Books published by publisher Beacon Audiobooks

Jack Reacher, adrift in the hellish heat of a Texas summer. Looking for a lift through the vast empty landscape. A woman stops, and offers a ride. She is young, rich and beautiful.But her husband's in jail. When he comes out, he's going to kill her.Her family's hostile, she can't trust the cops, and the lawyers won't help. She is entangled in a web of lies and prejudice, hatred and murder.Jack Reacher never could resist a lady in distress.

Ted Wallace is an old, sour, womanising, cantankerous, whisky-sodden beast of a failed poet and drama critic, but he has his faults too.Fired from his newspaper, months behind on his alimony payments and disgusted with a world that undervalues him, Ted seeks a few months repose and free drink at Swafford Hall, the country mansion of his old friend Lord Logan.But strange things have been going on at Swafford. Miracles, Healings, Phenomena beyond the comprehension of a mud-caked hippopotamus like Ted...From the Hardcover edition.

THE NEW QUESTIONTen years after the worldwide bestseller Good to Great, Jim Collins returns with another groundbreaking work, this time to ask: Why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others do not? Based on nine years of research, buttressed by rigorous analysis and infused with engaging stories, Collins and his colleague, Morten Hansen, enumerate the principles for building a truly great enterprise in unpredictable, tumultuous, and fast-moving times.THE NEW STUDY Great by Choice distinguishes itself from Collins's prior work by its focus not just on performance, but also on the type of unstable environments faced by leaders today. With a team of more than twenty researchers, Collins and Hansen studied companies that rose to greatness - beating their industry indexes by a minimum of ten times over fifteen years - in environments characterized by big forces and rapid shifts that leaders could not predict or control. The research team then contrasted these "10X companies" to a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to achieve greatness in similarly extreme environments.THE NEW FINDINGSThe study results were full of provocative surprises. Such as: * The best leaders were not more risk taking, more visionary, and more creative than the comparisons; they were more disciplined, more empirical, and more paranoid.* Innovation by itself turns out not to be the trump card in a chaotic and uncertain world; more important is the ability to scale innovation, to blend creativity with discipline.* Following the belief that leading in a "fast world" always requires "fast decisions" and "fast action" is a good way to get killed.* The great companies changed less in reaction to a radically changing world than the comparison companies.The authors challenge conventional wisdom with thought-provoking, sticky, and supremely practical concepts. They include 10Xers; the 20 Mile March; Fire Bullets then Cannonballs; Leading above the Death Line; Zoom Out, Then Zoom In; and the SMaC Recipe. Finally, in the last chapter, Collins and Hansen present their most provocative and original analysis: defining, quantifying, and studying the role of luck. The great companies and the leaders who built them were not luckier than the comparisons, but they did get a higher Return on Luck. This book is classic Collins: contrarian, data driven, and uplifting. He and Hansen show convincingly that, even in a chaotic and uncertain world, greatness happens by choice, not by chance.

A collectors' box set including the first four titles in the popular Mr. Gum series, all read by the wonderful Kate Winslet and including music and sound effects:You’re a Bad Man, Mr. Gum: Mr. Gum is a complete horror who hates children, animals, fun and corn on the cob. This book’s all about him. And an angry fairy who lives in his bathtub; and Jake the dog (who must be saved from terrible, terrible evil); and a little girl called Polly; and an evil stinky butcher who’s all covered in guts. And there’s heroes and sweets and adventures and a massive fat bloke called Jonathan Ripples and EVERYTHING...Mr. Gum and the Biscuit Billionaire: OK, this book’s a bit hard to describe. There’s this gingerbread man with electric muscles, see? And he’s as rich as a mushroom, right? And Mr. Gum and Billy William are planning to get the cash, yeah? And it’s up to Polly to save the day. And there’s a funfair and hot dogs, and Friday O’Leary shouts out some crazy stuff, and... hey, that wasn’t so hard to describe after all. Mr. Gum is back and as nasty as ever in this second hilarious story.Mr. Gum and the Power Crystals: Shabba me whiskers! Can it really be true that there's an ancient curse on the town of Lamonic Bibber? And you guessed it, that old roo–de–lally Mr Gum and his trusty sidekick Billy William the Third have something to do with it. But...our favorite heroes Polly and Friday and the gingerbread biscuit Alan Taylor are determined to save the town (sigh of relief). Hang onto your heads and prepare to chuckle like a chipmunk as you are whisked to the land of talking dogs, silly songs, Old Granny, and the best chase scene you've ever seen. You may even learn to say "The truth is a lemon meringue" in Spanish! This is barking bonkers...Mr. Gum and the Goblins: Well, that old roo–de–lally Mr. Gum and the hideous Billy William the Third are once more mucking things up for everyone. They're a–schemin' and a–hatchin' and making their bad plans up on Goblin Mountain. Can the wise old man Friday O'Leary and the small girl Polly make it past the Three Impossible Challenges of Goblin Mountain and save the town from a fate worse than something very bad indeed? In an epic tale of courage, valor, and plain idiocy only one thing is sure: The truth is a lemon meringue!