Showing results by narrator "William Hope" in All Categories

An interstellar craft is decelerating after its century-long voyage. Its destination is V538 Aurigae, a now-empty planet dominated by one gigantic megastructure, a conical mountain of such height that its summit is high above the atmosphere. The ship's crew of five hope to discover how the long-departed builders made such a colossal thing, and why: a space elevator? a temple? a work of art? Its resemblance to the mountain of purgatory lead the crew to call this world Dante.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton's book is ostensibly a work of Science Fiction. It deals with an underground race of advanced beings, masters of Vril energy - a strange power that can both heal and destroy - who intend to leave their subterranean existence and conquer the world. But the book has been seen by many as a barely concealed account of Hidden Wisdom, a theory that has attracted many strange bed-fellows, including the French author Louis Jacolliot, the Polish explorer Ferdinand Ossendowsky, and Adolf Hitler.

It is fall, 2000, and Frank Bascombe has arrived at a state of optimistic pragmatism that he calls the Permanent Period of life. Epic mistakes have already been made, dreams downsized, and Frank reflects that now at least there are fewer opportunities left in life to get things wrong. But the tranquillity he anticipated is not to be. In fact, as Thanksgiving dinner with his children and first wife nears, the Permanent Period proves as full of possibility as life had ever been.

Frank Bascombe, in the aftermath of his divorce and the ruin of his career, has entered an 'Existence Period' - selling real estate in New Jersey and mastering the high-wire act of normalcy. But over one Fourth of July weekend, Frank is called into sudden, bewildering engagement with life. Independence Day is a moving, peerlessly funny odyssey through America and through the layered consciousness of one of its most compelling literary incarnations, conducted by a novelist of extraordinary perception.

Mack Malloy, ex-cop, not-quite ex-drunk, and partner on the wane in one of the country's most high-powered law firms. A longtime ally of the wayward, Mack is on the trail of a colleague, his firm's star litigator, who has vanished with more than $5 million of a client's money. Soon Mack will descend into the enthralling and ominous heart of a city on his final desperate and courageous crusade to reinvent himself from the depths of his own shattered soul....

When you don't know The Rules it's hard to stay safe. After a traumatic incident, Aster finds that her blood work comes back with some unusual readings. Unsurprising, as she's the last of an alien race called the Kibsu. But Aster doesn't know this. Immediately, Aster finds herself the focus of a hunt, with her mortal enemies, the Trackers, on one side, and the American government on the other. There seems to be nowhere she can run. But help often comes from the most unexpected quarter.

In 1962, when mild-mannered actuary Walter Cousins sleeps with the sharp-tongued, not-quite-legal British au pair Diane Burroughs, he can have no sense of the magnitude of his error. For the brief affair sets in motion a tragedy of epic proportions. At the centre is Ed King, an infant given up for adoption who becomes one of the richest and most powerful men. But beneath the gripping story of Ed's seemingly inexorable rise to fame and fortune is a dark and unsettling destiny.

On the way from LA to Stockholm, a Boeing 777 carrying over 200 passengers disappears without a trace. No impact location is found. It is believed to a terrorist attack. Thana "Monty" Montgomery is one of the experts called in to investigate, together with ex-agent Henry Jäger and an expert from NASA, Dr. Hyman. How could they know that they would be investigating on another planet? Now they must not only stay alive, but also find a way back to earth to warn humanity of the most evil enemy the universe has encountered.

In 2008, almost two decades after the Cold War was officially consigned to the history books, an average American guy helped to bring down a top Russian spy based at the United Nations. He had no formal espionage training. Everything he knew about spying he'd learned from books, films, video games and TV. And yet, he ended up at the centre of a highly successful counterintelligence operation that targeted Russian espionage in America.

An acclaimed classic detailing the economic history of America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and exposing the capitalist giants who changed the world. Frederick Lewis Allen’s insightful financial history of the United States - from the late 1800s through the stock market collapse of 1929 - remains a seminal work on what brought on America’s worst economic disaster: the Great Depression.

