Showing results by narrator "Alex Lee" in All Categories

In 1999, legendary venture capitalist John Doerr invested nearly $12 million in a startup that had amazing technology, entrepreneurial energy and sky-high ambitions, but no real business plan. Doerr introduced the founders to OKRs and with them at the foundation of their management, the startup grew from 40 employees to more than 70,000 with a market cap exceeding $600 billion. The startup was Google. 

The crew aboard the fictional Coral Queen find themselves stretched to the limit by the antics of a queen tribute act, a troublesome stag party, and a group of excitable female cheerleaders. Rachel is accompanying Lady Marjorie on a cruise around the Baltics. The older woman is hoping for a mystery while Rachel seeks peace and quiet.

Rachel thinks she is living the dream. Taking a cruise around Australia and New Zealand as a guest lecturer and meeting up again with her best friend, cruise ship nurse, Sarah. The scene is set for the holiday of a lifetime! Rachel Prince is drawn to investigate when the leader of a bucket list tour party is discovered in the library on the first day of her antipodean cruise. Can this seemingly harmless group of elderly people have a killer among them?

Rachel Prince once again joins the Coral Queen for the holiday of a lifetime with her octogenarian friend Lady Marjorie Snellthorpe and her parents. One day into the voyage and a nun who is part of an exclusive religious party collapses. It's not long before the death is seen as suspicious. The chief of security, Jack Waverley, is flummoxed by the case and asks Rachel to assist. All is not what it seems with this religious order and the woman's dying words are a cause for concern.

January 28, 1547. It is almost midnight, and the cream of English nobility hold their breath as King Henry VIII prepares to face his God. As the royal physicians wring their hands and Archbishop Cranmer gallops through the frigid night, two dispossessed princesses pray for their father's soul, and a boy, soon to be king, snivels into his velvet sleeve. Time slows, and dread settles around the royal bed, the candles dip, and something stirs in the darkness...something, or someone, has come to tell the king it is time to pay his dues. 

Meet Rachel Prince, a newly qualified police constable trying to hold it together after being ditched by her fiancé. Rachel's best friend, Sarah, suggests that she needs a break and what better way to relax than a Mediterranean cruise? Sarah works as a nurse on the cruise ship and they plan to enjoy all the luxuries of cruising. At least they would do if Sarah ever got any time away from the medical centre. Rachel makes friends with a bereaved, elderly woman and an attractive Italian but it's not long before she is convinced that something sinister is going on.

Just when you thought it was safe to cruise again.... PC Rachel Prince returns to cruising after giving evidence in a difficult trial. She wants to recharge her batteries and reevaluate her future after receiving threats from the man she helped put away. Taking Queen cruises up on their offer of a free luxury cruise aboard the Coral Queen, she opts for a sailing to New York. Rachel's best friend and cruise nurse, Sarah is also returning to the ship to start a new nine-month contract so the timing is perfect.

Born into nobility, sold into slavery, Antonia Aliana’s life takes an unexpected turn. Believing herself agreeably married, Aliana’s world suddenly shatters when her treacherous husband callously discards her. Attempting to salvage her fate, she unwittingly shackles herself to an enigmatic and potentially ruthless master. While he may yet prove to be her saviour, he could equally be her undoing. Her future is now very uncertain.

Teresa’s heart stops when she enters her daughter’s bedroom to find that her sweet, trusting little girl is gone. Teresa can’t bear to think who would snatch a terrified three-year-old from her mother in the middle of the night, but all the signs point to someone close to home. Hasn’t Jessica’s stepfather been acting a little oddly? Or is it, as Teresa is beginning to fear, something to do with Angie, her daughter’s babysitter who lives next door...? 

As the early years of detective fiction gave way to two separate golden ages - of hard-boiled tales in America and intricately-plotted, so-called “cozy” murders in Britain - the legacy of Sherlock Holmes, with his fierce devotion to science and logic, gave way to street smarts on the one hand and social insight on the other, but even though these new sub-genres went their own ways, their detectives still required intelligence and clear-sightedness as characterized the earliest works of detective fiction: the trademarks of Sherlock Holmes, and of all the detectives featured here.

