Audiobooks narrated by Mark Rice-Oxley

"The Fab Four, the most beloved band of all time, join the ranks of this New York Times bestselling biography series about heroes, for ages 5 to 9. They began as Johnny and the Moondogs, and they weren't very good. But these teens who loved music more than anything kept working at their craft and playing on any small stage they could find. And eventually they became the most recognizable, most influential rock and roll band of all time. How? Through dedicated teamwork, shared passion, and love. They knew that the best music is the music you make together! This friendly, fun biography series inspired the PBS Kids TV show Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum. One great role model at a time, these books encourage kids to dream big. Included in each audiobook are: • A timeline of key events in the hero's history • Childhood moments that influenced the heroes • Facts that make great conversation-starters • A virtue these heroes embody: This book celebrates the importance of teamwork. You'll want to collect each title in this dynamic, informative series!"

Brad Meltzer (Author), Imani Jade Powers, Joe Jameson, Julian Elfer, Mark Rice-Oxley, Ralph Lister, Will Watt (Narrator)

Audiobook

Green Tea

"Amazing supernatural tale ahead of its time. Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was born on August 28th, 1814, at 45 Lower Dominick Street, Dublin, into a literary family with Huguenot, Irish and English rootsThe children were tutored but, according to his brother William, the tutor taught them little if anything. Le Fanu was eager to learn and used his father's library to educate himself about the world. He was a creative child and by fifteen had taken to writing poetry. Accepted into Trinity College, Dublin to study law he also benefited from the system used in Ireland that he did not have to live in Dublin to attend lectures, but could study at home and take examinations at the university as and when necessary. This enabled him to also write and by 1838 Le Fanu's first story The Ghost and the Bonesetter was published in the Dublin University Magazine. Many of the short stories he wrote at the time were to form the basis for his future novels. Indeed, throughout his career Le Fanu would constantly revise, cannabilise, embellish and re-publish his earlier works to use in his later efforts. Between 1838 and 1840 Le Fanu had written and published twelve stories which purported to be the literary remains of an 18th-century Catholic priest called Father Purcell. Set mostly in Ireland they include classic stories of gothic horror, with grim, shadowed castles, as well as supernatural visitations from beyond the grave, together with madness and suicide. One of the themes running through them is a sad nostalgia for the dispossessed Catholic aristocracy of Ireland, whose ruined castles stand in mute salute and testament to this history. On 18 December 1844 Le Fanu married Susanna Bennett, the daughter of a leading Dublin barrister. The union would produce four children. Le Fanu was now stretching his talents across the length of a novel and his first was The Cock and Anchor published in 1845. A succession of works followed and his reputation grew as well as his income. Unfortunately, a decade after his marriage it became an increasing source of difficultly. Susanna was prone to suffer from a range of neurotic symptoms including great anxiety after the deaths of several close relatives, including her father two years before. In April 1858 she suffered an "hysterical attack" and died in circumstances that are still unclear. The anguish, profound guilt as well as overwhelming loss were channeled into Le Fanu’s work. Working only by the light of two candles he would write through the night and burnish his reputation as a major figure of 19th Century supernaturalism. His work challenged the focus on the external source of horror and instead he wrote about it from the perspective of the inward psychological potential to strike fear in the hearts of men. A series of books now came forth: Wylder's Hand (1864), Guy Deverell (1865), The Tenants of Malory (1867), The Green Tea (1869), The Haunted Baronet (1870), Mr. Justice Harbottle (1872), The Room in the Dragon Volant (1872) and In a Glass Darkly. (1872). But his life was drawing to a close. Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu died in Merrion Square in his native Dublin on February 7th, 1873, at the age of 58."

