Showing results by narrator "Simon Mattacks" in All Categories

Sir Alex Ferguson CBE, born 31st December 1941, is a former Scottish football player and was manager of Manchester United from 1986 to 2013. During his 26 years in charge of United, he won more trophies than any other manager in the history of football. Packed with nearly 80 entertaining and exclusive interviews from those who know Ferguson best - friends, colleagues, associates and those who worked with him at both Aberdeen and Manchester United share their unique insight into the innermost secrets of Ferguson’s fascinating life and hugely successful career.

A celebration of individuality, diversity, and nonconformity, On Liberty still makes a persuasive argument for what John Stuart Mill believed to be humankind’s essential liberties: the freedoms of speech, assembly, and the pursuit of pleasure, so long as one’s actions do not impede the liberty of another. These freedoms, he maintained, result in a far more successful society than one ruled by the tyranny of the majority. This treatise on personal liberty has inspired debate since its publication in 1859, and has provided the foundation for modern liberal political thought.

Seth was a priest. He served for 10 years and 163 days. Then he decided to die. Beginning with his bungled suicide attempt, Faithless charts the incidents within Seth's ministry that led him to that point. From dealing with a cult leader to performing exorcisms in haunted houses, Seth has seen the unimaginable. He has escaped from the clutches of a man who showed signs of being possessed and helped rebuild families after unthinkable tragedy.

The festive season is in full swing - parties, champagne and Christmas crackers abound. You're having a breather at the hotel bar when a stunning young woman catches your eye. Could she really be interested in you? She flutters her eyelashes and takes your hand. Her Christmas party dress glitters with sequins. What you don't know is that your life is now in her hands - as she leads you up to her room there's only one thing that will determine whether you live or die. Are you a good person? Are you really?

Helmand, 2004: Afghanistan’s most lawless province, where nearly 90 per cent of the world’s opium is grown. Gangsters and warlords battle for supremacy in the lucrative trade, territories well-known, and fiercely contested. Well Diggers, an Anglo-Dutch NGO helping the farming community, comes under attack. One man is dead and another man is missing – suspected kidnapped, so head of security Ginger Jameson calls in his old friend Alasdair ‘Mac’ MacKenzie to help.

Princess of Troy, sister of Hector and Paris, Priestess of Apollo. Blessed by the Sun God with the gift of prophecy, and then - for rejecting his advances - cursed by him to never be believed. Diomenes, the enemy Achaean with the healing hands, and Cassandra become puppets of the gods. Their passions are thwarted, their gifts rendered useless for the sake of a wager between two immortals. And now doomed, magnificent Troy is burning. If Cassandra and Diomenes find each other, can their love survive the games of malicious gods, victorious warriors and hated kings?

Art expert Emma Lindhal is anxious when she's asked to appraise the antiques in the infamous manor house of one of Sweden's wealthiest families, on the island of Storholmen, where a young woman was murdered nine years earlier, her killer never found. As she goes about her painstaking work and one shocking discovery yields clues that lead to another, Emma becomes determined to uncover the secrets of the house and its occupants. When the lifeless body of another young woman is found in the icy waters surrounding the island, Detective Karl Rosén arrives to investigate.

It's never going to be you. Then one day you hear the clatter of automatic fire at the mall. You have been drawn into the chaos and terror of an active shooter event. What do you do? Who do you turn to? Be a Hero is the essential guide to terrorist attacks that will help you survive. Former Special Air Service terror expert John Geddes will explain how to cope with a life-threatening event.

At the peak of her career as lead singer of a legendary 1980s indie band, Meredith Vincent was driven off the international stage by a horrific incident. Now living a quiet existence in a cottage on the grounds of an old stately home, she has put her past behind her and come to terms with her new life. When a body is found in the manicured gardens of her home, and a series of inexplicable and unsettling events begin to occur, it becomes clear that someone is watching, someone who knows who she is…. Someone who wants vengeance.

Hollywood vs. The Author is a collection of non-fiction anecdotes by authors who’ve had the pleasure of experiencing the development room firsthand - some who have successfully managed to straddle the two worlds, seeing their works morph into the kinds of feature films and TV shows that make them proud, and others who stepped blindsided into that room after selling their first or second novels. All the stories in this collection illustrate the great divide between the world of literature and the big or small screen.

