Showing results by narrator "Joff Manning" in All Categories

1564: Devon sailor Francis Drake sets out on a journey of adventure. Drake learns of routes used to transport Spanish silver and gold, and risks his life in an audacious plan to steal a fortune.

Born in Vienna into an extremely wealthy and highly cultured family, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) grew up surrounded by art, music, and a disturbing amount of dysfunctional behavior. After studying mechanical engineering and developing an interest in aeronautics, he became obsessed with mathematics and logic, which led to his life's work exploring the relationship between language, philosophy, and reality.

A broken family. A new opportunity in a country on the precipice of unspeakable evil. November 1932. Seamus Ritter, a widower with four children, returns from riding the rails in an America crippled by the great depression. Realizing that his homecoming will not be how he envisioned it, and in a desperate attempt to make amends with his 16-year-old daughter, Maureen, Seamus accepts an invitation to come and work for his long-lost uncle in Berlin. With little other choice, Seamus takes the ship to Germany with his family.

With the coming of the Olympic Games to Berlin, a false air of civility has taken over as the government extends a welcome to the world. But below the surface, the police state remains, and hundreds of so-called “undesirables” are rounded up and held in a newly constructed concentration camp in the city. In desperation, one of the prisoners reaches out to the Ritter family, and Maureen and her band of subversives will undertake a mission of mercy that could see them all end up as victims of the dreaded Gestapo.

With the horrors of the Nazi regime becoming more apparent by the day, Maureen Ritter decides to remain in Paris. There, she meets a disturbed young man, who will change the course of history and set the match to a firestorm that will engulf the innocent Jews still in Germany. Fiona Ritter’s devotion to the Führer will be tested when the nightmare of Kristallnacht consumes Berlin. The foundations she built her life upon these last six years will be shaken, as she witnesses the horrific violence and destruction wrought that fateful night.

Legend tells that the Palladium, a powerful talisman dropped from heaven by the goddess Athena, protects modern Istanbul. What if it falls into the wrong hands? Moments after archaeologist Elif Mutlu finds a mysterious relic in a tomb in Istanbul, terrorists kidnap her and slaughter the rest of her team.

The Ritter family is fractured. Maureen, Michael, and his new wife, Monika, are in exile in the city of Paris. Seamus, Lisa, and the other children remain in Berlin, where 15-year-old Fiona is falling further under the spell of Nazi propaganda. Under constant pressure to inform on her parents and impress her peers, she will soon be faced with a stark choice on which direction her life is going to take.

Two years have passed since Hitler swept to power and the Golden Age the Nazis promised has come to pass—for some. When a mysterious fire burns down the factory, the police dismiss the investigation. Seamus will start down a path to finding the truth and discovering who has a grudge against them strong enough to risk everything. Faced with financial ruin, Seamus will have to decide to accept an offer of sale and break up his family or submit to the needs of rearming the Wehrmacht.

Berlin 1933. The new dawn that Hitler promised has taken place. Propped up by business interests and a fragile political coalition, the Nazis and their stormtroopers start to run riot throughout the city. The ghosts of Lisa and Seamus’s recent past come back to haunt them when a figure emerges from the shadows of their lives to threaten their future. Seamus will have to protect his family, his workers and his own life from the threats against them, no matter what it takes.

Tilly Barton can’t wait for Christmas - it’s her favorite time of the year. Her seafaring husband, Ray, is due home any moment now. Soon, she’ll be baking gingerbread and decorating the tree with her three young children. But, everything changes when Ray is tragically lost at sea. Tilly finds herself a widow with three little ones to think of in the brutality of a London winter. They’re cast into a turmoil of hardship, with Tilly struggling and scraping to keep her little family alive. Christmases come and go, bringing little joy with them.

Once an ancient race of supreme beings ruled over the Earth. Banished by the light centuries ago, one has returned. With the help of its disciples, it desires to plunge the world into a new age of darkness and horror. Ephraim Godwin is searching for the truth about his family's disappearance. After conventional ways failed, he turned to the world of spiritualism, only to discover it filled with charlatans and tricksters. As a known skeptic, Ephraim fights to shine a light on those who prey upon others as he searches for the truth.

In the year 1933, an elderly Dr. John Watson is looking back over his life and his time spent with his brilliant friend and master of deduction Sherlock Holmes. He writes in a letter to the listener that he has assembled a list of seven untold adventures that span from his and Sherlock's early years until the time of Sherlock's retirement. Watson explains that he wishes to leave, not only his family, but the public with a final compilation of adventures that he and Sherlock shared while he is still able.

With contributions from Stephen Fry, Mark Gatiss, Douglas Wilmer, and many more, this book was put together by fan site Sherlockology to help save Undershaw, the former home of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

It is June 1884, a grey period for both the weather and Sherlock Holmes' mood. A lack of compelling cases has left him bored and close once again to the dull embrace of the needle. At the 11th hour, Inspector Gregson arrives with the promise of an impossible crime to solve. A murder has shattered the bucolic peace of the sleepy arable farmlands of Bedfordshire. The owner of a small stately home has been brutally killed while hosting a dinner party. But what and where is the murder weapon?

Three seemingly separate crimes, three detectives. A mysterious stalker is on the loose in London known only as the Goblin Man and his sights are set on a wealthy businessman, David Daniels. A horrific explosion rips through Whitechapel Underground Station and the prime suspect is a Jewish anarchist. And a Mrs. Clara Edwards is searching for her missing lover, Philias Jackson. What connects these three?

Largely self-taught, with little formal education, Dickens was catapulted to fame at the age of 24 with the publication of The Pickwick Papers in 1836. While some authors have depicted Dickens as a tormented soul or cruel misogynist who compromised his work by pandering to a wide audience, Simply Dickens convincingly shows him as a purposeful, supremely talented, and versatile personality whose popular appeal was central to his achievement.