A few years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, spook-turned-novelist Edwin Lemaster reveals to young journalist Bill Cage that he’d once considered spying for the enemy. For Cage, a fan who grew up as a Foreign Service brat in the very cities where Lemaster set his plots, the story creates a brief but embarrassing sensation. More than two decades later, Cage, by then a lonely, disillusioned PR man, receives an anonymous note hinting that he should have dug deeper. The note is the first of many literary bread crumbs that soon lead him back to Vienna, Prague and Budapest in search fo the truth, even as the events of Lemaster’s past eerily – and dangerously – begin intersecting with those of his own.

It's 1989, and Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom is far from restful. Harry is 56 and overweight, and he has a struggling business on his hands and a heart that is starting to fail. His family, too, are giving him cause for concern. His son, Nelson, is a wreck of a man, a cocaine addict with shattered self-respect. Janice, his wife, has decided that she wants to be a working girl. And as for Pru, his daughter-in-law, she seems to be sending out signals to Rabbit that he knows he should ignore but somehow can't.

Based on a series of pathbreaking lectures given at Yale University in 2012, this powerful, thought-provoking work by national best-selling author Cass R. Sunstein combines legal theory with behavioral economics to make a fresh argument about the legitimate scope of government, bearing on obesity, smoking, distracted driving, health care, food safety, and other highly volatile, high-profile public issues.

Sixteen-year-old Amanda McCready has disappeared. Her anxious aunt contacts Patrick Kenzie to investigate. It is not the first time she has gone missing, as Patrick well knows - he was the investigator who worked on her case when she was kidnapped before, as a four-year-old.But this is not a simple case of a runaway girl.

In the 2008 US election, many Americans believed Barack Obama was a Muslim. The conspiracy theory book 9/11: The Big Lie has become a best seller. Hearsay has fuelled economic boom and bust - so much so that in many places it's now a crime to circulate false rumours about banks. Why do ordinary people accept rumours, even untrue, bizarre or damaging ones? Does it matter? And, if so, what should we do about it? As Cass Sunstein shows in his brilliant analysis of the phenomenon, there are many different ways in which rumours are dispersed.

Corey Grace - a handsome and charismatic Republican senator from Ohio - is plunged by an act of terrorism into a fierce presidential primary battle with the favorite of the party establishment and a magnetic leader of the Christian right. A decorated Gulf War pilot, Grace insists on voting his own conscience rather than the party line, and this stubborn independence—together with his growing romance with Lexie Hart, an African-American movie star.

Jefferson Winter is no ordinary investigator. The son of one of America's most renowned serial killers, Winter has spent his life trying to distance himself from his father's legacy.When he accepts a particularly disturbing case in London, Winter arrives to find a psychopath on the loose who likes abducting and lobotomising young women. Winter must use all his preternatural brain power in order to work out who is behind the attacks, before another young woman becomes a victim.

Australia brings to mind images of the Great Barrier Reef, great white sharks, huge crocodiles, and friendly people. Zane Grey fished everywhere, but he often found himself lured back to the Pacific, especially around Australia and New Zealand. Most of the fish caught in An American Angler in Australia are sharks: great white, tiger, and even a few carpet sharks. But Zane Grey found that one can't go big game fishing in Australia and not expect to be teased by marlins.

Frank Baltimore is a bit of a loser, struggling by as a carpenter and handyman in rural New England when he gets his big break, building a mansion in the executive suburbs of Hartford. One of his workers is a charismatic 18-year-old kid from Liverpool, Dmitry, in the US in the summer before university. Dmitry is a charming sociopath, who develops a fascination with his autodidactic philosopher boss, perhaps thinking that, if he could figure out what made Frank tick, he could be less of a pig.

A collection of radio readings of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fiction - plus two bonus programmes. Over the years the BBC has broadcast readings of many of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels, novellas and short stories. This collection includes some of his most famous works alongside various lesser-known tales, including three 'lost stories' (first published in 2017 and with an introduction written by editor Anne Margaret Daniel).