Sheridan Le Fanu (Author), Mark Rice-Oxley (Narrator)

Audiobook

The The Horror of the Heights

"A brilliant horror story about air travel written before it's time. Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on 22nd May 1859. His childhood was blighted by his father’s heavy drinking which for some years broke up the family. Fortunately, wealthy uncles were willing to support them by paying for education and clothing. He was accepted at the University of Edinburgh to study medicine and also began to write short stories the first, ‘The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe’, was published in Blackwood’s Magazine. Despite several other stories and some articles in the British Medical Journal his medical studies took priority. When these finished he was appointed as Doctor on the Greenland whaler ‘Hope of Peterhead’ in 1880 and then, after graduation, as ship’s surgeon on the SS Mayumba on its voyage to West Africa. 1882 saw a move to Plymouth and his own independent practice. With few patients he resumed writing and completed his first novel, ‘The Mystery of Cloomber’, although most of his output was short stories based on his experiences at sea. He married Louisa Hawkins in 1885. However, two years later he met and fell in love with Jean Elizabeth Leckie, though they remained platonic out of respect for, and loyalty to, his wife. His literary career suddenly burst into life in November 1886 with ‘A Study In Scarlet’, the first of the fabulously successful Sherlock Holmes stories. With two children to support he now revisited his haphazard commercial arrangements and curtailed everything save for commissions from the Strand Magazine. As a sportsman he was remarkably proficient. He was goalkeeper for Portsmouth Association Football Club and played ten first-class cricket matches for the Marylebone Cricket Club as well as captain of the Crowborough Beacon Golf Club in East Sussex. In 1891 tired of writing Holmes stories, he began a series of historical novels and even went so far as to apparently kill off Holmes in a lethal brawl with his arch-nemesis Moriarty. Despite heavy and sustained criticism he continued to write in support of the Boer War, a fact he thought contributed to his knighthood in 1902. The following year to great relief and acclaim he brought Sherlock Holmes back from the dead in his first outing for a decade. Sadly, his wife Louisa died from TB in 1906 and, a year later, he at last married Jean. During the War and for several years after family deaths had left him depressed. In a search for solace and answers he alighted upon spiritualism and, such was his interest, that he wrote several books on the subject. On 7th July 1930 Conan Doyle was discovered in the hall of Windlesham Manor, his house in East Sussex, clutching his chest dying of a heart attack. He was 71."

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Author), Mark Rice-Oxley (Narrator)

Audiobook

Scary Stories for Teenagers

"Classic stories that are the original form of horror movies. In that extraordinary time between childhood and adulthood are those years that most parents dread; The Teenage Years. Hormones rage, personalities can become belligerent, lives are lived in partial secrecy as their brains undergo re-wiring and their bodies shoot out in all sorts of places. How then to find stories they can engage with? There’s an easy answer. The same way we as adults engage. Great stories told by great authors. In this volume we can tick both boxes with the bonus that the stories are actually about them. Our classic authors including Marjorie Bowen, Gustav Meyrink, Kenneth Grahame, Thomas Hardy and many others bring all facets of this genre into needle-sharp focus. 01 - Scary Stories for Teenagers - An Introduction02 - The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde - Part 1 by Robert Louis Stevenson03 - The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde - Part 2 by Robert Louis Stevenson04 - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving05 - The Signalman by Charles Dickens06 - The Fall of the House of Usher - Part 1 by Edgar Allan Poe07 - The Fall of the House of Usher - Part 2 by Edgar Allan Poe08 - The Empty House by Algernon Blackwood09 - The Cats of Ulthar by H P Lovecraft10 - The Monkey's Paw by W W Jacobs11 - Gabriel-Ernest by Saki12 - The Boarded Window by Ambrose Bierce13 - The Room in the Tower by E F Benson14 - The Ash Tree by M R James. wav15 - August Heat by W F Harvey16 - The Vampyre. A Tale - Part 1 by John Willaim Polidori17 - The Vampyre. A Tale - Part 2 by John Willaim Polidori"

Algernon Blackwood, Charles Dickens, E F Benson, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, John Willaim Polidori, M.R. James, Robert Louis Stevenson, Saki, W F Harvey, W W Jacobs, Washington Irving (Author), David Shaw-Parker, Mark Rice-Oxley, William Dufris (Narrator)

