Showing results by narrator "Frederick Davidson" in All Categories

Few moments in history are as stirring as the Allied liberation of Paris. Yet few people are aware of how narrowly, and how miraculously, the city escaped Hitler's secret plan to reduce it to ashes. Is Paris Burning? reconstructs, in meticulous and riveting detail, the network of fateful events, day by day, moment by moment, that saved the City of Light.

Wealthy and old, Martin Chuzzlewit, Sr. is surrounded by greedy relatives hoping to obtain a portion of his estate upon his death. Of his two descendants, born and bred in the same heritage of selfishness, one, Martin Jr., has the good fortune to transform, while the other, Jonas, does not and receives a fatal penalty.

Here is one of those rare novels, the first in an epic series, that completely transports the listener to an unforgettable time and place in history. At Talavera in July of 1809, Captain Richard Sharpe, bold, professional, and ruthless, prepares to lead his men against the armies of Napoleon into what will be the bloodiest battle of the war.

Pretty, impecunious Sally Nicholas never dreamed a fortune could prove a disadvantage, until she became an heiress and watched in bewilderment as her orderly existence went haywire. Coping first with her brother's wild theatrical ambitions, then with the defection of her fiancé and his immediate replacement by a much more appropriate but strangely unattractive suitor, Sally finds that life in New York is becoming altogether too complicated, and a trip to England only makes the whole situation worse.

Graham was a young man when he was overcome by a strange deep sleep. He was still youthful when he finally woke up - two hundred years later! And the world that he resumed life in was a fabulous one, a world of great marvels and scientific achievement, whose strange underlying economy was that it was all his private property, for the acquisition of interest and the testaments of others had made Graham the Sleeper the sole final owner of everything - with an administrative council that dictated to the world in his name!

G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown is perhaps the most lovable amateur detective ever created. This short, shabby priest with his cherubic, round face attracts situations that baffle everyone - except Father Brown and his rather naïve wisdom. The twelve enthralling stories in this book take Father Brown from London to Cornwall, from Italy to France, as he gets involved with bandits, treason, murder, curses, and an American crime-detection machine.

The Civilization of the Middle Ages incorporates current research, recent trends in interpretation, and novel perspectives, especially on the foundations of the Middle Ages and the Later Middle Ages of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. A sharper focus on social history, Jewish history, women’s roles in society, and popular religion and heresy distinguish the book.

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.

In 1936, George Orwell went to Spain to report on the civil war and instead joined the P.O.U.M. militia to fight against the Fascists. In this now justly famous account of his experience, he describes both the bleak and the comic aspects of trench warfare on the Aragon front, the Barcelona uprising in May 1937, his nearly fatal wounding just two weeks later, and his escape from Barcelona into France after the P.O.U.M. was suppressed.

Robertson's story, written 14 years before the historic event it presaged, parallels the descriptions and fate of the Titanic with psychic precision. His tale, however, doesn't end with the passengers' watery demise; rather, it chronicles the detective work instigated by members of Lloyd's of London, embroiling Scotland Yard, when word comes in that the heavily insured ship has sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

An amateur production of The Tempest provides a colorful backdrop for a hilarious look at unrequited love. Mathematics teacher Hector Mackilwraith, stirred and troubled by Shakespeare's play, falls in love with the beautiful Griselda Webster. When Griselda shows she has plans of her own, Hector despairs on the play's opening night.

Who has not come to know and love the impeccable Jeeves and the inimitable Bertie? Together with Lord Emsworth, his prize sow the Empress of Blandings, Psmith, and a whole host of redoubtable Wooster aunts, they form a cast of characters, immortalized in print and on screen, whose sharply observed antics are as popular now as when they first appeared in 1919.

He was a gossip columnist’s dream. Piccadilly Jim’s life was a collage of broken promises and drunken brawls. And his straight-laced Victorian aunt was not amused. So, she decided to reform him. Unfortunately, her reform project started at a time when Jim had fallen in love and had already decided to reform himself. Thus, life became complicated. Jim pretends to be himself - a beautiful display of Wodehousean logic; hilarious indeed!

When Arthur Abdel Simpson first spots Harper in the Athens airport, he recognizes him as a tourist unfamiliar with the city and in need of a private driver - in other words, the perfect mark for Simpson’s brand of entrepreneurship. But Harper proves to be more the spider than the fly when he catches Simpson searching his wallet for traveler’s checks. Soon Simpson finds himself blackmailed into driving a suspicious car across the Turkish border. When he is caught again, this time by the police, he faces a choice: cooperate with the Turks and spy on his erstwhile colleagues or end up in one of Turkey’s notorious prisons.

When Jimmy Pitt bets an actor friend that any fool could burgle a house, a feat which he offers to demonstrate that very night, he puts his reputation on the line. Although he hires the services of a professional burglar, the difficulty is increased when he has the misfortune to select Police Captain McEachern's house.

How is it that the small continent of Europe, with its rich multiplicity of cultures and traditions, has managed to exert so profound an influence on the rest of the world? Roberts's sweeping and entertaining history notes the paradoxical effect, for good and ill, on everything touched by those Western values that originated in Europe.

Twenty years later, time has weakened the resolve of the Musketeers and dispersed their loyalties. But treasons and stratagems still cry out for justice: civil war endangers the throne of France, while in England, Cromwell threatens to send Charles I to the scaffold. Dumas brings his immortal quartet out of retirement to cross swords with time, the malevolence of men, and the forces of history. But their greatest test is a titanic struggle with the son of Milady, who wears the face of Evil.

Dr. Johnson may have been correct in saying that “Rousseau was a very bad man,” but none can argue that his ideas are among the most influential in all of world history. It was Rousseau, the father of the romantic movement, who was responsible for introducing at least two modern day thoughts that pervade academia. The Confessions is Rousseau’s landmark autobiography. Both brilliant and flawed, it is nonetheless beautifully written and remains one of the most moving human documents in all of literature.

The great voyages of discovery to the New World are here brought to life by one of the 20th century's most eminent historians, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Samuel Morison. A master seaman himself, Morison personally retraced the voyages of the early explorers, charting his travels in maps and photographs and comparing these to the maps and travelogues of the early sailors.

After his final trip up the river Thames with his three companions - - Harris, George, and Montmorency the dog - - Jerome K. Jerome sat down to write his proposed book, The Story of the Thames. But before he could tackle the work in the serious manner intended, his humor took over and gave birth to a masterpiece of unquenchable comedy. This is a classic of English humor, justifiably loved around the world.