Showing results by narrator "Steven Crossley" in All Categories

Three cell phones ring in an opulent London suite. The calls go unanswered, because their recipients are dead. Earlier that night, four old friends and lovers meet for a reunion dinner. Miko and Robert haven't seen each other in 10 years; Miko hates Robert for the money he's made with shady ethics. Unbeknownst to Miko, his wife, Veera, also slept with Robert the last time everyone was together. Robert's young trophy wife, Elise, has no old grudges to bear, but will be swept up in the murderous fray.

In The Last of All Possible Worlds, royalty, bankers, lovers, and wives intertwine to create a vivid portrait of Europe in the early 1900s. We meet wise and worldly Prince Sobieski, Vienna's ambassador in London, his enchanting wife, her English lover, and her enigmatic lifelong companion, Josefa. When Sobieski's illegitimate daughter makes a demand of her influential father, the unspoken rules of the family are challenged.

"The Chimes" focuses on Trotty, a poor elderly messenger who is filled with gloom over reports of crime and immorality in the newspapers. After losing faith in society, Trotty follows a call to the church bell tower, where he encounters goblins that teach him - and listeners - lessons in the form of visions about the mistreatment of the lower class in society. This story of social awakening inspires listeners to treat everyone with fair kindness.

Someone is trying to kill leading British Shakespearean actor, husband, father, ladies' man, and soon-to-be knight of the realm Winstanley Fortescue. The actor, rehearsing his starring role in the forthcoming play Serpent in the Heather, is conked on the head backstage. He falls off a ladder and lands on the resident pest-control officer, Montmorency D. Mousa (otherwise known as Monty), the company cat. When Fortescue comes to, he finds, to his horror, that he has become trapped in Monty's body.

Doug Perkins; his partner, Gerry; and their cat, Pandora, have one job to do: spin gaffes into gold. But this cozy little London PR agency - a better environment for Pandora than profits - is about to be involved in a disastrous affaire dentaire. Endicott Zayle, dentist to the rich and famous - as well as to Doug and Gerry - has a problem of royal proportions. He just killed a beautiful woman with an experimental anesthetic. Or did he?

A trip to London turns deadly...until a cat helps foil a nearly purrfect crime. Larkin's Luxury Tours Number 79 is a traveler's nightmare. The problems started in Zurich, when one of the group died under mysterious circumstances. Now the remaining tour members have landed in London, tight lipped, fearful, and ready to ask for their money back. It's up to Doug Perkins of PR firm Perkins and Tate to restore their spirits.

Doug Perkins doesn't dislike cats - he just isn't especially interested in them. But the struggling young London public relations firm Perkins and Tate can't afford to be choosy about the jobs they take. So when Doug is asked to do the PR for a glorified feline extravaganza called Cats Through the Ages, he doesn't hesitate. But it isn't long before he wishes he had hesitated. There are some very valuable cats on exhibit - even a few feline celebrities.

Two corpses. A country on the edge of a political precipice. A conspiracy so bold it would make Machiavelli wince. Andrew Marr's debut novel imagines what really might be going on behind the door of 10 Downing Street. When a young investigative reporter is found dead on the streets of London few people notice. But when another body - minus its head and hands - is washed up on the banks of the Thames, its grisly condition arouses a little more interest.

1814, London's Covent Garden entices rich and poor alike with a cocktail of gin, beer and sex. In the surrounding parishes a group of young men are found murdered, all of them wearing masks, all of them behind locked doors. Constable Charles Horton's investigation into these violent crimes begins at Thorpe Lee House in Surrey, where accusations of witchcraft have swept the village. What connects these broken London men, and a village awash with talk of burning witches?

Bill Buford spends a wild night in the park; Jonathan Safran Foer envisions it as a tiny, transplanted piece of a mythical Sixth Borough; and Marie Winn answers definitively Holden Caulfield's question of where the ducks go when the park's ponds freeze over. There are bird sightings and fish sightings; Jackie Kennedy and James Brown sightings; and pieces by Colson Whitehead, Paul Auster, and Francine Prose. This vibrant collection presents Central Park in all its many-faceted glory, a 51-block swath of special magic.