In their twilight years, two 80-something sisters, Esther and Minnie are coaxed from their easy chairs and their comfort zone of carpet slippers, crochet hooks, jigsaws, and rummage sales to fulfill the dying wish of a dear friend. They go on to undertake a road trip of sorts in Esther's beloved classic Trafalgar blue Morris Traveller, affectionately known as "Vivien". The trip, however, is no minor errand to return late library books. Theirs was to be an epic undertaking from Lodon's Whitechapel to Raipur, deep in the heart of the Indian Subcontinent.

In the years after Bosworth, a small boy is ripped from his rightful place as future king of England. Years later, when he reappears to take back his throne, his sister, Elizabeth, now queen to the invading king, Henry Tudor, is torn between family loyalty and duty. As the final struggle between the houses of York and Lancaster is played out, Elizabeth is torn by conflicting loyalty, terror, and unexpected love.   

Before Anne Boleyn stole the heart of a king and demanded marriage, another woman strove to wed an already-married King of England. This is the story of Elfrida, who would become the first crowned Queen of England.  

Thirty-something single mum Beth Haldane is forced to become Dulwich’s answer to Miss Marple when she stumbles over a murder victim on her first day at work. To clear her name, Beth is plunged into a cozy mystery that’s a contemporary twist on Golden Age crime classics. But can she pull it off? Listen to find out more.

Jilly thinks she's figured out how life works. But when her sister Emma is born deaf, she realizes how much she still has to learn. A big fantasy reader, Jilly connects with another fan, Derek, who is African American and a deaf ASL user. She goes to Derek for advice but doesn't always know the best way to ask for it and makes some mistakes along the way. Jilly has to step back to learn to be an ally, a sister, and a friend, understanding that life works in different ways for different people, and that being open to change can make you change in the best possible ways.

The Velveteen Daughter reveals for the first time the true story of two remarkable women: Margery Williams Bianco, the author of one of the most beloved children's books of all time, The Velveteen Rabbit, and her daughter Pamela, a world-renowned child prodigy artist whose fame at one time greatly eclipses her mother's. But celebrity at such an early age exacts a great toll. Pamela's dreams elude her as she struggles with severe depressions, an overbearing father, an obsessive love affair, and a spectacularly misguided marriage. Throughout, her life raft is her mother. 

A long-buried secret has come to light in the village of Midbury, England. A secret of betrayal and murder. The past seems long dead, but it intrudes on the present of the vicar of St. James parish and his family. Beth Granger and her grandmother, the famous mystery writer Dame Joan, join forces with the vicar, Joseph Levi, inspector Janice Sidwell, and her sergeant, Davy Collins. Together they work to solve a very old murder and a very new one. The story begins in 1960 and moves on to the present.

A penniless young widow with an indomitable spirit. A wealthy viscount with an unsavory reputation. London, 1815: After her husband's untimely death, Letty Burton comes up from the country with her domineering mother-in-law. Hiding a past she wishes to forget and facing an uncertain future, all she wants is to navigate London Society as a silent companion. A chance meeting with London's most eligible bachelor sets in motion a series of events that will bring her quiet life under the unfriendly scrutiny of the ton. With the net of scandal, debts, and rivals closing in, will she let her dark past dictate her life forever? Will she learn to trust again? And most importantly, will she allow herself to love? The Widow's Redeemer was a finalist in the 2012 RONE Awards (Reward of Novel Excellence) hosted by InD'Tale Magazine. 

Beth and Gran begin to read Grace Robinson Nesbitt's journal of the time just before World War II. It turns out the Grace was secretly a code-breaker at the famous Bletchley Park! Dame Joan is just now finding out that her own mother was a hero. Due to the Official Secrets Act, Grace was never able to divulge that she was a "Bletchley Girl"! It's Christmas in 1938 and the present. In the present day, Beth's growing relationship with the local vicar is relayed between the journal entries. 

In the gaming hells of 18th-century London, orphan Caro Worth is leading a double life. By day, she plays a proper gentlewoman on the lookout for a wealthy husband. By night, she plays the infamous Angelica, her fictional half-sister with a talent for cards and an ability to finance the life her respectable self has built. An introduction to a rich Marquis brings marriage and security within Caro's grasp - until the arrival of the unpredictable and totally ineligible Mr. Tobias Felton.