Audiobook

Short Stories About Regret

"Characters dwelling on the past for better or worse .An action is taken. It may be as the result of balanced thought or on a mere whim or impulse. But once taken many of these actions cannot be disregarded or ignored. They have set in motion effects and consequences. Some may be harmless or just minor irritations, but others can have long-lasting consequences that bring regret and the thought of what might have been. In this volume our classic authors Sherwood Anderson, Katherine Mansfield, D H Lawrence and many others bring narratives that bring regret and its’ aftermath in many shades and hues. 1 - Short Stories About Regret - An Introduction2 - Regret by Guy de Maupassant3 - About Love by Anton Chekhov4 - Winter Dreams by F Scott Fitzgerald5 - A Modern Lover - Part 1 by D H Lawrence6 - A Modern Lover - Part 2 by D H Lawrence7 - The Other Woman by Sherwood Anderson8 - The Second Generation by Algernon Blackwood9 - The Lady's Maid by Katherine Mansfield10 - The Omnibus by Arthur Quiller-Couch11 - A Painful Case by James Joyce12 - The Grave by Guy de Maupassant"

Algernon Blackwood, Anton Chekhov, Arthur Quiller-Couch, D.H. Lawrence, F Scott Fitzgerald, Guy De Maupassant, James Joyce, Katherine Mansfield, Sherwood Anderson (Author), David Shaw-Parker, Eric Meyers, Mark Rice-Oxley (Narrator)

Audiobook

Short Stories About Trickery & Deception

"Tales of manipulation, broken promises and tests of faith. As a general rule we are a trusting lot. You say something and, whilst I might disagree, I believe you are acting in good faith. Of course this may be just the beginning of a ruse. If I trust you I might let down my guard, I might seek to share and to create a bond between us. But, if you can’t be trusted, if you have an ulterior motive I might lose out. In the hands of authors such as Maxim Gorky, Ella D’Arcy, Rudyard Kipling, Ivan Turgenev and may others reality may not be what it quite seems. 1 - Short Stories About Trickery & Deception - An Introduction2 - The Man Who Would Be King - Part 1 by Rudyard Kipling3 - The Man Who Would Be King - Part 2 by Rudyard Kipling4 - Chelkash - Part 1 by Maxim Gorky5 - Chelkash - Part 2 by Maxim Gorky6 - Chelkash - Part 3 by Maxim Gorky7 - Souls Belated by Edith Wharton8 - The She-Wolf by Saki9 - Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet by O Henry10 - The Wooing of Pastor Cummings by Georgia F Stewart11 - Mrs Packletide's Tiger by Saki12 - As the Crow Flies by John Davys Beresford13 - The Rats in the Walls by H P Lovecraft14 - The District Doctor by Ivan Turgenev15 - Irremediable by Ella D'Arcy16 - The Connoisseur by Perceval Gibbon17 - The Kiss by Kate Chopin18 - The Hired Baby, A Romance of the London Streets by Mary Mackay writing as Marie Corelli19 - The Open Window by Saki20 - Revenge by Samuel Blas21 - Cheating The Gallows by Israel Zangwill22 - Putois by Anatole France23 - Post Mortem by Barry Pain"

Anatole France, Barry Pain, Edith Wharton, Ella D'Arcy, Georgia F Stewart, H.P. Lovecraft, Israel Zangwill, Ivan Turgenev, John Davys Beresford, Kate Chopin, Mary Mackay Writing As Marie Corelli, Maxim Gorky, O Henry, Perceval Gibbon, Rudyard Kipling, Saki, Samuel Blas (Author), Mark Rice-Oxley, Richard Mitchley, Warren Keyes (Narrator)

