Showing results by narrator "Stephen Thorne" in All Categories

England 1371. A solemn procession winds out of York Minster, after the funeral of Sir Ranulf Pagnell, patriarch of a powerful Yorkshire family. William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, escorted the knight's remains north after his death in France, but he is shunned by the family. They hold him responsible for failing to negotiate the Sir Ranulf's ransom.

Late spring, the year of our Lord 1370. Owen Archer, ex-soldier and spy, is preparing to depart Wales, his work for John of Gaunt completed. But his attempts to arrange safe passage home to York are thwarted by a mysterious suicide. In York Lucie Wilton is disheartened by her husband’s long absence and concerned by allegations against her apothecary. Then Brother Michaelo brings upsetting news, forcing her to journey to her father’s manor outside the city.

While the Imortik venom continues to drain Daegan, his dragon confronts the dragon pretending to be his who wants Daegan dead. Casidhe finds a lead on a grimoire volume without Daegan around to stop her from a decision that turns out nothing like she expects. Tristan pays a heavy price for trying to escape spelled manacles. Atlanta is invaded by an influx of demons being driven by an unknown player while VIPER headquarters is attacked, resulting in a dangerous backlash from Tribunal deities.

The Singers, an all-American family in the California style, are about to lose everything. Anne is a bureaucrat in the Los Angeles Office of Sustainability whose ideals are compromised by a proposal from a venture capitalist seeking to privatize the city's wastewater. Her brother, Ben, a former Navy SEAL, returns from Afghanistan disillusioned and struggling with PTSD, and starts down a path toward a radical act of violence. And Anne's teenage son, Aaron, can't decide if he should go to college or pitch it all and hit the road.

Daegan and Casidhe are tested at every turn by angry immortals when they appear uninvited in a place with no exits. An expected change of events devastates Daegan’s hope of gaining the second grimoire volume and shatters Casidhe’s trust. Faced with becoming a monster, Adrianna gambles with the ancient Witchlock power capable of cataclysmic results and becomes collateral damage. Possessed by an Imortik, Reese runs to keep Quinn safe and finds a way to save others even though she can’t save herself.

Get partnership and marriage help tested by real couples. The relationship experts behind the bestselling The Five Core Conversations for Couples put together another essential couples book for relationships. Secrets of Better Relationships shows you how real couples have made it through to the other side of real crises—together. Learn how to overcome couples communication hardships, marriage fights, and more.

Julius Hutch has planned to spend his retirement years 'pottering' and worrying about his bills, but wakes one morning to discover a foreign merchant bank has put four million pounds into his account—and won't take it back. So Julius, a humble man, sets out to spend the money helping other people, and wooing Pauline, the local bank teller. Up against an enormous banking corporation and an unsavoury property developer, Julius soon discovers that rather than being crushed by these financial giants as he would have been in the past, he is rendered rather more delightfully impervious.

 In The Five Orange Pips, a young Sussex gentleman named John Openshaw tells the strange story of his uncle Elias Openshaw, who came back to England after living in the United States as a planter in Florida and serving as a colonel in the Confederate Army. His uncle begins receiving threatening letters inscribed “KKK” and including five orange pips. He is killed shortly thereafter. The job of unraveling this sordid transatlantic mystery falls to Holmes and his trusty companion, Dr. Watson. 

Thirty-five years after the publication of Ronald Blythe's classic portrait of an English village, Akenfield, Craig Taylor returned to the Suffolk village on which the book was based. He sought out locals who appeared in the original book to learn how their lives had changed, met newcomers, and interviewed Ronald Blythe himself.

Faced with losing the only grimoire volume Daegan has or turning his back on Casidhe, he makes a surprising choice. Time is literally running out of an hourglass for Casidhe to prove her value to Queen Maeve or face never leaving TÅμr Medb, but to hand the crazy queen a grimoire volume would destroy humans and nonhumans. Reese finds a place to stay away from those she cares for in Atlanta while hunting the origin of demons flooding the city, but she’s not as adept at hiding as she thinks.

In Game On David Bockino, a former marketing and advertising manager at ESPN turned professor of communications and sport management, provides the first overview of the evolution of the sports media industry.

Casidhe followed her conscience. It cost her everything and she now faces Herrick’s wrath for deceiving him. After a disastrous trip to the Caucasus Mountains, Daegan has no mercy for another enemy, then discovers important information about his past from an unlikely source. He’s running out of days, and now the Tribunal is making Beladors pay until he finds Sen. Reese has to choose between saving millions, including Quinn, from a demon invasion and giving up her baby. Adrianna sees an opening to escape, but nothing is ever as it appears when dealing with monsters.

Students and teachers alike face a dilemma: Why think deeply when we can just take a shortcut by googling something? Why read an article when we can learn from a social media headline? If, as educators, we want to encourage our students to value thoughtfulness and to embrace the effort it takes to reach deep understandings, we must model that behavior ourselves.

Random Acts of Automation dives deep into the hidden consequences of our rapid automation, examining the forces that will reshape the current workforce. This book focuses on real people—fast-food workers, warehouse staff, customer service agents, even lawyers and tech professionals—all facing the impact of automation. In its chapters, you will find practical solutions to your workplace concerns about AI. This isn't just about understanding your current job; it's about seeing where automation will take you and how you can thrive.

The man who brutally murdered Uncle Harry is dead. In an effort to recover from the confrontation and collect himself, Jack takes refuge on Torcello, a small island in the Venetian lagoon, to return to his writing career. Even more urgently, he wants to win back Kerry, the beautiful lawyer who rejected him after the bloody episode with Harry's assassin.

On a cold morning in Grimsby, Albert Hardcastle wakes up to the first day of his retirement. His days of working in a shop are behind him, and he and his wife, Alice, decide to celebrate by taking the luxury cruise of which they always dreamed. Meanwhile, on the Essex coast, Rear Admiral Sir Benbow Harrington, a retired Royal Navy officer, is trying to assemble a fleet of passenger ships. His newest vessel, the Golden Handshake, is ready for its maiden voyage.

We're addicted to our devices. Our kids are too. None of us seem to be better for it. We all know this, but what can we do practically to become less isolated, polarized, and disconnected? This book answers that question with a bold idea: In an age of personal brands and artificial intelligence, perhaps it's time to relearn the forgotten art of being ordinary.

Crip and Henrietta aren't your typical California private eyes. For one thing, Crip's real name is Tom Bateman. His sometime sidekick with body piercings and spiked green hair, Henrietta, calls him "Crip" because he's in a wheelchair. When she isn't mocking him, Henrietta grows marijuana, hangs with jailbirds, and brings in cases that reek of trouble - and weed - at first sniff. In these episodes, we watch Crip and Henrietta's relationship grow as both characters struggle to bridge chasms of bitterness and mistrust.

While the hyper-partisanship in Washington that has stunned the world has been building for decades, Ira Shapiro argues that the US Senate has suffered most acutely from the loss of its political center. In Broken, Ira Shapiro, a former senior Senate staffer and author of the critically-acclaimed book The Last Great Senate, offers an expert's account of some of the most prominent battles of the past decade and lays out what must be done to restore the Senate's lost luster.

Sherlock Holmes reappears in London after a three-year absence, shocking Dr. Watson, who believed his good friend had been killed in a confrontation with Professor Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls. Holmes is compelled to outwit the “second most dangerous man in London” who has a good reason to hope for Holmes’ demise.