Books with author D. Roberts

The emperor is dead. Betrayed. Now a new ruler must rise from the ashes.Mykah had been the Empire’s greatest general before it had rotted to corruption. Now he builds his own empire in order to crush the greatest nation in the world. At his side is the stunning woman who leads the horned barbarians from the north, known as the oni.The Empire’s armies are limitless. They have dragons, vampires, scores of mages, space-bending foxes, and more patriotic knights than one can imagine. Their industrial network can outfit an army in days.Sometimes, winning requires a lot more than just a good army and tactics.Mykah is up against the clock as the Empire rushes to crush his rebellion. He needs to find an edge over his opponent. His old allies turn on him even as he gathers new ones: elite sorceresses, energetic berserkers, and the horned beauty that leads the oni.Establishing a new empire is hard. Mykah needs to do it before his past catches up to him and grinds him into the dust.Note: The Empire Reforged Series is an empire building fantasy series with harem / polyamorous elements, beast-girls, adult scenes and plenty of violence. Enjoy, or don’t read.

Originally published in 1827, Roberts’ Guide for Butlers and Other Household Staff was a handbook for servants to perform their duties more efficiently and thoughtfully. Roberts gives a plethora of information about household duties of a butler like:• How to dress suitably for work• Regulations for the dinner table• Directions for cleaning tea trays• Giving Britannia metal a brilliant polish• Preserving fruits for the year• Addressing and behaving properly around your employer• And many more insightsRoberts provides information on how to make the best-tasting lemonade; preserving good wine for years; not passing judgments on the other servants; never letting your master ring the bell for you twice; cleaning dirty tables with a mix of milk, turpentine, and sweet oil; rubbing off rust with salad oil and lime; and other useful tidbits for the curious butler. This is a fascinating look behind the scenes of household help and will delight any nineteenth century enthusiast.

"Gripping and superb. This book will steal the night from you." ―Laurence Gonzales, author of Deep SurvivalOn January 17, 1913, alone and near starvation, Douglas Mawson, leader of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, was hauling a sledge to get back to base camp. The dogs were gone. Now Mawson himself plunged through a snow bridge, dangling over an abyss by the sledge harness. A line of poetry gave him the will to haul himself back to the surface.Mawson was sometimes reduced to crawling, and one night he discovered that the soles of his feet had completely detached from the flesh beneath. On February 8, when he staggered back to base, his features unrecognizably skeletal, the first teammate to reach him blurted out, "Which one are you?"This thrilling and almost unbelievable account establishes Mawson in his rightful place as one of the greatest polar explorers and expedition leaders. It is illustrated by a trove of Frank Hurley’s famous Antarctic photographs, many never before published in the United States. 24 pages of illustrations

Sometime you have to find out you're average...Before you can be exceptional.Riding his bike home from the library, Sean Sharpe finds out that the world isn't quite as average as he'd originally thought. After narrowly surviving an attack by a mysterious assailant, he is approached by another stranger--one who claims to be a Hunter. He tells Sean that his attacker was one of the Nephilim; half human spawn of fallen angels who have taken the form of creatures of the night.Even worse, the Hunters believe that the Nephilim will want revenge for killing one of their own.Sean is faced with a bitter reality; the world may not be average, but he is. There is nothing special about him. If he is going to survive, he will have to learn to be more than average.But will it be enough?

"Gripping and superb. This book will steal the night from you." —Laurence Gonzales, author of Deep SurvivalOn January 17, 1913, alone and near starvation, Douglas Mawson, leader of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, was hauling a sledge to get back to base camp. The dogs were gone. Now Mawson himself plunged through a snow bridge, dangling over an abyss by the sledge harness. A line of poetry gave him the will to haul himself back to the surface.Mawson was sometimes reduced to crawling, and one night he discovered that the soles of his feet had completely detached from the flesh beneath. On February 8, when he staggered back to base, his features unrecognizably skeletal, the first teammate to reach him blurted out, "Which one are you?"This thrilling and almost unbelievable account establishes Mawson in his rightful place as one of the greatest polar explorers and expedition leaders. It is illustrated by a trove of Frank Hurley’s famous Antarctic photographs, many never before published in the United States.

Mark has no choice but to soldier on trying to stay alive long enough to provide help that is not wanted to get his Family's Trampship "Star Queen 52" back into space before delivery late charges on the cargo it is carrying bankrupts the ship. Between crewmen that hate him, the planet's Government that think junk ships should be scrapped and not allowed to leave for the safety of their crews, the military that wants to use his ship as a sacrificial test target in their fight against the pirates in the far Outback and a pirate that was using the space port the Queen landed in for washing stolen cargo and all to ready to take vengeance on the ship that cost him his own family when he took the Star Queen 21 years before, the Star Queen does not stand a chance.

