horror stories. But Mary Shelley's original novel, written in 1816, dealt more sympathetically with "the daemon," showing how an initially beneficent creature is hammered into a daemon by the way he is treated. Her ideas, and her dramatic but poignant story, is brought to life in this sound dramatization.

An exhilarating, original novel, set in Brazil, Idaho, and outer space, about an obsessive librarian, a down-at-heel author, and a disgraced historian who go on the hunt for a mystical, life-changing book--and find it. The Infinite Future is a mindbending novel that melds two page-turning tales...

One of Tolstoy’s most important shorter works, The Kreutzer Sonata presents a problematic view of the relationship between the sexes and promotes abstinence as the solution. Pozdnyshev jealously observes the intimacy that emerges between his wife and a violin player. Haunted by The Kreutzer Sonata, over which they bonded, it plays round and round in Pozdnyshev’s head driving him to distraction and to an unquenchable rage.

In 1836, Charles Henry Harrod was convicted at the Old Bailey of receiving stolen goods and sentenced to seven years' hard labour in Tasmania. But he miraculously escaped his fate to found what would become the legendary Harrods. His son, Charles Digby, transformed the shop from a local grocer's to a department store patronised by the wealthy and famous. Robin Harrod's fascinating book reveals the previously unknown origins of the store and follows its fortunes through family scandal, the devastating fire of 1883 and its subsequent rise from the ashes, to 1889 when its shares were floated on the stock exchange, completing one of the most extraordinary stories in the history of commerce.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING SERIES Max takes on knight school in the hilarious sequel to the bestselling illustrated novel Max and the Midknights, from the author of the Big Nate series! "Fantastic! I loved it!" -Dav Pilkey, New York Times bestselling author of the Dog Man series "Max is epic...

On the afternoon of Sunday April 24, 1932, a group of approximately 500 men and women set out for the summit of Kinder Scout, the highest point in Derbyshire's Peak District. They were not here to take in the fresh air and breath-taking vistas; they were here to make a stand. Kinder Scout, like almost every other site of natural beauty in Britain at that time, was privately owned and fiercely guarded. This wild, open landscape was one that they had absolutely no right to visit.

A satirical adventure novel, The Flying Inn is set in a quirky, dystopian England in which a new puritanical government has outlawed alcohol and other traditional English customs. Enter Humphrey Pump and his spirited friend Captain Patrick Dalroy, who take it upon themselves to supply what the government refuses.

René Descartes is one of the formative figures in Western philosophy, logic and mathematics. His famous statement: "I think, therefore I am," has become perhaps the most famous phrase in all of philosophy. Descartes’s ground-breaking writings attempted to establish unshakeable foundations of knowledge, and set a trend for subsequent Western philosophy, which has endlessly critiqued and expanded upon his ideas.

London. A city where no one feels safe and one man's crime is another man's justice. A paedophile is brutally murdered,and to protect other known offenders the police must haul the families of their victims down to the station for questioning.It's just another day in the life of DI Will "Staffe" Wagstaffe. In this case nothing is simple,least of all Staffe's personal life.

The 21st book in the New York Times bestselling series of biographies about heroes tells the story of Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the U.S. who helped draft the Declaration of Independence while making important scientific contributions. This friendly, fun biography series...

When scientist Victor Frankenstein forms a creature from the body parts of corpses, thus shattering the perceived limits of scientific understanding, the consequences are devastating. As Frankenstein becomes disgusted with his experiment, he thwarts the creature’s desire for a companion, and what ensues is singularly chilling.