Showing results by narrator "William Roberts" in All Categories

Herman Melville is now seen as one of the great figures in American literature, a man who expanded the role of the novel and gave new and complex depths to the meaning of a story. His best work uses the form of the novel or the story as a means of carrying and discussing concerns about the nature of humanity, the role of God, and a sometimes satiric, sometimes bitter, examination of colonialism and capitalism.

Written some 40 years after Moby Dick, Melville's Billy Budd is a moving tale of good versus evil. Set aboard a British navy ship at the end of the eighteenth century, a young, innocent sailor's charm and good nature put the men around him at ease. Ship life agreed with Billy. He made friends quickly and was well liked, which infuriated John Claggart, the ship's cold-blooded superior officer.

Along with historical narrative, hear rare recordings of some of the most iconic people in history, including Robert Browning, Kenneth Landfrey, Florence Nightingale, Sir Henry Morton Stanley, PT Barnum, Sir Arthur Sullivan, Edwin Booth, General Nelson Miles, William Jennings Bryan and Garret A. Hobart. Recording obtained and published by Rick Sheridan.

Released to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the author’s birth in January 1809, this selection of well-loved, chilling tales from the master of the supernatural is a perfect Christmas gift. The short stories include "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", "The Pit and the Pendulum", "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Masque of the Red Death", and "The Fall of the House of Usher". This release also features additional poetry by Poe and a new biography especially written for Naxos AudioBooks by Roy McMillan.

When The Great Gatsby was published, commercially it was a failure but critically it was a success. It is still the most admired and well-read of all Scott Fitzgerald’s novels and it is considered a handbook of the 'Jazz Age'. Scott Fitzgerald put much of himself and his life into the book. He created the character of Jay Gatsby to illustrate his own experiences of the illusory and morally bankrupt aspects of 1920s' America, and the character of Nick Carraway to show his disapproval of its destructive effects.

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.

The epic story of the invention of a global network of weights, scales, and instruments for measurement.

Millions of transactions each day depend on a reliable network of weights and measures. This network has been called a greater invention than the steam engine, comparable only to the development of the printing press.

Frank Dixon’s first novel, Plague Boy, is sinking into oblivion on Amazon and neither his nor anyone else’s literary agent will return his calls. Then Frank discovers online poker, and is soon addicted to the rush he feels as the successful, popular “Chip Zero”. But as he wins thousands of dollars, it soon becomes clear that his Internet success is not the solution to his problems. And when the virtual world comes crashing in on Frank’s real life, it can only mean trouble.

It opens in 1943, when Wells is recording a talk for the Home Service in which he questions mankind's future. After the broadcast, he spends the evening with American journalist Martha, and tells her the astonishing news that his bestselling book The Time Machine was not fantasy but fact. Wells explains that he was actually present at the dinner party in Richmond fifty years earlier, when the Time Traveller returned from his first fateful journey into the future.

David Moloney’s Barker House follows the story of nine unforgettable New Hampshire Correctional Officers over the course of one year on the job. While veteran guards get by on what they consider survival strategies - including sadistic power-mongering and obsessive voyeurism - two rookies, including the only female Officer on her shift, develop their own tactics for facing “the system”.

An American heiress newly arrived in Europe, Isabel Archer does not look to a man to furnish her with her destiny; instead she desires, with grace and courage, to find it herself. Two eligible suitors approach her and are refused. She then becomes utterly captivated by the languid charms of Gilbert Osmond. To him, she represents a superior prize worth at least seventy thousand pounds; through him, she faces a tragic choice.

Wherever there are cars, buses, coaches, trucks, bicycles, and motorbikes, there are road traffic accidents. This book was written based upon my work as a clinical psychologist, using the same methodologies that I used in my practice. These methods brought results that were 100 percent effective.

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel The Leopard (Il Gattopardo) is one of the world’s most loved modern classics. A Leopard’s Kiss entwines the story of Tomasi di Lampedusa writing his famous novel with that of a young couple who say farewell to their Sicilian homeland to settle in far-off Australia. The novella moves from the mountains of an ancient Sicilian village to the ornate cafes and lounges of 1950s Palermo. And from the humid Queensland cane-fields in the north of Australia to a Catholic convent school in the south.