Showing results by narrator "Raj Ghatak" in All Categories

We begin with the footsteps of a family walking along a beach 950,000 years ago. From here, Montefiore takes us on an exhilarating epic journey through the families that have shaped our world: the Caesars, Medicis and Incas, Ottomans and Mughals, Bonapartes, Habsburgs and Zulus, Rothschilds, Rockefellers and Krupps, Churchills, Kennedys, Castros, Nehrus, Pahlavis and Kenyattas, Saudis, Kims and Assads.

Her eccentric and childless guardian, Mr. Penicuik, is leaving Kitty all of his vast fortune - but with one condition. She must marry one of his five grand-nephews. However, Kitty's clear favourite - the rakish Jack Westruther - doesn't appear at all interested in the arrangement. To make Jack jealous, Kitty impulsively convinces his cousin, the kind-hearted and chivalrous Freddy Standen, to enter into a pretend engagement. But the more time she spends with Freddy, the more Kitty wonders whether Jack is the right choice after all....

Why does it make sense to Ethiopian runners to get up at three a.m. to run up and down a hill? Who would choose to train on almost impossibly steep and rocky terrain, in hyena territory? And how come Ethiopian men hold six of the top 10 fastest marathon times ever? Michael Crawley spent 15 months in Ethiopia training alongside (and sometimes a fair way behind) runners at all levels of the sport, from night watchmen hoping to change their lives to world-class marathon runners, in order to answer these questions.

This groundbreaking book shows how to identify your own Unfair Advantages and apply them to any project. Drawing on over two decades of hands-on experience, including as the first Marketing Director of Just Eat (a startup now worth over £4 billion), the authors offer a unique framework for assessing your external circumstances in addition to your internal strengths. Hard work and grit aren't enough, so they explore the importance of money, intelligence, location, education, expertise, status and luck in the journey to success.

The final book in the best-selling Ibis trilogy from the author of Booker-shortlisted Sea of Poppies. It is 1839, and tension has been rapidly mounting between China and British India following the crackdown on opium smuggling by Beijing. With no resolution in sight, the colonial government declares war. One of the vessels requisitioned for the attack, the Hind, travels eastward from Bengal to China, sailing into the midst of the First Opium War.

In a world far from our own, where enemies come in many forms, the ultimate battle for survival continues.... Cade Carter has been chosen. In a realm of monsters and warriors, Cade is an unwilling contender in a deadly tournament controlled by the brutal alien overlord Abaddon. Cade may have won the first round but the fight isn't over yet. For his next battle he must duel a seven-foot-tall, clawed monster - the reigning champion of an alien race. Losing will lead to earth's destruction.

The fourth heart-stopping novel in James Patterson's Alex Cross series. Just as Alex Cross is beginning to feel that life is good and he is finally coming out of the depression he's been in since the death of his wife, he is called to Union Station train terminal - a man is on the loose, firing at random into the swarming crowds of travellers. Psychopath Gary Soneji seems determined to go down in a blaze of glory, and he wants Alex Cross to be there. Will this be the final showdown?

Michael Crawley immerses himself in various endurance cultures and asks what makes enduring together meaningful to people. He learns how Nepalese runners face different challenges depending on their location up a mountain, from those in the lowlands and ‘middle hills’ to Sherpas from the Solu Khumbu, and observes Tarahumara ultrarunners’ ability to cover extreme distances on highly technical terrain. But he also delves into the history of Dance Marathons, six-day pedestrianism races in Madison Square Gardens and the unique Enhanced Games.

Cade Carter is lost. Convicted of a crime he didn't commit, Cade is facing a year in reform school when he finds himself suddenly transported to another realm. But this new world is no escape. Populated by bloodthirsty prehistoric creatures and fierce warriors, Cade's surroundings are full of danger. Along with his fellow students, Cade is forced to become a contender in a deadly game of the highest stakes, controlled by invisible overlords. Who are these brutal rulers, and why did they choose Cade?

