John Lee has narrated 329 audiobooks on Listento.it by 240 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.6★ across 25,868 ratings. The most-rated is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Book 7.
SPQR VI: Nobody Loves a Centurion
Summary
Julius Caesar, as we know, arrived in Gaul (now France) and announced "I Came, I Saw, I Conquered." But when Decius Metellus arrives from Rome, not seeking military glory but rather avoiding an enemy currently in power, he finds that although the general came and saw, so far, at least, he has far from conquered. The campaign seems at a standstill. Decius' arrival disappoints the great Caesar as well. He has been waiting for promised reinforcements from Rome, an influx of soldiers to restart his invasion. Instead he is presented with one young man ridiculously decked out in military parade finery and short on military skills, accompanied not by eager troops but by one callow and reluctant slave, the feckless Hermes. It soon develops, however, that Decius' arrival was fortuitous. When Vinius, the army's cruelest centurion (so-called because he commands 100 soldiers), is found murdered, Caesar remembers that his new recruit has successfully come up with the culprit in a number of recent crimes. Murder is bad for morale, particularly since it seems quite clear that the murderer was one of Caesar's men. Caesar orders Decius to find the killer - and quickly. Although evidence points to the son of one of Decius' clients - a youth who was the particular target of the centurion's brutality - Decius racks his brain to find a way to save him from the sentence of death. The investigation leads Decius to two German slaves of the dead man - a dwarfish old man and a beautiful woman. They are puzzling; the man is arrogant, the woman haughty - very unlike slaves. There are unanswered questions. It soon becomes clear to Decius that only by finding and punishing the real murderer will it be possible to quiet the rising dissatisfaction with Caesar's unorthodox method of warfare and forestall a mutiny against the mighty Caesar's authority and aims.
©2001 John Maddox Roberts (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
SPQR X: A Point of Law
Summary
Decius Caecilius Metellus is moving up in the world. He's won some money and glory fighting pirates in the Mediterranean and expects a speedy election to the office of praetor. That all changes when a man he's never seen before publicly accuses him of corruption. Decius and his powerful family of Rome's leading politicians scramble to prepare a defense. However, the day of the trial they are greeted with a strange surprise on the steps of the courthouse: the corpse of the man who made the accusation. Now Decius is up against a much more serious charge of murder. It may cost him his chance to run for office, but not if he can help it. Roberts once again masterfully sets Decius and his adventures against the background of this famed and crumbling Republic, enriching his story with historical detail and the immortal personalities of the day.
©2006 John Maddox Roberts (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
SPQR XI: Under Vesuvius
Summary
Things are going well for Decius Caecilius Metellus. He is Praetor Peregrinus, which means he has to judge a case or two, but those cases are outside of the city. His cases will be those dealing with foreigners, and all of Italy is his province. His first stop is Campania, "Italy’s most popular resort district". Decius and his wife, Julia, are happy for a change of scenery. But the good times end when, in a town near Vesuvius, a priest’s daughter is murdered. Decius must find her killer and keep the mob off a young boy who everyone blames but he believes to be innocent. Decius may have acquired more prestige, but he’s also acquired more trouble. With his SPQR novels, John Maddox Roberts has written a satisfying and entertaining historical mystery series. The stakes just keep getting higher in this latest atmospheric puzzle.
©2007 John Maddox Roberts (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Sunstorm
Summary
Returned to the Earth of 2037 by the Firstborn, mysterious beings of almost limitless technological prowess, Bisesa Dutt is haunted by the memories of her five years spent on the strange alternate Earth called Mir, a jigsaw-puzzle world made up of lands and people cut out of different eras of Earth's history.Why did the Firstborn create Mir? Why was Bisesa taken there and then brought back on the day after her original disappearance? Bisesa's questions receive a chilling answer when scientists discover an anomaly in the sun's core - an anomaly that has no natural cause, evidence of alien intervention over two thousand years before. Now, plans set in motion millennia ago by inscrutable watchers light-years away are coming to fruition, in a sunstorm designed to scour the Earth of all life through a bombardment of deadly radiation. Thus commences a furious race against a ticking solar time bomb. But even now, as apocalypse looms, cooperation is not easy for the peoples and nations of the Earth. Religious and political differences threaten to undermine every effort. And all the while, the Firstborn are watching...
