Showing results by narrator "Christopher Ragland" in All Categories

When F. W. Murnau brought Nosferatu to the screen in 1922, he ushered in the bloody reign of cinema’s most venerable villain - the vampire. Nocturnal, fanged and insatiable for human blood, the vampire has infected the public consciousness like no other movie monster. In this illustrated pocket guide, Charles Bramesco goes vampire hunting across a century of cinema, stalking around lonely Transylvanian castles, dusty New York apartments and rain-soaked Washington woods to discover why the vampire has become cinema’s most enduring villain.

‘If you care about the planet, and about the people and animals who live on it, there are two ways to think about this. You can keep on hoping that catastrophe is preventable, and feel ever more frustrated or enraged by the world’s inaction. Or you can accept that disaster is coming, and begin to rethink what it means to have hope.’ The honesty and realism of Jonathan Franzen’s writings on climate have been widely denounced and just as widely celebrated.

How to pray, how to serve, how to overcome, how to love: Jesus taught the disciples these timeless lessons through hands-on experience and powerful parables that resonated in the hearts of multitudes. Most evident in John 13-21, however, is Christ's teaching on the transforming power of joy—how to have it, hold onto it, and never let it go.

All of America knows what happened in Sanctuary - a boy lost his footing at a party and a town went mad with grief. But not everyone believes it. Now Detective Maggie Knight is forced before a congressional hearing, following a revival of persecution that hasn't been seen since Salem. Exiled witch Sarah Fenn and her daughter Harper fled, seeking refuge. Instead, they find hope carried on whispers of a dangerous magic and a centuries-old legend promising power.

Art and life. Each the mirror of the other. This then is the classic definition of what ‘Realism’ as a writing form really is. Some might call it a fancy term for the mundane day to day pursuits but in the hands of an author it comes alive. We are drawn into characters and landscapes that we can empathize with, we can, metaphorically speaking, help shoulder their burden, be on the long trail with them whatever the landscapes, the hurdles, incidents and other people may place in their literary way.

In this series we listen to short stories that are NOT by perhaps the most well-known author of this type. But the many other rich talents in the volume may have treated the subject matter a little differently, or were perhaps just overlooked in the stampede to applaud the winner, but these authors are of equal merit.

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society. In this volume we offer up a small selection of talents from the literary landscape of the American male author whose time has now come again.

In this series we explore the many facets of love through literary talents that span both time and country. Love is good. It’s positive, a source of joy, nourishment and all over goodness. But sometimes other more malevolent forces come to play. They infect that love, they see their form as better. Instinctively we would shy away but sometimes its pull is too powerful, almost attractive. We are drawn closer into the shadows.

The American West. A landscape hewn in vastness as its rips from Plains, to deserts, to mountain, to ocean overlaid by waves of emigration of peoples either dispossessed or searching for a new life and the American dream. These are their stories. Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on 24th September 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota into an upper-middle class family. Whilst his mother was pregnant with him, his two young sisters tragically died. Fitzgerald once said this was when his destiny as a writer was ordained. In 1913 he enrolled at Princeton but his devotion to his own literary pursuits resulted in him leaving and, rather bizarrely, joining the Army. He continued to write with great mastery and the titles of his novels and many of his 164 short stories are household names.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on 4th July 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, a town synonymous with the earlier Salem Witch Trials. It was instrumental in Hawthorne’s later use of American Gothic and dark romanticism in his writing. He was a mere four years old when his father died and his mother took him and his two sisters to live with her family and then on to their own home in Raymond, Maine. The young Hawthorne had a passion for fiction and poetry and voraciously read the works of Ann Radcliffe, Henry Fielding and Lord Byron.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. Jack London is widely regarded as one of America’s pre-eminent writers of the great outdoors. His stories are raw and, at times, harrowing, but always dependable fare. His work also includes stories on pandemics and bizarre scientific experiments. An author so much more than the usual wrapper proclaims.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. A new century dawns, one in which America would become pre-eminent as its industrial might and military power rose above all others. In literature too its authors tackled new forms and new ideas, they shied away from little, immersing themselves and their readers in the promise of a new Century.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. For America, as the century closes, she is becoming less isolated. Her industrial might, her rising military power are pulling her ever closer into the entangled globe of nations. Her authors flex ideas and lexicons with riveting tales of this astonishing society.

PEOPLE LIKE ME is a wonderfully all encompassing love story. It not only explores filial love and the drive for parenthood, but also poses fundamental questions for society: how many types of love, partners, friendships, families and emotional ties exist in our modern world? How is a family...

Zeitgeist is a modern cyber thriller, the hero is a Big Data analyst, who can use i.e. data from your phone to predict your future behavior – and it's not made up, it's real, the author works for big companies doing just that, but on bigger consumer groups, to predict future trends on the...

New York, mid-21st century. Things aren't going well for Aiden. Not long ago he was a successful lawyer with a swanky East Village apartment and a glamorous fiancé. Now he is faced with the ruins of his existence and on top of that he has the feeling that he is going insane. Wanda is used to...

Henry Fleming, a young soldier in the American Civil War, grapples with fear, courage, and the realities of battle. He joins the Union army with grandiose ideas of heroism, but when he faces the brutal truth of war, he is overcome by fear and runs from the battlefield in his first encounter with the enemy. After fleeing, Henry is consumed with shame and guilt. He struggles internally, questioning his own courage and trying to come to terms with his actions.

William Sydney Porter was born on 11th September 1862 in Greensboro, North Carolina. At age 3 his mother died from tuberculosis. From an early age it was clear Porter had a large appetite for reading as he absorbed the world around him. He was a member of several singing and dramatic groups when he met 17 year old Athol Estes, daughter of a wealthy Austin family. Despite her mother’s objection owing to Athol’s tuberculosis, they began courting and in July 1887, they eloped and soon married.

William Sydney Porter was born on 11th September 1862 in Greensboro, North Carolina. At age 3 his mother died from tuberculosis. From an early age it was clear Porter had a large appetite for reading as he absorbed the world around him. He was a member of several singing and dramatic groups when he met 17 year old Athol Estes, daughter of a wealthy Austin family. Despite her mother’s objection owing to Athol’s tuberculosis, they began courting and in July 1887, they eloped and soon married.