Monarchy

 Read by David Starkey,♥ ♥ ♥ ♥;   10:09

The Crown of England is the oldest surviving political institution in Europe.  David Starkey emphasises the Crown’s endless capacity to adapt to circumstances and reshape national policy, whilst he unmasks the personalities and achievements, the defeats and victories, which lie behind the kings and queens of British history. Each of these monarchs has contributed to the religion, geography, laws, language, and government which survives today.

-Audible

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Juliet

Juliet ♥ ♥ ♥
Cassandra Campbell
16 discs

Twenty-five-year-old Julie Jacobs is heartbroken over the death of her beloved Aunt Rose. But the shock goes even deeper when she learns that the woman who has been like a mother to her has left her entire estate to Julie’s twin sister. The only thing Julie receives is a key—one carried by her mother on the day she herself died—to a safety-deposit box in Siena, Italy.  This key sends Julie on a journey that will change her life forever—a journey into the troubled past of her ancestor Giulietta Tolomei.  In 1340, still reeling from the slaughter of her parents, Giulietta was smuggled into Siena, where she met a young man named Romeo. Their ill-fated love turned medieval Siena upside-down and went on to inspire generations of poets and artists, the story reaching its pinnacle in Shakespeare’s famous tragedy.

But six centuries have a way of catching up to the present, and Julie gradually begins to discover that here, in this ancient city, the past and present are hard to tell apart. The deeper she delves into the history of Romeo and Giulietta, and the closer she gets to the treasure they allegedly left behind, the greater the danger surrounding her—superstitions, ancient hostilities, and personal vendettas. As Julie crosses paths with the descendants of the families involved in the unforgettable blood feud, she begins to fear that the notorious curse—“A plague on both your houses!”

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Across the Nightingale Floor

Across the Nightingale Floor ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by Kevin Gray and Aiko Nakasone
8:30

Sixteen-year-old Takeo’s village has been massacred by an evil warlord, and he is about to be slain by the men who murdered his parents and neighbors. At the last moment, his life is saved by a nobleman, who claims the boy as his kin and begins his education.  But nothing is as it seems. Takeo discovers that he has rare powers that are useful to those around him. As he grows into manhood, he must decide where his loyalties lie: with his noble master and adoptive father; with the Hidden, a secret, spiritual sect whose beliefs are forbidden; or with the Tribe, the assassins and spies who consider him one of their own.  A story of treachery, political intrigue, and the intensity of first love, set in a world ruled by formal ritual and codes of honor.

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Prophecy

Prophecy ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by John Lee
12:48

It is the year of the Great Conjunction, when the two most powerful planets, Jupiter and Saturn, align – an astrological phenomenon that occurs once every thousand years and heralds the death of one age and the dawn of another. The streets of London are abuzz with predictions of horrific events to come, possibly even the death of Queen Elizabeth.

When several of the queen’s maids of honor are found dead, rumors of black magic abound. Elizabeth calls upon her personal astrologer, John Dee, and Giordano Bruno to solve the crimes. While Dee turns to a mysterious medium claiming knowledge of the murders, Bruno fears that something far more sinister is at work. But even as the climate of fear at the palace intensifies, the queen refuses to believe that the killer could be someone within her own court.

Bruno must play a dangerous game: can he allow the plot to progress far enough to give the queen the proof she needs without putting her, England, or his own life in danger?

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Heresy

Heresy ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by John Lee
13:9

Set in the 16th-century England, Giordano Bruno, monk, poet, scientist, and magician is on the run from the Roman Inquisition on charges of heresy for his belief that the Earth orbits the sun and that the universe is infinite. Bruno’s pursuit of rare knowledge brings him to London, where he is unexpectedly recruited by Queen Elizabeth I and is sent undercover to Oxford University on the pretext of a royal visitation. Officially Bruno is to take part in a debate on the Copernican theory of the universe; unofficially, he is to find out whatever he can about a Catholic plot to overthrow the queen.   His mission is dramatically thrown off course by a series of grisly murders and a spirited and beautiful young woman. As Bruno begins to discover a pattern in these killings, he realizes that no one at Oxford is who he seems to be. Bruno must attempt to outwit a killer who appears obsessed with the boundary between truth and heresy.

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World Without End

World Without End ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by John Lee
Download 45:38

Set 200 years after The Pillars of the Earth and its story of a  cathedral in Kingsbridge, England, now that very same cathedral still dominate in village life. Much has changed though, including the common people serving as serfs instead of wandering the countryside looking for work, and more societal changes, including medicine, commerce, architecture, and justice, are working into the lives of the people. Four children save a knight being attacked by armed men, and their stories drive the narrative, which includes the biggest change yet to be visited up on Kingsbridge, the arrival of the Black Plague.

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The Eight

The Eight ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by Susan Denake
Download 25:49

A dabbler in mathematics and chess, Catherine Velis is also a computer expert for a Big Eight accounting firm. Before heading off to a new assignment in Algeria, Cat has her palm read by a fortune-teller. The woman warns Cat of danger. Then an antiques dealer approaches Cat with a mysterious offer: He has an anonymous client who is trying to collect the pieces of an ancient chess service, purported to be in Algeria. If Cat can bring the pieces back, there will be a generous reward.

In the south of France of 1790, Mireille de Rémy and her cousin Valentine are young novices at the fortress-like Montglane Abbey. With France aflame in revolution, the two girls burn to rebel against constricted convent life – and their means of escape is at hand. Buried deep within the abbey are pieces of the Montglane Chess Service, once owned by Charlemagne. Whoever reassembles the pieces can play a game of unlimited power. But to keep the Game a secret from those who would abuse it, the two young women must scatter the pieces throughout the world.

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Sepulchre

Sepluchre  ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by Donada Peters
Download 20:17

The stories of two women separated by more than a century are brought together by a series of visions that are related to the tarot and a small church, known as a Sepulchre in the grounds of the Domaine de la Cade.

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Nefertiti

Nefertiti  ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by Cassandra Campbell
13 discs

Nefertiti and her younger sister, Mutnodjmet, have been raised in a powerful family that has provided wives to the rulers of Egypt for centuries. Ambitious, charismatic, and beautiful, Nefertiti is destined to marry Amunhotep, an unstable young pharaoh. It is hoped by all that her strong personality will temper the young Amunhotep’s heretical desire to forsake Egypt’s ancient gods, overthrow the priests of Amun, and introduce a new sun god for all to worship. From the moment of her arrival in Thebes, Nefertiti is beloved by the people. Her charisma is matched only by her husband’s perceived generosity: Amunhotep showers his subjects with lofty promises. The love of the commoners will not be enough, however, if the royal couple is not able to conceive an heir, and as Nefertiti turns her attention to producing a son, she fails to see that the powerful priests, along with the military, are plotting against her husband’s rule. The only person wise enough to recognize the shift in political winds—and brave enough to tell the queen—is her younger sister

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Ghostwalk

Ghostwalk ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by Rosalyn Landor
10 discs

Cambridge historian, Elizabeth Vogelsang, is found dead in the river Cam, just as she was about to finish her unconventional study of Isaac Newton’s infatuation with alchemy. Lydia Brooke is asked by Elizabeth’s son, Cameron, her former lover, to finish the book. Soon the affair has been rekindled, and Lydia, ensconced in Elizabeth’s studio, is experiencing all variety of otherworldly phenomena: movements of light across the walls, vanished papers, even the possible interference in her work of a seventeenth-century rival of Newton’s. Can a series of Cambridge murders in the present, all apparently connected to Cameron’s scientific research, be linked to a similar series of deaths in the seventeenth century that opened the door for Newton to win a professorship?  -Booklist

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