Showing results by narrator "Sean Barrett" in All Categories

They are voices lost to time. Beginning in the late 1970s, five veteran airmen sat for private interviews. Decades after the guns fell silent, they recounted in vivid detail the most dangerous missions that made the difference in the war. Ed Haydon dueled with the deadliest of German aces - and forced him to the ground. Robert Johnson racked up 27 kills in his P-47 Thunderbolt, but nearly lost his life when his plane was shot to ribbons and his guns jammed. Cigar-chomping Curtis LeMay was the Air Corps general who devised the bomber tactics that pummeled Germany's war machine.

Jen did not want to leave the city. She did not want to move to a farm with her mom and her mom's new boyfriend, Walter. She did not want to leave her friends and her dad. Most of all, Jen did not want to get new "sisters", Andy and Reese. As if learning new chores on Peapod Farm wasn't hard enough, having to deal with perfect-at-everything Andy might be the last straw for Jen. Besides cleaning the chicken coop, trying to keep up with the customers at the local farmers' market, and missing her old life, Jen has to deal with her own insecurities about this new family.

After a long and fruitful life, the Buddha is now 80. For 50 years after his Enlightenment, he has been walking the hot, dusty roads of Northeastern India with just a robe and bowl, tirelessly and selflessly teaching and inspiring. He knows death is approaching. This is the background to the Maha-Paranibbana Sutta, the original account of the Buddha’s last months. It is extremely moving because it is so personal, detailed and vivid.

A novel in verse form, Byrne echoes and takes further many of the preoccupations of Burgess's earlier fiction. It tells the story of a rampant Irish artist who, in the early days of the century, goes rapidly to the bad and ends up within Hitler's Third Reich.

Set in the fictional city of Maardam, each story is linked by themes of secrets coming to light, lies being exposed and pasts coming back to haunt the people who thought they had fled them - all told in Håkan Nesser’s signature style of dark, cutting prose that displays a true understanding of human nature. The collection is the basis for a trilogy of international films - Dear Agnes, Death of an Author and Samaria - directed by Daniel Alfredson and starring Ben Kingsley and Gemma Chan.

A shipboard quarrel between Nurkeed and Pambe Serang leads to a lingering grudge and a terrible revenge. Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English short-story writer, poet and novelist. He wrote tales and poems of British soldiers in India and stories for children.

Poetry can capture the imagination in a few short lines but narrative verse or poetry takes the form of telling a story, whether it be simple or complex in a longer form. Among the most ancient forms of poetry, it has widespread roots through almost every culture. In Volume 4 we bring you the classics 'The Eve of St Agnes' by John Keats; 'Flodden' by Sir Walter Scott; 'The Ballad of Agincourt' by Michael Drayton; 'Tam O'Shanter' by Robert Burns; and 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' by Robert Browning.

Poetry can capture the imagination in a few short lines but narrative verse or poetry takes the form of telling a story, whether it be simple or complex in a longer form. Among the most ancient forms of poetry, it has widespread roots through almost every culture. In Volume 3 we bring you the classics 'Goblin Market' by Christina Rosseti; 'The Wreck of the Hesperus' by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; 'The Raven' by Edgar Allan Poe; 'Morte D'Arthur' by Alfred Lord Tennyson; and from 'Horatius' by Thomas Babington Maculay.

This is a story from the Canterbury Tales III: Modern Verse Translation collection.

Inspector Darch of Scotland Yard finds himself dealing with a baffling mystery which will test his powers of deduction to the very limit.

Secrets of the Symbol builds upon the expertise and wisdom of Nobel prize-winning scientists, historians, technologists, and conspiracy theorists to help readers fully understand the mysteries behind The Lost Symbol.

Hodgson’s finest short story is set at sea, where one dark, starless night a schooner is hailed by a voice from a nearby rowing boat. The passenger refuses to bring his craft alongside and insists that the crew put away their lantern. He has approached them to beg for food for his fiancée, who he has left behind upon an island, but dares not come any closer. The crew float a box of food to him, and with heartfelt thanks he rows away. But three hours later he returns....

Settling himself in front of the station fire, a young policeman is little prepared for the account of bloody murder that will be relayed that night. For it seems that Mrs Crosscapel's lodging-house is a place of dark secrets and buried passions - emotions that will soon cloud even his own judgement. Who Killed Zebedee? is a brilliant and highly original tale of horror and the macabre.

"I heard, with an unpleasant surprise, close to me, a voice that was drawling, and, I fancied, sneering, repeat the words: 'Food for worms, dead and rotten; God over all.' There was a small window in the wall, here very thick, which had been built up, and in the dark recess of this, deep in the shadow, I now saw a sharp-featured man, sitting with his feet dangling. His keen eyes were fixed on me, and he was smiling cynically...."

FreeFlow is a group of activists dedicated to freedom of information. They have evidence of a military atrocity in the Middle East and are preparing to unleash it. On the glacial rim of an erupting volcano, they christen their endeavour Operation Meltwater. Minutes later, one of them is murdered. Magnus Jonson has a long list of suspects, but he’s getting little help - for a group dedicated to transparency, they’re a secretive bunch. But they are not the only ones with secrets....

Darkness falls. The undead rise to feast on the succulent blood of the living. For years vampires have fascinated great writers of the occult such as De Maupassant, Count Stenbock, E Nesbit and EF Benson. This is The Story Circle's collection of some of their spine-chilling tales told by award-winning actors.

In a certain portion of a certain Australian Colony, two miners, when out prospecting in what was then, as now, one of the dreariest parts of the Island Continent, chanced upon a rich find. But before they could enjoy their riches, the field was declared abandoned, and the dead were left to take their last long sleep, undisturbed by the clank of windlass or the blow of pick.

John Bodman and his wife are polar opposites who have grown to hate each other. But without grounds for divorce, they are tied together till death. So, in a state of despair, Bodman sets his mind on murder.

Pleasures of the Garden begins in ancient China and ends on the Isle of Man; it admires both stately landscaped parks and a soap box full of red geraniums on a fire-escape. It shows that gardening is for everybody, whatever their resources.

The deadly conspiracy against the children of Ealdorman Coenwulf is to be resolved. Those involved have been unmasked and arrested. But will justice prevail? While the court convenes to determine the conspirator’s fate, King Wiglaf’s position is precarious. His wife, Queen Cynethryth, has been implicated in the plot and while Wiglaf must remain impartial, enemies of the Mercia still conspire to prevent the full truth from ever being known.