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The Peking Express
- The Bandits Who Stole a Train, Stunned the West, and Broke the Republic of China
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins
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Publisher's summary
The thrilling true story of train-robbing revolutionaries and passengers who got more than they paid for in this Murder on the Orient Express-style adventure, set in China’s republican era.
In 1923 Shanghai, native and foreign travelers alike are enthralled by the establishment of a new railway line to distant Peking. With this new line comes the Peking Express, a luxurious express train on the cutting edge of China’s continental transportation.
Among those drawn to the train are oil heiress Lucy Aldrich, journalist John Benjamin Powell, and vacationing Army Majors Roland Pinger and Robert Allen, wives and children in tow. These errant Americans and their eclectic fellow passengers all eagerly anticipate an idyllic overnight journey in first class.
But the train’s passengers are not the only ones enchanted by the Peking Express. The bandit revolutionary Sun Mei-yao sees in it the promise of a reckoning long overdue. From his vantage in Shantung Province, a conflict-ravaged region through which the train must pass, he identifies the Peking Express as a means of commanding the global stage. By disrupting the train and taking its wealthy passengers hostage, he can draw international attention to the plight of Shantung and, he hopes, thereby secure a solution.
In the first hours of May 6, 1923, Sun and his bandit troops enact their daring plan. Wrested from the pleasures of their luxury cabins, dozens of travelers including Aldrich, Powell, Pinger, and Allen are plunged into the unfamiliar Shantung terrain. Pursued by warlords and led by their captors, they must make their way to the bandits’ mountain stronghold and there await their fate.
The Peking Express is the incredible, long-forgotten story of a hostage crisis that shocked China and the West. It vividly captures the events that made international headlines and later inspired Josef von Sternberg’s 1932 Hollywood masterpiece Shanghai Express.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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“The Peking Express is a fascinating story, and the author has done an amazing amount of research. It’s really an intriguing, impressive work.”—Ian Johnson, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of The Souls of China
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In the heart of Nazi-occupied Europe, two people meet fleetingly in a chance encounter. One an underground resistance fighter, a bold young woman determined to vanquish the enemy occupiers; the other a prisoner of war, a man longing to escape the confines of the camp so he can battle again. A crumpled note passes between these two strangers, slipped through the wire of the compound, and sets them on a course that will change their lives forever.
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Such devotion
- By smilin29 on 01-01-24
By: Doug Gold
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Caught in the Revolution
- Petrograd, Russia, 1917 - a World on the Edge
- By: Helen Rappaport
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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From the New York Times best-selling author of The Romanov Sisters, Caught in the Revolution is Helen Rappaport's masterful telling of the outbreak of the Russian Revolution through eyewitness accounts left by foreign nationals who saw the drama unfold.
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Ordinary People; Chaotic Times
- By David on 03-18-17
By: Helen Rappaport
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Hero of the Empire
- The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill
- By: Candice Millard
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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At age 24 Winston Churchill was utterly convinced it was his destiny to become prime minister of England one day, despite the fact he had just lost his first election campaign for Parliament. He believed that to achieve his goal, he had to do something spectacular on the battlefield. Despite deliberately putting himself in extreme danger as a British army officer in colonial wars in India and Sudan and as a journalist covering a Cuban uprising against the Spanish, glory and fame had eluded him.
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Far More Than Simply, Hero of the Empire!
- By Matthew on 09-21-16
By: Candice Millard
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The Volunteer
- One Man, an Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz
- By: Jack Fairweather
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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To uncover the fate of the thousands being interred at a mysterious Nazi camp on the border of the Reich, a young Polish resistance fighter named Witold Pilecki volunteered for an audacious mission: intentionally get captured and transported to the new camp to report back on what was going on there. But gathering information was not his only task: he was to execute an attack from inside - where the Germans would least expect it. The name of the camp was Auschwitz.
