Showing results by publisher "Spoken Realms" in All Categories

This is a selection of the myths and legends of Scotland, filled with local color, from Scottish journalist, folklorist, and writer Donald Alexander Mackenzie. These stories offer not only glimpses of ancient times and of old habits of thought and life but also of the country itself at different times of the year.

Charles Ward, even as a child, had always wandered the streets of ancient Providence, drawn inexorably to its domes and spires, its hills and homes, its history and its haunts. His antiquarian habits were always just so: an innocent preoccupation with the city and its wonders. Yet, when the discovery of a shadowy ancestor exposes an eldritch malevolence long thought to be contained, Charles must resist the dark grip of his fascination, before it consumes him, and his world, completely.

Dr. Randall Forth is so desperate to discover a cure for the 48-year-fever, known as Trailmen's fever, he persuades Dr. Jay Allison to undergo hypnosis. Once hypnotized, Jay Allison becomes Jason Allison, his hidden and polar opposite secondary personality.

Loveday Brooke is the first female detective created by a woman writer. Catherine Louisa Pirkis published stories about this smart, spirited sleuth in the 1880s, and they were collected into this anthology in 1894. In these tales, Loveday takes on cases involving wayward nuns, missing debutantes, a mysterious princess, and a ghost who resembles Napoleon, among other strange phenomena.

Endymion is the largest work by John Keats and was composed between April and November 1817. It was published in April 1818, and the critical reception was almost universally hostile. The plot is built around the ancient Greek legend of Endymion, the young shepherd whose beauty was such that the goddess of the Moon entreated Zeus to cast him into a permanent sleep so that she could gaze on him without interruption. Keats expands this story into an epistle on beauty and love, and weaves into it elements from several other Greek legends.

One of Hemingway's most acclaimed novels, "A Farewell to Arms," narrated by Mike Vendetti. Set during World War I, this poignant love story draws upon Hemingway's own experiences as an ambulance driver. Within the backdrop of war's brutality, the narrative balances moments of humor with the profound horrors of battle. Hemingway, a master of literary expression, skillfully captures the complex emotions of love, fear, and the occasional levity that can emerge even in the darkest of circumstances, offering listeners a deeply immersive experience.

The only survivors of a shipwreck off a Pacific island are Cambridge professor Edward Bowden and an orphaned baby girl. When Valentine Ryven is discovered 20 years later, Edward has recently died, and she is relieved and excited to be taken to England, where she believes her loving family awaits. Valentine is sure of a warm welcome because among the papers retrieved from the wreck is a letter from her Aunt Helena saying so. But in 20 years things change ... especially when money is involved.

When the hard-won peace of the primitive Empire of Pellucidar is shattered by the invasion of the fierce Korsar sea-rovers, Emperor David Innes sends his caveman horde to battle. One of the bravest of his club-swinging warriors is Tanar the Fleet One. Despite the strange weapons of the invaders, David and his skin-clad band thrust back the Korsars and force them to flee in their ships--but with them they take several captives, including Tanar. But the bronzed warrior from the kingdom of Sari is no easy prisoner to keep.

Here are the stories of the great gangs that once terrorized New York City, from the Bowery Boys and the Dead Rabbits to the Gophers and the Eastmans—here are the infamous gangsters, from the days of the murderous Five Points Gangs to the later underworld mobs led by Mose the Bowery Boy, Monk Eastman, Paul Kelly, Kid Dropper, Dopey Benny, Gyp the Blood, and Owney Madden, and such feminine underworld luminaries as Gallus Mag and Sadie the Goat.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky is best known as the cofounder of theosophy, which is essentially a selective conflation of Hindu and Buddhist ideas combined with Blavatsky's idiosyncratic system of cosmology. The Voice of the Silence, first published in 1889, is described by the author as "chosen fragments from the Book of the Golden Precepts, for the daily use of disciples".

"The Eve of St. Agnes" was written in January 1819 and first published in 1820. It is a Romantic Narrative poem written in 42 Spenserian stanzas. John Keats based his poem on the superstition that a girl could see her future husband in a dream if she performed certain rites on the eve of the feast of St. Agnes (the patron saint of virgins who died a martyr in 4th century Rome.) The eve falls on January 20th; the feast day on the 21st.

Originally published in 1948, Tozer's The Pursuit of God stands as an enduring favorite among Christian classics. In this uplifting listen from Apostle Audio and Kyle Tait, Tozer aims to unpack the truth, that to "find" God is only the beginning of a lifelong chase after the almighty creator.

Sherlock Holmes is bored between cases at 221B Baker Street. So when King Oskar II of Sweden - who has heard of the discovery of the Kensington Runestone by a farmer in Minnesota - asks to engage his services, Holmes jumps at the chance to decipher the runes and determine whether the find is real or a hoax. With Dr. John H. Watson by his side, faithfully recording every detail, Holmes makes his way to Minnesota for a third time.

The Book of Tea is much more than a book about tea. It's a celebration of the arts and culture of Japan, and a portrait of tea ceremony, the "Way of Tea", as the pinnacle of Japanese spirituality and artistic life. Written in 1906 by Kakuzo Okakura, curator of Chinese and Japanese Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and a noted scholar and art critic, this modern classic traces the history of tea from its early medicinal uses in China, through the development of Chinese tea culture, and finally to the role of tea in Japanese Zen, culture, and politics.

The action of this play, which occurs during a conflict on the Balkans, is initiated by the discovery by Raina, the daughter of an military officer, of a man who has taken refuge in her bedroom. Unfortunately, the man belongs to the opposing army. How will she deal with a notional enemy who behaves with such quixotic courtesy?

One of France's greatest writers, Voltaire was frequently persecuted for his ideas and as a result, spent time in the famed Bastille. He fled his native land for England in 1726, at which time he witnessed the differences between the two countries. His celebrated Letters on England was first published in that nation in 1733 and contained 24 succinct letters on subjects ranging from religion and politics, to trade, the arts, philosophy, and science.

In the Halow system, one of Earth’s three sister star systems, tek and magic - humans and fae - are at war. Kesh Lasota is a ghost in the machine. Invisible to tek, she’s hired by the criminal underworld to carry illegal messages through the Halow system. But when one of those messages kills its recipient, Kesh finds herself on the run with a bounty on her head and a quick-witted marshal on her tail. Proving her innocence should be straightforward. Until a warfae steals the evidence she needs.

Seventeen iconic poems from World War One, including: Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Deorum Est"; "In Flanders Fields" by John McRae; "Counter Attack" by Siegfried Sassoon; Rupert Brook's "The Soldier"; and many more that bring the horrors of the Great War vividly to life through the eyes of those living them.

This is volume two—what Henry George called "the Solution to the Problem". This landmark treatise by the great economist Henry George was first published in 1879. George's work became the seminal analysis of the political economy which inspired most, if not all, the prominent thinkers of the Progressive Movement and many others of great influence: Upton Sinclair, John Dewey, George Bernard Shaw, Friedrich Hayek, H. G. Wells, Clarence Darrow, and Leo Tolstoy, to name but a few. His analyses and proposals are referred to as "Georgism".

Peerless medical jurist Dr. John Thorndyke unravels nine more tales of greed, deceit, theft, and murder—including the sinister meaning behind a pickpocket's discarded plunder; a man terrorized by a vengeful ghost; a young wife accused of poisoning her older husband; a body concealed beneath the floor of a cottage; and the case of an unknown criminal mastermind and a strong room with an impossibly complex lock...