Audiobook

Stories About Animals

"Classic tales from innocuous flies on the wall to murderous wolves. Many say that some of their greatest friends, and their greatest joys and feelings, are about animals. Rather than find those same joys and feelings from amongst friends, family and the rest of humanity it can be far easier, some say wiser, to find that from other sources. Some animals may be entirely innocent and entirely devoted to us. But we forget that in the world of wild animals survival is the primary instinct and usually the great enemy is the human race. In this volume our classic authors, including H Rider Haggard, Saki, Bret Harte, Jack London and many others bring us many tints and shades of our relationships with the animal world, both wild and domestic. Just be careful. 1 - Short Stories About Animals - An Introduction2 - The Crocodile. An Extraordinary Incident - Part 1 by Fyodor Dostoyevsky3 - The Crocodile. An Extraordinary Incident - Part 2 by Fyodor Dostoyevsky4 - Tobermory by Saki5 - A Dark Brown Dog by Stephen Crane6 - The Maltese Cat by Rudyard Kipling7 - To Build a Fire by Jack London8 - Mumu by Ivan Turgenev9 - A Yellow Dog by Bret Harte10 - A Passion in the Desert by Honoré de Balzac11 - Misery by Anton Chekhov12 - The Canary by Katherine Mansfield13 - Love by Guy de Maupassant14 - A White Heron by Sarah Orne Jewett15 - How They Stopped the 'Run' by Anthony Hope16 - Long Odds by H Rider Haggard17 - How I Killed a Bear by Charles Dudley Warner18 - A Lesson on a Tortoise by D H Lawrence19 - The Lizard by C J Cutcliffe Hyne20 - Running Wolf by Algernon Blackwood21 - Esme by Saki22 - The White Silence by Jack London23 - The Murders in the Rue Morgue - Part 1 by Edgar Allan Poe24 - The Murders in the Rue Morgue - Part 2 by Edgar Allan Poe"

Algernon Blackwood, Anthony Hope, Anton Chekhov, Bret Harte, C J Cutcliffe Hyne, Charles Dudley Warner, D.H. Lawrence, Edgar Allan Poe, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Guy De Maupassant, H Rider Haggard, Honoré de Balzac, Ivan Turgenev, Jack London, Katherine Mansfield, Rudyard Kipling, Saki, Sarah Orne Jewett, Stephen Crane (Author), Christopher Ragland, Mark Rice-Oxley, William Dufris (Narrator)

Audiobook

When the World Screamed

"Exciting science fiction story by the talented writer of Sherlock Holmes. Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on 22nd May 1859. His childhood was blighted by his father’s heavy drinking which for some years broke up the family. Fortunately, wealthy uncles were willing to support them by paying for education and clothing. He was accepted at the University of Edinburgh to study medicine and also began to write short stories the first, ‘The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe’, was published in Blackwood’s Magazine. Despite several other stories and some articles in the British Medical Journal his medical studies took priority. When these finished he was appointed as Doctor on the Greenland whaler ‘Hope of Peterhead’ in 1880 and then, after graduation, as ship’s surgeon on the SS Mayumba on its voyage to West Africa. 1882 saw a move to Plymouth and his own independent practice. With few patients he resumed writing and completed his first novel, ‘The Mystery of Cloomber’, although most of his output was short stories based on his experiences at sea. He married Louisa Hawkins in 1885. However, two years later he met and fell in love with Jean Elizabeth Leckie, though they remained platonic out of respect for, and loyalty to, his wife. His literary career suddenly burst into life in November 1886 with ‘A Study In Scarlet’, the first of the fabulously successful Sherlock Holmes stories. With two children to support he now revisited his haphazard commercial arrangements and curtailed everything save for commissions from the Strand Magazine. As a sportsman he was remarkably proficient. He was goalkeeper for Portsmouth Association Football Club and played ten first-class cricket matches for the Marylebone Cricket Club as well as captain of the Crowborough Beacon Golf Club in East Sussex. In 1891 tired of writing Holmes stories, he began a series of historical novels and even went so far as to apparently kill off Holmes in a lethal brawl with his arch-nemesis Moriarty. Despite heavy and sustained criticism he continued to write in support of the Boer War, a fact he thought contributed to his knighthood in 1902. The following year to great relief and acclaim he brought Sherlock Holmes back from the dead in his first outing for a decade. Sadly, his wife Louisa died from TB in 1906 and, a year later, he at last married Jean. During the War and for several years after family deaths had left him depressed. In a search for solace and answers he alighted upon spiritualism and, such was his interest, that he wrote several books on the subject. On 7th July 1930 Conan Doyle was discovered in the hall of Windlesham Manor, his house in East Sussex, clutching his chest dying of a heart attack. He was 71."