©2005 Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Alexander the Great
Summary
What can we learn from the stunning rise and mysterious death of the ancient world’s greatest conqueror? An acclaimed biographer reconstructs the life of Alexander the Great in this magisterial revisionist portrait. “[An] infectious sense of narrative momentum.... Its energy is unflagging, including the verve with which it tackles that teased final mystery about the specific cause of Alexander’s death.” (The Christian Science Monitor) More than two millennia have passed since Alexander the Great built an empire that stretched to every corner of the ancient world, from the backwater kingdom of Macedonia to the Hellenic world, Persia, and ultimately to India - all before his untimely death at age 33. Alexander believed that his empire would stop only when he reached the Pacific Ocean. But stories of both real and legendary events from his life have kept him evergreen in our imaginations with a legacy that has meant something different to every era: In the Middle Ages he became an exemplar of knightly chivalry, he was a star of Renaissance paintings, and by the early 20th century he'd even come to resemble an English gentleman. But who was he in his own time? In Alexander the Great, Anthony Everitt judges Alexander’s life against the criteria of his own age and considers all his contradictions. We meet the Macedonian prince who was naturally inquisitive and fascinated by science and exploration, as well as the man who enjoyed the arts and used Homer’s great epic, the Iliad, as a bible. As his empire grew, Alexander exhibited respect for the traditions of his new subjects and careful judgment in administering rule over his vast territory. But his career also had a dark side. An inveterate conqueror who in his short life built the largest empire up to that point in history, Alexander glorified war and was known to commit acts of remarkable cruelty. As debate continues about the meaning of his life, Alexander's death remains a mystery. Did he die of natural causes - felled by a fever - or did his marshals, angered by his tyrannical behavior, kill him? An explanation of his death can lie only in what we know of his life, and Everitt ventures to solve that puzzle, offering an ending to Alexander’s story that has eluded so many for so long.
©2019 Anthony Everitt (P)2019 Random House Audio
The Black Cat
Summary
Three months have passed since Richard Jury was left bereft and guilt- ridden after his lover's tragic auto accident, and he is now more wary than ever. He is deeply suspicious when requested on a case far out of his jurisdiction in an outlying village, where a young woman has been murdered behind the local pub. The only witness is the establishment's black cat, who gives neither crook nor clue as to the girl's identity or her killer's. Identifying the girl becomes tricky when she's recognized as both the shy local librarian and a posh city escort, and Jury must use all his wits and intuition to determine the connection to subsequent escort murders. Meanwhile, Jury's nemesis, Harry Johnson, continues to goad Jury down a dangerous path. And Johnson, along with the imperturbable dog Mungo, just may be the key to it all. Written with Martha Grimes' trademark insight and grace, The Black Cat signals the thrilling return of her greatest character. The superintendent is a man possessed of prodigious analytical gifts and charm, yet vulnerable in the most perplexing ways.
©2010 Martha Grimes (P)2010 Penguin
Millennium
Summary
History's greatest tour guide, Ian Mortimer, takes us on an eye-opening and expansive journey through the last millennium of human innovation. In Millennium, best-selling historian Ian Mortimer takes the listener on a whirlwind tour of the last 10 centuries of Western history. It is a journey into a past vividly brought to life and bursting with ideas, that pits one century against another in his quest to measure which century saw the greatest change. We journey from a time when there was a fair chance of your village being burned to the ground by invaders - and dried human dung was a recommended cure for cancer - to a world in which explorers sailed into the unknown and civilizations came into conflict with each other on an epic scale. Here is a story of godly scientists, fearless adventurers, coldhearted entrepreneurs, and strong-minded women - a story of discovery, invention, revolution, and cataclysmic shifts in perspective. Millennium is a journey into the past like no other. Our understanding of human development will never be the same again, and the lessons we learn along the way are profound ones for us all.
©2014 Ian Mortimer (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
The Black Book
Summary
A new translation and afterword by Maureen Freely.
Galip is a lawyer living in Istanbul. His wife, the detective novel-loving Ruya, has disappeared. Could she have left him for her ex-husband or Celâl, a popular newspaper columnist? But Celâl, too, seems to have vanished. As Galip investigates, he finds himself assuming the enviable Celâl's identity, wearing his clothes, answering his phone calls, even writing his columns. Galip pursues every conceivable clue, but the nature of the mystery keeps changing, and when he receives a death threat, he begins to fear the worst.
With its cascade of beguiling stories about Istanbul, The Black Book is a brilliantly unconventional mystery, and a provocative meditation on identity. For Turkish literary fans, it is the cherished cult novel in which Orhan Pamuk found his original voice, but it has largely been neglected by English-language speakers. Now, in Maureen Freely’s beautiful new translation, they, too, may encounter all its riches.
©2018 Orhan Pamuk (P)2018 Random House Audio
SPQR IV: The Temple of the Muses
Summary
When Roman junior senator Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger has a chance to join a diplomatic mission to Alexandria, he welcomes the opportunity to temporarily elude his enemies in the Eternal City - even though it means leaving his beloved Rome. Decius is just beginning to enjoy the outpost's many exotic pleasures when the suspicious death of an irascible philosopher occurs, coinciding with the puzzling and apocalyptic ravings of a charismatic cult leader. Intrigued, Decius requests and is given permission by the Egyptian Pharaoh to investigate the heinous crime. What he discovers is beyond shocking. And when the corpse of a famous courtesan mysteriously turns up in his bed, Decius suddenly finds himself entangled in a web of conspiracy far more widespread and dangerous than he ever imagined - one that threatens to bring about the downfall of the entire Empire.
©1992 John Maddox Roberts (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The White Castle
Summary
From a Turkish writer who has been compared with Borges, Nabokov, and DeLillo comes a dazzling novel that is at once a captivating work of historical fiction and a sinuous treatise on the enigma of identity and the relations between East and West.
In the 17th century, a young Italian scholar sailing from Venice to Naples is taken prisoner and delivered to Constantinople. There he falls into the custody of a scholar known as Hoja - "master" - a man who is his exact double. In the years that follow, the slave instructs his master in Western science and technology, from medicine to pyrotechnics.
But Hoja wants to know more: why he and his captive are the persons they are and whether, given knowledge of each other's most intimate secrets, they could actually exchange identities.
Set in a world of magnificent scholarship and terrifying savagery, The White Castle is a colorful and intricately patterned triumph of the imagination.
Translated from the Turkish by Victoria Holbrook.
©1991 Orhan Pamuk (P)2018 Random House Audio
Time Pieces
Summary
From the internationally acclaimed and Man Booker prize-winning author of The Sea and the Benjamin Black mysteries - a vividly evocative memoir that unfolds around the author's recollections, experience, and imaginings of Dublin. As much about the life of the city as it is about a life lived, sometimes, in the city, John Banville's "quasi-memoir" is as layered, emotionally rich, witty, and unexpected as any of his novels. Born and bred in a small town a train ride away from Dublin, Banville saw the city as a place of enchantment when he was a child, a birthday treat, the place where his beloved, eccentric aunt lived. And though, when he came of age and took up residence there, and the city became a frequent backdrop for his dissatisfactions (not playing an identifiable role in his work until the Quirke mystery series, penned as Benjamin Black), it remained in some part of his memory as fascinating as it had been to his seven-year-old self. And as he guides us around the city, delighting in its cultural, architectural, political, and social history, he interweaves the memories that are attached to particular places and moments. The result is both a wonderfully idiosyncratic tour of Dublin, and a tender yet powerful ode to a formative time and place for the artist as a young man.
©2018 John Banville (P)2018 Random House Audio
The Auschwitz Volunteer
Summary
In 1940, the Polish Underground wanted to know what was happening inside the recently opened Auschwitz concentration camp. Polish army officer Witold Pilecki volunteered to be arrested by the Germans and report from inside the camp. His intelligence reports, smuggled out in 1941, were among the first eyewitness accounts of Auschwitz atrocities: the extermination of Soviet POWs, its function as a camp for Polish political prisoners, and the "final solution" for Jews. Pilecki received brutal treatment until he escaped in April 1943; soon after, he wrote a brief report. This book is the first English translation of a 1945 expanded version. In the foreword, Poland's chief rabbi states, "If heeded, Pilecki's early warnings might have changed the course of history." Pilecki's story was suppressed for half a century after his 1948 arrest by the Polish Communist regime as a "Western spy". He was executed and expunged from Polish history. Pilecki writes in staccato style but also interjects his observations on humankind's lack of progress: "We have strayed, my friends, we have strayed dreadfully.... We are a whole level of hell worse than animals!"
