Showing results by narrator "Steven Crossley Crossley" in All Categories

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.

Oscar Wilde’s classic story of a young man who sells his soul in exchange for eternal beauty and youth continues to thrill generations of readers. Written by a man who was every bit as flamboyant and unconventional as its hero, The Picture of Dorian Gray is as haunting today as when it first shocked the British public in 1891. Dorian Gray, young, intelligent, sophisticated, gazes on his freshly painted portrait.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

The birth of the Royal Air Force marked a pivotal moment in military history. World War I was frozen in the bloody stalemate of trench warfare, which gave strategic urgency to any means of directly attacking enemy resources and morale. The new technologies of air power held promise, and by 1917 German bombers had begun attacking British cities.

There have been numerous books about the why, when, and where of slavery in America, but there is a dearth of material exposing what slavery was actually like. In The Great Stain, researcher Noel Rae frames firsthand accounts from former slaves, slave owners, and even African slavers. Rae exposes the commerce and culture of slavery, not only from an economic or moral standpoint but also through multitudinous perspectives within it: a young girl is beaten after being accused of stealing a piece of candy, a slave ship's surgeon recounts brutal treatment and squalid conditions.

The year is 2024, and the residents of the Tower, a virus-proof apartment building, live in a state of permanent lockdown. The building is controlled by James, who keeps the residents safe but incarcerated. Behind bricked-up front doors, their every need is serviced; they are pampered but remain prisoners. This suits Eugene just fine. Ravaged by the traumas of his past, the agoraphobic ex-detective has no intention of ever setting foot outside again.

Though best known for the fictional cases of his creation Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle was involved in dozens of real life cases, solving many and zealously campaigning for justice in all. Stanford thoroughly and convincingly makes the case that the details of the many events Doyle was involved in, and caricatures of those involved, would provide Conan Doyle the fodder for many of the adventures of the violin-playing detective.

Great battles mark history's turning points, occurring as they do where cultures and ideologies clash. While some battles have been won by the superior force, others have been won by a sheer dogged refusal to surrender in the face of overwhelming odds. All the great battles in this book are pivotal in history: if any one of them had gone the other way, the world would have been a very different place.

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.

Eleven-year-old Amelia Fairwick is eagerly waiting for her widowed father to return from his business trip. But a letter arrives with shattering news - Papa has been lost in a terrible hotel fire. Now Amelia must leave her London home to live in America with a relative she has never met. Amelia thinks things can’t get much worse when stern Cousin Charlotte travels with her on the voyage across the Atlantic. Amelia must stay alone in the cabin, talking to no one. But the day the ship arrives in New York City is worst of all....

The first in a new series of classic detective stories from the vaults of HarperCollins involves a disappearing corpse, a supernatural theory, and a genuinely shocking finale. The Detective Story Club, launched by Collins in 1929, was a clearing house for the best and most ingenious crime stories of the age, chosen by a select committee of experts. Now, almost 90 years later, these books are the classics of the Golden Age, republished at last with the same popular cover designs that appealed to their original readers.

Before Isaac Newton became the father of physics, an accomplished mathematician, or a leader of the scientific revolution, he was a boy living in an apothecary's house, observing and experimenting, recording his observations of the world in a tiny notebook. As a young genius living in a time before science as we know it existed, Isaac studied the few books he could get his hands on, built handmade machines, and experimented with alchemy.