Showing results by narrator "Jonathan Oliver" in All Categories

Ivanhoe has never been superseded as the epitome of chivalric novels. The brave knight comes from the Crusades to claim the Anglo-Saxon princess, Rowena, as his bride. But he becomes caught up in the feud between Prince John and his brother, Richard the Lionheart, who has returned to England incognito.

A murdered woman is discovered in a City hotel room: Elena Danya, high-end prostitute.Another working girl,her friend,is found dead. Then aristocractic bad-girl Arabella,another friend of Elena's,goes missing. The evidence points to a voyeuristic predator, but D.I. Will Wagstaffe is not convinced.Instead his investigation leads towards three ruthless and dangerous men: a City banker,a Russian oligarch and a Turkish playboy.

A young woman falls to her death. The only people with her are four schoolfriends. One - or maybe all of them - is responsible. Twenty years later someone is intent on letting them have their just desserts.

Article 9 of the Tokyo Judgement at the end of WWII withdrew from the Japanese constitution the state's right of belligerency. Traumatised and guilt ridden for having killed enemy soldiers in war, Bernard has to attempt to coerce his children to continue his life's work, and makes their awaiting inheritance dependent on their abandoning their present careers and dedicating their lives to the promotion of A9.

From the introduction by Jonathan Santlofer: "Like film, literature has been no stranger to marijuana and hashish, going back to Charles Baudelaire's 1860 Artificial Paradises, in which the French poet not only describes the effects of hashish but postulates it could be an aid in creating an ideal world.

When the managing director of Wainwright Enterprises dies everyone is amazed to find he was far richer than they supposed, and that he's left his estate to his nephew Alex and his wife Sally. She uncovers accounting irregularities within the company, but resists involving the police - until the firm's accountant is murdered. But DCI Andrew Fenwick's investigation reveals a web of corruption reaching the highest levels of the local community that puts his own child's life in peril.

For decades the painting was believed to be lost. But just as mysteriously as it disappeared, it reappears, an anonymous donation to a gallery in Sydney. The art world is stunned, but so are the three men who loved the woman in the painting - the woman on the stairs. One by one they track her down to an isolated cottage in Australia. Here they must try to untangle the lies and betrayals of their shared past - but time is running out.

As the ship docked in Bombay,the shocking news of the rising by the Indian mutineers and their massacire of women, children, and civilians reached Anthony Morgan and his company. Even so,they were hardly prepared for what they now faced.Morgan himself has another quest. On discovering that the son he had fathered,his child's mother and her husband,Morgan's old sergeant, are captives up in the hills, he is determined to rescue them. A gripping tale of a soldier torn between orders and honour.

One of Tolstoy’s most important shorter works, The Kreutzer Sonata presents a problematic view of the relationship between the sexes and promotes abstinence as the solution. Pozdnyshev jealously observes the intimacy that emerges between his wife and a violin player. Haunted by The Kreutzer Sonata, over which they bonded, it plays round and round in Pozdnyshev’s head driving him to distraction and to an unquenchable rage.

In 1836, Charles Henry Harrod was convicted at the Old Bailey of receiving stolen goods and sentenced to seven years' hard labour in Tasmania. But he miraculously escaped his fate to found what would become the legendary Harrods. His son, Charles Digby, transformed the shop from a local grocer's to a department store patronised by the wealthy and famous. Robin Harrod's fascinating book reveals the previously unknown origins of the store and follows its fortunes through family scandal, the devastating fire of 1883 and its subsequent rise from the ashes, to 1889 when its shares were floated on the stock exchange, completing one of the most extraordinary stories in the history of commerce.

The gothic tale of Frankenstein and his construction of a human being who runs amok has, with the help of numerous films, become one of the most vivid horror stories. But Mary Shelley's original novel, written in 1816, dealt more sympathetically with "the daemon," showing how an initially beneficent creature is hammered into a daemon by the way he is treated. Her ideas, and her dramatic but poignant story, is brought to life in this sound dramatization.

London. A city where no one feels safe and one man's crime is another man's justice. A paedophile is brutally murdered,and to protect other known offenders the police must haul the families of their victims down to the station for questioning.It's just another day in the life of DI Will "Staffe" Wagstaffe. In this case nothing is simple,least of all Staffe's personal life.

René Descartes is one of the formative figures in Western philosophy, logic and mathematics. His famous statement: "I think, therefore I am," has become perhaps the most famous phrase in all of philosophy. Descartes’s ground-breaking writings attempted to establish unshakeable foundations of knowledge, and set a trend for subsequent Western philosophy, which has endlessly critiqued and expanded upon his ideas.

On the afternoon of Sunday April 24, 1932, a group of approximately 500 men and women set out for the summit of Kinder Scout, the highest point in Derbyshire's Peak District. They were not here to take in the fresh air and breath-taking vistas; they were here to make a stand. Kinder Scout, like almost every other site of natural beauty in Britain at that time, was privately owned and fiercely guarded. This wild, open landscape was one that they had absolutely no right to visit.

This engaging biography series focuses on the traits that made our heroes great - the traits that kids can aspire to in order to live heroically themselves. Each book tells the story of an icon in a lively, conversational way that works well for the youngest nonfiction listeners. This volume features Anne Frank, whose courage and hope during a time of terror are still an inspiration for people around the world today.

In the shadows of a seismic shift in American politics comes Tom Rachman's timely and hilarious new work. Basket of Deplorables takes an incisive and satirical look at the United States in the era of Trump data breaches, liberal self-righteousness, red-hat rancor, Starbucks macchiatos, Ultimate Fighting factories, and Internet sinkholes.

When scientist Victor Frankenstein forms a creature from the body parts of corpses, thus shattering the perceived limits of scientific understanding, the consequences are devastating. As Frankenstein becomes disgusted with his experiment, he thwarts the creature’s desire for a companion, and what ensues is singularly chilling.

A woman is discovered beneath the London streets, barely alive. Soon after, DC Josie Chancellor finds an abandoned, newborn baby close to Leadengate station. DI Will Wagstaffe puts woman and baby together. The woman is Kerry Degg, a burlesque singer. Kerry has bad friends, a dodgy husband and no idea about what it takes to build a family. As Kerry clings to life, Staffe hears only discord as he ventures from Whitehall’s clubland to Soho’s fleshpots trying to make his way through a labyrinth of trails that leads to another woman, seemingly forced - like Kerry Degg - to bear her child in captivity.

This friendly, fun biography series focuses on the traits that made our heroes great - the traits that kids can aspire to in order to live heroically themselves. Each book tells the story of an icon in a lively, conversational way that works well for the youngest nonfiction listeners and that always includes the hero's childhood influences. This volume features Founding Father and scientist Benjamin Franklin.

When it comes to the holidays, no story captures the true spirit of giving like O. Henry’s classic "The Gift of the Magi". And in celebration of the season, Audie Award® winners Katherine Kellgren, Oliver Wyman, and Jonathan Davis bring to life this timeless Christmas tale, plus two more of O. Henry’s holiday gems: "The Cop and the Anthem" and "The Last Leaf".