Showing results by narrator "Derek Perkins" in All Categories

The House on Sugarbush Road, set in post-apartheid Johannesburg shortly after the 1994 election of Nelson Mandela, is the story of the intertwining lives of a once prominent liberal Afrikaner family and Beauty Mapule, their domestic servant of more than 30 years. Cook's intimately interconnected and finely drawn characters are white, black, rich, poor, beautiful, ugly, old, and young; they are also hustlers, do-gooders, petty criminals, and sensualists, heading towards dramatic explosions both inevitable and unexpected.

While trying to free a lawyer friend convicted of a crime he didn't commit, New Orleans private investigator Luke Jacobs is drawn into an international web of real estate fraud, pharmaceutical corporation misdealing and murder. Mardi Gras may have to be put on hold.

What passes for investing today is, in fact, gambling: the notion of making money quickly and without effort...and that's just how Wall Street likes it. By charting the development of the modern financial system from its roots in the madness of the first bubbles and Roaring '80s, this book will cast a light on the chicanery of the big banks and hedge funds - and give you the information you need to make the right choices for your own investing future.

A British soldier walked over to the German front line to deliver newspapers; British women married to Germans became ‘enemy aliens’ in their own country; a high-ranking British POW discussed his own troops’ heroism with the Kaiser on the battlefield. Just three amazing stories of contact between the opposing sides in the Great War that eminent historian Richard van Emden has unearthed - incidents that show brutality, great humanity, and above all the bizarre nature of a conflict between two nations with long-standing ties of kinship and friendship.

This newly launched report argues that development policies based on new insights into how people actually think and make decisions will help governments and civil society more readily tackle such challenges as increasing productivity, breaking the cycle of poverty from one generation to the next, and acting on climate change.

Separated again, further than they ever have before, Barl and Shryke must fight against the fell powers which have stripped them of their access to the Quantum Aether. Having lost all the faculties given to them in their training with the Assassin’s Guild, they are both faced with an impossible situation - how to survive in a world where they are vulnerable to attack, in a way they have never thought possible, when all their most basic defenses are gone.

Since John Lennon composed "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" in early 1967, fans and music critics alike have argued over the meaning of the song. Is it about drugs? Is it just a lyrical response to a drawing given Lennon by his 4-year-old son Julian? Is there some deeper meaning? Professor Tim Kasser goes beyond speculative explanations by applying innovative psychological methods to the song's lyrics and music. He deeply analyzes the song's linguistic structure, its basic theme, and the way its words and music had been used by Lennon in earlier songs.

Will is football mad, but he's the shortest boy in the year, and one of the slowest. He knows his skills at passing and ball control could make up for his lack of size and strength, but the team coach is only interested in speed and strength. Will Will ever get a chance to show what he can do?

First published in 1922 and filled with evocative portraits of pre-World War I society, these eight stories from the creator of the Father Brown mysteries recount the adventures of Horne Fisher, a socialite who uses his immense knowledge and powerful deductive gifts to investigate crimes committed on the sprawling country estates of the aristocracy - crimes that must, alas, go largely unpunished due to the greater harm that justice would unleash.

Weather and Warfare dramatically retraces the meteorological forces during battlefield engagements that doomed or saved civilizations. In 1588 more than half of the Spanish Armada, on its way around northern Britain, was destroyed by storms in retreat back to Spain. Napoleon's attack on Russia was stopped cold by winter weather, as was Hitler's siege of Leningrad. In WWI, it was all-quiet on the western front during mud season.

Money Mania is a sweeping account of financial speculation and its consequences, from ancient Rome to the Meltdown of 2008. Acclaimed journalist and investor Bob Swarup tracks the history of speculative fevers caused by the appearance of new profitable investment opportunities; the new assets created and the increasing self-congratulatory euphoria that drives them to unsustainable highs, all fed by an illusion of insight and newly minted experts; the unexpected catalysts that eventually lead to panic...

A short story about a mysterious man who arrives in a small 19th century Orkney Island fishing village. He has the air of an aristocrat, the clothes of a beggar and a leather pouch filled with the biggest pearls anyone has ever seen. The women can't take their lustful eyes off him, the men are jealous, but he only has one woman and one purpose on his mind.

In 1900 the global average life expectancy at birth was 31 years. By 2000 it was 66. Yet, alongside unprecedented improvements in longevity and material well-being, the 20th century also saw the rise of fascism and communism and a second world war followed by a cold war. This book tells the story of the battles between economic systems that defined the last century and created today's world. The 19th century was a period of rapid economic growth, but it also brought great inequality.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde grew out of a horrifying nightmare Robert Louis Stevenson had one night in Bournemouth, England, in 1886. "The Yellow Wallpaper" sprang from a catastrophic nervous breakdown Charlotte Perkins Gilman had six years later on the other side of the Atlantic following the birth of her daughter. Now these two haunting, iconic tales are brought together for the first time in this powerful classic audio exploration of madness and the duality of the human soul.

Nine-year-old Laddy Merridew, sent to live with his grandmother for reasons he does not understand, stumbles off the bus in a small Welsh town where he begins an unlikely friendship with old Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins, the town beggar-storyteller. Through Ianto, Laddy learns of the collapse decades earlier of a coal mine called Kindly Light - a disaster whose legacy has echoed through generations, shaping lives in unexpected ways. And while Ianto spins the lively stories of so many men and women in this town, it's his own history in Kindly Light that is the story he can't tell.

This is a short story about a young man who wants to be a wizard. Within, you will encounter one of the most powerful, life-transforming, secrets ever revealed. If you find it, you are ready for The Journey.

When Holmes gives up the adventurous life of a consulting detective and retires to the Sussex countryside to raise bees, little does he or his old friend Dr. John Watson realize that their greatest adventures lies ahead - an adventure spanning centuries and extending across the solar system.... For nothing less than human civilization lies at state as Sherlock Holmes finds himself moving inexorably toward the final and most terrible confrontation with his ancient enemy, the time-jumping Napoleon of crime, professor Moriarty!

Vaughan Roberts surveys the Christian worldview and seeks to apply these principles to the many complex questions surrounding assisted dying. This short book gives an overview and a starting point for constructive discussion as we seek to live in a world with different values, and love, serve, and engage with the questions surrounding euthanasia.

Jodie lives in the year 2075, and more than 50 years have passed since the banning of books and paper; it's a time when no one can own a printed book. In this E-world, experiences are largely simulated, from the reconstituted food, to the zoo that only shows films of all the extinct species. With her student library card, which gives her the ability to time travel, Jodie discovers that she and her friends can experience historical events and meet legendary characters, and can also find and bring home her precious books to keep safe in her secret hiding place.