©2012 Jarsolaw Garlinski and Aquila Polonica (U.S.) Ltd. (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Blood Royal or, The Son of Milady
Summary
The latest entry in this acclaimed series of new translations of the Musketeer novels, Blood Royal continues the adventures of the valiant d’Artagnan and his three loyal friends. The latest translation in Lawrence Ellsworth’s acclaimed new series of Alexandre Dumas’ greatest adventures is Blood Royal, the second half of what Dumas originally published as Twenty Years After. In this volume, all the plots and schemes set up in the previous novel come to dramatic fruition in the kind of exciting thrill ride Dumas is famous for - while at the same time introducing the characters and themes that form the foundation of the rest of the series, leading to its great climax in The Man in the Iron Mask. In Blood Royal, the Four Musketeers all venture to England on parallel missions to save King Charles I, pursued by the murderous and vengeful Mordaunt, the son of Milady de Winter, the great villain of The Three Musketeers. Despite all his experience, d’Artagnan is repeatedly foiled by the much-younger Mordaunt, who erupts out of the past to embody the strengths of audacity and cunning that were once d’Artagnan’s hallmarks. Mordaunt has corrupted those youthful strengths, and the older d’Artagnan is no match for him until he is able to pull his former team together again. To do this, d’Artagnan will have to become a true leader of men, leading not just by example, but also by foresight, persuasion, and compromise. Only then can the team of Athos, Porthos, and Aramis be reformed in all its might to defeat the specter of their past. Blood Royal is unmatched in Dumas' oeuvre in its depictions of his most famous and beloved characters and is an unforgettable saga of swordplay, suspense, revenge, and ultimate triumph.
©2020 Lawrence Schick (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing
A Bold and Dangerous Family
Summary
From the best-selling author of A Train in Winter, the story of the Rosselli family, whose courage standing up to Mussolini's fascism helped define the path of Italy in the years between the World Wars. "I had a house: they destroyed it. I had a newspaper: they closed it. I had a university chair: I was forced to abandon it. I had - as I still do - dreams, dignity, ideals: to defend them I was sent to prison. I had teachers: they murdered them." (Carlo Rosselli on Italy's fascist regime) Italy's Rosselli family were members of the cosmopolitan, cultural elite in Florence at the start of the 20th century. Led by their fierce matriarch, Amelia Rosselli, they were also vocal antifascists. As Mussolini rose to power in Italy following WWI, the Rossellis took leading roles in the rebellion against him, a stance that few in their class would risk. And when Mussolini established a police state whose tactics grew more brutal, the Rossellis and their antifascist friends transformed from debaters and critics into activists. As punishment for their participation in revolutionary activities, the Rossellis' homestead was ransacked, one after another of their number was imprisoned, others in the family fled the country to escape a similar fate, and two were eventually assassinated on the orders of Mussolini's government. After the outbreak of WWII, Amelia fled with the remaining members of the Rosselli family to New York City. Their visas were arranged by Eleanor Roosevelt herself. Through the stories of these brave people and their friends, renowned historian Caroline Moorehead delivers an immersive picture of Italy in the first half of the 20th century. She reveals the rise and fall of Mussolini and his black-shirted Squadristi; the ambivalence of many prominent Italian families to Mussolini and their seduction by his promises; and the bold, fractured antifascist movement, so many of whose members died at Mussolini's hands. Continuing The Resistance Quartet she began with A Train in Winter and continued with Village of Secrets, Moorehead once again shows us the faces of those who helped the world hold on to its humanity at a time when it seemed all might be lost.
©2017 Caroline Moorehead (P)2017 Penguin Random House Canada
Napoleon
Summary
Paul Johnson's book is a refreshing return to a concept whose time has come once again: the Great Man theory of biography. It serves as "the greatest possible refutation of those who hold that events are governed by forces, classes, economics, and geography rather than the powerful wills of men and women". Napoleon truly was the Great Man of his age, a towering and terrible genius who managed to conquer the Continent. In Napoleon's insatiable hunger for power, Johnson sees a pragmatist constrained neither by patriotism nor by ideology, a brilliant opportunist who fulfilled his ambition in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Johnson puts Napoleon in the context of his times, but his effort seems to underline even more profoundly how Napoleon stood out above them.
©2002 Paul Johnson (P)2002 Books on Tape, Inc.
Abandoned
Summary
The survivors are trapped. Cut off from the rest of the world and quarantined as the virus spreads to every corner of the country, while the combined forces of the naval fleet set sail for deeper waters and leave the UK to its fate. Facing the aftermath of the battle for the island, the groups are separated as the bonds of friendship and camaraderie are violently severed, and they must survive on their own. Every effort to survive is fraught with peril, and those left behind must battle to find some form of safety, no matter how brief that respite might be. As it dawns on those left behind that the rest of the world has turned its back on them, they must cope with the realization that they are alone, and fight against the brutality that threatens them at every turn. Brutality from both the infected and the rest of the world as it devolves into nuclear Armageddon. Rejoin Johnson, Peter, Amber, and the others in the immediate aftermath of the island battle, as they strive to find safety, to survive after being truly abandoned.