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It is impossible to hear of the atrocities of Auschwitz without being. Forced to consider man’s infinite cruelty
- By Marge Greenwald on 07-15-19
By: Jack Fairweather
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The Wolves at the Door
- The True Story of America's Greatest Female Spy
- By: Judith Pearson
- Narrated by: Patrice O’Neill
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Virginia Hall left her comfortable Baltimore roots in 1931 to follow a dream of becoming a Foreign Service Officer. After watching Hitler roll over Poland and France, she enlisted to work for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), a secret espionage and sabotage organization. She was soon deployed to occupied France where, if captured, imprisonment and torture at the hands of the Gestapo was all but assured.
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The narrator is ruining the book for me
- By Penni Khandi on 06-19-14
By: Judith Pearson
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The Art of Resistance
- My Four Years in the French Underground: A Memoir
- By: Justus Rosenberg
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1937, as the Nazis gained control and anti-Semitism spread in the Free City of Danzig, a majority German city on the Baltic Sea, 16-year-old Justus Rosenberg was sent to Paris to finish his education in safety. Three years later, France fell to the Germans. Alone and in danger, penniless and cut off from contact with his family in Poland, Justus fled south.
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Rosenberg, Please focus
- By Jess on 03-20-22
By: Justus Rosenberg
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Three Ordinary Girls
- The Remarkable Story of Three Dutch Teenagers Who Became Spies, Saboteurs, Nazi Assassins and WWII Heroes
- By: Tim Brady
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 7 hrs
- Unabridged
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May 10, 1940. The Netherlands was swarming with Third Reich troops. In seven days it's entirely occupied by Nazi Germany. Joining a small resistance cell in the Dutch city of Haarlem were three teenage girls: Hannie Schaft, and sisters Truus and Freddie Oversteegen, who would soon band together to form a singular female underground squad.
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Communist fan fiction
- By Rodney on 03-12-23
By: Tim Brady
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The Good Man of Nanking
- The Diaries of John Rabe
- By: Edwin Wickert
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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This unique and gripping document contains the recently discovered diaries of a German businessman, John Rabe, who saved so many lives in the infamous siege of Nanking in 1937 that he is now being honored as the Oskar Schindler of China. As the Japanese army closed in and all foreigners were ordered to evacuate, Rabe mobilized the remaining Westerners in Nanking and organized an "International Safety Zone" which guaranteed safety to all unarmed Chinese by virtue of Germany's pact.
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why is it narrated by a woman?
- By Anonymous User on 11-10-20
By: Edwin Wickert
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The Patient Assassin
- A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge, and India's Quest for Independence
- By: Anita Anand
- Narrated by: Anita Anand
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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The “compelling [and] vivid” (The New York Times Book Review) true story of a man who claimed to be a survivor of a 1919 British massacre in India, his elaborate 20-year plan for revenge, and the mix of truth and legend that made him a hero to hundreds of millions.
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more interesting history
- By Autodidact on 09-07-19
By: Anita Anand
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Naples '44
- By: Norman Lewis
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Naples '44 is an unflinching autobiographical account of a year in Naples after the armistice and Allied landings in Sorrento in 1943. Working as a British counterintelligence officer under the Allied occupation, Lewis documents the rich pageant of life in the city and its surrounding areas. There is suffering and squalor: Criminal gangs are on the rise, along with typhus and black market commerce, and the female population is forced into part-time prostitution. But there is farce and humor, too, witnessed in the Roman uncle paid handsomely simply to appear at funerals.
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Sharply observed, beautifully written, and deeply humane
- By cw on 11-13-23
By: Norman Lewis
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Black Mischief
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Michael Maloney
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Black Mischief, Waugh's third novel, helped to establish his reputation as a master satirist. Set on the fictional African island of Azania, the novel chronicles the efforts of Emperor Seth, assisted by the Englishman Basil Seal, to modernize his kingdom. Profound hilarity ensues from the issuance of homemade currency, the staging of a "Birth Control Gala", the rightful ruler's demise at his own rather long and tiring coronation ceremonies, and a good deal more mischief.