Cade has managed to survive the duel with the Hydra Alpha - barely. But the Games are far from over. By order of the cruel and mysterious alien overlord Abaddon, Cade and his friends are sent off to war against the Greys, a humanoid race that has far surpassed humans in technology on their home planet.

When Santosh Wagh isn’t struggling out of a bottle of whisky he’s head of Private India, the Mumbai branch of the world’s finest PI agency. In a city of over 13 million he has his work cut out at the best of times. But now someone is killing women - seemingly unconnected women murdered in a chilling ritual, with strange objects placed carefully at their death scenes.

An entertaining drama based on Nye Bevan’s race to create the new NHS by 5 July 1948. Getting Better is a roller coaster period drama based on real political events alongside the fictional story of front-line tears, trauma and triumph at The Park Hospital in Manchester. As Bevan faces up to the establishment in Parliament, Dr Eva Callaway faces the same challenges – facing poverty, sexism and homophobia in a system stuck in the past.

In the shadow of Mount Hood in the US Pacific Northwest, 16-year-old Tennant is checking rabbit traps with her eight-year-old sister, Sophie. The girls are suddenly overcome by a strange vibration rising out of the forest, building in intensity until it sounds like a deafening crescendo of screams. From out of nowhere, their father sweeps them up and drops them through a trapdoor into a storm cellar. But the noise only gets worse....

'Ma, I feel exhausted with consuming, with taking and grabbing and using. I am so bloated that I feel I cannot breathe any more. I am leaving to find some air, some place where I shall be able to purge myself, push back against the life given me and make my own. I feel I live in a borrowed house. It’s time to find my own… Forgive me…’ Calcutta, 1967. Unnoticed by his family, Supratik has become dangerously involved in extremist political activism.

Gathering pieces written between 2003 and 2020, including several never previously published, Languages of Truth chronicles a period of momentous cultural shifts. Across a wide variety of subjects, Rushdie delves into the nature of storytelling as a deeply human need, and what emerges is a love letter to literature itself. Throughout, Rushdie shares his personal encounters, on the page and in person, with storytellers from Shakespeare and Cervantes to Samuel Beckett, Eudora Welty, and Toni Morrison, and revels in the creative lines that can join art and life.

From the prize-winning author of West, a collision between old and new, east and west, in a former British hill station in contemporary South India. Fleeing the dark undercurrents of contemporary life in Britain, Hilary Byrd takes refuge in Ooty, a hill station in South India. There he finds solace in life's simple pleasures, travelling by rickshaw around the small town with his driver, Jamshed, and staying in a mission house beside the local presbytery where the Padre and his adoptive daughter, Priscilla, have taken Hilary under their wing.

We are on the brink of environmental catastrophe. Cutting emissions is essential but won't be enough. We also need to harness the power of nature, recognizing that the natural world is not only priceless, but has measurable economic value. Restoring biodiversity aided by technological and financial innovation will unlock environmental protections and economic benefits. The Case for Nature sets out with powerful clarity how protecting nature is both the right thing to do, and in our economic interests.

Up to 44 in every 1,000 adults suffer from a condition known as Generalised Anxiety Disorder. This is much more than the normal worrying we all do - it can be a debilitating disorder leading to significant personal and social problems and sometimes financial loss. Using established and proven CBT techniques, expert clinicians Kevin Meares and Mark Freeston help listeners to understand that it is their propensity to worry, not the multitude of problems they worry about, that is the root of the problem.

Fears and worries are very common among children, with around 15% thought to suffer from anxiety disorders, the most commonly identified emotional or behavioural problems among children. However, if left unchecked, they can cause more serious problems such as school avoidance, difficulties in making friends and long-term problems with anxiety and depression.

We like to think we know the story of how Britain went to war with Germany in 1939, but there is one part of the story that has never been told. It features a group of MPs who repeatedly spoke out against their party and their government's policy of appeasing Hitler and Mussolini. Remarkably, nearly all of them were gay or bisexual. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain hated them. He had them followed, harassed, spied upon and derided in the press and called them 'the glamour boys' in reference to their sexuality.