Clarke Peters has narrated 4 audiobooks on Listento.it by 4 authors, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is The History of Magic.
The History of Magic
Summary
Brought to you by Penguin. Three great strands of practice and belief run through human history - science, religion and magic. Over the last few centuries, magic - the idea that we have a connection with the universe and that the universe responds to us - has developed a bad reputation. But it is still with us, as it has been for millennia, as Professor Chris Gosden shows in this extraordinarily bold and unprecedented history. As Gosden argues, magic preceded religion and science, and it has been with us from the curses and charms of ancient Greek, Roman and Jewish magic, to the shamanistic traditions of Eurasia, indigenous America and Africa, the alchemy of the Renaissance, colonial dismissals of magic as backward, and quantum physics today, where magic and science converge. Today 75 percent of the adult population of the Western world hold some belief in magic, whether we believe that the mind of a patient influences recovery, or find it hard to stab a photo of a loved one. Drawing on his decades of research around the world, with incredible breadth and authority and stunning detail - from the first known horoscope to the power of tattoos - Gosden reveals magic's positive qualities and how we might use it to rethink our relationship with the world. This timely history of human thought across thousands of years rightly shows the role that magic has played in shaping civilisation.
©2020 Chris Gosden (P)2020 Penguin Audio
Telegraph Avenue
Summary
As the summer of 2004 draws to a close, Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe are still hanging in there - longtime friends, bandmates, and co-regents of Brokeland Records, a kingdom of used vinyl located in the borderlands of Berkeley and Oakland. Their wives, Gwen Shanks and Aviva Roth-Jaffe, are the Berkeley Birth Partners, a pair of semi-legendary midwives who have welcomed, between them, more than a thousand newly minted citizens into the dented utopia at whose heart - half tavern, half temple - stands Brokeland Records. When ex-NFL quarterback Gibson Goode, the fifth-richest black man in the United States, announces plans to build his latest Dogpile megastore on a nearby stretch of Telegraph Avenue, Nat and Archy fear it means certain doom for their vulnerable little enterprise. Meanwhile, Aviva and Gwen also find themselves caught up in a battle for their professional existence, one that tests the limits of their friendship. Adding another layer of complication to the couples' already tangled lives is the surprise appearance of Titus Joyner, the teenage son Archy has never acknowledged and the love of 15-year-old Julius Jaffe's life.
©2012 Michael Chabon (P)2012 HarperCollins Publishers
Easy Rawlins: Black Betty (BBC Radio Crimes)
Summary
On the shady side of LA in 1961, African-American private eye Easy Rawlins can go places a white detective cannot. So when Saul Lynx needs a missing woman found, he hires Easy to do his dirty work. Elizabeth Eady - ‘Black Betty’ - is as dark as midnight and just as beautiful. An old acquaintance of Easy’s when he was a child back in Texas, she had been working for a rich white woman in Beverley Hills, but left her job with no forwarding address. Easy knows she always brings trouble in her wake, but he has a family to support and needs Lynx’s money. With Martin Luther King in the news and a new young president in the White House, it’s a time of hope for most black Americans. But as Easy tries to unravel a case that sends him in search of his own past, he finds only death under the stones he is paid to turn over…. Starring Clarke Peters, John Guerrasio and Alibe Parsons and dramatised by Bonnie Greer, this was first broadcast as part of BBC Radio 4’s ‘American Noir’ season.Warning: contains strong language.
©2012 AudioGO Ltd (P)2012 AudioGO Ltd
The Edgar Allan Poe BBC Radio Collection
Summary
Edgar Allan Poe's most celebrated stories, as heard on BBC Radio - plus bonus documentaries and two thrilling original dramas. The master of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe has inspired generations of horror writers with his chilling Gothic tales and is also credited with inventing the detective fiction genre in 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue'. This radio collection features five of his classic tales - 'The Pit and the Pendulum', 'The Tell-Tale Heart', 'The Oblong Box', 'The Fall of the House of Usher' and 'The Masque of the Red Death', read by David Horovitch, Brian Gear, James Aubrey, Sean Barrett and Don Gilet. Also included is his renowned poem 'The Raven', read by Patrick Romer. Here, too, are adaptations of Poe's suspenseful story of piracy and slavery, 'The Gold Bug', starring Clarke Peters and Rhashan Stone, and his pioneering mystery story 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', starring James Fleet and Andrew Scott. Radio 3's The Essay: Loving the Raven sees Poe enthusiasts Andrew Taylor, Joanne Harris, Louise Welsh, Mark Lawson and Kim Newman discussing the author's enduring legacy and cult status, while in Adventures in Poetry: The Raven, Peggy Reynolds explores Poe's most iconic work. Also included are two original dramas featuring Poe himself. Obsessed by a woman's unsolved murder, Edgar Allan Poe is presented with a disturbing revelation on the night before his death in Peter Mackie's The Real Mystery of Marie Roget, starring Ed Bishop. And in Christopher Cook's The Strange Case of Edgar Allan Poe, starring Kerry Shale and John Moffatt, Poe's famous detective C. Auguste Dupin investigates the bizarre death of his creator. Content warning: 'The Gold Bug' is set in a time when slavery was still prevalent in America and contains racist language from that era. Track listing: 'The Pit and the Pendulum' 'The Tell-Tale Heart' 'The Oblong Box' 'The Fall of the House of Usher' 'The Masque of the Red Death' 'The Raven' 'The Gold Bug' 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' The Essay: Loving the Raven Adventures in Poetry: The Raven The Real Mystery of Marie Roget The Strange Case of Edgar Allan Poe
©2020 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)2020 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd