Showing results by narrator "Jeff` Harding" in All Categories

There is a dark mood aboard Serapis, driven by its distracted captain. It was agreed that this ship would not be returning from its voyage, the insurance money paying for a new ship. But the captain loses more than he bargained for, and it is years until he is at peace when he is unexpectedly reunited with the wreck on the coast of Chile.

A deadly captain is the subject if this short story. Young sailor Roberts recalls his experience of Captain Morbond, a cruel, heartless man who mysteriously is followed by small white mice said to carry the souls of dead men.

An earthquake throws a ship and its crew into disarray in this short story from Morgan Robertson. But the waves become the least of their worries when they discover a mysterious beast has been disturbed, invisible to natural light.

A smoking cigar is seen in the fog, but not the man behind it. Could it be the final smoke of Charlie Devereux? The crew aboard the Königen Teresa recall this ghostly story as they themselves plough into fog across the Mid-Atlantic.

Professor Jonkin is a scientist who has successfully cultivated a tree that produces many fruits. He doesn’t stop there though and starts experimenting on a pitcher plant with disastrous results....

A retired war pilot is travelling the French countryside. Entranced by the natural beauty of the area when he stops to rest by a lake, he sees visions of beautiful tree women who seek his protection.

The titular house in this short story sits not far from the state of Missouri. An old, run-down building, missing windows and doors, it has been overgrown with foliage, and its dilapidated appearance has given it an ‘evil reputation’.

Emma Vane blurs the line between human and plant in this short story featuring a lily that has developed a mouth and can moan. Concern is soon raised for the safety of the central protagonist, botanist Carl Brense.

The story is set in Padua and follows botanist Giacomo Rappaccini’s garden of poisonous plants. A student from the university of Padua falls for a maiden in the luscious garden, but he soon learns some troubling information about his beloved’s true nature.

A short story from the British Library Tales of the Weird collection Evil Roots. Best known as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, this short story by Conan Doyle preceded the famous detective by almost a decade. After an altercation, a disgruntled American storms off into the night, only to disappear mysteriously. Could a giant flytrap really be capable of engulfing an adult victim?

BBC Audio present six fantastic tales of twisted futures and times beyond tomorrow. Inspired by the pulp sci-fi of '50s America, these perfectly pitched parodies are redolent of the atomic age—when the space race was at its height, Cold War paranoia was at fever pitch and the future seemed both thrilling and terrifying.

In Our Time is an exploration of alienation, loss and war that launched Ernest Hemingway into the American public consciousness and began his career as one of American’s foremost writers.

Shawnee chief Tecumseh was a man destined for greatness - the son of a prominent war leader, he was supposedly born under a lucky shooting star. Charismatic, intelligent, handsome, he was both a fierce warrior and a savvy politician. In the first biography of Tecumseh in more than 20 years, Peter Cozzens thoroughly revises our understanding of this great leader and his movement, arguing that his overlooked younger brother Tenskwatwa, the 'Shawnee Prophet', was a crucial partner in Tecumseh's success.

Lying has been with us from time immemorial. Yet today is different - and in many respects worse. All over the world, people are circulating damaging lies, and these falsehoods are amplified as never before through powerful social media platforms that reach billions. Liars are saying that COVID-19 is a hoax. They are claiming that vaccines cause autism. In the face of those problems, the renowned legal scholar Cass Sunstein probes the fundamental question of how we can deter lies while also protecting freedom of speech.

'Dry Gulch Outlaws': Link Bonner has already tracked and killed two of the Carp brothers who raped and murdered his young Pawnee bride. Then when he gets word of the whereabouts of the others, he leaves Emma Fitzgerald behind him in Fort Union and heads for Yuma. But Emma has tracked him down and now intends to march straight into his heart. 'The Dark Trail to Nowhere': Lucas Santana is a freelance range detective working for both the US Marshals Service and the Pinkerton Detective Agency in the 1880s.

When the body of Mayra Cabral de Melo, a well-known stripper, is found by the side of a dusty road, detective Edgar "Lefty" Mendieta has personal reasons for bringing the culprit to justice. Mayra had no shortage of ardent, deluded and downright dangerous admirers, and Lefty himself is haunted by one steamy night he spent in her generous company. So begins an investigation that will bring him ever closer to the murderous world of the narcos, who are waging a war of bloody attrition against the Mexican state.

Why is it that we read? Is it to pass time? To learn something new? To escape from reality? For Will Schwalbe, reading is a way to entertain himself but also to make sense of the world, to become a better person, and to find the answers to the big (and small) questions about how to live his life. In this delightful celebration of reading, Schwalbe invites us along on his quest for books that speak to the specific challenges of living in our modern world, with all its noise and distractions.

Black Beauty is a novel by English author Anna Sewell written around 1877. The story is told in the first person and is a fictional autobiographical memoir told from the perspective of a horse named Black Beauty. The story follows this horse's life, from his young days on an English farm with his mother, to the more dreadful years of pulling cabs in London, and ending with his happy retirement in the country.

The Iliad is an epic Greek poem written by philosopher Homer, and is considered one of the oldest pieces of western literature still in existence. The story takes place during the last weeks of the 10-year Trojan War, with a focus on the quarrels between King Agamemnon and the legendary warrior Achilles. However, this tale's most famous scene is when the Greek's give a gift to the Trojans of a large wooden horse, but one that is filled with soldiers, that allows the Greeks to infiltrate the high walls of the city of Troy.

Bruce Lee, having had access to more than one million pages of US Army documents and thousands of pages of daily top-secret messages dispatched to Tokyo from the Japanese embassy in Berlin, assembles fascinating revelations about pivotal moments in the war, including the reason Eisenhower stopped his army at the Elbe and let the Russians capture Berlin, the invasion of Europe, and the battles on the African and Eastern fronts.