Showing results by narrator "Steven Crossley" in All Categories

Trapped in a London laboratory during a worker uprising in 1924, ex-artillery officer and physics instructor Jeremy Tuft awakens 150 years later - in a neo-medieval society whose inhabitants have forgotten how to build or operate machinery. Not only have his fellow Londoners forgotten most of what humankind used to know, before civilization collapsed, but they don't particularly care to re-learn any of it. Though he is at first disconcerted by the failure of his own era's smug doctrine of Progress, Tuft eventually decides that post-civilized life is simpler, more peaceful.

A skeleton buried on a lonely Northumberland hill? Nothing wrong with that. Garrigill was once an ancient burial ground. Archaeologist Rena Williams is here to excavate the site. She is an old friend of Arnold’s. And with his help, her team have uncovered more than a few old bones already. But never like this. The bludgeoned skull, the modern dental work…nothing about this death feels accidental. Or even all that old. Who was the dead man, and what did he know that was worth killing for?

The year is 1962. Young Lieutenant Tromp Kramer of the Trekkersburg Murder and Robbery Squad has been ordered up to Jafini, a small, dusty town in northern Zululand, to investigate the "hero’s death" of the town’s chief detective, Maaties Kritzinger - another Afrikaner maverick, and one with many secrets. Kramer finds himself increasingly identifying with the victim as the investigation proceeds. And then his path crosses that of Bantu Detective Sergeant Mickey Zondi, who is trying to locate a multiple killer whose summary execution will quiet the spirits of his ancestors. Despite the racial differences, the two men sense a kinship.…

Beginning with Pearl Harbor, renowned historian Donald Macintyre charts the course of the Pacific war through the major battles that shaped World War Two: Java Sea, Coral Sea, Midway, Philippine Sea, and Leyte Gulf. Of course, the Pacific theater was shaped not only by naval actions but also by closely interlocking military campaigns. Macintyre brings these amphibious struggles, which were more ferocious and wide-ranging than the world had ever seen, to the forefront of listeners' minds and demonstrates just why the Allies were able to emerge victorious.

Questions of what happens after death were vital in Shakespeare's time, as it is today. And, like today, the answers were by no means universally agreed upon. Exploring how particular texts and characters answer these questions, Shakespeare and the Afterlife showcases the vitality and originality of the author's language and thinking. We encounter characters with very personal visions of what awaits them after death, and these visions reveal new insights into these individuals' motivations and concerns as they navigate the world of the living.

Using hundreds of primary sources, Charles Dickens in Love narrates the story of the most intense romances of Charles Dickens’ life and shows how his novels both testify to his own strongest affections and serve as memorials to the young women he loved all too well, if not always wisely. Charles Dickens has no rival as the most fertile creative imagination since William Shakespeare, and no one influenced his imagination more powerfully than these three women, his muses and teachers in the school of love.

Three cell phones ring in an opulent London suite. The calls go unanswered, because their recipients are dead. Earlier that night, four old friends and lovers meet for a reunion dinner. Miko and Robert haven't seen each other in 10 years; Miko hates Robert for the money he's made with shady ethics. Unbeknownst to Miko, his wife, Veera, also slept with Robert the last time everyone was together. Robert's young trophy wife, Elise, has no old grudges to bear, but will be swept up in the murderous fray.

This is the story of Billy and the baron's entrancing daughter, Karin, and the dangerous paths they travel as their childhood attachment deepens to a complex love overshadowed by the rise of the Nazis. Their story takes us from a golden Edwardian summer on the Isle of Wight to London under zeppelin attack to Ireland on the brink of its War of Independence and at last to Germany in the darkening Weimar period, where Billy and Karin come of age in a country wounded by war and seething with hatred.

The Reign of Terror has ended, and Napoleon Bonaparte has seized power, but shifting political loyalties still tear apart families and lovers. On Christmas Eve 1800, a bomb explodes along Bonaparte's route, narrowly missing him but striking dozens of bystanders. Chief Inspector Roch Miquel, a young policeman with a bright future and a beautiful mistress, must arrest the assassins before they attack again.

Tollie Erasmus, an unsavory bank robber on the run, is hung from the neck until dead. Unfortunately, execution was administered without the benefit of South African judge or jury. Somewhere there's a killer who knows far too much about the hangman's craft, and Lieutenant Tromp Kramer and his Bantu assistant Mickey Zondi must find him before his trail of death continues.

A tense, mesmerizing novel about memory, privacy, fear, and what happens when our past catches up with us. After a decade living in England, Jeremy O'Keefe returns to New York, where he has been hired as a professor of German history at New York University. Though comfortable in his new life...

Wisecracking PI Kemal Kayankaya cares more about sausage and beer than politics, but when he's hired to defend four eco-terrorists charged with murdering a chemical plant owner, he finds himself stuck in the middle of Germany's culture wars. It doesn't take long for Kayankaya to realize that the whole situation stinks and that both the Left and the Right have blood on their hands. And is the fiery journalist Carla Reedermann dogging his steps because she smells a story, or is she after something more? A hardboiled noir in the Chandler tradition....

The year is 2024, and the residents of the Tower, a virus-proof apartment building, live in a state of permanent lockdown. The building is controlled by James, who keeps the residents safe but incarcerated. Behind bricked-up front doors, their every need is serviced; they are pampered but remain prisoners. This suits Eugene just fine. Ravaged by the traumas of his past, the agoraphobic ex-detective has no intention of ever setting foot outside again.

Love is never easy - especially when your girlfriend is an illegal Thai prostitute who has been kidnapped (again) by a gang of sex traffickers. Fortunately for the hapless fiancé, wisecracking gumshoe Kemal Kayankaya is on the case. The son of a Turkish garbage collector, he knows a thing or two about living in the ethnic fringes of the ugliest German city of them all: Frankfurt. Kayankaya plunges into the city's underbelly, where the police don't care if you live or die, and the powerful view an illegal alien as just another paycheck.

The Donkey and the Darling is an infamous parody of children's fairy tales that is classic Terry Southern. Originally a collaboration with painter Larry Rivers, there were only 35 physical copies created of what turned out to be the most expensive and labor-intensive project ever created by University Limited Art Edition. This audio version is a unique, winking performance by Steven Crossley.

Double trouble surprise! Julia hasn’t seen her husband Max for almost a year, but he’s just walked through the door of their home looking as breathtaking as ever. Max has come to make things right with his beloved Julia. However, a lot can happen in a year and Max hasn’t bargained on meeting two surprise little twin girls. Now, Max has two weeks to prove he can be a wonderful husband and father.

Bill Buford spends a wild night in the park; Jonathan Safran Foer envisions it as a tiny, transplanted piece of a mythical Sixth Borough; and Marie Winn answers definitively Holden Caulfield's question of where the ducks go when the park's ponds freeze over. There are bird sightings and fish sightings; Jackie Kennedy and James Brown sightings; and pieces by Colson Whitehead, Paul Auster, and Francine Prose. This vibrant collection presents Central Park in all its many-faceted glory, a 51-block swath of special magic.

Sebastian, the alchemist's son, must face a new evil. An old enemy, a magician whose power lies in stealing souls, has reappeared in a new and cunning disguise. He is using an ancient spell book to bring about a terror beyond imagining. Once again, Pip and Tim brave sorcery and danger to help Sebastian as he pursues his enemies through the centuries.

Three Brothers follows the fortunes of Harry, Daniel, and Sam Hanway, a trio of brothers born on a postwar council estate in Camden Town. Marked from the start by curious coincidence, each boy is forced to make his own way in the world - a world of dodgy deals and big business, of criminal gangs and crooked landlords, of newspaper magnates, backbiters, and petty thieves.

Naomi Stride was a wealthy woman, and her death has left several people richer - none more so than her 26-year-old son Theo, with whom she had long had bitter differences over money. She was also a controversial woman, a writer whose novels had been banned in South Africa. But was it for money, politics, or some other unknown reason that she was killed? And why was her naked corpse strewn with flowers and herbs? These are the questions South African Lieutenant Kramer and his partner must answer.