Showing results by narrator "David Thorn" in All Categories

Since publication in 1908, The Wind in the Willows has established itself as one of the most popular children's books ever written. The animals Rat, Toad, Mole, Badger, and many more share their trials and tribulations as well as joys as they progress through the seasons of the year. The magical fantasy of their journeys starts on the river bank and goes to the heights of Toad Hall, a truly fine mansion of many secret passages. All children will delight and be taken away on the wings of imagination.

The colorful Cossack way of life is made alive and real in this historical novel.

Tolstoy's first novel and acknowledged as one of his best, it is based on his own forays into the Caucasus, abandoning his aristocrat life of gambling and carousing in Moscow and volunteering to be attached to the regular army.

For many enlightened, liberal-minded thinkers today, and for most on the political left, evil is an outmoded concept. It smacks too much of absolute judgements and metaphysical certainties to suit the modern age. In this witty, accessible study, the prominent Marxist thinker Terry Eagleton launches a surprising defence of the reality of evil, drawing on literary, theological, and psychoanalytic sources to suggest that evil, no mere medieval artefact, is a real phenomenon with palpable force in our contemporary world.

These entertaining stories of nature, with a moral lesson thrown in for good measure, are fun as well as thought provoking.

After Jane Austen's earliest known writings, she began a more serious work, Lady Susan, in 1793 or 1794. It is a short, epistolary novel that portrays a woman bent on the exercise of her own powerful mind and personality to the point of social self-destruction.

Henry James' short but much acclaimed suspenseful novel, set in Venice, concerns an American editor's determination to acquire a collection of unpublished letters to the former mistress of a famous deceased poet. This Miss bordereau is now very elderly, living modestly in a dilpidated old palazzo with her shy, awkward and uncomely niece Tita, an unwitting "pawn" in the plot.

Welcome to the French Revolution, where a dashing English aristocrat risks his life to enter France and save innocents from the guillotine.

The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel is a secret society of English aristocrats who are determined to rescue their French counterparts from execution. Their leader is the mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel, whose name comes from the drawing of a red flower he uses to sign his messages.

This Series, in seven parts, tells the story of America from the earliest founding through the days of Woodrow Wilson and The Great War (World War I). You'll hear stories of great explorers and pioneers.

A Golden Deed must be something more than mere display of fearlessness. Grave and resolute fulfilment of duty is required to give it the true weight. For the true metal of a Golden Deed is self-devotion. Selfishness is the dross and alloy that gives the unsound ring to many an act that has been called glorious. And, on the other hand, it is not only the valor, which meets a thousand enemies upon the battlefield, or scales the walls in a forlorn hope, that is of true gold....

Here are American author Howard Pyle's exciting and hilarious tales of Robin Hood and his merry band of outlaws, who reigned over Sherwood Forest doing many good deeds for the poor - and deserved misdeeds to the pompous and haughty rich.

This extraordinary account of Wolsey's rise and fall from power was written between 1554-1558 by his gentleman usher, George Cavendish. This rare document was edited by former Royal Holloway College (University of London) faculty member and Tudor period authority, Roger Lockyer.

Dramatizing explosive events in London and Palestine in the years directly following World War II, The List follows the lives of Edith and Georg, Austrian refugees who are expecting their first baby in a world unfriendly to Jews. Anti-Semitism sweeps across the streets of London even as the world learns of the atrocities of the Holocaust. As Edith and Georg desperately search for surviving family members, they struggle to stay afloat in a world riddled with terrorism, assassination attempts, and fear.

A collection of classic Christmas stories, including:

• 1. "The Royal Truffle Hunt" by Anthony Thorn
• 2. "A Christmas Dream and How it Came True" by Louisa Mae Alcott
• 3. "The Sabots of Little Wolff" by Francois Coppee
• 4. "A Christmas Guest" by Selma Lanerlof
• 5. "The Christmas Goblins" by Charles Dickens
• 6. "At Christmas Time" by Anton Chehkov
• 7. "The Heavenly Christmas Tree" by Fydor Dostoyevsky

This Series, in seven parts, tells the story of America from the earliest founding through the days of Woodrow Wilson and The Great War (World War I). In this volume, you'll hear stories of: "The Struggle for Liberty... The Boston Tea-Party"; "Paul Revere's Ride"; "The Birth of a Great Nation"; and much more.

The book chronicles - sometimes dramatically, sometimes poignantly - the king's imprisonment after his defeat in the civil war, the events and paliamentary debates leading up to the charges of high treason being brought against the king, and a virtual transcript of the trial itself - bringing into our living-rooms the spirited arguments between Charles and the president of the court, Lord Bradshaw.

In the setting of what is present-day Kazakhstan, Tolstoy examines two psychological problems. The first dilemma is that of a young man who desires both fulfilling love and a place as a respected member of society. The other is the difficulty of a primitive society to accept domination by a higher culture that has no understanding of the traditions it asks its colonists to cast aside.

Set and written in 1726, This is a marvelously imaginative tale of the four voyages of Lemuel Gulliver. He finds himself shipwrecked and the prisoner of captors ranging in size from 6 inches tall to 60 feet tall and of various other persuasions. But this is just the beginning of a story written, strangely enough to satirize the foolishness and vices of modern men as they were perceived at the time. No one, young or old, can ever forget the Lilliputians and the Yahoos that starred in these wonderful and riveting stories of long ago.

Essential learning for any young student of American History, biographies of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Daniel Webster and Abraham Lincoln. These stories help us get to know the gentleman as people and then take us through their great accomplishments that make us appreciate their place in American history.

The wonderful adventure story of two boys, one the son of a mysterious impoverished grandee and the other a handicapped son of a n'eer-do-well drunkard, who together travel through Europe on a secret mission to save Samavia from its wicked rulers.

The story opens in the country parsonage of Dr. Primrose, a kindly man who has a good heart, a good family, and a good income. Suddenly, his idyllic life is cruelly devastated by a series of misfortunes, and he ends up in prison. Yet, despite all this calamity and injustice, the vicar never loses sight of Christian morality, a conviction which lends him genuine nobility and, in the end, also brings justice and the restoration of his family and fortune.