Mostrando resultados por autor "iain" en Todas las categorías

There is a world that hangs suspended between triumph and catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers, frozen in the shadow of suicide terrorism and global financial collapse. Such a world requires a firm hand and a guiding light. But does it need the Concern: an all-powerful organization with a malevolent presiding genius, pervasive influence and numberless invisible operatives in possession of extraordinary powers?

It is 4034 AD. Humanity has made it to the stars but Fassin Taak, a Slow Seer at the Court of the Nasqueron Dwellers, will be fortunate if he makes it to the end of the year. The Nasqueron Dwellers inhabit a gas giant on the outskirts of the galaxy, in a system awaiting its wormhole connection to the rest of civilisation. In the meantime, they are dismissed as decadents living in a state of highly developed barbarism, hoarding data without order, hunting their own young and fighting pointless formal wars.

Iain Banks, aka Iain M Banks, came to fame in 1984 with his transfixing debut The Wasp Factory, described as both ‘a work of unparalleled depravity’ and 'a masterpiece'. In 1993 he was acknowledged as one of the Best of Young British Writers, and his numerous bestselling books include The Crow Road, Complicity and the ‘Culture’ sci-fi series. Collected here are three of his best works, as heard on BBC Radio.

On Friday, November 10, 1775, the Continental Congress approved a resolution for the organization of the Corps, creating what would become the hallowed few, the proud - the Marines. Since then, the men and women of the United States Marine Corps have created the finest traditions of service and honor, and supplied a pantheon of heroes who have upheld them.

Two and a half millennia ago, the artifact appeared in a remote corner of space, beside a trillion-year-old dying sun from a different universe. It was a perfect black-body sphere, and it did nothing. Then it disappeared.

I Wrote This for You: Please Listen focuses on a different facet of life, love, loss, beginnings, and endings. This audio project inspired by the original book weaves the poetry into a never-before heard holistic narrative.

When Jonathan Argyll is arrested for breaking into an obscure church in Rome, he claims that it contains a long-lost Raphael hidden under a painting by Mantini. The painting disappears - then reappears in the hands of the top British art dealer, Edward Byrnes. How has Byrnes found out about the hidden masterpiece, and whom is he acting for? There is also the curious matter of the safe deposit box full of sketches closely resembling features of the newly discovered painting.

Joe, a recent divorcee, takes his wrestling-mad son Danny to the zoo for his weekend of custody. Everything is going great until a bizarre snake attack sends everybody running for cover. A horrific scene, and one Joe's poor son is unlikely ever to forget... But the terror has only just begun. A simple snake attack is only the first incident in an unstoppable catastrophe. Something is causing animals to attack people... to think for themselves... to thirst for blood.

The team: Joan of Arc, the armor-plated teen saint of Orleans. Francis of Assisi, friend to all the animals whether they like it or not. St Christopher, the patron saint of travel who by papal decree has never existed - no matter how much he argues otherwise. The mission: An impossible prayer has been received by heaven, and it’s a prayer that only Mary, mother of God, can answer. Unfortunately, Mary hasn’t been seen in decades and is off wandering the Earth somewhere. This elite team of heavenly saints are sent down to Earth to find Mary before Armageddon is unleashed.

Tobacco was first cultivated and enjoyed by the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas, who used it for medicinal, religious, and social purposes long before the arrival of Columbus. But when Europeans began to colonize the American continents, it became something else entirely - a cultural touchstone of pleasure and success and a coveted commodity that would transform the world economy forever.

The Wasp Factory is a bizarre, imaginative, disturbing, and darkly comic look into the mind of a child psychopath - one of the most infamous of contemporary Scottish novels.

Charged with gross incompetence, Satan is fired from his job as prince of Hell and exiled to that most terrible of places: English suburbia. Forced to live as a human under the name of Jeremy Clovenhoof, the dark lord not only has to contend with the fact that no one recognizes him or gives him the credit he deserves but also has to put up with the bookish war-gamer next door and the voracious man-eater upstairs.

In this deeply scary and intensely unnerving debut novel, Jake and a woman known only as "The Girlfriend" are on a drive to visit his parents at their secluded farm. But when Jake leaves "The Girlfriend" stranded at an abandoned high school, what follows is a twisted unraveling of the darkest unease, an exploration into psychological frailty, and an ending as suspenseful as The Usual Suspects and as haunting as Misery.

Summer is here and school's out, but boredom quickly sets in for the penniless kids of the Redsow housing estate. If only they had something to do... In an effort to escape a pack of local bullies, best friends, Ashley and Jude, decide to brave Devil's Ditch, a place deep in the woods that everyone says is haunted by something ancient and evil. At first, everything seems fine, but then they discover an old farmhouse covered in weeds. Inside is a naked woman in chains. Her name is Rose, and there's something not quite right about her.

When Jeremy Clovenhoof decides to set himself up as president for life of his own breakaway country, he knows he’ll need money, lots and lots of money. That might be a bit difficult, particularly since the Inland Revenue has just presented him with an enormous tax bill and Heaven and Hell have sent Joan of Arc and Rutspud of the Sixth Circle to bring him under control.

A man lies in a coma after a near-fatal accident. His body broken, his memory vanished, he finds himself in the surreal world of the bridge - a world free of the usual constraints of time and space, a world where dream and fantasy, past and future, fuse. Who is this man? Where is he? Is he more dead than alive? Or has he never been so alive before?

In May 1941 the German battleship Bismarck, accompanied by heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, broke out into the Atlantic to attack Allied shipping. The Royal Navy's pursuit and subsequent destruction of the Bismarck was an epic of naval warfare. In this new account of those dramatic events at the height of the Second World War, Iain Ballantyne draws extensively on the graphic eyewitness testimony of veterans to construct a thrilling story, mainly from the point of view of the British battleships, cruisers, and destroyers involved.

Iain Ballantyne considers the key episodes of submarine warfare and vividly describes the stories of brave individuals who have risked their lives under the sea, often with fatal consequences. His analysis of underwater conflict begins with Archimedes discovering the principle of buoyancy. This clandestine narrative then moves through the centuries and focuses on prolific characters with deadly motives.

It's snowing over every inch of the Earth; something that should not be possible. Grieving alcoholic Harry Jobson expected to end his night facedown in vomit like most nights down the pub, but the impossible blizzards have made old routines impossible, and he instead finds himself trapped with an odd group of strangers. Everyone is worried by the recent climatic events, but all Harry wants to do is drink alone.

In a world renowned even within a galaxy full of wonders, a crime within a war. For one man it means a desperate flight, and a search for the one - maybe two - people who could clear his name. For his brother it means a life lived under constant threat of treachery and murder. And for their sister, even without knowing the full truth, it means returning to a place she'd thought abandoned forever.