Showing results by narrator "John Lee" in All Categories

From the author of Confessions of an Actuarial Tutor comes this collection of more than 670 jokes that only actuaries will find funny (though probably only because they have such low standards for humor). With jokes covering actuaries and their (lack of) personality and social life, along with jokes on pensions, insurance, finance, mortality, statistics, Excel, and even accountants. By the Law of Averages, you’re sure to find something that will eventually make you almost laugh.

Spaceman Spiritus is a prisoner, found guilty of the enduring crime of solitude, sentenced to labor far underground somewhere in a distant galaxy. Peel is a rancher, a man tracing a lifetime of memories for those he loved and for the natural world around him. He’s about to plummet back to Earth with an angel by his side. And as for Martha and Pup, well...they’re the dogs charged with saving us all. Told in a braid of voices, Spaceman Spiritus weaves the trajectory of these characters into a thrilling, provocative, and ultimately, heart-wrenching allegory.

In 1678, a handful of perjurers claimed that the Catholics of England planned to assassinate the king. Men like the "Reverend Doctor" Titus Oates and "Captain" William Bedloe parlayed their fantastical tales of Irish ruffians, medical poisoners, and silver bullets into public adulation and government pensions. The result was the trial and execution of over a dozen innocent Catholics, and the imprisonment of many more, some of whom died in custody. Victor Stater examines the Popish Plot in full, arguing that it had a profound and lasting significance on British politics.

Assembled and edited by Julian Hawthorne and first published in 1907, the Old Time English volume of The Lock and Key Library features ten classic mysteries and ghost stories by Charles Dickens, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Thomas de Quincey, Charles Robert Maturin, Laurence Sterne, and William Makepeace Thackeray. This volume of The Lock and Key Library is sure to haunt and charm fans of ghost and detective mysteries alike.

After the events of his last quest, the Arkane Academy for the Gifted and Strange have concluded that Steve Firestone's patron is the source of a great curse that has plagued his family for centuries.

Alice’s adventures continue in this dramatized version of the timeless classic. Join Alice as she steps through a mirror into a strange new world where she encounters very peculiar characters, including a giant egg named Humpty Dumpty, the two odd brothers Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Tiger Lily, and the White Knight. Featuring stellar performances by a full cast of talented voice actors with music and sound effects. Expect the unexpected in this incredible journey into fantasy.

Meet Steve Firestone, late-night radio host and paladin. Since he joined the Arkane Academy for the Gifted and Strange, he's learned our world is full of supernatural monsters ripped from the pages of Dungeons & Dragons—and most of them want to eat or kill us. That's where Steve and his new friends come in. That is, if Steve can learn to channel the divine power of his mysterious patron. Depending on whom he talks to, it's either a Cthulhu-like space-squid or a fallen paladin residing somewhere in Hell. Neither seems like an ideal source.

Magee was given a key to the Baldpate Inn so he might write in solitude, but he soon discovers that he is not the only person with a key. In fact, he is only one of seven! And the other guests, including a young woman who catches Magee’s eye, are all there on a mission to find a mysterious package with a large sum of money.

When 60-something musician pals Roy and George attend the funeral of an old bandmate, they realise that since they stopped performing, they've got stuck in a rut. Retirement's all well and good, but they seem to spend most of their time in front of the TV, or propping up the bar at the Hen & Pewter. Believing that jazz players should keep swinging while they've still got rhythm, the duo decide it's time to recreate the good old days, and start a new band.

After recently discovering he’s a paladin and that the world of the supernatural is real, Steve Firestone, a divorced late-night radio host, has that first-day-at-school feeling. Only this is no Hogwarts. Being 40, out of shape, and with a mouth that gets him into trouble, Steve must find a way to meet his tutor’s exhausting demands and learn to channel divine power to live up to his ancestry. That’s if he wishes to stay at the academy and with his party of new friends, including Nymantha, the fearsome wizard to whose flame Steve is a moth.

The only and therefore funniest actuarial fairy tale book in the world! Actuarial Fairy Tales is the result of fitting a statistical humor distribution to a dataset of well-known fairy tales after making some assumptions and unfounded extrapolations. Hypothesis tests show, at the 1 percent level, that this audiobook is significantly funnier than being eaten by a wolf, locked in a tower or poisoned by an apple. The perfect bedtime listening for actuaries, data analysts, and financial analysts everywhere, guaranteed to send them to sleep.

A Gallery of Children is A. A. Milne's first published book of prose. It was released after his poetry collection, When We Were Very Young, and prior to Winnie the Pooh. With his characteristic blend of nonsense, wit and warmth, Milne offers 12 short stories of childish endeavour and mishap. They will delight and amuse listeners both young and not-so-young.

As with many of Ostrovsky's plays, the target of the author's satire is the merchant class and the inevitable corruption associated with mercantile endeavors. In Ostrovsky's bitterly realistic world, all personal encounters end in transactions, some humourous and some tragic.

None loves the land as well as Lorcan, orphaned at birth, who has sought his birthright for as long as he can remember. Exiled from his native land when it was invaded by Alizon, he spent his youth in Paltendale where he was treated as an outsider, especially by Hogeth, an heir of that dale, who resented Lorcan’s presence when both were still young men.

The heritage of the Gryphon will choose its own. The time of choice is now. The urge within him is overwhelming, and Kerovan - he of the cloven hooves and amber eyes - is driven toward the mountains - toward the dark. With him goes the Lady Joisan, who carries with her secrets unknown to Kerovan.

This is a touching and tender talk that will change forever the way you think about love, sending it, receiving it with those you love whether family, friends, lovers and even colleagues. It will remind you to throw away "The Golden Rule" when it comes time to loving people and adopt "The Platinum Rule", which says send the people you love the kind of love they long for and tell your loved ones the way you wish to be loved.

Long ago, after the Elder People deserted the place known as Witch World, a portal opened from another realm, bringing the people of Hallack to colonize the abandoned lands. But although the old inhabitants had gone, the Old Gods still existed to confound the new mortals beneath them.

Pull up a chair, snuggle under your favorite blanket, gather the kids, and enjoy the charming stories you know and love. This multicast production brings to life all your favorites!

In a public debate held at the Manhattan Opera House, Clarence Darrow argued that not one of the 19 men under sentence of death at Sing Sing Prison would have been convicted if they could have afforded good attorneys. He was opposed by Judge Alfred J. Talley of General Sessions, who argued for the retention of the death penalty for murder. The debate commenced with an address by Lewis Lawes, who was the warden at Sing Sing.

The title poem, a series of sonnet-sized Zoom meetings - a classroom, a memorial service, an encounter with a new baby in the family - finds humor and pathos in our age of social distancing and technology-induced proximity. Salter shows too how imagination collapses time and space: In “Island Diaries”, the pragmatist Robinson Crusoe meets on the beach a shipwrecked dreamer from an earlier century, Shakespeare’s Prospero.