Showing results by narrator "Nigel Patterson" in All Categories

The Norman Conquest in English History, Volume 1: A Broken Chain? pursues a central theme in English historical thinking over seven centuries. Covering more than half a millennium, this first volume explains how and why the experience of the Norman Conquest prompted both an unprecedented campaign in the early 12th century to write (or create) the history of England, and to excavate (and fabricate) pre-Conquest English law.

Recent elections in the advanced Western democracies have undermined the basic foundations of political systems that had previously beaten back all challenges - from both the left and the right. The election of Donald Trump to the US presidency, only months after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, signaled a dramatic shift in the politics of the rich democracies. In Anti-System Politics, Jonathan Hopkin traces the evolution of this shift and argues that it is a long-term result of abandoning the post-war model of egalitarian capitalism in the 1970s.

When the Bloodmoon rose, death came rushing into the world. Now the water is bitter, blight consumes everything, and the Crone haunts the hills. While the Druid of Blackthorn searches desperately for hope, the Ovate returns from the underworld bringing omens of despair. But Idris, the young bard, Keeper of the Sacred Word, will walk through fire and iron to uncover a question no one has ever dared to ask - a question that carries a world of answers on its back, a question that can change everything.

Rose and her giant, simple son, Poe, live quietly on the fringes of their town - tending their goats and working at odd jobs. Prosper Thorne, banished from his big-city law practice and worrying about his fading memory, obsessively watches over his beloved daughter Miranda. When Poe erupts from the forest one day carrying Miranda's bruised and bloody body, he is arrested, despite his protestations of get help-get help-get help.

When Adam is retained to confirm the veracity of a young heiress' family tree, it sounds like the simple case he needs to break the monotony of life on a Mediterranean island. But it soon becomes clear that others wish to stake a claim to the girl's fortune, sponsored by an organization with one foot in the occult. And something as inconvenient as a private investigator will not stand in their way.

Adam Park owes favors, and when an aid worker is murdered on the Greek island of Paramatra, one such favor is called in. Kai Pace's parents believe the investigation into their son's death is deeply flawed, and Adam is tasked with reviewing the police's conclusions and - if found wanting - identifying the real killer. On an island struggling to cope with the influx of refugees from war zones across the Mediterranean, Adam must battle corruption and ruthless smuggling gangs.

When medical malpractice leads to violent revenge, Irish-style.... Kieran Kelly's world turns upside down when his wife's health is devastated by an epidural in childbirth. Incensed by damning evidence of medical and pharmaceutical misconduct, the tormented former IRA hit man plots revenge against those he deems responsible, including a government that doesn't seem to care. Kelly's quest brings him face-to-face with an alcoholic physician, an altruistic scientist, and a corrupt government minister.

Crime reporter Mark Edwards and his colleague Danielle Green wade deep in red herrings and a twisting and turning plot as they seek to discover the terrible secret of a Nazi sadist who has continued his murdering ways in modern London. The story switches from a wartime transit camp in Czechoslovakia to contemporary Germany; from a London suburb to the Old Bailey, the world's most famous criminal court, where two men strive to claim that the other is the real Hans Schreiber.

Seriously Mum, What's an Alpaca? is the frank and charming story of a brave couple who risk everything to move to Spain to breed alpacas. Their intention is to make a living, but first they must negotiate their way through the Spanish property market, local characters, rogue builders and the worst weather Andalucía has seen for 100 years.

Alan and Lorna experience the joy, but also the heartbreak of alpaca breeding, picking up an assortment of stray animals on the way.

Everyone in Oldtown had heard talk of the Reapers. Even though nobody had seen one in years, everyone whispered the tales: flying from rooftop to rooftop, stealing the souls of the unwary, letting their undead beasts hunt through the streets for any member of the community too reckless or fearless to heed the nightly curfew ... mysterious and terrifying, most feared to even mention them by name, lest they appear and gather your spirit away.

Sergeant Jacob Knox leads the Head Knockers, a unit of scout-saboteurs in the war against the Dread Duke and his armies. They are the favorite squad among Captain Brighton's Stormwalkers, until an ambush by shapeshifters kills the Captain, half the company, and Knox's best men. Now the new Captain has new orders: he's sending the Head Knockers to investigate an abandoned village, the possible source of the attack.

We are all familiar with the "march of progress," the representation of evolution that depicts a series of apelike creatures becoming progressively taller and more erect before finally reaching the upright human form. Its emphasis on linear progress has had a decisive impact on public understanding of evolution, yet the image contradicts modern scientific conceptions of evolution as complex and branching.

As the world recently commemorated the hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, our fascination with the pharaoh begs for a balanced view. Most recovered mummies have not escaped the modern trafficking in ancient bodies and body parts. The story of Ankh-Hap, a Ptolemaic-era mummy seized in the nineteenth century from the infamous mummy-pits of Egypt, provides a salutary example of what most mummies have endured.

Awakening to China's Rise provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of how Europe's major powers have responded to the re-emergence of China as a great power in world politics since the end of the Cold War. To do so, it puts forward a unique cross-regional comparison of how the major European powers (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom) have confronted Chinese assertiveness both in the Asia-Pacific and in Europe.

This book tells the stories of the Muslims, Christians, Jews and others who made a courageous stand against the mass slaughter of Ottoman Armenians in 1915, the first modern genocide. Foreigners and Ottomans alike ran considerable risks to bear witness and rescue victims, sometimes sacrificing their lives. Diplomats, humanitarians, missionaries, lawyers and other visitors to the Empire stood up, including Tolstoy's daughter, Alexandra; Raphael Lemkin, the jurist who first established genocide as an international crime; and the polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen.