Showing results by narrator "Susan Iannucci" in All Categories

A Woman of No Importance takes place in a 24-hour period during a house party hosted by Lady Hunstanton at her country estate. The upper echelons of English society mix, mingle and flirt, including Lady Caroline Pontefract (who is on her fourth husband), the witty and ironic Mrs. Allonby and the dandyish Lord Illingworth. Wilde balances these worldly characters with a visiting young American woman, Hester Worsley.

Anna Katharine Green (1846 - 1935) was one of the crime novelists and paved the way for later female writers of detective novels, like Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Ngaio Marsh.

Based on H. G. Wells’s own life experience in the drapery trade, this comic novel presents our anti-hero, Alfred Polly, miserable, timid, and without direction, but with a gift for creating incomprehensible conversational “epithets” to express himself. No one quite understands what he has just said to them … Was it a compliment? An insult? Was it profound or absurd?

Gogol's phantasmagorical tale about a man whose nose decides to abscond and begin living a life of its own is one of the earliest and most celebrated examples of absurdist literature. Apart from its recondite humor, it is remarkable for Gogol's skill in characterization and his ability to paint a picture of contemporary life in Russia in a few verbal brushstrokes.

Anne of the Island was published in 1915 covering her from the ages of 18 to 22. This is the third story of Anne Shirley where she earns her BA at Redmond College. In this book, she enjoys new and old friends at Redmond, living together at Patty's Place chaperoned by Aunt Jamesina. Gilbert proposes to Anne and she rejects him - but you must listen to the story to know the rest!

Rainbow Valley was written in 1919 by L. M. Montgomery for the series that began with Anne of Green Gables. Anne and Gilbert's children are growing up! Their new friends, the Merediths, live in the Manse nearby. When the Merediths aren't playing in the graveyard or riding pigs through town, they meet up with the Blythes to play, fish, and study insects in Rainbow Valley!

First published in 1909, A Girl of the Limberlost is a novel by American writer and naturalist Gene Stratton-Porter. This classic of Indiana literature is a sequel to Stratton-Porter's earlier novel Freckles. Wholesome, sensible, and beautiful, the heroine, Elnora, is also compassionate, self-reliant, and intelligent. Neglected by her mother, Elnora reaches through this hardship toward education, friendship, and love. There are no shortcuts and her hard work brings joy to herself and all those she loves.

Queen Marguerite de Navarre was one of the most powerful women of her age. Her masterpiece, The Heptameron, is a collection of some 72 stories told by five gentlemen and five ladies who find themselves stranded in an abbey. Proposed as an edifying way of passing the time while a bridge is being repaired, the tale-telling - as well as the conversations that follow each story - quickly becomes a battle of wits between the sexes, with tales concerning illicit lovers, romantic conquests, lecherous monks, manly honor, and women's virtue.

Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling. Kipling's delightful collection of imaginative tales about natural history has captivated children and adults alike since its publication in 1902. Here stories are presented in dramatic format by members of The Online Stage. Stories include:"How the Whale Got His Throat", "How the Camel Got His Hump", "How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin", "How the Leopard Got His Spots", "The Elephant's Child", "The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo", and more.

Anne and Gilbert begin their life together in Anne's House of Dreams, a continuation of the story that began with Anne of Green Gables. First published in 1917, the L. M. Montgomery series continues with Anne as a new bride making new friends wherever she finds them. They settle on the seashore at Four Winds Point, an area near the village of Glen St. Mary on Prince Edward Island, Canada. She is befriended by the capable Miss Cornelia Bryant, kindly old sea Captain Jim, and the beautiful, mysterious figure of Mrs. Dick Moore.

Freckles is the only name he has ever known. His right hand is missing at the wrist, and he is haunted by not knowing how it happened. Raised since infancy in a Chicago orphanage, he speaks with a slight Irish accent and sings with a beautiful voice. Now, exhausted after many days of walking, he applies for a job with the Grand Rapids Lumber Company, guarding timber in the Limberlost Swamp from timber thieves. His Swamp Angel declares her love for him and promises that she will find his parents and prove that Freckles comes from "a race of men that have been gentlemen for ages."

