Showing results by narrator "The Raj" in All Categories

Meet Lady Toad, Mistress Badger, Miss Water Rat and Mrs Mole as they go about their adventures, messing around on the river, gallivanting in Lady Toad’s shiny new toy and fighting valiantly to save Toad Hall from unruly squatters. In this retelling by Dina Gregory, The Wind in the Willows becomes a story about a group of female animals to be admired for their close sisterhood and fierce independence. Featuring original music and songs by Rosabella Gregory and sound effects captured on location, put your headphones on, sit back and lose yourself in the British countryside.

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?

A ruthless serial killer stalks the streets of Mumbai, leaving behind a gruesome trail of tortured victims. As the city reels in terror, the authorities grapple with a vital question: what links these seemingly random targets?

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....

David hates school, where he has been bullied, has reached no friends. Music is the only thing that keeps him going. Inspired by his hero, Karl Williams, he becomes vegan, wears eyeliner and writes song lyrics. But one night onstage Karl Williams accuses Muslims of homophobia and is cancelled. Conflicted by his feelings for his favourite artist and compelled by the conversations he has while playing Call of Duty, David becomes fascinated by the far right's narratives of masculinity.

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.

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.

A vast and largely unseen transformation of how war is fought as profound as the invention of gunpowder or advent of the nuclear age is occurring. Flying cars that can land like helicopters, artificial intelligence-powered drones that can fly into buildings and map their interiors, microsatellites that can see through clouds and monitor rogue missile sites—all these and more are becoming part of America’s DIU-fast-tracked arsenal. Until recently, the Pentagon was known for its uncomfortable relationship with Silicon Valley and for slow-moving processes that acted as a brake on innovation.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Ramadan, 2017. Yusuf wakes up in the middle of the night to pray. His routine is always the same, but something tells him that tonight is different. Yellow flames blur Yusuf’s vision, and the laughter of a small child echoes in his ears. But this time, the red, smoke-filled skies aren’t just in his memory. Miles away, Rubi is also awake. On the television, she watches reports of a devastating fire in London. She is already anxious when her parents send her to stay with her Grandpa Yusuf, whose conservative house rules are almost as unbearable as the loneliness she feels at home.

England in the 14th Century. Twelve-year-old Robin’s world is turned upside down when his father, the Earl of Waringham, dies in disgrace. His inheritance lost and his family name dishonoured, the penniless Robin must begin a new life as a peasant on his own estate. He soon makes an enemy in Mortimer, the spoiled young son of the new Earl. As the years pass and the boys enter adulthood, Robin flees Waringham to seek his fortune abroad.

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.

At the age of 30, Robin is an Earl at last - but not the Earl of Waringham, the ancestral title that he still hopes to win back one day from the evil Mortimer. England has seen other changes too: Edward III is dead and his successor, the boy king Richard II, is at odds with his uncle, the Duke of Lancaster. The introduction of a hated new poll tax brings about one of the most dangerous episodes in English history and Robin finds himself embroiled in the Peasants’ Revolt.

Robin has made a powerful ally in the Duke of Lancaster. But he has made powerful enemies too: not only his childhood adversary Mortimer, but the sadistic knight Peter de Gray. Returning to England, he is awarded the fiefdom of Fernbrook in Lancashire, where he meets the beautiful noblewoman Joanna. But the wheel of fortune keeps turning and as the years pass Robin and his friends must face trials and tragedies: plague, war and political intrigue are never far away.

David Attenborough. Marcus Rashford. Diana Dors. Winston Churchill. Elizabeth David. Bob Geldof. Zaha Hadid. Frank Crichlow. Quentin Crisp. Dusty Springfield. Captain Tom. Who made modern Britain the country it is today? How do we sum up the kind of people we are? What does it mean to be the new Elizabethans? In this wonderfully told history, spanning back to when Queen Elizabeth became queen in 1953, Andrew Marr traces the people who have made Britain the country it is today.

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.