Résultats lu par "Kobna Holdbrook-Smith" dans Toutes les catégories

David Olusoga's Black and British is a rich and revealing exploration of the extraordinarily long relationship between the British Isles and the people of Africa. Drawing on new genetic and genealogical research, original records, expert testimony and contemporary interviews, Black and British reaches back to Roman Britain, the medieval imagination and Shakespeare's Othello.

God lies defeated, his corpse hidden in the catacombs beneath Mordew. On the surface, the streets of this the sea-battered city are slick with the Living Mud and the half-formed, short-lived creatures it spawns - creatures that die and are swept down from the Merchant Quarter by the brooms of the workers and relentless rains, where they rot in the slums. There, a young boy called Nathan Treeves lives with his parents, eking out a meagre existence by picking treasures from the Living Mud - until one day his mother, desperate and starving, sells him to the mysterious Master of Mordew.

It is the end of the 19th Century and the world is awash with marvels. But there is nothing so marvellous as the Wastelands: a terrain of terrible miracles that lies between Beijing and Moscow. Nothing touches this abandoned wilderness except the Great Trans-Siberian Express: an impenetrable train built to carry cargo across continents, but which now transports anyone who dares to cross the shadowy Wastelands. On to the platform steps a curious cast of characters. But the old rules are changing, and there are whispers that the train isn't safe.

A terrifying psychological trip into the life of one Joseph K., an ordinary man who wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not commit, a crime whose nature is never revealed to him. Once arrested, he is released, but must report to court on a regular basis - an event that proves maddening, as nothing is ever resolved. As he grows more uncertain of his fate, his personal life - including work at a bank and his relations with his landlady and a young woman who lives next door - becomes increasingly unpredictable.

Why are humans the only species to have escaped—only very recently—the subsistence trap, allowing us to enjoy a standard of living that vastly exceeds all others? And why have we progressed so unequally around the world, resulting in the great disparities between nations that exist today? Galor’s gripping narrative explains how technology, population size, and adaptation led to a stunning “phase change” in the human story a mere two hundred years ago.

In The Journey of Humanity, Oded Galor offers a revelatory explanation of how humanity became, only very recently, the unique species to have escaped a life of subsistence poverty, enjoying previously unthinkable wealth and longevity. He reveals why this process has been so unequal around the world, resulting in the great disparities between nations that exist today. He shows why so many of our efforts to improve lives have failed and how they might succeed.

Investigating a crime seemingly unconnected to the Royal Family, Holmes & Watson uncover a conspiracy to kidnap Queen Victoria and destabilise the British Empire. With a ticking clock to her next public engagement, Holmes and Watson must discover who is behind the plot and locate her majesty, while Mycroft tries to keep the monarch’s disappearance a secret from the British people. At first, Holmes believes Moriarty is responsible for the abduction, but when the Napoleon of Crime is proved innocent, Holmes must work with his arch-nemesis to rescue the Queen.

A poignant story about friendship, betrayal, obsession and second chances – this novel is an immensely powerful portrayal of human resilience. Sierra Leone: civil war has left an entire population with terrible secrets to keep. In the capital's hospital Kai, a gifted young surgeon, is plagued by demons. Elsewhere in the hospital lies Elias Cole, a university professor who recalls the love that drove him to acts that are far from heroic. As past and present intersect, Kai and Elias are drawn unwittingly closer and into the path of one woman at the centre of their stories.

As a member of the Counter Terrorist Unit, Sean Doyle thought he'd seen it all. Every violent act, every depraved action man could perpetrate against man but he is to discover that there are much worse things in this world than even he has encountered. Tracking a group of renegade terrorists from London to the Republic of Ireland, Doyle and his partner must discover who is funding these men and why. What he discovers is beyond even his experience and threatens not just his life but his sanity too.

During an archaeological dig, a hidden chamber filled with the skulls of children is discovered. At first glance they seem to have been there for thousands of years but closer examination reveals a more shocking secret. The opening of the chamber triggers a series of horrific murders, each victim mutilated and their entrails used to form a different letter of the alphabet. Who is behind this outrage? And how is it linked to a subterranean chamber thousands of years old? Inspector Stephen Wallace must unmask this crazed killer.

The year 1904. On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there is a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. In a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. This sets off a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families (black, white, brown) as they collide and converge over the course of the century, into the present and beyond.

Eleven-year-old Kofi Offin has dreams of water, of its urgent whisper that beckons with promises and secrets. He has heard the call on the banks of Upper Kwanta, West Africa, where he lives. He loves these things above all else: his family, the fireside tales of his father’s father, a girl named Ama, and, of course, swimming. But when the unthinkable – a sudden death – occurs during a festival between rival villages, Kofi ends up in a fight for his life. What happens next will send him on a harrowing journey across land and sea, and away from everything he loves.

One hundred and fifty years from now, in a world where Africa is the dominant technological and economic power, and where crime, war, disease and poverty have been banished to history, Geoffrey Akinya wants only one thing: to be left in peace, so that he can continue his studies into the elephants of the Amboseli basin. But Geoffrey's family, the vast Akinya business empire, has other plans.

Born into slavery in Maryland, Frederick Douglass escaped bondage to become an abolitionist leader, orator and politician, and one of the most famous African-Americans of the 19th century. His autobiographical Narrative, an immediate bestseller in 1845, was soon acknowledged as a pivotal text in the struggle against slavery. In this moving and beautifully written account, he lays bare a system that brutalised everyone it touched.

In the darkest months of the Second World War, Churchill approved what seemed to many like a suicide mission. Under orders to attack the St Nazaire U-boat base on the Atlantic seaboard, British commandos undertook 'the greatest raid of all', turning an old destroyer into a live bomb and using it to ram the gates of a Nazi stronghold. Drawing on official documents, interviews, unknown accounts and the astonished reactions of French civilians and German forces, The Greatest Raid recreates in cinematic detail the hours in which the 'Charioteers' fought and died.

In his village in Upper Kwanta, 11-year-old Kofi loves his family, playing oware with his grandfather and swimming in the river Offin. He’s warned though, to never go to the river at night. His brother tells him ”There are things about the water you do not know. “ Like what? Kofi asks. “The beasts.” His brother answers.

Belfast-born Jimmy Walker is a career criminal, desperate to leave the world of organised crime behind. He’s made just enough money to think about going straight. He wants to be a family man. He wants to stay alive for his wife and son. He wants to be the man they deserve. He reluctantly agrees to one final job with the intention that it will be his last. Little does Jimmy know that he’s been set-up. The sins of his past are about to catch up with him.

Haunting, uplifting, beautiful: the final work from Helen Dunmore. Helen Dunmore passed away in June 2017, leaving behind this remarkable collection of short stories. With her trademark imagination and gift for making history human, she explores the fragile ties between passion, love, family, friendship and grief, often through people facing turning points in their lives.

We join the action just as our ‘hero’ Tom, (early thirties, reads the ‘news’ on the radio) finds out that his girlfriend has not left him. Tom, I have not left you. But I am gone. Please carry on as normal. Love always, Hayley. Has Hayley gone or hasn’t she? Is she coming back? If she has gone, but is coming back, when is she coming back? And what is he supposed to bloody do in the meantime? And what if she’s never coming back?

Harold Pierce didn't mean to kill his baby brother all those years ago. He didn't intend to incinerate him in a fire but he did and he has spent most of his adult life in a psychiatric hospital because of that. Upon release he is given a job as a hospital porter but that job involves the burning of aborted foetuses and the memories of what happened to his brother begin to torment Harold. In the small town where he lives the terror is mounting because of the escape from prison of psychopath Paul Harvey.