Showing results by narrator "Peter Marinker" in All Categories

Diverse and moving, these six outstanding stories are meditations on grief and loss, love, communication and loneliness.  Each one will take the reader on a brief yet unforgettable journey into private worlds and unexpected corners of the human heart. The shortlisted stories have all been chosen for this year's Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award - the world's richest and most prestigious prize for a single short story, dubbed the 'equivalent of the Man Booker for the short story' by the Sydney Morning Herald.

Heavy snow falls on San Piedro and impedes the progress of Kabuo Miyomoto's trial. Hatsue, Kabuo's wife and Ishmael, a journalist on the case, find themselves reckoning with the past and their lost love.

For years legendary broadcaster Alistair Cooke brought America to the rest of the world with incomparable wit and wisdom. This is his classic ‘personal history’ of America, guiding us through centuries of changing life in the USA.

Believing that a good, interesting life is marked by quality, not quantity, John Steinbeck took note of his itchy feet and prepared to travel. He was accompanied by his French poodle, Charley, diplomat and watchdog, across the states of America from Maine to California. Moving through woods and forests, dirt tracks and highways to large cities and wildernesses, Steinbeck observed America and the Americans with a humorous and sometimes sceptical eye.

We are all storytellers - through stories, we make sense of our lives. But it is not enough to tell tales. There must be someone to listen. In his work as a psychoanalyst, Stephen Grosz has spent the last 25 years uncovering the hidden feelings behind our most baffling behaviour. The Examined Life distils over 50,000 hours of conversation into pure psychological insight, without the jargon. This extraordinary book is about one ordinary process: talking, listening, and understanding.

The fire that was to change so many lives started with a single shaft of lightning. It struck on a still and moonless night and cocooned for a while in the heart of an ancient pine. The woman camped nearby with her group of troubled teenagers slept on, hearing nothing. But one among them would be lost forever. For soon the pupa of fire would hatch and engulf the entire mountain. Into this inferno will come the Smoke Jumper.

Fifteen years ago, Susan Morrow left her first husband Edward Sheffield. One day, comfortable in her home and her second marriage, she receives--entirely out of the blue - a parcel containing the manuscript of her ex-husband's first novel. He writes asking her to read the book; she was always his best critic, he says. As Susan reads, she is drawn into the fictional life of Tony Hastings, a maths professor driving his family to their summer house in Maine. And as we read along with her, so are we....

Arthur Miller's plays have held the world's stages for almost half a century. Among them are Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, and All My Sons, which have been read and performed countless times across the world. His memoir, Timebends, shows that the life of the man is as compelling as his plays. With passion, wit and candour, Miller recalls his childhood in Harlem and Brooklyn in the 1920s and the Depression; his successes and failures in the theatre and in Hollywood; the formation of his political beliefs....

Award-winning historian Simon Schama's landmark exploration of how America's past influences its future 'I can tell you exactly when American democracy came back from the dead, because I was there . . .' Simon Schama's different kind of history of the USA begins in the middle of an Iowa caucus. There he witnesses first-hand the exciting, chaotic crush as ordinary Americans - grannies, students, businesswomen and doctors - decide who should become the 44th President of the United States.

In Tree Wisdom, Vincent teaches us what a year of healing among the trees can look like. Each lesson mirrors the wondrous way our tall timber friends have learned to thrive through the seasons. Each lesson is simple in nature, a push of the pause button, a chance to re-centre on what matters. 

The different ways that social change happens, from unleashing to nudging to social cascades. How does social change happen? When do social movements take off? Sexual harassment was once something that women had to endure; now a movement has risen up against it. White nationalist sentiments, on the other hand, were largely kept out of mainstream discourse; now there is no shortage of media outlets for them. In this book, with the help of behavioral economics, psychology and other fields, Cass Sunstein casts a bright new light on how change happens. 

Winter 1847, the Star of the Sea sets sail from Ireland for New York. Among the refugees are a maidservant, bankrupt Lord Merridith, an aspiring novelist, and a maker of revolutionary ballads. Each is connected more deeply than they know.

Uncover why the Titanic sank, ponder the sinister Vatican/Mafia network that plotted the assassination of liberal John Paul, find out why NASA 'lost' its files on Mars, read why no-one enters Area 51, and consider why medical supplies were already on site at Edgware Road before the 7/7 bombs detonated. Just because you are paranoid, it doesn't mean that they aren't out to conspire against you.

These four works show Samuel Beckett at his most penetrating. Both Krapp's Last Tape (1958) and Not I (1972) are among the most striking pieces written for the theatre in the 20th century. An old man sits at a table, playing back old tapes made when he was younger, mixed glimpses of past feelings. In Not I, we have just a mouth expressing memories and torment in a torrent of words.

Alistair Cooke was the greatest of all twentieth century reporters of life in America to the rest of the world. This book presents the cream of his writings on the events that shaped modern American history, from the end of the Second World War through to the assassination of John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy (Cooke was actually present), the moon landings and the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

In Paris' Pre-Lachaise cemetery, Jim Morrison's graffiti-scrawled tombstone is a place of pilgrimage for local devotees, adolescent hedonists, and wayward backpackers alike. Found dead in his bathtub aged only 27, having achieved worldwide stardom as lead singer of The Doors, Morrison was quickly immortalized amongt the rock and roll deities such as Hendrix and Joplin. In death, however, this debauched "rock poet" remained more stubbornly enigmatic than ever.

The Phantom of the Opera goes to New York. Forsyth picks up the story following the phantom's escape to the New World, where he begins his new and secret life in a place where he carves out a kingdom of fortune and power. He builds the most glittering opera house in the world, a place to lure Christine.

A mysterious man appears aboard the Titanic on its doomed voyage. His mission? To save the ship. The result? A world where the United States never entered World War I, thus launching the secret history of the 20th century. In April 2012 Joseph Kennedy, nephew of John F. Kennedy, lives in an America occupied in the East by Greater Germany and on the West Coast by Imperial Japan. He is one of six people who can restore history to its rightful order - even though it would mean his death and the deaths of everyone he loves.

Ben Given's wife has died, he, a heart surgeon, is unwell and life for him is not worth living. He sets off into the wilds bent on dying out there only to find himself caught up in an eye-opening, life-enhancing diversion.

Now a major ITV drama series, Mr Selfridge is a tale of Edwardian excess and the rise and fall of maverick retailer Harry Gordon Selfridge. In 1909 London's first dedicated department store opened in a huge blaze of publicity. Zola called Selfridges a 'great cathedral of shopping', and its high priest was Harry Gordon Selfridge, father of modern retailing, philanderer, gambler, dandy and showman.