Showing results by narrator "Simon Vance" in All Categories

Gavin Guile is dying. He'd thought he had five years left - now he's got less than one. With fifty thousand refugees, a bastard son and an ex-fiancée who may have learned his darkest secret, Gavin's got problems on every side. As he loses control of his magic, all magic is running wild...

When the travel bug bit, J. Maarten Troost took on the world's most populous and intriguing nation. As Troost relates his gonzo adventure - dodging deadly drivers in Shanghai, eating yak in Tibet, deciphering restaurant menus (offering local favorites such as cattle penis with garlic), and visiting with Chairman Mao (still dead) - he reveals a vast, complex country on the brink of transformation that will soon shape the way we all work, live, and think.

Anthony Powell's universally acclaimed epic encompasses a four-volume panorama of twentieth century London. Hailed by Time as "brilliant literary comedy as well as a brilliant sketch of the times," A Dance to the Music of Time opens just after World War I. Amid the fever of the 1920s and the first chill of the 1930s, Nick Jenkins and his friends confront sex, society, business, and art.

Thousands of years ago, Herodotus and Plutarch immortalized Spartan society in their histories; but today, little is left of the ancient city or the social structure of this momentous culture. One of the few antiquarian marks of the civilization that has survived lies scores of miles away from...

After the war that cost him so much, Kylar Stern is broken and alone. He's determined not to kill again, but an impending amnesty will pardon the one murderer he can't let walk free. He promises himself this is the last time. One last hit to tie up the loose ends of his old, lost life. But Kylar's best - and maybe only - friend, the High King Logan Gyre, needs him. To protect a fragile peace, Logan's new kingdom, and the king's twin sons, he needs Kylar to secure a powerful magical artifact that was unearthed during the war.

Suleiman the Magnificent, sultan of the Ottoman Empire and the most powerful ruler in the world, was determined to conquer Europe. Only one thing stood in his way: the island of Malta, occupied by the Knights of Saint John, the Holy Roman Empire’s finest warriors. Determined to capture Malta and use its port to launch operations against Europe, Suleiman sent overwhelming forces. A few thousand defenders in Fort Saint Elmo fought to the last man.

A modern short story collection featuring the great detective.

The vampire world is in crisis – their kind have been proliferating out of control and, thanks to technologies undreamed of in previous centuries, they can communicate as never before. Roused from their earth-bound slumber, ancient ones are in thrall to the Voice: which commands that they burn...

The time is World War II. The place is a brutal prison camp deep in Japanese-occupied territory. Here, within the seething mass of humanity, one man, an American corporal, seeks dominance over both captives and captors alike. His weapons are human courage, unblinking understanding of human weaknesses, and total willingness to exploit every opportunity to enlarge his power and corrupt or destroy anyone who stands in his path.

The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby is closely modelled on the 18h-century novels that Charles Dickens loved as a child, such as Robinson Crusoe, in which the fortunes of a hero shape the plot. The likeable young Nicholas, left penniless on the death of his father, sets off in search of better prospects.

When a prominent landowner goes missing, private investigator Atticus Priest is drawn into a web of secrets that stretch from the rolling fields of Wiltshire to the darkest corners of the past. The ancient estate of Brookmere—seat of the once-mighty Ainsley family—is crumbling, its future threatened by inheritance disputes, hidden debts, and buried scandal.

Can You Forgive Her? is the first of the six Palliser novels. Here Trollope examines parliamentary election and marriage, politics and privacy. As he dissects the Victorian upper class, issues and people shed their pretenses under his patient, ironic probe.

Eight of the nine Palm provinces of the Peninsula have been overcome by warrior sorcerers Brandin and Alberico. But the sorcerers don't know that a small band of survivors is plotting their removal. With tensions mounting, the sorcerers become increasingly at odds as each decides where his own path - and that of the land - should truly lie.

In this major and wholly original contribution to military history, John Keegan reverses the usual convention of writing about war in terms of generals and nations in conflict, which tends to leave the common soldier as cipher. Instead, he focuses on what a set battle is like for the man in the thick of it.

Contains all three books in the Iconoclasts trilogy and two short stories.

Rew, the King’s Ranger, accepted a role on the far edge of the realm to avoid the morass of intrigue and betrayal that bleeds from the heart of the kingdom. His only desire is to shoulder the burden he’s taken, to protect the village of Eastwatch, and to monitor the wilderness beyond. When three youths are arrested for petty theft in the village and beg for help, Rew’s friend insists he take responsibility for them. By ties stronger than steel, Rew is forced onto a path he knows leads to chaos. The King’s Ranger will battle to grant the youths a life he never had a chance of.

BuzzFeed Greatest Fantasy Book of the Year author In his magnificent, heroic, adventure fantasy, Dragonslayer, Duncan M. Hamilton debuts the first audiobook in a fast-moving trilogy: a dangerous tale of lost magics, unlikely heroes, and reawakened dragons. Once a member of the King's personal...

Someone is poisoning British soldiers in Cyprus; the same killer has murdered a British intelligence agent in Athens. James Bond himself barely escapes with his life.... But the secrets behind these and other deaths first start to come to light in Texas, where Bond goes in search of the assassin of M's friend and lover. Fearful of an international scandal that could engulf both his service and his country, he learns instead of the existence of the Decada.

Bloomsbury presents The Silver Arrow by Lev Grossman, read by Simon Vance. 'There’s nothing so rare as a fantasy that elicits genuine wonder and that uses marvellous things to enrich a child’s appreciation of ordinary ones. Lev Grossman’s novel The Silver Arrow is something special.' WALL...

First published in monthly parts from March 1852 to September 1853, this novel follows the fortunes of three pedestrian characters; Esther Summerson, Ada Clare, and Richard Carstone. The story they tell embondies Dickens' merciless indictment of the Court of Chancery and its bungling, morally corrupt handling of the endless case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, giving the novel its scope and meaning.