R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) is a science-fiction drama that was first presented in Czech in 1921. It introduced the term "robot", which is derived from a Czech word meaning "worker," to international vocabulary. The action opens in a factory that has successfully produced thousands of robots, who are essentially mindless drones. An idealistic humanitarian activist launches a plan to imbue some of the robots with human traits. The robots which have been humanized then assume leadership over the other robots and seek to organize them in a revolution to take over the world.

Following Anne of Green Gables (1908), this book was written by Lucy Maud Montgomery in 1909. From the age of 16 to 18, Anne is about to start her first term teaching at the Avonlea school. The book soon introduces Anne's new and problematic neighbor, Mr. Harrison, and his foul-mouthed parrot, as well as the twins, Davy and Dora. Other characters introduced are some of Anne's new pupils and Miss Lavendar Lewis, a sweet but lonely lady.

Seven children home for the summer left only with their nurse and they are inclined to prank those who cross their path. Their parents and governess are away. A neighbor, Mrs. Moffat tells Mary about becoming a Christian. Mary is intrigued and she begins to read her Bible and explore what this means. As her brothers and sisters watch her life, she really wants to know if she can still have fun. Several anxious events befall she and her siblings and she learns how to pray and find God's peace. Overall, a short light hearted and humorous family story for children.

A baker‘s dozen of futuristic and space travel tales await you in this audiobook of short stories, originally published in the science fiction magazine, IF (1960-61). These stories are both a sign of their times and a testament to the imaginative powers of writers in the era between Sputnik and Neil Armstrong’s steps on the moon. Death and Taxes are inevitable, of course, but you’ll also find a (Mind)snake, and maybe even a Garden of Eden within.

When immortals start meddling with a century-old murder mystery, the King of the Eternal City summons Delphi Janjack: fixer, tour guide, gentleman’s gentleman...a one-person army meant to solve problems without mussing his top hat and brocaded vest. Delphi might also be a disgraced champion in hiding, his secrets so abhorrent nothing but death will wipe the slate clean. Nearly 400 years after the Elves invaded South America, there is just one free city left: Austen, Tejas. With the heir to Court Royale missing, the last bastion of human independence faces inevitable destruction.

Ellwood Manor, Rose Glen, West Virginia, 1864: Young Lady Adaline's days fluctuate between tea parties in the rose garden at Ellwood Manor, and attending to wounded Union soldiers injured in the Civil War. When the town's hospital, plantation homes, and government buildings, overflow as makeshift hospitals, Adaline's mother, Lady Ellwood, offers Ellwood Manor as a convalescent home to recovering soldiers.

Arthur Ransome brilliantly wrote about Oscar Wilde in A Critical Study, published in 1912, and then went on to write the popular and better known children's series, Swallows and Amazons, in 1930. Ransome considers Oscar Wilde a visionary of whom every classical scholar must know. Oscar Wilde changed the culture of his own day and, by doing so, changed ours. Wilde tried various literary activities, poetry, drama, dialogues and essays, a novel, and even wrote about interior decoration. To him, art was supreme, and he pursued that ideal in every expression that he encountered.

The story from which this collection takes its title describes the adventures of an imaginative boy who discovers an omnibus that enables him to travel to the past in the company of famous historical personages. When at his invitation, an incredulous adult accompanies him on a journey, the astonishing new vistas unfolding alarm the security-conscious older man, who wishes himself back in his comfortable suburban home.

In the not-too-distant future, 2185 AD, anti-gerisone is the new drug that stops ageing. People are now living into their hundreds until it's time to take their own big trip up yonder, and in the case of the Ford family and Gramps, the notable patriarch, families are living and fighting together in one home for much longer. Eventually there are no prisons, slums, asylums, poverty, wars, or disease. and 200 years later the population of the US is set at 40 million people. But since no one gets any older, someone must volunteer to die if a baby is born.