Showing results by narrator "Jennifer M. Dixon" in All Categories

Two cyclists die on the Somerset Levels, and the Exham bakery gets the blame. Libby Forest runs into danger as she sets out to solve the mystery, save the bakery and rescue her career, helped by Bear, the enormous Carpathian Sheepdog, Fuzzy, an aloof marmalade cat, and the handsome, secretive Max Ramshore. Set in the coastal resort of Exham on Sea, Murder on the Levels features a cast of local characters, including Mandy the teenage Goth, her new boyfriend, Steve, Frank the baker, and Detective Sergeant Joe Ramshore, Max's estranged son.

By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean is nothing less than the story of how humans first started building the globalized world we know today. Set on a huge continental stage, from Europe to China, it is a tale covering more than 10,000 years, from the origins of farming around 9000 BC to the expansion of the Mongols in the 13th century AD.

The respectable ladies of the Knitters' Guild plan to spring a surprise on the quiet cathedral city, but murder isn't part of the scheme. The last thing Libby Forest needs is another investigation into a mysterious sudden death. There's enough on her plate already. The fast-growing cake and chocolate business takes all her time, her apprentice has problems, and even Bear, her beloved dog, is determined to create havoc. She'd like to leave detection to the police, but the prime suspect begs for help, and once more, Libby takes on the role of amateur sleuth.

Long-term social and demographic changes - and the conflicts they create - continue to transform British politics. In this accessible and authoritative book, Sobolewska and Ford show how deep the roots of this polarization and volatility run, drawing out decades of educational expansion and rising ethnic diversity as key drivers in the emergence of new divides within the British electorate over immigration, identity, and diversity.

A summer wedding.... An eccentric aunt.... What can possibly go wrong? Libby's instincts tell her there's something amiss in the picturesque villages, small towns, and rural farms of Exmoor. Then, people begin to disappear.... She's joined forces with on-off partner Max in a private investigation business, but she's getting cold feet about the idea of marriage. After all, it's taken plenty of hard work to regain her independence after her husband's death. Meanwhile, a sinister new acquaintance sends shivers down her spine....

It was just a stroll on the hill - until the mist came down. In Murder on the Tor, the third Exham on Sea mystery, clues to a present-day crime lead baker and chocolatier Libby Forest back into the historic past of mysterious Glastonbury, a place of myth and legend where truth merges with fable. With the enormous Carpathian Sheepdog, Bear, at her side, she sets out to unravel the mystery and bring the killer to justice.

Behind the locked doors of three mansions in London's exclusive Kensington Palace Gardens neighborhood, the British Secret Service established a highly secret prison in 1940: the London Cage. Here recalcitrant German prisoners of war were subjected to "special intelligence treatment." The stakes were high: the war's outcome could hinge on obtaining information German prisoners were determined to withhold. After the war, high-ranking Nazi war criminals were housed in the Cage, revamped as an important center for investigating German war crimes.

Viruses are big news. From pandemics such as HIV, swine flu, and SARS, we are constantly being bombarded with information about new lethal infections. In this Very Short Introduction, Dorothy Crawford demonstrates how clever these entities really are. From their discovery and the unravelling of their intricate structures, Crawford demonstrates how these tiny parasites are by far the most abundant life forms on the planet.

Alice George is a headstrong young British woman who finds herself living among the Tuareg, a tribe of nomadic warriors. While the outside world faces the catastrophe of World War I, the Tuareg continue to crisscross the Sahara as a matrilineal society in which the men are veiled, and the women hold property—a world in which anything can happen. It is a world well suited to eighteen-year-old Alice, who discovers a life she could never live in corseted England. In 1917, Alice returns home to a world completely alien to the one she left in the Sahara.

This provocative and panoramic book shows listeners what they can learn from their ancestors, and how the unwavering ability of prehistoric people to survive and thrive can continue into the present.

Charles Lutwidge Dodson, a professor of mathematics at Magdalen (Maudlin) College, Oxford, originally wrote these charming children's stories for young Alice, the daughter of his friend, Henry George Liddell, the dean of Christ Church. After publication, these children's books rapidly became popular with adults because of the extraordinary mixture of rationalism and fantasy, irony, and absurdity viewed through the looking glass of a child's dreams.

This momentous biography tells the story of the Huxleys: the Victorian natural historian T. H. Huxley ("Darwin's Bulldog") and his grandson, the scientist, conservationist, and zoologist Julian Huxley.

The ruins of ancient Athens, Luxor, and Rome are familiar cornerstones of world history, visited by travelers from across the globe. But what about the cities that have dropped off the map? Where are they, and what can they tell us about our past? In this compendium of forgotten cities, Philip Matyszak explores the trials, tribulations, and triumphs these cities faced.

The Despensers were a baronial English family who rose to great prominence in the reign of Edward II (1307-27) when Hugh Despenser the Younger became the king's chamberlain, favorite, and perhaps, lover. He and his father Hugh the Elder wielded great influence, and Hugh the Younger's greed and tyranny brought down a king for the first time in English history and almost destroyed his own family. The Rise and Fall of a Medieval Family tells the story of the ups and downs of this fascinating family from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries.

The rose is bursting with meaning: Over the centuries, it has come to represent love and sensuality, deceit, death, and the mystical unknown. Today the rose enjoys unrivalled popularity across the globe, ever present at life's seminal moments.

Zoologist Jo Wimpenny turns a critical eye to Aesop's fables to discover whether there is any scientific truth to their portrayal of the animal kingdom. She brings the tales into the twenty-first century, introducing the latest findings on the most fascinating branches of ethological research—the study of why animals do the things they do. In each chapter she interrogates a classic fable and a different topic—future planning, tool use, self-recognition, cooperation and deception—concluding with a verdict on the veracity of each fable's portrayal from a scientific perspective.

The lives of the sons of Eleanor of Aquitaine are the stuff of legend. Her daughters, however, are less well known, and the fascinating personalities of her daughters-in-law have been almost entirely overlooked, as have those of the daughters she bore Louis VII of France. The Families of Eleanor of Aquitaine redresses this balance and showcases the lives, travels, and careers of these ten very different women, who formed a great international network of political alliances that linked their parents, siblings, husbands, and children all across Europe and the Holy Land.

We live in an age of displacement. Refugee numbers are increasing due to a proliferation of fragile states. And yet, rising populist nationalism has undermined the political willingness of rich countries to accept migrants and asylum seekers. Given these contradictory trends, how can we create sustainable refugee policies that enable displaced people to live in safety and dignity, while operating at scale? The Wealth of Refugees draws upon a decade of original qualitative and quantitative research to offer practical solutions.

Tolkien's Lost Chaucer uncovers the story of an unpublished and previously unknown book by the author of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien worked between 1922 and 1928 on his Clarendon edition Selections from Chaucer's Poetry and Prose, and though never completed, its 160 pages of commentary reveals much of his thinking about language and storytelling when he was still at the threshold of his career as an epoch-making writer of fantasy literature.

She keeps house for Inspector Witherspoon...and keeps him on his toes. Everyone's awed by his Scotland Yard successes - but they don't know about his secret weapon. No matter how messy the murder or how dirty the deed, Mrs. Jeffries's polished detection skills are up to the task...proving that behind every great man there's a woman - and that a crimesolver's work is never done. It took no time at all for the magistrate to rule the death of Harlan Westover a suicide. But not everyone is convinced by the result of what may have been a slip-shod investigation.