Showing results by narrator "Greg Wagland" in All Categories

Atticus Perennis, Roman prefect and hero of the seas, is stranded in Carthage. His Roman masters have all but abandoned him, and at his feet gape the jaws of an angry mercenary army. For while the senators and consuls of Rome bicker and debate, the mercenaries around Utica are running out of patience and strain at the leash, on the verge of war. And then, when a councillor is sent as a message to Atticus and his comrades, all but dead and hideously disfigured, the leash finally breaks....

In a series of revolts starting in 1820, four military officers rode forth on horseback from obscure European towns to bring political freedom and a constitution to Spain, Naples, and Russia; and national independence to the Greeks. The men who launched these exploits from Andalusia to the snowy fields of Ukraine - Colonel Rafael del Riego, General Guglielmo Pepe, General Alexandros Ypsilanti, and Colonel Sergei Muraviev-Apostol - all hoped to overturn the old order.

Lady Leila Staines has always felt like an outcast among her magically gifted sisters. Desperate to discover her own talent, she seeks out Dunstan Ives, a dark and brooding aristocrat with a scientific bent who may hold the key to unleashing Leila's hidden powers.

H. G. Wells was known as the father of science fiction, but his creative genius encompassed far more that a single literary genre. He was also a visionary, a satirist, a sociologist and an historian. This third audio anthology of H. G. Wells’ Short Stories produced by Raconteurs Audio in collaboration with Spoken Realms, brings together some his lesser known short stories.

The story of one of the most remarkable–and feared–British aircraft of the Second World War: the de Havilland DH.98 Mosquito fighter-bomber.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a chilling novella written by Robert Louis Stevenson and published in 1886. The subject matter may be partly that of a shilling shocker but the whole is executed with great panache and a fine Gothic sensibility. Lawyer Gabriel Utterson leads us apace through the rain-swept streets of Victorian London in pursuit of the diminutive but thoroughly monstrous Mr. Hyde.

Peter Willems is the outcast of the islands, in this, Joseph Conrad’s second novel published in 1896, inspired by his experience as ship’s mate on the trading vessel Vidar. Willems is confidential clerk to Hudig, a powerful merchant trading out of Macassar, in the Dutch East Indies, on the island of Sulawesi. But very soon Willems is on the run from a scandal and finds himself up-river at Almayer’s remote trading post. An all-consuming liaison ensues between Willems and Aissa, the local chief’s daughter.

The Prince, Machiavelli's 'little book', was written in 1513 and is dedicated to Lorenzo de' Medici. It remains a compelling and controversial treatise on politics, dispensing often cynical, sometimes brutal advice on gaining power and retaining it. Essential listening for our masters perhaps, but most certainly for those of us who would not be mastered. The text used here is the unabridged and classic translation by W. K. Marriott.

A Personal Record is a "fragment of biography", an autobiographical work by Joseph Conrad, published in 1912. It is also a masterpiece of atmospheric writing and the main contemporary source to detail his early life. Conrad, Polish by birth, who goes on to become one of the greatest novelists of the English language, describes his childhood and adolescence, discusses his forebears, one of whom fought on the side of Napoleon and ate a Lithuanian dog, the exile of his parents, the death of his mother and his relationship with his Uncle Tadeusz.

In fading light on the Thames Estuary near London, as Charles Marlow and his companions relax on deck, waiting for the turn of the tide, he tells of the time he turned ‘freshwater sailor’ on the River Congo. His perilous journey upriver in a little steamboat with a band of white colonialists and a group of cannibals takes him closer to the coveted ivory, closer to Kurtz the rogue agent, closer to certain unspeakable rites and the heart of darkness.

Raconteurs Audio and Spoken Realms team up once again to bring this second collection of short stories by H. G. Wells to audio. Written between 1894 and 1902, this anthology of 13 stories delves into botany, flying machines, travel, distant lands and customs, virology, magic, taxidermy, journalism - and there’s even a ghost story.

‘It was a sweet finish after the bitter pills of floggings and bullets with which these same governments, just at that time, dosed the German working-class risings’. The Communist Manifesto is, perhaps surprisingly, a most engaging and accessible work, containing even the odd shaft of humour in this translation by Samuel Moore for the 1888 English edition.

Herbert George Wells was one of the most prolific and visionary British writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. H. G. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels, although he wrote across many genres, including nonfiction. His fiction embraces history, science fiction, horror, satire, fantasy, and social commentary. Wells was also a futurist, foreseeing air travel, tanks (as in “The Land Ironclads” - part of this anthology) space travel, nuclear weapons, and even satellite television.

Selected Poems by Robert Browning (1812-1889) is read by Greg Wagland for Magpie Audio. The selection is as follows: "The Bishop Orders his Tomb at St Praxed’s Church", "The Lost Leader", "Pictor Ignotus", "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister", "Love Among the Ruins", "Up at a Villa, Down in the City", "A Woman’s Last Word", "A Toccata of Galuppi’s", "Love in a Life", "Life in a Love", "Women and Roses", "Two in the Campagna", and more.

Human, Animal is an ode to the wild, an elegy for what we have lost and a reproof of our society's inability to find common ground. Since the death of his brother, veteran dairy farmer George has been struggling to keep the family business afloat. His troubles only worsen when animal rights activists descend on his cowshed one morning to film content for their social media.

Mario and Luciano are twin brothers trying to scratch a dishonest living in the slums of Palermo. Mario is wild, dangerous, and a natural leader; Luciano is his brother's nervous shadow, reluctantly following him in all things. When the twins rob and kill a shopkeeper, Mario thinks they are going up in the world. He longs to be recognized by the Mafia hierarchy and will do anything to achieve his aim. The brothers move on to an ambitious bank heist and a bloody shootout in the streets of Palermo.

Baptiste Molino has devoted his life to other people's happiness. Moored on his houseboat, he helps his clients navigate the waters of contentment yet remains careful never to make waves of his own. However, it is Baptiste's new client, the elegant and enigmatic Amandine Rousseau, who is the puzzle he longs to solve. But when his mysterious birth mother's legacy finally reveals itself, he finds himself torn between pursuing his own happiness and safeguarding that of the one he loves.

A Little Book of Eastern Wisdom is a wide-ranging and thought-provoking collection of spiritual and meditative gems by mystics, prophets, poets, and philosophers, mainly from the Middle East, ordered here into thematic sections by translator and author Claude Field. It was first published in 1910 by George G. Harrap & Co.

Darkus Knightley is used to expecting the unexpected. An extraordinary solver of crimes, with immense powers of deduction, and regularly found bedecked in tweed, Darkus is anything but the average 13-year-old. But he is the person to call when strange goings-on are afoot! Despite trying to leave his detective ways behind to lead a normal teenage life, when his father's loyal housekeeper, Bogna, goes missing, Darkus must return to the family fold and follow the clues to America and the bright lights of Las Vegas.

The Island of Doctor Moreau is a science fiction novel by H. G. Wells, first published in 1896. It recounts the adventures of shipwrecked Edward Prendick, who is rescued only to be set adrift near the volcanic, tropical island of Doctor Moreau, an obsessive vivisectionist who 'artistically' carves human beings from animals.