©2018 DHP Publishing (P)2019 Tantor
White Sands, Red Steel
Summary
Mad. Brutal. Unpredictable. And those are their good points. Vicious. Hateful. Foul-mouthed and bad tempered...He-Dog and Balless are all of these and more. And as mercenaries go, they have a stubborn sense of honor. A sense of honor that has once again landed them into a cauldron of mayhem. After an unfit night of drinking, which might have involved firewater, He-Dog and Balless accept a mission that no one wanted. To travel for days through a scorching desert to the glittering city of Foust and deliver a message scroll to the city’s ruler. At the time, word was the war there would be over. At the time, the coin was too good to refuse. At the time, He-Dog was so pickled he would’ve right and proper agreed to just about anything. Trouble is, one eventually sobers, and when He-Dog and Balless and their companions finally do and journey to the outskirts of Foust’s besieged walls, they discover the war’s nowhere near over. In fact, it’s only just beginning. A vicious, seething army of beastmen surround the towering city walls, their intent to sack the fabled city and feast upon every last citizen within. Still, coin was paid, and their unfit sense of honor will not allow them to turn back. No one in their right mind would try to get past an army of beastmen. He-Dog, Balless, and their companions, however, aren’t in their right minds. And a job’s a job. He-Dog and company will soon realize that while getting into Foust is unfit madness.... Getting back out will get them killed. Contains violence and hard language.
©2012 Keith C. Blackmore (P)2019 Podium Publishing
Spikes and Edges
Summary
Strength. Honor. Death. Once every year, in the city of Sunja, gladiators meet within the arena known as Sunja’s Pit. Some men enter for the lure of fortune, some for the fame, and some simply for the fight. The games continue for days until a champion is finally crowned. Or until all involved perish. Feeling the weight of sustained injuries, Halm decides upon his future with the Ten, which prompts a crippled Pig Knot to contemplate his own remaining days. An act of vengeance drives Borchus into hiding. Within the underbelly of the Pit, arrangements are made to introduce Sunja’s most despised and dangerous criminals into the games, including a captured group of Nordish Jackals. All the while, the House of Ten prepares for its day of vengeful blood matches, where the gladiator known only as Junger will shine as a legend.
©2015 Keith C. Blackmore (P)2019 Podium Publishing
The Pandemic Century
Summary
Ever since the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, scientists have dreamed of preventing catastrophic outbreaks of infectious disease. Yet despite a century of medical progress, viral and bacterial disasters continue to take us by surprise, inciting panic and dominating news cycles. From the Spanish flu to the 1924 outbreak of pneumonic plague in Los Angeles to the 1930 "parrot fever" pandemic, through the more recent SARS, Ebola, and Zika epidemics, the last one hundred years have been marked by a succession of unanticipated pandemic alarms. In The Pandemic Century, a lively account of scares both infamous and less known, Mark Honigsbaum combines reportage with the history of science and medical sociology to artfully reconstruct epidemiological mysteries and the ecology of infectious diseases. We meet dedicated disease detectives, obstructive or incompetent public health officials, and brilliant scientists often blinded by their own knowledge of bacteria and viruses. Like man-eating sharks, predatory pathogens are always present in nature, waiting to strike; when one is seemingly vanquished, others appear in its place. These pandemics remind us of the limits of scientific knowledge, as well as the role that human behavior and technologies play in the emergence and spread of microbial diseases.
©2019 Mark Honigsbaum (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Summary
The last and most famous of D. H. Lawrence's novels, Lady Chatterley's Lover was published in 1928 and banned in England and the United States as pornographic. While sexually tame by today's standards, the book is memorable for better reasons---Lawrence's masterful and lyrical prose, and a vibrant story that takes us bodily into the world of its characters. As the novel opens, Constance Chatterley finds herself trapped in an unfulfilling marriage to a rich aristocrat whose war wounds have left him paralyzed and impotent. After a brief but unsatisfying affair with a playwright, Lady Chatterley enjoys an extremely passionate relationship with the gamekeeper on the family estate, Oliver Mellors. As Lady Chatterley falls in love and conceives a child with Mellors, she moves from the heartless, bloodless world of the intelligentsia and aristocracy into a vital and profound connection rooted in sexual fulfillment. Through this novel, Lawrence attempted to revive in the human consciousness an awareness of savage sensuality, a sensuality with the power to free men and women from the enslaving sterility of modern technology and intellectualism. Perhaps even more relevant today than when it first appeared, Lady Chatterley's Lover is a triumph of passion and an erotic celebration of life.
Public Domain (P)2011 Tantor