Showing results by narrator "Frederick" in All Categories

Our new home was meant to be a chance for us to start again; to make new friends and forget the past. And as I look around the barbeque we’ve thrown for our neighbors, I dare to dream that things will be all right. I watch my husband joking as he flips burgers and my daughter turning cartwheels on our sun-bleached lawn. And then my gaze falls on my son, Jacob, and his new girlfriend, Rose, in her light blue jeans and her green crop top. There is a worried expression clouding her beautiful eyes.... The next day I get a call from Rose’s mother that chills me to the bone.

It was one of the most traumatic events in maritime history, and Archibald Gracie was probably among the last to leave the sinking Titanic on that cold April night in 1912. In this unique account, he describes his personal experiences and remarkable escape from death in the icy waters of the Atlantic, painting a vivid picture of what it was like on board the Titanic in its final hours.

The scientific theories that were first discovered and made public in the years 1700-1900 are some of the most pivotal in history. Landmark theories of planetary motion, the workings of nature, and the speed of light were all ideas that took the world by storm. Now you can share in that story of discovery in a series of 36 lectures designed to give you a rock-solid understanding of the great discoveries of Newton, Darwin, Franklin, Pasteur, and so many others.

Although it is little known in this country, The Belly of Paris is considered one of Émile Zola’s best novels. Set in the newly built food markets of Paris, it is a story of wealth and poverty set against a sumptuous banquet of food and commerce. Having just escaped from prison after being wrongfully accused, young Florent arrives at Paris’ food market, Les Halles, half starved, surrounded by all he can’t have, and indignant at his world, which he now knows to be unjust. He finds that the city’s working classes have been displaced to make way for bigger streets and bourgeois living quarters, so he settles in with his brother’s family.

Set in the Parisian underworld and plotted like a detective story, Les Miserables follows Jean Valjean, originally an honest peasant, who has been imprisoned for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's starving family. A hardened criminal upon his release, he eventually reforms, becoming a successful industrialist and town mayor. Despite this, he is haunted by an impulsive former crime and is pursued relentlessly by the police inspector Javert.

Germany, 1945. As the ground shakes and the air raid sirens wail, Katja holds her tiny baby to her chest. She pictures Karl’s handsome face and kind blue eyes, her breath catching at the thought of him heading back to the front. She must never tell anyone about the letters she delivered for him or the other secret she is hiding....

After meeting Jamie’s smiling blue eyes across a crowded bar, I tell myself, that after my recent divorce, this is the bit of fun that I need. It is the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. Because when I return to his flat the next day, excited to see him again, I am horrified to discover he has been murdered. I know I should tell the police, but I can’t be the person to call them. With my past they will just assume the worst…

Having entered the British Navy at the age of 12, Horatio Lord Nelson achieved the rank of captain at the age of 20. As captain, he was quickly recognized as a magnetic and controversial figure. He triumphed at Cape St. Vincent and the Nile, but failed at Tenefife and Boulogne. With the glories of Copenhagen and Trafalgar yet ahead of him, his ardent passion for Emma Hamilton, the wife of a British Ambassador, cast a heavy shadow over his career.

‘There’s Rosemary, that’s for remembrance.’ Published in 1945, Sparkling Cyanide is all about remembrance. It begins with six characters recalling the horrific death of Rosemary Barton, a beautiful but shallow young heiress poisoned by a cyanide-spiked glass of champagne whilst...

Hector Munro, writing under the pseudonym of Saki, is justly renowned for his urbane and witty short stories. His eccentric characters, humorous dialogue and engaging domestic situations all reveal a penetrating and sometimes disturbing insight into human nature. As a quixotic tour guide, Saki leads the reader from garden party to pig sty to political convention with the ease of one who is intimately familiar with the cares and foibles of the human condition, showing us this vista of life through the well tempered lens of his gentle, British irony. In this definitive collection of stories we can browse and sightsee at our leisure, cross borders of fresh insight, admire and enjoy each whimsical tale as we journey through the imaginative landscape of a truly artful writer.

Charles Paris' old friend Mark, who runs a recording studio in Bath where Charles is making a talking book, has a drinking problem that amounts to a death wish. But it's not the drink that kills Mark, it's somebody in the cast of Charles' play who has a dirty little secret that Mark must not be allowed to reveal...

As the eldest son of the Duke of Langford, Nathaniel Gresham sees his arranged marriage to Lady Violet Devere as just another obligation to fulfil – highly suitable, if unexciting. But as Violet sets out to transform herself from dowdy wallflower to dazzling young duchess-to-be, proper Nathaniel sets out to prove he's a match for his new bride's vivacity and daring.

A memoir of trauma and transformation by a man who was haunted by childhood abuse but who fought his way back—a journey from vengeance and prison to freedom and redemption. For a boy growing up in the 1970s, rural northern New Jersey was a year-round playground, filled with secret fishing...

Your lost love never came home after the war. Would you risk everything to find out what happened to him?

Arthur is King - but treachery runs rampant throughout the beleaguered Isle of the Mighty. Darkest evil descends upon Britain's shore in many guises. Fragile alliances fray and tear, threatening all the noble liege has won with his wisdom and his blood. His most trusted counselor - the warrior, bard, and kingmaker whom legend will name Merlin - is himself to be tested on a mystical journey back through his own extraordinary past. So in a black time of plague and pestilence, it is Arthur who must stand alone against a great and terrible adversary. For only this way can he truly win immortality - and the name to treasure above all others: Pendragon.

This full-cast dramatisation tells the true story of the French Resistance plot to destroy Nazi Germany's Atlantic Wall in Normandy. When France fell to the Germans in 1940, a slight, scholarly 28-year-old captain of engineers and professor escaped to England. In collaboration with General...

An anthology of plays and original radio dramas from the prolific playwright Born and brought up in the East End of London, Bernard Kops came to fame in the late 1950s as part of British drama’s ‘New Wave’. A lyrical chronicler of Jewish family life, he is often compared to Arnold Wesker...

When Scotland Yard arrive, the police try to stop Mabel from interfering. But having just formed the London Ladies’ Murder Club, Mabel isn’t going anywhere. And with the help of former detective Park Winstone, she begins to piece together what really happened at the ghostly gathering. But when Mabel receives a threatening letter warning her to stay away from the case, she realizes the murderer may have another victim in mind. With time running out, will she hit a dead end? Or can she keep herself from becoming the next one to be sent to an early grave?

David Tennant stars as Malvolio in Shakespeare's comedy of disguise, madness and love. One of Shakespeare's happiest plays, Twelfth Night is both a comedy of misrule and a trenchant attack on puritanism. Disguise and deceit leads to misadventure, madness and mistaken love. Orsino loves Olivia...

In this spirited and romantic saga, a young heir named David Balfour meets his miserly uncle Ebenezer, who has illegally taken control of the Balfour estate. Ebenezer kidnaps David and plots to have him seized and sold into slavery on a ship to the Carolinas. A couple of days into the voyage, a shipwreck throws David together with David Break, a Scotsman returning from political exile in France, and the two of them journey together.