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Storm’s Edge
- Life, Death and Magic in the Islands of Orkney
- Narrated by: Kenny Blyth
- Length: 22 hrs and 44 mins
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Publisher's summary
'A surprising page-turner, full of humour and startling details' THE TIMES
'If I read a better history this year, I will be lucky' TOM HOLLAND
'An astonishing tour de force’ SPECTATOR
From Peter Marshall, winner of the Wolfson Prize 2018, Storm’s Edge is a new history of the Orkney Islands that delves deep into island politics, folk beliefs and community memory on the geographical edge of Britain.
Peter Marshall was born in Orkney. His ancestors were farmers and farm labourers on the northern island of Sanday – where, in 1624, one of them was murdered by a witch. In an expansive and enthralling historical account, Marshall looks afresh at a small group of islands that has been treated as a mere footnote, remote and peripheral, and in doing so invites us to think differently about key events of British history.
With Orkney as our point of departure, Marshall traverses three dramatic centuries of religious, political and economic upheaval: a time when what we think of as modern Scotland, and then modern Britain, was being forged and tested.
Storm's Edge is a magisterial history, a fascinating cultural study and a mighty attestation to the importance of placing the periphery at the centre. Britain is a nation composed of many different islands, but too often we focus on just one. This book offers a radical alternative, encouraging us to reorient the map and travel with Peter Marshall through landscapes of forgotten history.
Critic reviews
'A surprising page-turner, full of humour and startling details… In Storm’s Edge, Marshall set out to ‘make the peripheral central’, and so he has'
The Times
'Engrossing and near-faultless… Orkney already boasts a roll call of distinguished writers. The list has just got longer'
Literary Review
'Peter Marshall’s new, very readable history of the archipelago is a wonderful corrective to our tendency to see Scottish history through a lowland lens… I have, I am ashamed to say, never been to Orkney. But reading Marshall’s book might just tempt me to make the journey'
The Herald
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Story
Drawing on essential new material derived from decades-long investigations, Detective Mike Rothmiller and Douglas Thompson shatter the secrets and lies with a revelatory and dramatic true-life thriller focusing on JFK and Robert F. Kennedy, both before and after they bought the White House.
By: Mike Rothmiller, and others
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Atrocity on the Atlantic
- Attack on a Hospital Ship During the Great War
- By: Nate Hendley
- Narrated by: Adam Barr
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
On the evening of June 27, 1918, the Llandovery Castle—an unarmed, clearly marked hospital ship used by the Canadian military—was torpedoed off the Irish Coast by U-Boat 86, a German submarine. Sinking hospital ships violated international law. To conceal his actions, the U-86 commander had the submarine deck guns fire on survivors. One lifeboat escaped with witnesses to the atrocity. Global outrage over the attack ensued.
By: Nate Hendley
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Lenin Lives?
- By: Christopher Read
- Narrated by: Mike Cooper
- Length: 7 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Lenin's work and influence have often been written off as no longer relevant, and many today consider this to be so. Lenin has, they claim, had his day, even though he is still revered in China, the world's most populous country. However, Lenin, like his mentor Marx, has had a tendency to rise from apparent decline and oblivion to renewed force and influence.
By: Christopher Read
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Bandit Heaven
- The Hole-in-the-Wall Gangs and the Final Chapter of the Wild West
- By: Tom Clavin
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Robbers Roost, Brown’s Hole, and Hole in the Wall were three hideouts that collectively were known to outlaws as “Bandit Heaven.” During the 1880s and ‘90s these remote locations in Wyoming and Utah harbored hundreds of train and bank robbers, horse and cattle thieves, the occasional killer, and anyone else with a price on his head.
By: Tom Clavin
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A Hard Rain
- America in the 1960s, Our Decade of Hope, Possibility, and Innocence Lost
- By: Frye Gaillard
- Narrated by: Chris Abernathy
- Length: 25 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
With A Hard Rain, Gaillard gives us a deeply personal history, bringing his keen storyteller's eye to this pivotal time in American life. He explores the competing story arcs of tragedy and hope through the political and social movements of the times: civil rights, black power, women's liberation, the war in Vietnam, and the protests and movements against it.
By: Frye Gaillard
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1517
- Martin Luther and the Invention of the Reformation
- By: Peter Marshall
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Martin Luther's posting of the 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517, is one of the most famous events of Western history. It inaugurated the Protestant Reformation and has for centuries been a powerful and enduring symbol of religious freedom of conscience and of righteous protest against the abuse of power. But did it actually really happen? In this engagingly written, wide-ranging, and insightful work of cultural history, leading Reformation historian Peter Marshall reviews the available evidence and concludes that very probably, it did not.
By: Peter Marshall
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A Really Strange and Wonderful Time
- The Chapel Hill Music Scene: 1989-1999
- By: Tom Maxwell
- Narrated by: Tom Maxwell
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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A Really Strange and Wonderful Time features a representative cross-section of what was being created in and around Chapel Hill between 1989 and 1999. In addition to the aforementioned indie bands, it documents―through firsthand accounts―other local notables like Ben Folds Five, Dillon Fence, Flat Duo Jets, Small, Southern Culture on the Skids, Squirrel Nut Zippers, The Veldt, and Whiskeytown. At the same time, it describes the nurturing infrastructure which engendered and encouraged this marvelous diversity. In essence, A Really Strange and Wonderful Time is proof of the genius of community.
By: Tom Maxwell
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Everest, Inc.
- The Renegades and Rogues Who Built an Industry at the Top of the World
- By: Will Cockrell
- Narrated by: Pete Simonelli
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Anyone who has read Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air or has seen a recent photo of climbers standing in line to get to the top of Everest may think they have the mountain pretty well figured out. It’s an extreme landscape where bad weather and incredible altitude can occasionally kill, but more so an overcrowded, trashed-out recreation destination where rich clients pad their egos—and social media feeds—while exploiting local Sherpas. There’s some truth to these clichés, but they’re a sliver of the story.
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Great read.
- By dom_a_j on 04-26-24
By: Will Cockrell