The call comes in the early hours. Human remains have been discovered in a suitcase, dumped on the muddy banks of the River Thames. Detective Jack MacIntosh races to the scene. The suitcase contains a human torso, two arms and two legs. It's the body of a young girl. But where is her head? Then a skull is found embedded in the silt of the riverbed. But it doesn't belong to the body in the case. As the river offers up more of its gruesome secrets, Jack uncovers a tangled web of shocking secrets stretching back 20 years.

Nicole Sutton’s world has been turned upside down. Sixteen and suffering the fallout of a devastating family tragedy, she is forced to move away from her London home to the quiet town of Henley - and a new life she never wanted nor expected. In the dusty cellar of her strange new house, Nicole stumbles upon a worn old journal left behind by a previous occupant. Inside, through the eyes of a soldier named Mac, she finds herself drawn into a brutally honest memoir of the horrors of war and Auschwitz - and of the life and love Mac had to leave behind.

Zoe knows that it wasn't really her fault. Of course it wasn't. But if she'd just grasped harder, run faster, lunged quicker, she might have saved him. And Edward doesn't really blame her, though his bitter words at the time still haunt her, and he can no more take them back than she can halt the car that killed their son. Two years on, every day is a tragedy. Edward knows they should take healing steps together, but he's tired of being shut out. For Zoe, it just seems easier to let grief lead the way.

Like any mother, Chrissie wants to protect her family. She would do anything to keep them safe. So when a mysterious stranger turns up at her door, offering to prevent the deaths of the people she loves, it sounds too good to be true. The only problem: she must choose someone to die in their place. A substitute. When her daughter Holly has a terrible accident, Chrissie has no option but to enter the programme. In that horrifying moment, she would do anything to save her.

Out-of-work actor Harriet is recuperating from a crash-and-burn affair with Damian - aka ‘Cockweasel’ - and making ends meet as a barista when she meets two rather lovely men. Tom is a regular at the café, and seems like such a nice guy. Smooth-talking DJ Richard is older, but in great shape - a real silver fox. Deciding to take a chance on both of them, Harriet doesn’t realise at first that she is actually dating father and son.

Time to Heal tells the story of the colourful life of a country doctor towards the end of his career. In turn shocking, sad and funny, it describes a doctor who feels poorly served by the conventional medicine of his time and finds new ways to relieve the suffering of his patients. This tale has a twist. Twenty-first-century general practice and its patients have been betrayed by top-heavy regulation, performance management and a blame culture. Young doctors no longer want to enter general practice. The author explores why and how pandemics might provide the answers.

In a world rife with willful chaos, how can order be restored? Philosopher Thomas Hobbes’s answer, composed amid the violence of the English Civil War, revolutionized political thought. His solution was a commonwealth, or Leviathan, a body politic ruled and protected by an absolute sovereign. Its power would be dependent on the people to exchange their freedom for the security and order of a common law. Only with this social contract, Hobbes argued, can civil peace be established.

The flame-haired virago bearing down on Ross MacKenna was far too shapely to be a seasoned warrior, but she was just as deadly. As she engaged him on the battlefield, Ross knew her for a MacKay, long-time enemies of his clan. What he didn’t know was that she would soon be his wife, given to him by her father in a desperate effort to end generations of feuding.

Phobia is a series of five DS Jason Smith cases he worked on before we met him in the first book, Smith. We get insights into what molded him into the detective sergeant we first get a glimpse of in Smith. Smith quickly realizes that police work isn't always cut and dry. Justice is not always black and white; there are many shades of gray in between.

Organizational structures are ineffective when they do not delineate and define accountabilities. Brian Dive focuses upon the implications of clear accountability for leadership, with an in-depth analysis of “distributed leadership” - a concept neglected in the leadership literature to date. Dive explores the relationship between leadership, accountability, and organizational structure. He argues that the majority of leadership-related problems arise not from ineffective individuals but from organizational structures that lack accountable jobs.