Showing results by narrator "Robin Sachs" in All Categories

With the premiere of two new film versions of the Snow White tale, Blackstone enters the fray with its own adult, edgy, and not altogether serious full-cast exposé of fairy-taledom. At last it can be told! Was Snow White really as pure as the driven snow? Did her allegedly wicked stepmother get a bum rap from the Grimm brothers? What went on behind the closed Dutch doors of the dwarves’ cottage? How many handsome princes does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Sandra Worth's Crown of Destiny, her second novel in a trilogy about Richard III, picks up shortly after the first book's conclusion, with Richard finally wed and attempting to safeguard his new family from the machinations of his brother Edward IV's court. This is a fast listen, but one that never lags. Richard grows in this unusual portrayal of a humane man in an inhumane time, one who must confront challenging choices that threaten to rend his world apart, and contend with the own darkness in his own nature.

A Hunger for the Infinite, which first appeared in Robert Silverberg's Far Horizons anthology, is a novella that takes place in the universe of "The Galactic Center Saga", detailing a galactic war between mechanical and biological life. Here, the pilots had made it to True Center in order to destroy something, anything, important to the Mechs, but Paris had something else on his mind. A story of the Mantis, and the decline of humans beginning in 3600 AD.

Rebecca Barnhouse weaves Norse gods, blood feuds, and a terrifying dragon into this spectacular retelling of the end of the Old English poem Beowulf. When he was a baby, Rune washed up onshore in a boat, along with a sword and a pendant bearing the runes that gave him his nickname. Some people thought he was a sacrifice to the gods and wanted to send him right back to the sea. Luckily for Rune, King Beowulf disagreed. He lifted the boy from the boat and gave him to Amma, a wise woman living on a farm far removed from the king’s hall, to raise as she saw fit.

Three young women have been brutally assaulted and murdered in the city of Philadelphia. Lieutenant William Fogarty, a time-toughened cop hardened by personal tragedy, is shocked by the brutality of the crimes. His only lead comes from medical examiner Josef Tanaka. Half Japanese and half American, Tanaka, a skilled practitioner of the martial arts, claims to recognize the method used in the attacks: a karate strike known as nukite, or spear hand. Fogarty has nowhere else to turn.

The Mediterranean island of Malta, still a British colony, is a strategic lynchpin under siege--literally the most bombed patch of earth on the planet. Max Chadwick is an officer with the British Ministry of Information and is thus charged with keeping morale high against all odds. If the Maltese bow under the weight of the daily assaults, the tide of the war could turn. Max spends his time with the military's top brass and the beautiful deputy editor of Il Berqa, the Maltese paper.

Afghanistan's strategically significant lands have long been fought over by foreign invaders. Today, as yet another generation risks life and limb in this inhospitable territory, an ever-rising death toll puts back under the spotlight the way the modern war in Afghanistan is being run, and demands answers. Drawing on interviews with Afghan politicians, businessmen and ordinary people, British, American and European diplomats and soldiers, Sandy Gall addresses the challenges that face those now fighting on the most dangerous frontier in the world.

A pregnant woman, believed killed in a bridge accident in the Scottish Highlands, seizes her chance to disappear from her uncaring husband. Determined to safeguard her baby’s future and reinvent herself, she befriends illegal immigrant Silva, whose husband Stefan and daughter Anna, as she alone knows, have died in her place. As the bridge is rebuilt, the two women build a precarious existence in a makeshift home by the river.

Father Pat Connor knows marriages. Having presided over more than two hundred weddings and conducted pre-marriage and marriage counseling for more than forty years, he’s something of an expert. And now he is sharing his wealth of experience with women everywhere on the subject of Whom Not to Marry.

Rare Stamps offers a revealing insight into the life of an actor and the making of a man. Beginning with an Academy Award nomination for Billy Budd in 1962, Terence Stamp was called "the most beautiful man alive," only to be discarded at the end of the decade with the words "we're looking for a younger Terence Stamp." Soul searching, he traveled alone through India, staying at the Taj Mahal Hotel while studying above a public lavatory with a chain-smoking guru, only to wind up back in London and broke by 1984.

A true story of obsessive love turning to obsessive hate, Give Me Everything You Have chronicles the author's strange and harrowing ordeal at the hands of a former student, a self-styled "verbal terrorist", who began trying, in her words, to "ruin him". Hate mail, online postings, and public accusations of plagiarism and sexual misconduct were her weapons of choice, and as with more conventional terrorist weapons, proved remarkably difficult to combat.

It seems the city of Oslo has a serial killer on its hands, and detective Harry Hole is assigned to the case. Only he is not happy with his colleague Tom Waaler, whom he suspects of arms smuggling and murder. A previous Jo Nesbø title was voted best Norwegian crime novel of all time.

Jacob Marlowe has lost the will to live. For two centuries he has wandered the world, enslaved by his lunatic appetites and tormented by the memory of his first and most monstrous crime. Now, the last of his kind, he knows he can't go on.But as Jake counts down to suicide, a violent murder and an extraordinary meeting plunge him straight back into the desperate pursuit of life.

Few were disappointed when Raoul Vernet was found with his head bashed in, dead in a pool of his own blood. On vacation in England, the Belgian seducer comes to visit Matilda, an old flame from a few years before. She agrees despite suspicions that Vernet has been deploying his legendary charm on another member of the family: young Rosie, who has returned from her Swiss boarding school carrying a child. None of the family members were in the house when Raoul was killed, but all were within a fog-choked London mile.

When a number of women are reported missing in Glasgow, the specter of a previous spate of unsolved disappearances in the city rears its head. Journalist Ray Bissett is drawn into the case when his daughter joins the ranks of the missing. Ambitious police detective Tom Kendrick won’t let Ray forget a terrible incident from his past that resulted in the death of a young boy. The streets of Glasgow are haunted by the ghosts of the missing - and an artist driven by a deadly inspiration.

In 1990—after the Iron Curtain has lifted but before East and West Germany become one—an uneasy truce exists between the spy agencies of Berlin’s two halves. As the governments of the divided state negotiate reunification, espionage continues quietly. That calm is about to explode. An English agent, on a routine collection of microfilm on the other side of Checkpoint Charlie, is arrested for spying, and all hell threatens to break loose.

When an unidentified young Indian bride is ritualistically murdered, Detective Inspector Tom Kendrick and forensic anthropologist Elizabeth Bell are mobilized to hunt down the perpetrators. But Kali keeps spinning her web. Elizabeth finds herself in mortal danger, and a criminal network involved in illegal immigration and drug production gradually emerges from the shadows. Meanwhile, small-time crook Suyaal Ackhbaar is being blackmailed by a vicious gang lord....

Originally published in a 1892 edition of Strand Magazine, "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" was one of 12 short stories to be included in the first Sherlock Holmes collection, the 1892 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. In this tale, Holmes and Watson investigate two cases - one involving a Christmas goose and a hat and the other, the theft of the Blue Carbuncle, a priceless jewel. The cases are quickly revealed to be intertwined, and the spirit of the holidays influences the tale's end.

On a summer's day in June 1761, astronomers all over the world cast their eyes to the sky to witness a rare astronomical event: the transit of Venus across the face of the sun. It was one of the most important collaborations of scientific history, as by racing to different points around the world and comparing results, these men hoped to unlock the key to one of the most pressing questions of the Enlightenment: the distance between the Earth and the sun, which would allow them to calculate the dimensions of our solar system.

1944: Daniel, a soldier, legendary among the Norwegians fighting the advance of Bolshevism on the Russian front, is killed. Two years later, a wounded soldier wakes up in a Vienna hospital. He becomes involved with a young nurse, the consequences of which will ripple forward to the turn of the next century. 1999: Harry Hole, alone again after having caused an embarrassment in the line of duty, has been promoted to inspector and has surveillance duties. He is assigned the task of monitoring neo-Nazi activities; fairly mundane until a report of a rare gun being fired sparks his interest.