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Author), Mark Rice-Oxley (Narrator)

Audiobook

Richard Marsh - A Short Story Collection

"Richard Bernard Heldmann was born on 12th October 1857, in St Johns Wood, North London. By his early 20’s Heldmann began publishing fiction for the myriad magazine publications that had sprung up and were eager for good well-written content. In October 1882, Heldmann was promoted to co-editor of Union Jack, a popular magazine, but his association with the publication ended suddenly in June 1883. It appears Heldman was prone to issuing forged cheques to finance his lifestyle. In April 1884 he was sentenced to 18 months hard labour. In order to be well away from the scandal and the damage that this had caused to his reputation Heldmann adopted a pseudonym on his release from jail. Shortly thereafter the name ‘Richard Marsh’ began to appear in the literary periodicals. The use of his mother’s maiden name as part of it seems both a release and a lifeline.A stroke of very good fortune arrived with his novel ‘The Beetle’ published in 1897. This would turn out to be his greatest commercial success and added some much-needed gravitas to his literary reputation. Marsh was a prolific writer and wrote almost 80 volumes of fiction as well as many short stories, across many genres from horror and crime to romance and humour. His unusual characters, plotting devices and other literary developments have identified his legacy as one of the best British writers of his time. Richard Marsh died from heart disease in Haywards Heath in Sussex on 9th August 1915. He was 57."

Richard Marsh (Author), Mark Rice-Oxley (Narrator)