Central Park is perhaps the most well-trod and familiar green space in the country. It is both a refuge from the city and Manhattan's very heart; a respite from the urban grind and a hive of activity all its own. Eight hundred forty-three carefully planned acres allow some 37 million visitors each year to come and get lost in a sense of nature. Unsurprisingly, the park also inspires a wealth of great writing, and here Andrew Blauner collects some of the finest fiction and nonfiction - 20 pieces in all.

Trapped in a London laboratory during a worker uprising in 1924, ex-artillery officer and physics instructor Jeremy Tuft awakens 150 years later - in a neo-medieval society whose inhabitants have forgotten how to build or operate machinery. Not only have his fellow Londoners forgotten most of what humankind used to know, before civilization collapsed, but they don't particularly care to re-learn any of it. Though he is at first disconcerted by the failure of his own era's smug doctrine of Progress, Tuft eventually decides that post-civilized life is simpler, more peaceful.

Secret agent Mr. Adolph Verloc operates from a seedy Soho shop, where he deals in pornography and espionage. Idle, treacherous, and self-righteous, he makes the life of his wife, Winnie, one of silent misery. When Verloc is assigned to plant a bomb at Greenwich Observatory, his plans go terribly awry, and his family has to deal with the tragic repercussions of his actions. Joseph Conrad's dark satire on English society, while rooted in the Edwardian period, remains strikingly contemporary.

Sebastian, the alchemist's son, must face a new evil. An old enemy, a magician whose power lies in stealing souls, has reappeared in a new and cunning disguise. He is using an ancient spell book to bring about a terror beyond imagining. Once again, Pip and Tim brave sorcery and danger to help Sebastian as he pursues his enemies through the centuries.

Julia hasn't seen her husband, Max, for almost a year - but he's just walked through the door of their home looking as breathtaking as ever. Max has come to make things right with his beloved Julia. However, a lot can happen in a year, and Max hasn't bargained on meeting two surprise little twin girls. Now Max has two weeks to prove he can be a wonderful husband and father....

Larry Zagorski spins wild tales of fantasy worlds for pulp magazines. But as the Second World War hangs in the balance, the lines between imagination and reality are starting to blur. The truth is stranger than anything Larry could invent. But when he looks back on the 20th century, the past is as uncertain as the future. Just where does truth end and illusion begin?

Acclaimed biographer Carolly Erickson brings history vibrantly to life with her powerful flesh-and-blood portrait of Charles Stuart, the Young Pretender to the British throne. Courageously attempting to conquer England, this significant figure in Scottish history divides the troubled British kingdom and disturbs decadent monarchies throughout the entire European continent.

Livingstone's first book revolutionized the way European readers saw Africa and made him a hero in England. He returned again to the Zambesi with his brother Charles and others, this time with more equipment and funds. Again he faced hippopotami, crocodiles, impossible terrain, and disease, but his greatest enemies on this trip prove to be human. The British eventually lost faith in the expedition, but Livingstone proved in the end to have had tremendous foresight.

Life has been difficult for 10-year-old Colley Trevelyan ever since he lost his mother and father in a fatal carriage accident. Most of the servants have been dismissed, and the house feels empty. To make matters worse, soon he will be living with his aunt and uncle who have never liked him. One night he suddenly wakes up wrapped tightly in a rough blanket. As he struggles to free himself, a strange man carries him to a waiting carriage.

In a Parisian restaurant Aleister Crowley, the notorious occultist, chances on Major-General Sir Hector McDonald, who is facing ruin in a shocking scandal, and vulnerable to Crowley's curious offer of help. Follow this unlikely pair on an extraordinary night of revelation and transgression. Be transported to the battlefields of Sudan, the backstreets of Edinburgh, and the sultry tropics of Ceylon. And discover Sir Hector's tragic secret....