Showing results by narrator "Matt Addis" in All Categories

Science starts to get interesting when things don'’t make sense. Even today, there are experimental results that the most brilliant scientists can neither explain nor dismiss. In the past, similar anomalies have revolutionised our world: in the 16th century, a set of celestial irregularities led Copernicus to realise that the Earth goes around the sun and not the reverse. In 13 Things That Don'’t Make Sense, Michael Brooks meets thirteen modern-day anomalies that may become tomorrow'’s breakthroughs.

Why do you lose arguments with people who know MUCH LESS than you? Why can you recognise that woman, from that thing...but can't remember her name? And why, after your last break-up, did you find yourself in the foetal position on the sofa for days, moving only to wipe the snot and tears haphazardly from your face? Here's why: the idiot brain. For something supposedly so brilliant and evolutionarily advanced, the human brain is pretty messy, fallible and disorganised.

Published to mark the 30th anniversary of the financial revolution known as Big Bang, Crash Bang Wallop tells the gripping story of how the changes introduced in the 1980s in the City of London transformed our world. Attitudes to money and the way we measure value and status were completely reshaped by Big Bang, and it had an extraordinary impact on politics, on style, on technology, on the class system, on questions of public ownership, and on the geography of London.

When we come up against stressful situations in our everyday life, our automatic reaction is to turn away and escape. If, on the other hand, we can accept stress, allow it to become part of us, the conflict disappears. The secret lies in seeing that either we are the no-thing that overcomes stress by excluding it or the every-thing that overcomes stress by including it. This method of coping with stress applies to its many manifestations in our lives. It can turn boredom into joy and despondency into deep contentment.

Endowed with rank, wealth and elegance, Sylvester, Duke of Salford, posts into Wiltshire to discover if the Honorable Phoebe Marlow will meet his exacting requirements for a bride. If he does not expect to meet a tongue-tied stripling wanting both manners and conduct, then he is intrigued indeed when his visit causes Phoebe to flee her home. They meet again on the road to London, where her carriage has come to grief in the snow. Yet Phoebe, already caught in one imbroglio, now knows she soon could be well deep in another.... 

The people of Perizzi have survived the battlemage war, but their future is looking darker than ever.... Byrne is a member of the Watch, investigating a series of murders. Fray's expertise with magic is needed to catch the killer, but working with the Watch destroyed his father years before. Choss is a champion fighter trying to diffuse a war in the underworld. Katja is a spy from a foreign land attempting to prevent a massacre that will topple two dynasties.

The death of Adam Penhallow on the eve of his birthday seems, at first, to be by natural causes. He was elderly after all. But Penhallow wasn't well liked. He had ruled over his estate with an iron will and a sharp tongue. He had played one relative off against another. He was so bad tempered and mean that both his servants and his family hated him. It soon transpires that far from being a peaceful death, Penhallow was, in fact, murdered.

It is a complete mystery why anyone would choose to murder the trusted old butler of Norton Manor. Barrister-turned-amateur-detective Frank Amberley has reason to suspect that the shooting involves the nervy young lady discovered at the scene of the crime, a snooping gentleman in the halls of Greythorne and then a second dead body. 

Flash crashes. Speed dating. Instant messaging. From the devices we carry to the lives we lead, everything is getting faster, faster. But where did this great acceleration come from? And where will it lead? In this vitally important new audiobook, Robert Colvile explains how the cult of disruption in Silicon Valley, the ceaseless advance of technology and our own fundamental appetite for novelty and convenience have combined to speed up every aspect of daily life.

On a quiet seafront in the middle of the afternoon the sun sets, the clouds part and something like a pale, elongated human figure appears on the horizon. For Maria, watching from the beach, it’s proof that she should never have dared to return. Five years earlier, her life shattered by the arrival of the Stone Man, she’d fled the country. But now she can’t escape: suddenly, there are news reports of ‘Empty Men’ materialising all around the coast, and the roads are gridlocked. The Empty Men are killers, and they’re heading inland.