Audiobook

Lord of the Jackals

"Sax Rohmer was born on February 15th, 1883 as Arthur Henry Sarsfield in Birmingham to working class parents.Rohmer started his career as a civil servant but soon had ambitions to change careers and write full time.Not content with just fiction he wrote poetry, songs as well as comedy sketches for music hall performers. From these varied beginnings he reinvented himself as Sax Rohmer.He first published in 1903, age 20, with the short story ‘The Mysterious Mummy’ in the magazine Pearson’s Weekly. At this stage his early influences are easy to spot as he pays homage to both Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle. Together with his contemporaries Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen, Rohmer claimed membership to a popular (among creatives) faction of the qabbalistic Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (a Western esoteric tradition involving mysticism, Gnosticism, and the occult. It is the underlying philosophy and framework for magical societies such as the Golden Dawn).His career, at this point, is one of transitioning from his earlier genres and short stories, the latter of which were in demand from the plethora of weekly and monthly magazines that were hungry for content and paid relatively well, to full length novels.In 1909 he married Rose Elizabeth Knox to whom he would remain married until his death half a century later.He published his first book Pause! anonymously in 1910 and followed this in 1911 with a stint as ghost-writer on the autobiography of Little Tich, the stage name of the famous 4’ 6” music hall entertainer Harry Relph.The serialization of his first Fu Manchu novel, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu, from October 1912 to June 1913 brought him instant success. Though today his works are seen as morally flawed at the time the fast-paced story of Denis Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie facing the worldwide conspiracy of the ‘Yellow Peril’ meant only one thing. Sequels.The first three Fu Manchu books were published between 1913–1917. These books were also turned into two successful serials for the cinema by Stoll in the 1920s. (Stoll was based at its own film studios located in Cricklewood, in NW London, which operated from 1920 to 1938 and was owned by Sir Oswald Stoll as the principal base for his Stoll Pictures, which also operated from Surbiton Studios. The studio was the largest in Britain at the time. It was later used for the production of quota quickies. In 1938 the studios were sold off for non-film use. Sir Oswald Stoll is perhaps better known as a theatre owner.)Rohmer then put the character on hiatus whilst he attended to other works and characters. It was only after a 14-year absence in 1931 that Rohmer added a fourth to the series with The Daughter of Fu Manchu after pressure from both the Colliers Magazine and for the marketing opportunity about to be unveiled by the Paramount film The Mysterious Dr Fu Manchu, the first talkie version of his works. Rohmer's first effort at reviving the Fu Manchu property was eventually reworked as The Emperor of America as Rohmer was unhappy both with the book as outlined and as it finished. In the meantime, he tried to focus his creative abilities on what was first titled Fu Manchu's Daughter in 1930, but with an older, and knighted, Nayland Smith as the protagonist once more. The results were far superior and jump-started the series back to commercial prominence.In the 28 years from 1931 to 1959, Rohmer added no fewer than 10 new books to the Fu Manchu series, creating thirteen in total and, posthumously, a fourteenth with the collection The Wrath of Fu Manchu.The Fu Manchu series drew a lot of criticism both from the Chinese government and Chinese communities for what was seen as negative and ethnic stereotyping. Whilst many critics say they were products of their time that does not avoid the conflict with modern day sensibilities.Any writer would base a character on a friend or acquaintance and Rohmer was no different. He had made friends with the escapologist Harry Houdini, who wrote to him praising his book The Romance of Sorcery. From this relationship sprang his mystery-solving magician character Bazarada based on Houdini.One book that stands alone in Rohmers’ works is The Orchard of Tears (1918). There are no villains or far-flung locations; instead, there are gentle rabbits and lambs in pastoral settings together with a great deal of philosophical musing, an antidote it seems to the previous few years. The incredible commercial success of Fu Manchu had brought Rohmer both fame and fortune and he wanted to use both to allow him to explore and create other characters as well as other interests.In The Quest of the Sacred Slipper (1919) terror arrives on Britain’s shores when an ego ridden archaeologist happens upon one of Islam's holiest relics—the sacred slipper of the prophet Mohammed. Until it is returned to its rightful people, the Hassan of Aleppo vows his reign of death and destruction shall not cease. Behind these inhuman outrages dwells a secret group of fanatics and not even the best of Scotland Yard detectives seem able to apprehend them.Tales of Chinatown (1922) is a collection of ten stories that first appeared in magazines. It includes a story considered one of his best; "Tcheriapin." The story "The Hand of the Mandarin Quong" was rewritten for this. It had been first published as "Hand of the White Sheikh" but Rohmer changed the setting to a Chinatown background and published it as "The Mystery of the Shriveled Hand" the title then changed for this collection.Rohmer also wrote several novels of supernatural horror, including Brood of the Witch-Queen, which has been described as Rohmer's masterpiece.Unfortunately, despite his ability to generate income, Rohmer lacked the skills to properly manage his wealth and made several very poor business decisions that hobbled him throughout his career. His final success came with a series of novels featuring a female variation on Fu Manchu, Sumuru. This series would run to five novels.Ironically, given that today some of Rohmer’s actions are seen as bordering on racism, his works were banned in Nazi Germany and Rohmer complained loudly that he could not understand such censorship, stating "my stories are not inimical to Nazi ideals".After World War II, Rohmer and his wife moved to New York, only returning to London shortly before his death. Sax Rohmer died on June 1st, 1959, due to an outbreak of influenza, ironically named "Asian Flu".His wife, Rose Elizabeth, together with Cay Van Ash, her husband's former assistant, wrote a biography of Rohmer, Master of Villainy, published in 1972."

Sax Rohmer (Author), Mark Rice-Oxley (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Hill

R Ellis Roberts (Author), Mark Rice-Oxley (Narrator)

Audiobook

The White Line

"John Ferguson was born on the 18th August 1881 in Stirling in Scotland.He attended the High School there and little other information is available. It is known that he worked primarily in the banking industry. His literary canon is exceedingly small, this being the only volume of his poems ever published. What is known is that he suffered from ill-health and these poems were written whilst in a sanitorium.The book itself was very successful after its publication in 1912, with at least 14 editions published during his lifetime.John Ferguson died on the 8th March 1928 and is buried in the cemetery at Stirling Castle. He was 46."

John Ferguson (Author), Mark Rice-Oxley (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks Narrated by Mark Rice-Oxley

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