At the dawn of the nineteenth century, two very different magicians emerge to change England's history. In the year 1806, with the Napoleonic Wars raging on land and sea, most people believe magic to be long dead in England-until the reclusive Mr Norrell reveals his powers, and becomes a celebrity overnight.Soon, another practicing magician comes forth: the young, handsome, and daring Jonathan Strange. He becomes Norrell's student, and they join forces in the war against France. Bu...

In his eleventh novel, Tim Powers takes his unique brand of speculative fiction into uncharted territory, instilling the old-fashioned espionage novel with a healthy dose of the supernatural.As a young double agent infiltrating the Soviet spy network in Nazi-occupied Paris, Andrew Hale finds himself caught up in a secret, even more ruthless war. Two decades later, a coded message draws Professor Andrew Hale back into Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Elements from his past are gatherin...

One of the world’s greatest novelists, Leo Tolstoy was also the author of a number of superb short stories, one of his best-known being “The Kreutzer Sonata.” This macabre story involves the murder of a wife by her husband. It is a penetrating study of jealousy as well as a piercing complaint about the way in which society educates men and women in matters of sex—a serious condemnation of the mores and attitudes of the wealthy, educated class.

Hailed as one of the world’s masterpieces of psychological realism, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high-court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise he is brought face to face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?The first part of the story portrays Ivan Ilyich...

Art imitates life in this brilliant psychological study of a compulsive gambler, modeled on Dostoevsky's own tendencies. Like so many characters in Dostoevsky's novels, Alexei, a young tutor working in the household of an imperious Russian general, is trying to break through the wall of the established order and the human condition itself, but instead he is drawn into the vortex of the roulette wheel. His intense addiction is accentuated by his affair with the general's cruel, seductive ni...

· Publishers Weekly 'Listen Up' Award Winner · ForeWord Magazine's 'Audiobook of the Year' Winner · AFIM Indie Award Winner · Independent Publisher Magazine’s ‘IPPY Award’ Finalist. Epic--a mountaineering term that evokes a sense of treacherous disaster. The climb that went wrong: fighting blinding snowstorms and horrific avalanches; days spent tentbound running low on food, water and oxygen; surviving broken bones and shattered spirits. With writing from Greg Child, David Roberts, Stephen...

Essential listening for all those who want to understandthe universe in which we liveStephen Hawking is one of the most influential thinkers of our time, an intellectual icon, known not only for the adventurousness of his ideas but also for the clarity with which he expresses them. Seeking to uncover the holy grail of science: the elusive Theory of Everything that lies at the heart of the cosmos, Professor Hawking takes us the cutting edge of theoretical physics, where truth is often stran...

Against a vivid backdrop of history, Danielle Steel tells a compelling story of love and war, acts of faith and acts of betrayal…and of three generations of women as they journey though years of loss and survival, linked by an indomitable devotion that echoes across time.For the Wittgenstein family, the summer of 1915 was a time of both prosperity and unease, as the guns of war sound in the distance. But for eldest daughter Beata, it was also a summer of awakening. By the glimmerin...

Three Compelling Sherlock Holmes Mysteries In One Book. Narrated by the celebrity actor Simon Prebble who is also known as an award winner for the best voice in fiction.STORY ONE: The Mystery of the Poisoned Tomb."Ah good morning, John, if we do not hurry then we shall miss the unveiling of the sarcophagus." He leaped up, feeling much better than I did, and chased me into my own room so that I could get changed. There was a large crowd who had come to see the tomb. Holmes a...

As the Nazi hold tightens over Germany in 1939, British journalist John Russell is living in Berlin, where he has spent fifteen years working as a freelancer.Despite his hatred for fascism and the signs of coming war, Russell is determined to stay in Berlin to be near his son, Paul, and his long-time girlfriend, the Germanfilm actress Effi Koenen. For paying work, which has become hard to find, Russell agrees to take on jobs that take him increasingly deeper into a web of esp...

By the first decade of the twentieth century, Germany was the Mecca of science and technology in the world. However, by the beginning of the First World War, Germany began to display some of the features that would blight the conduct of ideal science through the rest of the century.After Hitler came into power in 1933, science and technology were quickly pressed into service by racist, xenophobic idealologies. From 1939 to the war's end, scientists working under military control began rese...

Romance Writers of America RITA Award FinalistNew York Times bestselling author Stephanie Laurens knows Regency London, and outside the exclusive enclave in which the aristocracy lived in wealth and comfort, lay another world …An intriguing manHandsome, enigmatic, and deliciously dangerous, Barnaby Adair has made his name by solving crimes within the ton. When Penelope Ashford appeals for his aid, he is moved by her plight—and capt...