Showing results by narrator "William Roberts" in All Categories

After nearly two decades in Britain, Bill Bryson, the acclaimed author of such best sellers as The Mother Tongue and Made in America, decided it was time to move back to the United States for a while. This was partly to let his wife and kids experience life in Bryson's homeland, and partly because he had read that 3.7 million Americans believed that they had been abducted by aliens at one time or another. It was thus clear to him that his people needed him.

Hardly anyone ever leaves Des Moines, Iowa. But Bill Bryson did, and after 10 years in England he decided to go home, to a foreign country. In an ageing Chevrolet Chevette, he drove nearly 14,000 miles through 38 states to compile this hilarious and perceptive state-of-the-nation report on small-town America.

In Made in America, Bryson de-mythologizes his native land, explaining how a dusty hamlet with neither woods nor holly became Hollywood, how the Wild West wasn't won, why Americans say 'lootenant' and 'Toosday', how Americans were eating junk food long before the word itself was cooked up, as well as exposing the true origins of the G-string, the original $64,000 question, and Dr Kellogg of cornflakes fame.

A Short History of Nearly Everything is Bill Bryson's quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization. He takes subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us, like geology, chemistry, and particle physics, and aims to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science. In the company of some extraordinary scientists, Bill Bryson reveals the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.

After moving back to the States, Bryson started to write a column for The Mail on Sunday Night and Day magazine. This is a collection of these column entries. Bryson writes about everything from everyday chores, to suing people, the beach, TV, movies, air conditioners, college, Americana, injury dangers, wasting resources, and holiday seasons.

The Appalachian Trail covers 14 states and over 2,000 miles, snaking through some of the most spectacular landscapes in America. Reluctant adventurer Bryson recounts his gruelling hike along the longest continuous footpath in the world.

In Neither Here nor There Bill Bryson brings his unique brand of humour to bear on Europe as he shoulders his backpack, keeps a tight hold on his wallet, and journeys from Hammerfest, the northernmost town on the continent, to Istanbul on the cusp of Asia.

Melanie Hoskins, an experienced firefighter-paramedic, has been recruited by a very selective and secret organisation known as The Division. Their mission is to protect the populace and secure the continuation of the United States. The Division is only activated at times of dire need. This just so happens to be one of those times. Based in New York City, Hoskins is forced to leave her civilian life and those she loves behind, and join the front line to try to control the 'dollar flu' virus that has been spreading throughout the city.

Australia has more things that can kill you than anywhere else. Nevertheless, Bill Bryson journeyed to the country and promptly fell in love with it. The people are cheerful, their cities are clean, the beer is cold, and the sun nearly always shines.

A classic from the New York Times bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods and The Body. After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly 3 million Americans believed they had...

Glasgow, 2025. Dr Amanda Maclean is called to treat a young man with a mild fever. Within three hours, he dies. The mysterious illness sweeps through the hospital with deadly speed. This is how it begins. The victims are all men. Dr Maclean raises the alarm, but the sickness spreads to every corner of the globe. Threatening families. Governments. Countries. Can they find a cure before it’s too late? Will this be the story of the end of the world - or its salvation?

The Origins and History of Consciousness draws on a full range of world mythology to show how individual consciousness undergoes the same archetypal stages of development as human consciousness as a whole. Erich Neumann was one of C. G. Jung's most creative students and a renowned practitioner of analytical psychology in his own right. In this influential book, Neumann shows how the stages begin and end with the symbol of the Uroboros, the tail-eating serpent.

The Zondervan Biblical and Theological Lectures series provides a unique audio learning experience. Unlike a traditional audiobook's direct narration of a book's text, Introduction to Biblical Interpretation: Audio Lectures includes high quality live-recordings of college-level lectures that...

This is a story from the Fall of the House of Usher collection. The horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, with its dungeon of death, and the overhanging gloom on the House of Usher demonstrate unforgettably the unique imagination of Edgar Allan Poe. Unerringly, he touches upon some of our greatest nightmares: Premature burial, ghostly transformation, words from beyond the grave. Written in the 1840s, they have retained their power to shock and frighten even now.

From the #1 international bestselling author of The Revenant – the book that inspired the award-winning movie – comes the remarkable true story of the worst mining disaster in American history. In 1917, the lives of a company of miners changed forever when the underground labyrinth of...

In the Redhawk Mining District, he is known as Johnny Montana. It is the name given to him by those who followed him to the Northwest gold fields in the spring of 1863. Now, with a harsh Montana winter about to descend upon them, all Johnny and his partners want to do is go home. And all that stands in their way is a highly organized gang of thieves and murderers. Others have tried to escape the Redhawk District with their summer's cache of gold, but none have succeeded. Now they are turning to one man, asking him to accomplish what heavily-armed parties have so far failed to achieve - get their gold out of Montana, before the outlaws come for it.

At the heart of these stories, as with all the best of Lovecraft’s work, is the belief that the Earth was once inhabited by powerful and evil gods, just waiting for the chance to recolonise their planet. Cthulhu is one such god, lurking deep beneath the sea until called into being by cult followers who – like all humans – know not what they do.

At the Mountains of Madness first appeared in 1936, in the February, March and April editions of the American magazine Astounding Stories. One of H.P. Lovecraft’s most chilling works, it draws on Edgar Allan Poe’s Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, as well as Lovecraft’s deep fascination with the Antarctic. The sinister discoveries made by a group of explorers in At the Mountains of Madness are testament to the author’s enormous powers of imagination.

Nine long years have passed since the killer last struck - nine years since eight helpless young women were brutally slaughtered by an icepick-wielding maniac. The trail grew cold and the book was unofficially closed on a serial killer who stopped killing. But now "The Icepick Prowler" has confessed - but only to seven of the killings. Not only does he deny the eighth, he has an airtight alibi. Barbara Ettinger's family had almost come to accept that the young woman was the victim of a random killing.

The American Classics Collection is a century-spanning collection of 17 classic novels, short stories, essay, and poetry by American authors, read by a cast of incredible narrators including Kobna Holdbrook-Smith; Nathan Osgood; Robert G. Slade; Jonathan Keeble, and more. Included here are stories by some of the greatest writers of all time, including Ernest Hemingway; Mark Twain; F. Scott Fitzgerald; Edith Wharton; Frederick Douglass; and H.P. Lovecraft, amongst a host of others.