Showing results by narrator "Kelly Birch" in All Categories

From Darjeeling to Lapsang Souchon, from India to Japan-a fresh, concise, world-encompassing exploration of the way tea has shaped politics, culture, and the environment throughout history. From the fourth century BC in China, where it was used as an aid in Buddhist meditation, to the Boston Tea Party in 1773, to its present-day role as the most consumed substance on the planet, the humble Camellia plant has had profound effects on civilization.

Memory and history have been Penelope Lively’s terrain in fiction over a career that has spanned five decades. But she has only rarely given listeners a glimpse into her influences and formative years. Dancing Fish and Ammonites traces the arc of Lively’s life, stretching from her early childhood in Cairo to boarding school in England to the sweeping social changes of Britain’s 20th century. She reflects on her early love of archeology, the fragments of the ancients that have accompanied her journey - including a sherd of Egyptian ceramic depicting dancing fish and ammonites found years ago on a Dorset beach.

One minute Amaryllis Duvane is the belle of the London season - a "diamond of the first water", desired by every man and envied by every woman. Even better, she's about to marry the man of her dreams.

Rescuing the subject from dry abstractions, Clare Connors focuses on the real questions that emerge when we read and study literature - such as how we find meaning and how literature relates to its historical context - before exploring the response of theorists. Using selections from works including poetry by Christina Rossetti and Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain, Connors unites theory with practice, revealing how enjoyable it is to think about reading.

Acts of the Apostles tells the story of a disparate group of men who, against the odds, came to spearhead an international movement. Jane Williams examines the central messages of Acts and how and why they matter to us. The How to Believe series of books explores the teachings, philosophies, and beliefs of major thinkers and religious texts. In a short, easy-to-access format, leading writers present new understandings of these perennially important ideas.

fresh and engaging account of the life, times, politics, loves, and letters of the great English poet John Milton on the 400th anniversary of his birth. John Milton is one of the worlds greatest poets, renowned author of the epic Paradise Lost as well as numerous sonnets and other works. But he was also deeply involved in the political and religious controversies of his time.

Janet Tavakoli takes you into the world of Warren Buffett by way of the recent mortgage meltdown. In correspondence and discussion with him over two years, they both saw the writing on the wall, made clear by the implosion of Bear Stearns. Tavakoli, in clear and engaging prose, explains how the credit mess happened beginning with the mortgage lending Ponzi schemes funded by investment banks, the Fed bailout, and its impact on the dollar.

John Donne is well known as one of literature’s great love poets. But his writing is also infused with a deep-yet-playful philosophy. Satirist and cleric both, in Roz Kaveney’s engrossing ebook, John Donne is the man who thought too much - about love and death and his rejection of the choices of his family to rise up the church's ranks.

Anne was not best pleased when her godmother's family dealt with their troublesome ward by shipping her off to school. After years of being ignored by the aristocratic young Debenham brothers, a bit of revenge may be in order. Especially that arrogant, overbearing, insufferable Charles needs a lesson, and Anne is determined to teach it to him. And London may never be the same.

“Game-changing . . . How history should be written.” — Andrew Roberts, author of Napoleon: A Life [An] ambitious re-examination of the intersection of gender and monarchy.” — New York Times Book Review Queen Elizabeth I was all too happy to play on courtly conventions of gender when it...

The number of soldiers wounded in World War I is, in itself, devastating: over 21 million military wounded, and nearly 10 million killed. On the battlefield, the injuries were shocking, unlike anything those in the medical field had ever witnessed. The bullets hit fast and hard, went deep, and took bits of dirty uniform and airborne soil particles in with them. Soldier after soldier came in with the most dreaded kinds of casualty: awful, deep, ragged wounds to their heads, faces, and abdomens.

Marriage is the institution through which our lives are defined: We are married, divorced, single, or widowed. It gives shape to our family relationships. Through marriage, we have access to the words for the closest connections in our lives, such as aunts and uncles, grandparents and step-children. Marriage is an internationally recognized institution that eases international travel and work for spouses. It formalizes a union using traditions we have built up and treasure.

Rescuing the subject from dry abstractions, Clare Connors focuses on the real questions that emerge when we read and study literature - such as how we find meaning and how literature relates to its historical context - before exploring the response of theorists. Using selections from works including poetry by Christina Rossetti and Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain, Connors unites theory with practice, revealing how enjoyable it is to think about reading.

The role of women in the Christian Church is the subject of heated debate. In this powerful book Julia Ogilvy interviews twelve of the most notable Christian women of our time, providing a telling and at times shocking analysis of the situation today. The women – from the Dean of York and the Presiding Bishop in America to Helena Kennedy QC and Dr Elaine Storkey – share some of the pain, disappointment and hurt they have experienced and reflect on the impact of a patriarchal Church on the suffering of women across the world.

Madeleine wants revenge; Madeleine wants to be remembered: Madeleine wants love. Who doesn't? Madeleine is ex-wife and chief persecutor of Jarvis, the architect. Why not? She hates him. Hilary is their daughter, growing fatter and lumpier every day under Madeleine's triumphant care, and witness to the wrongs her mother suffered. For Jarvis has a clean new life with a clean new wife, Lily, and a nice new baby, Jonathan. The furniture is polished and there is orange juice for breakfast. Jarvis is content, or thinks he is, fending off Madeleine's forays as best he can.

Your friend's mother-in-law is visiting from Korea. When greeting her, do you bow, shake hands, or kiss her on both cheeks? The meeting with his international customers is going well for the corporate president - until he gives the thumbs-up sign. Why? Discover the answers in this incisive, award-winning guide to etiquette, now thoroughly revised to reflect today's truly multicultural society.

When BBC Radio 4's Material World programme announced a search for the UK's top amateur scientist, little did anyone expect that the winning experiment would comprise one of our humblest garden pests. Ruth Brooks posed this question: Do snails have a homing instinct? The nation was gripped by the unexpected thesis and by Ruth's online diaries, which catalogued her trials and tribulations as she got to grips with these slimy little gastropods. A Slow Passion is Ruth's story, with anecdotes and misadventures galore.

Cancer is the second biggest killer in the world, but few of us understand how it works or how we treat it. In this illuminating introductory audiobook, Paul Scotting explains the science behind the disease and explores why some of us are more likely to develop it than others. Arguing that we're in a new age of understanding that will revolutionise the fight against cancer, Scotting discusses cutting-edge developments and maps out the promising future strategies for its prevention, treatment, and cure.

The connections between seemingly disparate people can run deep, as Gillian White demonstrates in this gripping novel. Her chain of homebuyers, sellers, and occupants includes a frail woman whose best days are behind her, the upper-middle-class Middleton family and their suspicious neighbors, a pop star, and a sliver of the British nobility. When the Middletons’ son is accused of a dreadful crime, the hidden ties among the characters start to tangle and warp, changing their lives forever.

Men have deserted women often, and perhaps Natalie Harris, whose husband ran off with the local carnival queen, should not have been surprised. But there she was - charming, well-meaning, and well-dressed - suddenly without gas to drive her children to school or money to pay their tuition. True. Natalie had had a lover for a number of years, but they saw each other only on Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. Still, she felt wronged and helpless when her husband left her; she was the kind of woman other men, attached to other women, liked to help - on their own terms, of course.