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Narrator: Justin Avoth
Audiobooks Narrated by Justin Avoth
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Voices of Victory: Powerful eye-witness accounts of the battle to take Germany, Feb 1945 to VE Day
From the bestselling author of D-Day: The Unheard Tapes comes a revealing new history of the final bloody battles against Nazi Germany. Published for the 80th anniversary of VE Day and based on over 150 audio interviews with those who fought their way to victory, this is a compelling and immersive account of a crucial period in the Second World War.
February, 1945. Eight months have passed since the D-Day landings, when the Allies gained their foothold in North-West Europe. Since then the British Army has fought near continuously against the German military. Now, they stand ready for their greatest test: the battle for the German homeland.
Drawing on the sound archive of the Imperial War Museums, military historian Geraint Jones brings this this often-overlooked period of the war vividly to life in the words of British soldiers who were there, from war-weary men who have survived many months of combat to new recruits facing Hitler's fanatic Panzer divisions for the first time. German soldiers and civilians add their own perspective on events.
In Voices of Victory we experience the fierce fighting in the forests of the Reichswald and through the streets of the industrial Ruhr Valley. The book describes the amphibious crossing of the Rhine (the most successful Allied airborne operation of the war), the liberation of prisoners from the concentration camps and the final surrender of Germany, whose war has cost half a million British lives.
Geraint Jones (Author), Justin Avoth , TBD (Narrator)
Audiobook
The Great Siege of Malta
Brought to you by Penguin.
Even as the great siege began it was understood by both sides to be an epic – a potentially decisive encounter between an uneasy assortment of soldiers, native Maltese, adventurers and Knights Hospitaller on a strategically crucial but near waterless island and a vast, seemingly all-powerful Ottoman armada. With three quarters of the Mediterranean’s coasts already in the hands of the Sultan and his allies, all eyes were now on Malta.
This superb new account of the siege emphasises the crucial importance of the siege while at the same time putting it in a far wider context. While seen as a climactic battle between the West and the East, it was also much more nuanced than that – both sides had many other interests and priorities beyond Malta. Suleiman the Magnificent had conquered and subsumed regions from Hungary to the Persian Gulf; Philip II was building an empire in America and Asia.
Drawing on a wide range of eyewitness stories, Marcus Bull gives a vivid sense of the period’s technologies, values and assumptions. It was a grim world built on the labour of many thousands of disposable galley-slaves, shockingly brutal forms of warfare and religious absolutism. But it was also a world filled with the most extraordinary new discoveries and ideas. Both these worlds come together in the siege and in this book.
© Marcus Bull 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025
Marcus Bull (Author), Justin Avoth , TBD (Narrator)
Audiobook
Little Boy Lost
Marghanita Laski's novel Little Boy Lost is as enthralling as it is heart-wrenching. A man grapples with questions of emotional responsibility, fatherhood, and memory. Laski describes a much-changed France, struggling to rebuild its morale after the ruin caused by wartime bombing and occupation.
English writer Hilary Wainwright lost all trace of his young son when Lisa, his wife, was killed by the Gestapo in Paris. Several years later, an acquaintance travels to England with news that Hilary's son may be alive in France. Doubting whether five-year-old Jean is indeed his, and determined not to feel vulnerable to love and tenderness again, Hilary travels to France to find the boy. Amidst a war-torn Northern French town, he gets to know young Jean, as well as the town's inhabitants. In a matter of days Hilary must decide if this charming and intelligent child could be his own . . . and if he is prepared to take Jean home.
Little Boy Lost is part of the Persephone Audiobook Collection, a series of forgotten classics including neglected fiction and non-fiction by women writers. First published in 1949, this edition includes a new afterword by Anne Sebba.
Marghanita Laski (Author), Justin Avoth (Narrator)
Audiobook
The Umbrella Murder: The Hunt for the Cold War's Most Notorious Killer
Brought to you by Penguin.
In 1978 the Bulgarian author and dissident Georgi Markov was assassinated by a poisoned umbrella on Waterloo Bridge in London. His murder is the most iconic killing in almost five decades of the Cold War, and no one has ever been prosecuted for it.
The Umbrella Murder reveals the real architect and hit man behind this spectacular killing: a spy code-named Piccadilly who worked for the Bulgarian secret service and the KGB, who has been hiding for more than forty years.
Written as a modern-day thriller, and drawing on an incredible thirty-year cache of original documents and recordings and never-before-seen archive material -- some not even seen by police or secret services -- this is a jaw-dropping and page-turning search for justice in the murky underworld of intelligence and across the shifting sands of spycraft.
