Showing results by narrator "John Paton" in All Categories

Ten-year-old Andries, newly orphaned, comes to join his bachelor uncle, Pieter Verbeek, in a large, but silent and unhappy house. Across the way sits a cottage, overflowing with the lively Dykstra family. While Father Dykstra works as a wooden-shoemaker, Mother Dykstra oversees the household of four children.

Voran can’t help but believe the rumors. As blight ravages the countryside and darkness covers the sun, the young warrior of Vasyllia hears of an ancient spirit that devours souls. He feels powerless to fight the oncoming devastation until a mythical creature entrusts him with a long-forgotten song. Legend has it that such a song can heal the masses, overthrow kingdoms, and raise humans to divine beings.... Armed with the power of the song, Voran must hunt down the dark spirit before it achieves its goal of immortality.

Listeners have called the Raven Son series The Lord of the Rings meets 1984. If you enjoy traditional fantasy, cinematic world-building, and creative twists on mythology, you'll love Nicholas Kotar's sweeping tale.

Llun the smith is an artist at heart, content to make the most beautiful swords, nails, and horseshoes in his city. But when his smithy is visited by the grand inquisitor of the secret police, his peaceful life is at an end. He is offered a perfect job - to be the exclusive smith of the new order. Endless luxury, good food, and the freedom to create - it’s everything he ever wanted. But it comes with a price.

After being ridiculed by other boys in his Mongolian village, Dashan, nearly 14 years old, is anxiously considering his chances for entering warrior training. Just at that moment, a messenger racing through the settlement makes Dashan resolve that he will be not only a warrior, but also an arrow-messenger. The great conqueror, Jenghiz Khan, always held at ready a select number of his warriors to ride like an arrow between the farthest provinces of his empire. Jenghiz Khan is now gone, but his laws are still in force. Though small, Dashan is the best rider, but now he must prove it.

He thought he was the chosen one, a warrior of the gods. He had no idea that his god was a demon. After 20 years, Voran has faced his deadly enemy. But instead of victory, Voran loses his home, his hope, and his love...With nothing left, he storms the country of the gods, demanding answers. But the only one who knows the way...is his greatest enemy, the Raven himself. Sabíana returns to her beleaguered city, but finds nothing there but cowardice and vice. She can save her city, but is it even worth saving anymore?

Lebía lives in paradise. Her husband and four children are her pride and joy. Years of war and plague have finally given way to peace and prosperity. Except her paradise is nothing but a lie, created by a dark power who makes false worlds for his own insidious purposes. The world-maker gives Lebía one chance to save her family and her people. Thrust into a parallel world outside time, Lebía must find an ancient magic and unlock its power. But things are not as they seem in this strange world filled with walking nightmares and heroes from deepest legend.

Thirteen-year-old Matt is spending the holidays at the dilapidated Woodhall mansion where his spirited step-sister Caroline works as cook. In a faded rose garden, Matt meets Alix, proud old Madame Ayre’s granddaughter, and is introduced to the tension-filled relationship between the embittered mother and her crippled son Theo.

All 16-year-old Khaidu ever wanted was her own hunting eagle. Her 10 brothers laugh at her. After all, the rule-bound world of the Gumiren nomads has no place for a girl hunter, much less a crippled one. But Khaidu has a secret. Mastering the ancient magic of eagle-binding, she captures the largest eagle her tribe has ever seen. Except, her eagle isn’t an eagle, at all.

In 1917, G.K. Chesterton published an essay in response to an English minister’s objection to people sending cigarettes to British soldiers fighting in the trenches of World War I, titled "The Dregs of Puritanism". He writes that a large number of young men were being hurt by shells, bullets, fever, hunger and horror of hope deferred. The “good reverend”, however, was anxious that they should not be hurt by cigarettes.

Dances of Life - and Death is adapted from Edgar Allan Poe’s Masque of the Red Death. Poe wrote the Masque as a sort of horror story. This play frames the story as a morality play, set in the time of the Plagues and the Renaissance. Though set in the past it is, also, about the present. The plague, here, is a metaphor for life in Syria, Iraq, Columbia, Guatemala, Nigeria, and Somalia, etc. leading desperate refugees to flee from violence and war. But the reaction of those in safer countries is to withdraw behind their walls.

A collection of fairy tales and other classic children's stories by Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm.