Showing results by narrator "Josephine Bailey" in All Categories

As the work at the heart of Christianity, the Bible is the spiritual guide for one out of every three people in the world. It is also the world's most widely distributed book, having been translated into over 2,000 languages, as well as the world's best-selling book, year after year. But the Bible is a complex work with a complicated and obscure history.

Dubbed the "pirate queen" by the Vatican and Spain's Philip II, Elizabeth I was feared and admired by her enemies. Extravagant, whimsical, and hot-tempered, Elizabeth was the epitome of power. Her visionary accomplishments were made possible by her daring merchants, gifted rapscallion adventurers, astronomer philosophers, and her stalwart Privy Council, including Sir William Cecil, Sir Francis Walsingham, and Sir Nicholas Bacon.

Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth Gaskell's last novel, is regarded by many as her masterpiece. Molly Gibson is the daughter of the doctor in the small provincial town of Hollingford. Her widowed father marries a second time to give Molly the woman's presence he feels she lacks, but until the arrival of Cynthia, her dazzling stepsister, Molly finds her situation hard to accept. Intertwined with the story of the Gibsons is that of Squire Hamley and his two sons.

Pride and Prejudice captures the affections of class-conscious 18th-century English families with matrimonial aims and rivalries. This story of the Bennet family and the novel's two protagonists, Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, is told with a wit that author Jane Austen feared might prove "rather too light and bright, and sparkling".

One of the greatest mystery thrillers ever written, Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White was a phenomenal best seller in the 1860s, achieving even greater success than works by Charles Dickens. Full of surprise, intrigue, and suspense, this vastly entertaining novel continues to enthrall audiences today.

Reuters correspondent Connie Burns is no stranger to the world’s trouble spots, including the vicious civil unrest in Sierra Leone and the war in Iraq. But as she begins to suspect that a foreigner is using the chaos of war to act out sadistic fantasies against women, her efforts to bring him to justice leave her devastated. Degraded and terrified, she goes into hiding in England and strikes up a friendship with Jess Derbyshire, a loner whose reclusive nature may well be masking secrets of her own.

Bringing back the lovers from Slightly Shady, Amanda Quick plunges us into a whirlwind intrigue involving an ancient cameo bracelet, known as the Blue Medusa, said to possess terrifying powers. Lavinia Lake and Tobias March join forces again, romantically and intellectually, to solve the murder of the beautiful wife of an old family friend.

Charles Darwin's foremost biographer, Janet Browne, delivers a vivid and accessible introduction to the book that permanently altered our understanding of what it is to be human. A sensation on its publication in 1859, The Origin of the Species profoundly shocked Victorian readers by calling into question the belief in a Creator with its description of evolution through natural selection. And Darwin's seminal work is nearly as controversial today.

Not many detectives stumble across a crime in the midst of a late-night tryst. But that's exactly what happens to Lavinia Lake and Tobias March, the prickly and passionate pair from Slightly Shady and Don't Look Back, when their weekend getaway at a posh country house turns into a full-fledged manhunt for a killer who targets wealthy older men who are about to wed young beauties.

Mark Kurlansky, winner of the James Beard Award for Excellence in Food Writing, leads us on a mouthwatering culinary tour around the world and through history and culture from the fifth century B.C. to the present day. This wonderful collection contains essays by Plato on the art of cooking, Pablo Neruda on french fries, and many other writers on the passions of cuisine.