Showing results by narrator "David Parker" in All Categories

We all love animals, even if sometimes its only from afar on TV or at a zoo. But many of us have felt a closer friendship and companionship with our friends in the animal world. We talk and react to them as if they really do understand us. Perhaps they do. In this volume Hardy, Thackeray, Carroll, DH Lawrence, Emily Dickinson, and many others share their words with our ears.

Poetry can capture the imagination in a few short lines but narrative verse or poetry takes the form of telling a story whether it be simple or complex in a longer form. Among the most ancient forms of poetry, it has widespread roots through almost every culture. In Volume 2 we bring you the classics 'Sohrab and Rustum' by Matthew Arnold, 'The Prisoner of Chillon' by Lord Byron, and 'Faithless Sally Brown' by Thomas Hood. They are read for you by the renowned actors Sean Barrett and David Shaw-Parker.

Poetry can capture the imagination in a few short lines but narrative verse or poetry takes the form of telling a story whether it be simple or complex in a longer form. Among the most ancient forms of poetry it has widespread roots through almost every culture. In Volume 1 we bring you 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' - Oscar Wilde; 'The Highwayman' - Alfred Noyes; and 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' - Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Poetry can capture the imagination in a few short lines but narrative verse or poetry takes the form of telling a story, whether it be simple or complex in a longer form. Among the most ancient forms of poetry, it has widespread roots through almost every culture. In Volume 3 we bring you the classics 'Goblin Market' by Christina Rosseti; 'The Wreck of the Hesperus' by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; 'The Raven' by Edgar Allan Poe; 'Morte D'Arthur' by Alfred Lord Tennyson; and from 'Horatius' by Thomas Babington Maculay.

“If music be the food of love, play on" was one of Shakespeare’s finest lines. If music is food then poetry is the wine. In this volume of classic love poetry the flavoured capture of words and rhythms makes us think more carefully of words and their value to us. They also surprise us with their structure and meaning, layering in thoughts and emotions that we might otherwise shy away from. Poems are wonderful ways to express what we feel for a very special someone.

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on the 16 October 1854 in Dublin, Ireland. The son of Dublin intellectuals, Oscar proved himself an outstanding classicist at Trinity College and then at Oxford. Wilde then moved to London and its fashionable cultural and social circles. With his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the most well-known personalities of his day.

William Pett Ridge was born at Chartham, near Canterbury, Kent, on 22 April 1859. His family’s resources were certainly limited. His father was a Railway Porter, and the young Pett Ridge, after schooling in Marden, Kent became a Clerk in a railway clearing-house. The hours were long and arduous, but self-improvement was Pett Ridge’s goal. After working from nine until seven o’clock he would attend evening classes at Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institute to follow his passion: the ambition to write.

In this volume we gather together verse from lesbian poets that is deeply personal and at times overwhelming. It is not just a search for physical love but a journey through the spiritual to completeness, to becoming whole. However we recognise that the label lesbian might be anachronistic and so also include those who stand by their sides or who have a view in verse that helps us to revel in their love. For in the end that is all our journey is about.

The human race prides itself on being the most organised of animals. We manage the fate of all other species. All other animals bow to our control or suffer. In diminishing numbers we allow some to live in the wild, but in increasing numbers we domesticate them, and whether they become part of the family, a best friend or wonderfully decorative accessory, we take their compliance for granted.

On a summer’s day we have perhaps all wished to take flight and view life and the world from the vantage point of a clear blue sky. Our feathered friends do it as a matter of course, and in this volume some of our finest wordsmiths speak with imagination, longing and desire on their behalf.

With classics such as ‘My Last Duchess’ and ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ Robert Browning’s status as one of the great Victorian poets will always be secure in popular culture, while for the more literary he is considered a master of dramatic verse and dramatic monologues. It is interesting to note that his career bloomed late. Indeed, it was only after the death of his wife Elizabeth in 1861 and his return to England from their life in Italy that his work came into wider acceptance and critical acclaim.

These stories reveal the truth about vampires as told by a rather special vampire. Not the romantic or even the really nastily horrific stories that the non-vampires amongst us have dreamed up. Tracing a life lived over centuries, from ancient Rome right through to the more modern Texas, these stories are linked by the narrator, with interludes of explanation. Subtly dark, and with enough horror behind to send a shudder down the spine in places, but with gentle humour and a facility for twisting the historic truth just so much that the fictitious explanation makes sense in context.

Martial arts master Lin Su Yoshimura is a force to be reckoned with. Now in the US after being shunned as a mixed-race Chinese-Japanese girl, then kidnapped as a teen and sold into the sex-trafficking trade, Lin Su is rescued from an abusive New York pimp by one of the city’s top-level cocaine dealers. Navigating both back alleys and opulent venues with lethal grace, Lin Su finds her way forward through the underbelly of the city, as she wrestles with the horrors of her past.

Spurned by the discovery of his wife’s infidelities, Mark Dalton hangs up his hat as a private detective and heads out on the open road as an owner/operator. But his talents for solving crimes come to quick use as he encounters hitchhikers with shady pasts, goods smuggled across the border and a murder at a movie shoot where almost everyone is a suspect. All part of his adventures in Highway Robbery and Other Tales of the Open Road.

Dark Shadows: Return to Collinwood presents a look back at four decades of the successful, spooky soap opera that made sympathetic vampire Barnabas Collins a pop-culture phenomenon and prompted the big-budget big-screen Warner Bros. revival starring longtime fan Johnny Depp, directed by Tim Burton, that premiered May 11, 2012. With the ongoing fascination for all things vampiric, this audiobook about the making of the new film and the history of the original series will be an enticing volume for new and old fans alike.

Nature took on a new importance for thousands of people when the coronavirus pandemic arrived in Britain, providing solace in a time of great anxiety - not least because the crisis struck at the beginning of spring, the season of hope and renewal, and furthermore, in an extraordinary conjunction, the spring of 2020 turned out to be the loveliest spring ever recorded in Britain. Three nature writers, living like everyone else under lockdown, but walking out each day to exercise, resolved to record their experiences of the coronavirus spring, in widely contrasting parts of the country.

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.

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 whose time has now come again.

In modern society writing a letter, on paper, is almost unheard of. We all scribble notes and reminders but very rarely compose our thoughts in lengthy prose for another person to read. In this volume our talented authors bring us a plethora of narratives that centre themselves on how vital a few lines are to characters navigating through the twists and turns of a story.