In my world, magic is an everyday thing. It's on street corners; it's in our schools, our homes and even our governments. Magic carpets share the sky with jets, international boxing shares air time with magical duellists. It's a whole mess, but then nobody consulted me before outing every mage on the planet.My twin brother is a Wizard, and thinks he's the only magician in the family. It's actually a little funny that he hasn't suspected anything different in the last seventeen years, what with my constantly needing to keep his idiot face out of danger and stupidity, but that's not today's problem.You see, someone's trying to kill him. It started off with a shadow monster that was all but immune to my magic attacking him at school, and it went steadily downhill from there, meandering through an encounter with a succubus (a species I was told categorically didn't exist anymore), to nearly getting abducted by murderous homeless men and blasted by the government's anti-magic police, and that was just Monday!While I'm trying to help the idiot, I'm also doing my level best to keep him from finding out about my own powers (which are frankly so sinister that I was terrified of my own shadow for the first decade of my life), and make sure that in my blundering about trying to solve a mystery I can't trust the Supernatural Crimes Authority to investigate correctly, I don't draw the attention of the people with horrific monsters at their beck and call.Family can be such a pain...

Not long after fifteen year old Nigel Briggs begins his apprenticeship to Professor Ashcroft, debunker of the paranormal, they are invited to investigate a spate of deaths plaguing a factory. The factory workers claim that a wraith is killing all those that have the misfortune of seeing it.The Professor concludes the deaths are coincidental and that the wraith is the work of an opportunistic hoaxer. Nigel, however, fears there may be more to the claims. His fears come true when he sees the wraith for himself.Haunted by the wraith, Nigel must find a way to destroy it before he becomes its next victim...

My twin brother has started to go mad, and my powers are the cause. Nobody knows how to stop it and all the facts are telling me that unless I can cure him, my brother is very likely going to try and kill me soon. And that's just how this whole mess starts...From there I run face first into a whole stack of problems, including a crazy werewolf girl, a large pack of flesh-eating ghouls and a trip to the greatest repository of magical knowledge in the world, where someone like me is definitely not welcome.There, I discover dark secrets from before the birth of modern civilisation, and make an enemy of the toughest woman I've ever met, one whose motto may as well have been 'when in doubt, stab it a lot'!If that wasn't enough, Windward Academy has a new magic teacher, who also doesn't like me very much (who does these days?). She's not only far more powerful than I am, she's also hiding secrets of her own, any one of which could vastly complicate an already touchy situation.But I can't let any of that stop me. I've got to find a way to help Des, but the only paths open to me are costly and horrifically dangerous. No matter what I do, I'm bound to lose something precious.I still have to try.

An award-winning author and veteran mountain climber takes us deep into the Southwest backcountry to uncover secrets of its ancient inhabitants.In this thrilling story of intellectual and archaeological discovery, David Roberts recounts his last twenty years of far-flung exploits in search of spectacular prehistoric ruins and rock art panels known to very few modern travelers. His adventures range across Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and southwestern Colorado, and illuminate the mysteries of the Ancestral Puebloans and their contemporary neighbors the Mogollon and Fremont, as well as of the more recent Navajo and Comanche.

“Delightfully surprising….A portable virtual museum…an entertaining stroll through the history of one of the world’s great cities” (Kirkus Reviews), told through 101 distinctive objects that span the history of New York, almost all reproduced in luscious, full color.Inspired by A History of the World in 100 Objects, Sam Roberts of The New York Times chose fifty objects that embody the narrative of New York for a feature article in the paper. Many more suggestions came from readers, and so Roberts has expanded the list to 101. Here are just a few of what this keepsake volume offers: -The Flushing Remonstrance, a 1657 petition for religious freedom that was a precursor to the First Amendment to the Constitution. -Beads from the African Burial Ground, 1700s. Slavery was legal in New York until 1827, although many free blacks lived in the city. The African Burial Ground closed in 1792 and was only recently rediscovered. -The bagel, early 1900s. The quintessential and undisputed New York food (excepting perhaps the pizza). -The Automat vending machine, 1912. Put a nickel in the slot and get a cup of coffee or a piece of pie. It was the early twentieth century version of fast food. -The “I Love NY” logo designed by Milton Glaser in 1977 for a campaign to increase tourism. Along with Saul Steinberg’s famous New Yorker cover depicting a New Yorker’s view of the world, it was perhaps the most famous and most frequently reproduced graphic symbol of the time. Unique, sometimes whimsical, always important, A History of New York in 101 Objects is a beautiful chronicle of the remarkable history of the Big Apple. “The story [Sam Roberts] is telling is that of New York, and he nails it” (Daily News, New York).

Archons, Fanatics, Fairies, Black Magic, Shadowborn...As if my life wasn't already complicated enough, now the Archons are back, and they're searching for their lost brother.My school is overrun by a new crop of Magicians who can't keep a civil tongue in their heads, an ancient group of Shadowborn-hating fanatics has crawled out of the woodwork with a bag of powerful toys and the ruthlessness required to use them, and to top it all off, I've managed to draw the attention of the Fae.If you thought the attentions of a Succubus could be a pain, wait and see what an obsessed Unseelie Princess with a penchant for kidnapping and dirty tricks gets up to.Fanatics to the left, Fairies to the right and Black Magic creeping up the middle, tempting me and repulsing me in equal measure, drawing the attention of enemies I could never have anticipated.Oh, and my brother tries to kill me. Again.I knew I should have made a break for a different continent when I had the chance...