Orlando is one of the most unforgettable creations of twentieth-century literature. He emerges as a young man at the court of Queen Elizabeth I and progresses, with breathtaking ease, through three centuries until, by now a woman, she arrives in the bustle and diversion of the 1920s. For Virginia Woolf, a leading figure of the Bloomsbury Group, Orlando was more than a fantastic flight of imagination. It was a roman à clef, a love letter for her lover, the charismatic, eccentric bisexual, Vita Sackville West. Orlando's journey, from wondrous youth barbed by love, to fêted writer, settled in her femininity, is a wild and curiously relevant fable for our times.
A century after it first appeared, Crime and Punishment remains one of the most gripping psychological thrillers. A poverty-stricken young man, seeing his family making sacrifices for him, is faced with an opportunity to solve his financial problems with one simple but horrifying act: the murder of a pawnbroker. She is, he feels, just a parasite on society. But does the end justify the means? Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov makes his decision and then has to live with it. Dostoyevsky, in masterly fashion, contrasts the comedy and tragedy of life in St Petersburg with the anguish and turmoil of Raskolnikov's inner life.
The year is 1866. The maritime world is gripped by fear after reported sightings of a huge and terrible sea monster. Monsieur Aronnax, a distinguished Professor of Natural History, pronounces the creature to be a giant narwhal and is invited to join an official expedition to track down the beast. But Professor Aronnax is proved wrong; the beast is not of the natural world, but a huge submarine. When he is pulled out of the sea by the enigmatic Captain Nemo, and imprisoned on the Nautilus, he experiences at first hand the marvels and perils of submarine life. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is possibly the first and finest work of science fiction plausible, terrifying and utterly gripping.
The gothic tale of Frankenstein and his construction of a human being who runs amok has, with the help of numerous films, become one of the most vivid of horror stories. But Mary Shelley's original novel, written in 1816, dealt more sympathetically with 'the daemon', showing how an initially beneficent creature is hammered into a daemon by the way he is treated. Her ideas, and her dramatic but poignant story, is brought to life in this sound dramatisation.
The glorious but tragic story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table is one of the great legends of Western civilization. Storytellers and poets down the centuries have turned repeatedly to the universal themes of the Quest of the Holy Grail and the love between Sir Launcelot and Queen Guenever. Yet the first printed account, written by the fifteenth-century knight Sir Thomas Malory, remains unmatched. In words which speak directly to us today as they did to his own period, he brings to life a rich tale of heroism and ideals undermined by the poignancy of human emotions.
Chekhov, noted author, playwright and physician, is one of the most accessible and enjoyable of the Russian writers. He writes about life's routines in a way that encompasses the heights and depths of human emotion all in the span of a day, or even a meal. This recording includes four of his most acclaimed short stories, including: The Black Monk, The House with the Mezzanine, The Peasants, and Gooseberries.
During the Holocaust at the German concentration camp near Plaszow, thousands of Jews lost their lives at the hands of the Nazis. More than a thousand others would have been counted among the dead if not for a womanizing, heavy drinking, German-Catholic industrialist and Nazi Party member named Oskar Schindler.
One of the most remarkable narratives of the Holocaust, Schindler's List masterfully recreates the daring exploits of Schindler, who used his enormous fortune to build a factory near the concentration camp and saved the lives of over 1,300 Jews. An absorbing, suspenseful and moving account of Oskar Schindler's legacy of life, this is an unforgettable audio program.
The great Hans Christian Andersen creates a fir-tree with a voice, a soul, and thoughts we can briefly share.
An audio-dramatisation with full cast, sound effects, and 'audio-ambience' created for you by AudioscapePlayers.
A wicked queen, (and a step-mother to boot......there were lots of them in those days), changed eleven young princes into swans - simply because they weren't as ugly as she thought they should be. Their sister, Elise, was whisked away by the queen's henchmen, to be brought up as peasants.
The queen thought she would live happily ever after, with both the king and the kingdom under her control: but things were not quite so simple....
This enchanting tale of the journey taken by a youngster together with his mysterious friend, leads the listener into a unverse of magic and mystery: a princess who is a witch, a giant who likes to eat human eyes, a miserable king, a garden of bones......these are some of the ingredients of this fetching story.
An audio-dramatization with full cast, sound effects, and 'audio-ambience' created for you by AudioscapePlayers.
Frederick Winterbourne, an American expatriate visiting at Vevey, Switzerland, meets commonplace, newly rich Mrs. Miller from Schenectady, New York, her mischievous small son and her daughter, Daisy, an 'inscrutable combination of audacity and innocence.' The Millers have no perception of the complex code that underlies behavior in European society, and Winterbourne is astonished at the girl's innocent naivet' and her mother's unconcern, both of which lead to trouble for Daisy.
Saki's popularity and reputation continue to thrive. This collection of unusual stories from the master storyteller all feature animals. Includes The She Wolf, The Mouse, The Brogue, The Boar Pig, The Remoulding of Groby Lington, The Wolves of Cernogratz, Mrs Packletide's Tiger, The Lull, Laura, The Stalled Ox, Tobermory, The Bull, The Elk.
