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

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.

There’s something wrong next door. At least that’s what neighbours Howie Jeffries and Emily Phane both think. Howie is an accidental recluse, content with his fishing and dreams of someday sailing away on a boat. Emily couldn’t be more different: she’s irreverent, outgoing and seemingly well adjusted. But when Emily returns from college to care for her dying grandfather, Howie can’t help but notice her increasingly erratic behavior - not to mention her newfound love of nocturnal gardening.

From a centuries-old building on a narrow street in the heart of London, a firm known as the System, the world's most lucrative and least-known cartel, maintains a stranglehold on the world's diamonds. The company selects the stones a customer can buy and decides how much he must pay for the privilege. One dealer is tired of the game, and so he sets out to destroy the System forever.

Having escaped the Island - a wasteland that housed those no longer able to contribute to society - ageing 'Big Guy' Clancy thought his fight was over. But they have returned to the mainland to find that it is not the haven they anticipated. With the punishment satellites that kept them on the Island - and the city under control - gone, hell has been unleashed.

When the fog comes down and the drums start to beat, the inhabitants of the island tremble: for the punishment satellites - which keep the tyrannical Wastelords at bay - are blind in the darkness, and the islanders become prey. The inhabitants are the old, the sick, the poor: the detritus of Society, dumped on the island with the rest of Society's waste. There is no point trying to escape, for the satellites - the invisible eyes of the law - mete out instant judgement from the sky.

Freeman has agreed to report back on his friend to a clandestine agency interested in Omar's finances.

Meanwhile, in Washington, DC, Aliyah Rahim is spying on her husband, Abbas. A brilliant doctor, Abbas is crushed by the death of their daughter, which he blames on the post-9/11 mood of hostility towards Arab-Americans. Aliyah fears he may be planning a terrifying act of revenge.

There isn't much crime in Stoneleigh, Massachusetts. It is a college town, a mountain getaway for the quietly rich, where burglar alarms are typically set off only by foraging wildlife. So when Edward Iman, owner of Stoneleigh Sentinel Security, is alerted by a late-night alarm from the house of Doyle Cutler, one of his wealthiest clients, Edward thinks little of it - until a local student, Mary Steckl, claims that she was sexually assaulted at Cutler's house that same night.

It starts with a trip to a local amusement park. David Harwood is hoping a carefree day at Five Mountains will help dispel his wife Jan's recent depression, black moods that have led to frightening thoughts of suicide. Instead, a day of fun with their four-year-old son Ethan turns into a nightmare. When Jan disappears from the park, David's worst fears seem to have come true.

The pretty gift-wrapped box floating in a toy dinghy looks innocent enough, but it holds a bloody secret: a human heart. Nothing is more important to Detective Sam Becket than being able to keep his family safe. But when that gruesome package is found outside their home, they fear it can mean only one thing: that Cal the Hater is back. When a second grisly discovery is made in a crowded resort pool, the great manhunt is back on.

Ben Hur could be said to be the first American blockbuster. It combines all the best elements of popular classic, epic and action story against a background of authoritative historical detail. As this vivid reading shows, the story, together with the sweeping rhythm of the writer's prose, make it ideally suited to the audiobook.

"Who is the man with the roses in his hand?" thinks Anna. "I want to meet him." ’’Who is the girl with the guitar?’ thinks Will. "I like her. I want to meet her." But they do not meet. "There are lots of men!" says Anna’s friend Vicki, but Anna cannot forget Will. And then, one rainy day....

From the Links is a golf hall of fame, shame, and the arcane. Collected here are more than 100 of golf's greatest moments: from the famous to the long forgotten; from the links of Scotland in the 1800s to the 1938 US Open; from the 1954 US Women's Open to the 2010 Masters, and even to the little known Martini Invitational in 1971 and starring the giants of the game down to the struggling pros and amateurs.

It is 1910 and Dr Hawley Crippen has been convicted of the murder of his wife Cora. In his cell at Pentonville Prison, Crippen faces the prospect of the gallows. Laying bare his innermost feelings, he looks back at his austere childhood in Coldwater, Michigan, his tempestuous marriage and life on the run with his lover Ethel Le Neve. Yet as he revisits his life, Crippen entreats us to consider his "confession": I am not a murderer.

In Burning Midnight, master of the hard-boiled detective novel Loren D. Estleman gives readers a hot new Amos Walker mystery. Amos Walker knows Detroit, from the highest to the lowest, and that includes the gangs of Mexican town. When a friend asks Walker to get his son's brother-in-law out of one of two feuding gangs, Walker gets in trouble fast. First, dead bodies start to pile up; then come suspicious fires and the bottle bombs. Walker is caught in the middle of a gang war. Whether or not a middle-aged gringo like him can cool things off between the Maldados and the Zapatistas, he's got to try; he did promise his friend.

Hollywood, 1940. It’s the Golden Age of the Feelies. All one-time actor and unlicensed matrimonial private eye Clark Gable has to do is impersonate a wealthy scriptwriter for a few hours, and sign the contract for the biopic of the inventor of a device which has changed entertainment forever.

The keeper’s rats are kept in a comfortable cage until they’ve served their purpose. The keeper feels they’re as individual as humans; they like to eat, play, fight and procreate. And some like to kill…. Life is good in the Becket household. Sam is planning a surprise for Grace’s birthday, Cathy’s back from California and Grace is seeing patients again. Even Sam’s partner, Martinez, is in love. And then the killings begin. A newly-wed couple is found horribly slain in Miami Beach, their nude bodies bizarrely displayed.

The worst day of Tim Blake's life started out with him making breakfast for his seventeen-year-old daughter Sydney. Syd was staying with him while she worked a summer job - even if he wasn't entirely sure what her job at the Just Inn Time motel actually was - and Tim hoped this quality father-daughter time would somehow help her deal with his divorce. When she didn't arrive home at her usual time, he thought she'd probably gone to the mall to hang with her friends. When she didn't answer her phone he began to worry.