Showing results by narrator "Nicholas Bell" in All Categories

We are never really taught how to make sense of the torrent of news we face every day, writes Alain de Botton (author of the best-selling The Architecture of Happiness), but this has a huge impact on our sense of what matters and of how we should lead our lives. In his dazzling new book, de Botton takes twenty-five archetypal news stories - including an airplane crash, a murder, a celebrity interview and a political scandal - and submits them to unusually intense analysis with a view to helping us navigate our news-soaked age.

If meditation was available in capsule form, it would be the biggest selling drug of all time. It has been scientifically proven to deliver highly effective stress relief, boost our immune systems and dramatically slow the aging process. It has also been shown to make us much happier and more effective thinkers.

In The Romantic Movement, Alain de Botton explores the progress of a love affair from first meeting to breaking up, intercut with musings on the nature of art of love. The relationship between Alice, an advertising executive, and Eric, a banker, is examined at every stage, supplemented by quizzes and commentary by a chorus of great philosophers, from Descartes to Plato to Aretha Franklin. The Romantic Movement will charm listeners and lovers alike with wit, insight, and intelligence.

Holocaust survivor and American citzen Jossi Goldberg is found shot to death execution style in his house near Frankfurt. A five-digit number is scrawled in blood at the murder scene. The autopsy reveals an old tattoo on the corpse's arm--a blood type marker once used by Hitler's SS--causing detectives Pia Kirchhoff and Oliver Bodenstein to question his true identity. Two more murders reveal the connections between the victims.

One of the great, but often unmentioned, causes of both happiness and misery is the quality of our environment: the kind of walls, chairs, buildings, and streets we’re surrounded by. And yet a concern for architecture and design is too often described as frivolous, even self-indulgent. The Architecture of Happiness starts from the idea that where we are heavily influences who we can be - and argues that it is architecture’s task to stand as an eloquent reminder of our full potential.

Alexandra has returned to the world after her captivity and is left with a heady mix of emotions. Strangely empowered, her feelings of pleasure and exhilaration are tinged with fear, but now she must reconcile the decisions of her past and how they may determine her future. Alexandra knows it is she alone who holds the key to the answers so desperately sought by both her lover, Jeremy Quinn, and her captors.

Dr. Samuel Johnson observed that everyone's life is a subject worthy of the biographer's art. Accused by a former girlfriend of being unable to empathise, the narrator of Kiss & Tell takes Johnson's idea to heart and decides to write about the next person who walks into his life. He meets Isabel Rogers, a production assistant at a small stationery company in London, apparently an ordinary woman. But as the biographer's understanding of Isabel deepens, she becomes remarkable.

On a hot day in July, the body of a 16-year-old girl is pulled from the river Main near Frankfurt. She has been brutally attacked and murdered, but no one seems to miss her and no one seems to know who she is. Investigations lead to a rural children's home in the mountains, and to a TV presenter whose research took her too close to the wrong people. As investigators Pia Kirchhoff and Oliver von Bodenstein dig deeper, they uncover a pit of evil and cruelty in the midst of a middle class idyll.

Thousands of depressed little towns dot the vast plain where Cristiano Zena lives with his hard-drinking father, Rino. Unfocused urban sprawl with no centre to look to and nothing to look forward to. Rino Zena and his cronies, Danilo and Quattro Formaggi, are planning a ram raid on an ATM, using a converted tractor. The wary, adoring Cristiano sits in on their meetings, watching their half-baked plans unravel, and thinks about the unattainable Fabiana Ponticelli. He has no idea that something very, very bad is about to happen.

Set in North Africa and Sicily at the end of World War II, In the Wolf’s Mouth follows the Allies’ botched “liberation” attempts as they chased the Nazis north toward the Italian mainland. Focusing on the experiences of two young soldiers - Will Walker, an English field security officer, ambitious to master and shape events; and Ray Marfione, a wide-eyed Italian American infantryman - the novel contains some of the best battle writing of the past fifty years

Do you get stressed out behind the steering wheel? Would you like to transform your drive time into an opportunity to cultivate tranquility and calm? Dip into this selection of 10-minute mindfulness techniques and find the ones that best suit you.

Alain de Botton believes that philosophy can help people enjoy happier lives. And in his numerous best sellers, from Status Anxiety to The Art of Travel, his unique blend of erudition and self-help has reached an audience eager to listen. In On Seeing and Noticing, Alain de Botton takes everyday concerns such as expressing sadness or being romantic and dispenses advice and observations based on the works of some of history's greatest writers, artists and thinkers.

Life was going well for psychologist Alexandra Blake. Her career has taken off and she has been exploring her darkest sexual fantasies with her lover Jeremy Quinn. But her bliss is rudely interrupted when she is abducted in London, caught up in a dangerous struggle between unscrupulous corporations. Her captors want her to help them with their sexual experiments – pushing the boundaries of convention in the search for a drug to stimulate the female libido. But at what cost? How far will Alexandra be willing to go to satisfy her curiosity, both professional and personal?

This Christmas, Ann goes back home to Arlington, Texas, while juggling a big work pitch coming up next month, but an old fling may have a proposal of his own for her.

The Leader's Way takes leaders on a progressive path, first learning new techniques for themselves, then for their organizations, before applying them on a global scale to address such vital topics as poverty, sustainability, diversity, and environmental responsibility - all areas that are affected by the workings of the global marketplace.

They were never an obvious group of friends. Julian came from the most staid of county families. Jake's passage from unassuming suburbia to the dreaming spires of Oxford happened only by chance, and at great cost. And Adrienne, daughter of one of New York's wealthiest and most glamorous families, grew up more used to appearances in Vogue than to Oxford's cold and dusty lecture halls. When the three of them arrive at university, it is Julian's sister, Maggie, who brings them together.

John Anselm's a former Beirut hostage; a war correspondent who went to one war too many. A burnt-out case, he's working for a semi-legal Hamburg surveillance firm and trying to come to terms with his past. Then, into his life comes Con Niemand, ex-mercenary and professional survivor. Niemand has stumbled across evidence of a terrible secret and now he's on the run. Against his will, Anselm is plunged into a world of violence, betrayal and death.

Many people spend hours every day commuting to and from work. This time can be spent reading, listening to music, people-watching or it can just be a moment to relax and not worry about driving. But it's also the perfect opportunity to meditate, and reset yourself in preparation for what awaits at the end of the journey. In Cool, Calm and Commuted, the bestselling author of Buddhism for Busy People offers a series of meditative exercises to transform your commuting experience.

Two of the most popular titles in the best-selling Perfect series are here combined in one insightful audiobook, to help improve your confidence and help you relax. The Perfect series is a range of practical guides that give clear and straightforward advice on everything from getting your first job to choosing your baby's name. Written by experienced authors offering tried-and-tested tips, each book contains all you need to get it right first time.

A little girl wakes up to find she is a statue in a room in a grand house with only a tiger rug for company. Is anything the tiger says to be trusted? Is he a real tiger, a fake or a magic carpet? Is she really just a statue or is she bewitched - was she once turned to stone? Will she ever come to life? By turns comical and lugubrious, the tiger gives the little girl plenty of versions of the truth, but how will she decide what is true, and will it set her free?