©2024 Ulrik Skotte (P)2024 Penguin Audio
Ulrik Skotte (Author), Justin Avoth , TBD (Narrator)
Audiobook
The Lives of the Caesars
Brought to you by Penguin.
A masterful new translation of Suetonius' renowned biography of the twelve Caesars, bringing to life a portrait of the first Roman emperors in stunning detail
The ancient Roman empire was the supreme arena, where emperors had no choice but to fight, to thrill, to dazzle. To rule as a Caesar was to stand as an actor upon the great stage of the world. No biography invites us into the lives of the Caesars more vividly or intimately than that by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, written from the centre of Rome and power, in AD 121.
Placing each Caesar in the context of the generations that had gone before, and connecting personality with policy, Suetonius injected flesh and blood into their stories, which continue to inform how we understand the drama of power today. Their shortfalls, foreign policy crises and sex scandals are laid bare; we are shown their tastes, their foibles, their eccentricities; and we sit at their tables and enter their bedrooms, resulting in a series of biographies mediated through the lives of the Caesars themselves.
That Rome lives more vividly in people's imagination than any other ancient empire owes an inordinate amount to Suetonius, and now award-winning author and translator Tom Holland brings us even closer in a new, spellbinding translation. Giving a deeper understanding of the personal lives of the Caesars and of how they inevitably informed what happened across the vast expanse of empire, The Lives of the Caesars is an astonishing, immersive experience of a time and culture at once familiar and utterly alien to our own.
©2024 Suetonius (P)2024 Penguin Audio
Suetonius (Author), Justin Avoth , TBD , Tom Holland (Narrator)
Audiobook
The Muse of History: The Ancient Greeks from the Enlightenment to the Present
Brought to you by Penguin.
How the modern world has understood the ancient Greeks and why they matter today
The study of ancient Greek history has been central to the western conception of history since the Renaissance. The Muse of History traces the shifting patterns of this preoccupation in the last three centuries, in which each generation has reinterpreted the Greeks in the light of their contemporary world, through times of revolution, conflicting ideologies and warfare. It aims to offer a new history of Greek historiography from the Enlightenment to the present, and to acknowledge the continuing spiritual importance of the ancient Greeks for European culture in the twentieth century under totalitarian persecutions. Through the study of different historians, many of them unjustly forgotten, it shows the problematic nature of the Anglo-Saxon tradition and the importance of ideas from the continent of Europe, the ambiguities of democracy, and the impossibility of understanding the past or the present outside our common European heritage. It ends by offering suggestions for the future of the study of the Greeks in the context of world history.
©2024 Oswyn Murray (P)2024 Penguin Audio
Oswyn Murray (Author), Justin Avoth , TBD (Narrator)
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The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism
Brought to you by Penguin.
Ever since its publication in 1651, Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan has unsettled and challenged how we understand the World. Condemned and vilified by each new generation, Hobbes' cold political vision continues to see through any number of political and ethical vanities.
In his wonderfully stimulating book The New Leviathans, John Gray allows us to understand the World of the 2020s with all its contradictions, moral horrors and disappointments through a new reading of Hobbes' classic work. The collapse of the USSR ushered in an era of near apoplectic triumphalism in the West: a genuine belief that a rational, liberal, well-managed future now awaited humankind and that tyranny, nationalism and unreason lay in the past. Since then, so many terrible events have occurred and so many poisonous ideas flourished, and yet still our liberal certainties treat them as aberrations which will somehow dissolve away. Hobbes would not be so confident.
Filled with fascinating and challenging perceptions, The New Leviathans is a powerful meditation on historical and current folly. As a species we always seem to be struggling to face the reality of base and delusive human instincts. Might a more self-aware, realistic and disabused ethics help us all?
©2023 John Gray (P)2023 Penguin Audio
John Gray, Ph.D. (Author), Justin Avoth (Narrator)
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The Island of Whispers
The award-winning, bestselling Frances Hardinge and Emily Gravett unite for the first time to conjure up a thrilling fairy tale of ghosts and magic.
On the island of Merlank, the Dead must not be allowed to linger. The very sight of their ghosts can kill you. When young Milo is thrust into the role of Ferryman following his father's sudden death, he is the one who must carry away the Dead.
Pursued by a vengeful lord and two malignant magicians, Milo must navigate strange and perilous seas where untold threats whisper in the mist. Does he have the courage and imagination to complete his urgent mission?
From the Costa Book Award-winning Frances Hardinge, author of The Lie Tree and Unraveller, this riveting coming-of-age tale will sweep you away on an unforgettable journey.
Frances Hardinge (Author), Justin Avoth (Narrator)
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Philosophy and Life: Exploring the Great Questions of How to Live
Brought to you by Penguin.
From the eminent philosopher, an authoritative exploration of the great questions of how to live
'There is a question everyone has to ask and answer - in fact, has to keep on asking and keep on answering. It is, 'How should I live my life?' meaning, 'What values shall I live by? 'What sort of person should I be? What shall I aim for?' The great majority of people do not ask this question, they merely answer it unthinkingly, by adopting conventional views of life and what matters in it...'
From Stoics to existentialists, in philosophy and literature, discussion of the philosophy of life -- of love and death, of courage, fortitude and wisdom -- challenges us all to think about what kinds of life are truly worth living. In this summation of a lifetime thinking and writing about this great question, A. C. Grayling explores with clarity and depth the ideas that each of us must use in answering it for ourselves.
Drawing on the lives, experiences and works of a fantastically eclectic range of thinkers -- taking in not only philosophers such as Confucius, Seneca and Nietzsche, but also authors from Shakespeare to Ursula LeGuin, and modern thinkers such as Martha Nussbaum and Simon May - Philosophy and Life brings together wisdom from across eras and continents in a tour de force on the philosophy of being human in a complicated world.
'Grayling brings satisfying order to daunting subjects' Steven Pinker
'An enthusiastic thinker who embraces humour, common sense and lucidity' Independent
© A.C Grayling 2023 (P) Penguin Audio 2023
A. C. Grayling (Author), Justin Avoth (Narrator)
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How to Stay Smart in a Smart World: Why Human Intelligence Still Beats Algorithms
Brought to you by Penguin.
Is more data always better?
Do algorithms really make better decisions than humans?
Can we stay in control in an increasingly automated world?
Drawing on decades of research into decision-making under uncertainty, Gerd Gigerenzer makes a compelling case for the enduring importance of human discernment in an automated world that we are told can - and will - replace our efforts.
From dating apps and self-driving cars to facial recognition and the justice system, the increasing presence of AI has been widely championed - but there are limitations and risks too. Humans are the greatest source of uncertainty in these situations and Gigerenzer shows how, when people are involved, trust in complex algorithms can lead to illusions of certainty that become a recipe for disaster.
Filled with practical examples and cutting-edge research, How to Stay Smart in a Smart World examines the growing role of AI at all levels of daily life with refreshing clarity. This book is a liferaft in a sea of information and an urgent invitation to actively shape the digital world in which we want to live.
© Gerd Gigerenzer 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022
Gerd Gigerenzer (Author), Justin Avoth (Narrator)
Audiobook
Two Storm Wood: the must-read historical thriller and the Times Book of the Month
Brought to you by Penguin.
THE GUNS ARE SILENT. THE DEAD ARE NOT.
1919. On the desolate battlefields of northern France, the guns of the Great War are silent. Special battalions now face the dangerous task of gathering up the dead for mass burial.
Captain Mackenzie, a survivor of the war, cannot yet bring himself to go home. First he must see that his fallen comrades are recovered and laid to rest. His task is upended when a gruesome discovery is made beneath the ruins of a German strongpoint.
Amy Vanneck's fiancé is one soldier lost amongst many, but she cannot accept that his body may never be found. She heads to France, determined to discover what became of the man she loved.
It soon becomes clear that what Mackenzie has uncovered is a war crime of inhuman savagery. As the dark truth leaches out, both he and Amy are drawn into the hunt for a psychopath, one for whom the atrocity at Two Storm Wood is not an end, but a beginning.
Praise for Two Storm Wood:
'The world has been waiting for a worthy successor to Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong - now Philip Gray has delivered it' David Young, author of Stasi Child
'Atmospheric and meticulously researched, Two Storm Wood sheds light on the horrors and the trauma that continued even after the Armistice...a novel that informs while keeping you on the edge of your seat' Abir Mukherjee, author of The Shadows of Men
'Gray succeeds in entwining two powerful tales - a love story and a hate story - in a way that, right from the shocking start, is both convincing and enthralling' Virginia Baily, author of Sunday Times bestseller Early One Morning
'One of the most evocative thrillers I've ever read...Haunting, cinematic, and utterly gripping' D.B. John, author of Star of the North
© Philip Gray 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022
Philip Gray (Author), Justin Avoth (Narrator)
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