Showing results by narrator "David Parker" in All Categories

Our fear of the Devil, whatever his temptations and rewards, is amplified by the thought of eternal damnation in his hell house service. In this volume our authors are all from Europe and see the Devil in ways that we recognise and yet are culturally distinct to the European mainland.

Móric Jókay de Ásva was born on the 18th February 1825 in Komárom, then in the Kingdom of Hungary but now part of Slovakia. Due to his timid and delicate constitution he was educated at home until the age of 10 and then sent away to complete his studies at the Calvinist college at Pápa. In 1848 he married the actress, Róza Laborfalvi. That same year Europe was awash with revolutions and Jókai, a moderate Liberal, enthusiastically supported the nationalist cause and its decision to depose the Habsburg dynasty. The attempt failed. Mór Jókai died in Budapest on the 5th May 1904. He was 79.

Arnold Bennett was born in 1867 in Hanley one of the six towns that formed the Potteries that later joined together to become Stoke on Trent; the area in which most of his works are located. For a short time he worked for his solicitor father before realising that to advance his life he would need to become his own man. At the turn of the century he turned full time to writing and shortly thereafter in 1903 he moved to Paris and in 1908 published to great acclaim The Old Wives Tale. With this his reputation was set. Clayhanger and The Old Wives Tale are perhaps his most lauded novels.

Knut Ångström is a brooding, alcoholic, maverick Swedish detective from the mean streets of Oslo. Following the deaths of his beloved wife Christa and cheeky duck Elvin, he is posted to the Njalsland peninsula, where he becomes embroiled in a labyrinthine mystery which bears an eerie similarity to the Askeladden killings - a case from his distant past.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. This decade is resplendent with literature and its many prodigiously talented authors who write on as varied a range of subjects as might be thought possible. Yet each is studded with careful literary precision and narrative verve. It is a remarkable decade.

Everything’s unravelling. Soon he’ll come for us...and he won’t stop. The Lorelei has gone, and Barnabas and Quentin are missing, presumed dead. As Willie attempts to protect Maggie from the sheriff’s investigations, Angelique begins to uncover the truth about Barnabas and Quentin’s fate. But a powerful force is waiting in the wings, and its arrival in Collinsport will soon change the lives of everyone forever.

Everything’s unravelling. Soon he’ll come for us...and he won’t stop. The Lorelei has gone, and Barnabas and Quentin are missing, presumed dead. As Willie attempts to protect Maggie from the sheriff’s investigations, Angelique begins to uncover the truth about Barnabas and Quentin’s fate. But a powerful force is waiting in the wings, and its arrival in Collinsport will soon change the lives of everyone forever.

Someone has to die.... Henning Juul sits in a boat on a dark lake. A man with a gun sits opposite him. At the man's feet is a body that will be soon be dumped into the water. Henning knows that the same fate awaits him. And he knows that it's his own fault. Who started the fire that killed Henning's young son? How is his sister, Trine, involved? Most importantly, who can be trusted?

Martial arts master Lin Su Yoshimura is a force to be reckoned with. Now in the US after being shunned as a mixed-race Chinese-Japanese girl, then kidnapped as a teen and sold into the sex-trafficking trade, Lin Su is rescued from an abusive New York pimp by one of the city’s top-level cocaine dealers. Navigating both back alleys and opulent venues with lethal grace, Lin Su finds her way forward through the underbelly of the city, as she wrestles with the horrors of her past.

There is something about the number 3. The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two. Most religions also have 3 this and 3 that and, of course, in these more modern times, three’s a crowd may be too many, except when it’s a ménage à trois. It seems good things usually come in threes. Whatever history and culture says WE think 3, a hat-trick of stories, is a great number to explore themes and literary avenues that classic authors were so adept at creating.

Poetry has over the centuries grouped poets or poems into many different themes and movements. Amongst its most unusual movements are the English wordsmiths, The Silver Poets. This select band lived during the sixteenth century reign of Queen Elizabeth 1st. Amongst their storied ranks were Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Philip Sidney, Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Davies, Michael Drayton and Mary Sidney (Herbert), the Countess of Pembroke.

Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise he is brought face to face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?

The Irish Short Story tradition is packed with literary leviathans who take the raw ingredients of the land, it’s people and their own talents to create quite dazzling narratives in these perfectly pitched short stories. Genius has many names.

Peter Fleming, brother of James Bond author Ian Fleming, was one of the greatest adventurers and travel writers of the 20th century and author of several classic and best-selling books. This is the first paperback edition. It presents an exciting adventure that could never be made today - it will appeal to all interested in the region.

The Politics Book makes government and politics easy to understand by explaining the big ideas simply. The key events in political history are outlined from the origins of political thinking by Confucius and Aristotle to modern-day activists such as Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. This audiobook breaks down their important concepts into bite-size chunks to make the subject accessible to students of politics and anyone with an interest in how government works.

Poetry can capture the imagination in a few short lines but narrative verse or poetry takes the form of telling a story, whether it be simple or complex in a longer form. Among the most ancient forms of poetry, it has widespread roots through almost every culture. In Volume 3 we bring you the classics 'Goblin Market' by Christina Rosseti; 'The Wreck of the Hesperus' by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; 'The Raven' by Edgar Allan Poe; 'Morte D'Arthur' by Alfred Lord Tennyson; and from 'Horatius' by Thomas Babington Maculay.

Christina Georgina Rossetti remains one of the most important poets in the British tradition, both for her own work and those she influenced, most notably Virginia Wolfe. Rossetti is praised for her willingness to explore different genres and poetic forms within her body of work. Thematically, her poems run the gamut from frustrated love, to religion, to the Gothic, and beyond. Her choice of form is equally eclectic. Here, a reading of some of her best work by David Shaw-Parker and Ghizela Rowe.

A 10-week strength training programme that could transform your life...You’ve already figured out that strength training is the best way to burn fat, develop lean muscle, and get in great shape. The biggest problem of all? Finding an approach to weight training that you enjoy - and a diet that can be maintained in the long term. In this audiobook Marc McLean, author of the Strength Training 101 book series and online fitness coach, lays out his full 10-week weight training programme, step-by-step.

Almost always when we think of Ghost Stories, we first think of those written by the Victorians. If you want a really good ghost story to bring that edge of chill, that foreboding of dread, that feeling that in an empty house we are not quite alone and that sometimes the sharp, sheer shock of what just happened is upon us then look no further than ‘The Victorian Ghost Story’ for your listening pleasure.

Perhaps England’s greatest literary family. To find one brilliant novelist in a family is extremely rare. But two? Three?

The Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily Jane and Anne, together with their brother Patrick, are famed throughout the world. And amongst their many talents was poetry. Of course, being Brontë’s, they were rather good at that too.