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Raucous, Not Racist
- By John on 10-01-16
By: Evelyn Waugh
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D-Day Girls
- The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II
- By: Sarah Rose
- Narrated by: Sarah Rose
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1942, the Allies were losing, Germany seemed unstoppable, and every able man in England was on the front lines. To "set Europe ablaze," in the words of Winston Churchill, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), whose spies were trained in everything from demolition to sharpshooting, was forced to do something unprecedented: recruit women. Thirty-nine answered the call, leaving their lives and families to become saboteurs in France.
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an excellent story ruined by horrible narration
- By Joshua on 04-23-19
By: Sarah Rose
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The Road to Kalamata
- By: Mike Hoare
- Narrated by: Mike Hoare
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Col. Mike Hoare describes how his 4 Commando supported Moise Tshombe's breakaway state of Katanga against both the UN forces, and the Baluba tribesmen who used poison arrows, pit traps, marijuana, spells, jungle drums...and even reorted to ritual torture and cannibalism.
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another great book by hoare
- By Chris on 08-29-24
By: Mike Hoare
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Stealing the General
- The Great Locomotive Chase and the First Medal of Honor
- By: Russell S. Bonds
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 15 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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On April 12, 1862—one year to the day after Confederate guns opened on Fort Sumter and started the Civil War—a tall, mysterious smuggler and self-appointed Union spy named James J. Andrews and 19 infantry volunteers infiltrated Georgia and stole a steam engine called the General. Racing northward at speeds near 60 miles an hour, cutting telegraph lines, and destroying track along the way, Andrews planned to open East Tennessee to the Union army, cutting off men and materiel from the Confederate forces in Virginia.
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Stealing The General
- By Jean on 10-15-11
By: Russell S. Bonds
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Civil War Ghost Stories & Legends
- By: Nancy Roberts
- Narrated by: Susan Larkin, Allan Edwards
- Length: 5 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Few events have sparked more legends and stories of the supernatural than America's Civil War. The accounts of gallantry and heroism have spread far and wide. Nancy Roberts grew up listening to her father's stories of the War Between the States, and she trekked over many battle sites with him during her childhood. After reading about General Joshua Chamberlain's supernatural experience at the Battle of Gettysburg, Roberts began to collect tales of the blue and gray and write them down.
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Not just your typical "ghost" story
- By R Neustel on 09-19-16
By: Nancy Roberts
What listeners say about The Peking Express
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Peggy Mason
- 04-16-23
Might be better to read physically than listen to
It’s a great story which I never heard before. What I found most interesting was the psychology of the interactions. Captives and bandits bonded. In one remarkable scene - spoiler alert - the captives have just been freed but want to pause to drink with and say goodbye to bandits and have they’re pictures taken.
The narrator does a great job.
One of the captives is named Zimmerman. I wondered if he was a relation to the author.
The downside - why I don’t give it five stars - is that it’s very confusing because there are so many characters. And to my English ear the multitude of names was complicated by the plethora of Chinese names. I found it difficult to track all the different characters.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Donald B. Eager
- 05-18-23
Good Story, Lacks Tension
A very good historical account of an incident that rocked the world 100 years ago, May of 1923. However, while it is a good story and moves along with ease there just isn't any tension driving it considering the trials and tribulations the characters went through. We do like the many characters, they are well in troduced, but do we really care that much fore them? Not really, like actors in a Hollywood movie. The "bandits" like any debt of evil, meanness or contempt in treatment except on occasion when they do show an evil side. But, we never grow to fear them or fear their treatment of their captives. Very interesting introduction into the political winds that were blowing both internally in China and in the world's opinions of China. Also the aggressive nature of Japan is shown as a fore telling of the future.
I would recommend it as a good listen, Mr. Shih does a great job with the dialects and getting the story across. I just wish he had more to work with.
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- Peter W. Kalnin
- 02-16-24
A True Story That Fascinates
A True Story That Fascinates
A fascinating compilation of a patchwork quilt account of individual acts of bandits who terrorized the international passengers of a first class train.
David Shih's narration of this audiobook is outstanding.
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- Veronica
- 05-13-24
Reads like a work of fiction!
Hard to grasp everything that happened. Incredible research and reconstruction of events by the author, and well put together.
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