At three o'clock in the morning, Emergency receives a call. 'This is Zara Fanshawe. Always lost and never found.' An hour later, the wayward celebrity's Rolls Royce Phantom is found abandoned in dingy Becket Street. The paparazzi go wild. For some reason, news of Zara's disappearance prompts homeless woman Lena Wójcik to search the camps, nervously, for the bad-tempered vagrant known as 'Waitrose', a familiar sight in Oxford pushing his trolley of possessions. But he's nowhere to be found either.

The year is 1794. A young nobleman, Eric Three Roses, languishes in hospital. Some think he would be just at home in the madhouse across the road. Ridden with guilt, he spends his nights writing down memories of his lost love who died on their wedding night. Her mother also mourns her, and when no one listens to her suspicions, she begs the aid of the only person who will listen: Jean Mickel Cardell, the one-armed watchman.

When Sir Geoffrey’s unpopular brother, Henry, is murdered, he unwillingly inherits Goodrich Castle in the Welsh Marches. Immediately, his sister pushes him towards a marriage that will provide an heir and stability for the family. But when Geoffrey survives attempts on his own life, he wonders whether they are linked to Henry’s death, to his potential brides, or even to the rumoured murder of the Duchess of Normandy, as a Welsh revolt against the English looms.

Strange dealings are afoot in the Apostolic Palace - a nun leapt to her death shortly after participating in a seemingly routine exorcism. But when a priest clad in Gammarelli and a Vatican Commissario with an almost unholy level of sex appeal turn up at her door, Poldi is shocked to hear that she's a suspect in their case. Who is the woman being exorcised, and where has she disappeared to? And why in the world does she claim, in perfect Bavarian, to be Poldi, Isolde Oberreiter, of Torre Achirafari?

The Priory may look ramshackle in appearance, but Peter, Margaret and Celia are totally charmed by their newly inherited country house. But there's more to The Priory than meets the eye. Left empty for years, hardly a single person has set foot inside, and down in the village, the locals whisper of a ghostly figure that roams the halls. When a murder is committed, the new owners start to fear the rumours are true - but is their new home really haunted, or is someone trying to scare them away?

When Gregory Matthews, patriarch of the Poplars, is found dead one morning, imperious Aunt Harriet blames it on the roast duck he ate for supper. After all, she had warned him about his blood pressure. But a post-mortem determines that the cause of death is much more sinister. Murder. By poison. Suspicion falls immediately amongst his bitter, quarrelsome family. Each has a motive; each, opportunity. It falls to Superintendent Hannasyde to sift through all the secrets and lies and discover just who killed Gregory Matthews, before the killer strikes again....

Paris, 1943. The swastika flies from the top of the Eiffel Tower. Soldiers clad in field grey patrol the streets. Buildings have been renamed, books banned, art stolen and people disappeared. Amongst the missing is an Allied intelligence cell. Gone to ground? Betrayed? Dead? Britain's Special Operations Executive need to find out. They recruit ex-Parisian and Bletchley Park codebreaker Harry Mitchell to return to the city he fled two years ago. 

December 1938. Moscow. Josef Stalin has lost some gold. He is not a happy man. He asks his henchman, Beria, to track it down. September 1940. London. Above the city the Battle of Britain rages, and the bombs rain down. On the streets below, DCI Frank Merlin and his officers investigate the sudden disappearance of Polish RAF pilot Ziggy Kilinski while also battling an epidemic of looting unleashed by the chaos and destruction of the Blitz..

The astonishing story of the critical year 1923—the year when the French illegally and brutally occupied Germany's economic heartland, the Ruhr; when hyperinflation wrought havoc with the German economy and plunged millions into poverty; and when Hitler staged his abortive yet pivotal putsch in a Munich beer hall. This period saw the rise of nationalism as the intra-European consensus broke down, populist rhetoric translated into actual violence on the streets and the forces of liberalism underestimate the strength of their enemies. 

Here are the rules. Method: you can't use a gun. You can't use explosives. You can't use poison. It has to be up close and personal. You don't have to worry about leaving evidence; that will be taken care of. Victim: no one suicidal. No one over the age of 65. No one with a terminal illness. Choose your method. Choose your victim.