Christopher Selbie has narrated 10 audiobooks on Listento.it by 7 authors. The most-rated is Corruption.
The Man Who Was Death
Summary
Sometimes, the only enemy a man has is his own.... Jed Parks, Bernard Paltoquet’s new gardener, has an unusual psychic gift: He can see people’s auras. A black aura is a death sentence. He also has a guilty secret. Having helped to cover up two murders, he lives in fear his past will come back to haunt him. Thus, when Lady Mountjoy, his former employer and lover, turns up telling him he is the father of her son, he is torn between his old life and his new. Bernard and his friend Robbie become involved in Jed’s plight, but they are powerless to prevent the tragedy which follows....
©2020 Pat Herbert (P)2020 Pat Herbert
William Blake: In the Shadow of the Vortex
Summary
Review of the exhibition of visionary artist William Blake at Tate Britain, September 2019. The exhibition is arranged in eight rooms of the downstairs gallery spaces of Tate Britain, low-lit, maroon-painted walls, a very comprehensive collection of a highly original and complex visionary creator. Blake’s parents ran a successful hosiery and haberdashery shop in Broad Street Soho, in a local inhabited by well-to-do middle classes; bankers, fashionistas, gentry. Born in 1757, Blake felt his calling was to art from childhood, and he was encouraged by his parents purchase of colours, paints and casts, and support for his studies at the Royal Academy. His early studies, carefully completed works from the figure show a degree of competence and conscientious determination. It is precisely here that the original vision is inseminated: the pale grisaille ink and watercolour conceptions plant classical statuesque models into a supernatural arena of unfettered imagination. The canon of Western art, of Titian, Veronese, Michelangelo, Raphael, are absorbed by Blake but regurgitated as something quite alien and spectral, subject to a passionate and individual sensibility.
©2019 Cv Publications (P)2019 Cv Publications
Grand Scale Symphony: Anselm Kiefer at White Cube
Summary
A review of Anselm Kiefer exhibition at White Cube Bermonday tours room by room, with analytic descriptions of the large scale works on view. Superstrings, the Norms, Gordian Knot One enters the massive White Cube Gallery in Bermondsey and finds oneself in a darkened avenue bordered by large vertical paintings. Vitrines framed with broad metal casing contain accumulations of mixed media, the Superstrings. On closer attention, scrawed on the glass formulas for the scientific specialist, e.g. in Vitrine number 1 to the left reads Vu+xqa i/2 kud(lodk)ekx, whatever that means. Behind this a confusion of coiled cord, tangled loops of white and black lengths, suspended against a bleached-out suggestion of industrial landscape, silhouetted shapes of buildings and chimneys. Another formula scrawled on the glass. V(Nkov):xeinx encased. Are these scientific string theory? (1) In this panel the bunched confusion of cords lies on a silvered textured ground, which may be canvas but resembles parchment. In the fourth vitrine is a mesh of wire squared grid imposed over an absolute forest of black cord, fused and gutted, with white cord disposed at the base. The message seems to be the toppled towers of science, corrupted by the sensual intuitive surge of the artwork. The formulae are reduced to a scrawled nonsense. Vitrine number 6 is a chaotic tangle of elements....
©2019 Cv Publications (P)2020 Cv Publications
Steel, Blood & Fire
Summary
On the march, around the campfire, and in the taverns, they tell incredible stories about Tarmun Vykers, the Reaper - how he's never been cut in battle, how he once defeated hundreds of men by himself, how he exterminated an entire people over an insult. These stories make Vykers seem like a god, but he is a man, an arrogant, ruthless, and bloodthirsty man. For all that, he may be the only thing standing between the human race and utter annihilation at the hands of the mad wizard who calls himself the End-of-All-Things. Against this backdrop, smaller, lesser folks struggle to fulfill their own destinies, folks like Aoife, burdened with a secret so dark she is driven to do the unimaginable and seek an alliance with fey powers no mortal has ever encountered. Are you a fan of Joe Abercrombie's First Law series, Steven Erikson's The Malazan Book of the Fallen, Glen Cook's Chronicles of the Black Company, or Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicle? If so, grab your copy of Steel, Blood & Fire now! Author Q&A Is this audiobook appropriate for children? No, only 17+ please. What types of creatures are in the book? Several original creations, plus a few you know. There are ghosts and wizards, but not the typical ones found in most ghost novels and mage books, and the Fey here are more dangerous than in your average fairy books. If you enjoy edgier fantasy novels, then this is for you! Is this a stand-alone novel, or part of a series? This is book one in the Immortal Treachery series. It tells a complete story on its own, but subsequent books help tell a larger story.
©2018 Wendell Allan Batchelder (P)2019 Wendell Batchelder
The Dark Side of the Mirror
Summary
Twins sometimes run in families; in the Fentimans’ case, they positively stampede. In 1937, Robert Fentiman is hanged for the murder of a barmaid. Twenty years later his ghost claims his innocence, and Rev Bernard Paltoquet is called on to help clear his name by the dead man’s son, Carl. As Bernard and his pal Robbie begin their investigations, by a cruel twist of fate, another barmaid is murdered, who turns out to be the daughter of the first barmaid. And, by another twist of fate, Carl Fentiman is the main suspect. A professional medium, with an unconventional use for a crystal ball, is called in to help solve both crimes, but she is as baffled as Bernard and Robbie. Meanwhile Bernard’s housekeeper, Mrs Aitch, has deserted the vicarage for a mysterious suitor...
©2020 Pat Herbert (P)2021 Pat Herbert
As Flies to Wanton Boys
Summary
Three years have passed since Tarmun Vykers’ victory over the mad sorcerer who called himself the End-of-All-Things. But they’ve been three long years confined to a sick bed with a grievous wound that will not heal, cannot be healed by any means known to man. And then, something unthinkable happens, and Vykers is summoned once again to save the kingdom. This same mysterious event ensnares Long Pete and his companions, reuniting them for a mission whose consequences none can anticipate and not all will survive. Will Vykers master his wound, or will it finally end him? Can Long Pete serve both his queen and his family? And what of the A’Shea, Aoife, who finds herself torn between her faith and her powerful attraction to the Reaper? In a world in which the gods play with the fates of men as mischievous boys torture insects, nothing but strife is certain.
©2014, 2018 Wendell Allan Batchelder (P)2020 Wendell Allan Batchelder
Give a Manor Take a Manor
Summary
Domestic rebellions and foreign wars, the king’s rule, murder, traitors and execution, crippling debt, arranged marriages of young heirs and heiresses, avoidance of taxes, medieval decrees of inheritance, the black death, and famine. All that and more can be found in a fascinating new book based on the meticulous research of exceptional author Murray Johnston. While his first book The Watford Knight’s Fee will satisfy serious students and enthusiasts of medieval English history, his second opens the door to everyone. A time machine takes the listener along a fascinating and, sometimes, wobbly journey with the lords of the manor through 700 years, including - unique in English history - one family for 500 years. Welcome to the world of manors in medieval England!
©2019 Murray Johnston (P)2019 Murray Johnston
The Great Fury
Summary
Oengus, the stolen son of the Celtic Gods, has come of age. He must serve his apprenticeship, and as a first step, he is made the God of Inconsequential Things. He must go to New York to recover a sword called The Great Fury. Oengus finds his task is shrouded in complexity. Morag the Witch is plotting to contaminate the Manhattan water system. Oengus is supported by the apprentice witch Maedbh, and they are targeted by Morag and her crew of the Greyman with the embrace of death, Dearg Due the Vampire, and Leanan Sidhe the seductress. Will Oengus recover the lost sword and save New York from a plague of rats?
©2018 Thomas Kennedy (P)2019 Thomas Kennedy
Elfrid's Hole
Summary
After aspiring novelist Jake Conley regains consciousness from a coma, he discovers he’s affected by synaesthesia and that his now cross-wired brain endows him with heightened psychic powers. Jake’s research on the Northumbrian king Aldfrith takes him to Elfrid’s Hole in North Yorkshire, where - as legend relates - the king sheltered after a bloody battle. What Jake doesn't realize is that his investigation has unleashed a series of deadly paranormal events in which Jake himself becomes the prime suspect. Fighting to clear his name and overcome the hostility of Detective Inspector Mark Shaw, can Jake follow through and bring peace to a soul tormented for over a thousand years?
©2019 John Broughton (P)2019 John Broughton
Corruption
Summary
When Richard Griffiths meets attractive Andrea Nelson he is expecting nothing more than a holiday romance. But soon he is embroiled in a sinister web of deceit and corruption which reaches into the highest levels of the European parliament. As atrocity follows atrocity, Richard’s cousin, Commander Nick Hunter RN of the International Force Against Terrorism, is called in to chase down the villains before more innocent lives are lost. In a fight against time, this is Henke at his pause-resisting best.
©2012 Paul Henke (P)2019 Paul Henke