Matt Bates has narrated 26 audiobooks on Listento.it by 26 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 819 ratings. The most-rated is The Flame Bearer.
The Flame Bearer
Summary
The brand-new novel in Bernard Cornwell's number one best-selling series on the making of England and the fate of his great hero, Uhtred of Bebbanburg. BBC2's major TV show The Last Kingdom is based on the first two novels in the series. From the day it was stolen from me, I had dreamed of recapturing Bebbanburg. The great fort was built on a rock that was almost an island; it was massive, it could be approached only on land by a single narrow track - and it was mine. Britain is in a state of uneasy peace. Northumbria's Viking ruler, Sigtryggr, and Mercia's Saxon Queen, Aethelflaed, have agreed to a truce. And so England's greatest warrior, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, at last has the chance to take back the home of his traitorous uncle, which was stolen from him so many years ago - and which his scheming cousin still occupies. But fate is inexorable, and the enemies Uhtred has made and the oaths he has sworn combine to distract him from his dream of recapturing Bebbanburg. New enemies enter into the fight for England's kingdoms: the redoubtable Constantin of Scotland seizes an opportunity for conquest and leads his armies south. Britain's precarious peace threatens to turn into a war of annihilation. But Uhtred is determined that nothing, neither the new enemies nor the old foes who combine against him, will keep him from his birthright. He is the Lord of Bebbanburg, but he will need all the skills he has learned in a lifetime of war to make his dream come true.
©2016 Bernard Cornwell (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers
War of the Wolf
Summary
The 11th book in the epic and best-selling series that has gripped millions. A hero will be forged from this broken land. As seen on Netflix and BBC around the world. Lord Uhtred of Bebbanburg knows that peace is far from reach. Though he has won the battle for his ancestral home, rebellion looms in Mercia and invading Norsemen appear at every turn. With the country in turmoil, Uhtred comes face to face with King Skoll, a violent Norseman leading an army of úlfheðinn, or wolf warriors, hellbent on seizing a kingdom – and killing any in his path. Surrounded and outnumbered by new enemies, Uhtred must call on all his skill and courage to survive and prevent his beloved Northumbria from falling to the Viking hordes.
©2018 Bernard Cornwell (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers
Warriors of the Storm
Summary
The new novel in Bernard Cornwell's number-one best-selling series on the making of England and the fate of his great hero, Uhtred of Bebbanburg. BBC2's major autumn 2015 TV show The Last Kingdom is based on the first two books in the series. A fragile peace is about to be broken.... King Alfred's son, Edward, and formidable daughter, Æthelflaed, rule Wessex, Mercia and East Anglia. But all around the restless Northmen, eyeing the rich lands and wealthy churches, are mounting raids. Uhtred of Bebbanburg, the kingdoms' greatest warrior, controls Northern Mercia from the strongly fortified city of Chester. But forces are rising up against him. Northmen allied to the Irish, led by the fierce warrior Ragnall Ivarson, are soon joined by the Northumbrians, and their strength could prove overwhelming. Despite the gathering threat, both Edward and Æthelflaed are reluctant to move out of the safety of their fortifications. But with Uhtred's own daughter married to Ivarson's brother, who can be trusted? In the struggle between family and loyalty, between personal ambition and political commitment, there will be no easy path. But a man with a warrior's courage may be able to find it. Such a man is Uhtred,and this may be his finest hour.
©2015 Bernard Cornwell (P)2015 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
Sword of Kings
Summary
England is in turmoil as Vikings and Saxons battle for territory. Rumours build about the fatal sickness of the King, and the country awaits an heir. A violent clash at sea forces the warrior lord Uhtred to lead his men from his Northumbrian fortress to London and plunge into the eye of the storm. For two kings claim the empty throne and a new kingdom cannot be born without bloodshed. Uhtred’s sword will leave one king dead and the other victorious. But sometimes it is hard to know the will of the gods....
©2019 Bernard Cornwell (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
The Pagan Lord
Summary
The new novel in Bernard Cornwell's number one best-selling series The Warrior Chronicles, on the making of England and the fate of his great hero, Uhtred of Bebbanburg. Alfred the Great is dead and Edward his son reigns as king. Wessex survives but peace cannot hold. The Danes in the north, led by Viking Cnut Longsword, stand ready to invade and will never rest until the emerald crown is theirs. Uhtred, once Alfred's great warrior but now out of favour with the new king, must lead a band of outcasts north to recapture his old family home, that great Northumbrian fortress, Bebbanburg.Loyalties will be divided and men will fall, as every Saxon kingdom is drawn into the bloodiest battle yet with the Danes; a war which will decide the fate of every king, and the entire English nation.
©2013 Bernard Cornwell (P)2013 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
The Empty Throne
Summary
The new novel in Bernard Cornwell's number-one best-selling series "The Warrior Chronicles", on the making of England and the fate of his great hero, Uhtred of Bebbanburg. In the battle for power, there can be only one ruler. England is fractured, torn apart more by internal fighting than the threat of Viking invasion. The ruler of Mercia is dying, leaving no legitimate heir. His wife is a formidable fighter and great leader, but no woman has ever ruled over an English kingdom. And she is without her strongest warrior and champion, Uhtred of Bebbanburg. So the scene is set for an explosive battle between elders and warriors for an empty throne. The vacant throne leaves a dangerous opportunity for the rival West Saxons to seize Mercia. But Edward of Wessex is distracted by the succession of his own throne, with two heirs claiming the right to be West Saxon king. And while the kingdoms are in disarray, the Vikings, this time coming from the west, will go on the rampage once more. The very future of England hangs in the balance. A hero is needed, a hero who can destroy the threat to Mercia, a hero who will ultimately decide the fate of a nation…
©2014 Bernard Cornwell (P)2014 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
War Lord
Summary
The number one Sunday Times best seller In the final reckoning, choose your side carefully.... The epic conclusion to the globally best-selling historical series, coming October 2020. After years fighting to reclaim his rightful home, Uhtred of Bebbanburg has returned to Northumbria. With his loyal band of warriors and a new woman by his side, his household is secure – yet Uhtred is far from safe. Beyond the walls of his impregnable fortress, a battle for power rages. To the south, King Æthelstan has unified the three kingdoms of Wessex, Mercia and East Anglia – and now eyes a bigger prize. To the north, King Constantine and other Scottish and Irish leaders seek to extend their borders and expand their dominion. Caught in the eye of the storm is Uhtred. Threatened and bribed by all sides, he faces an impossible choice: stay out of the struggle, risking his freedom, or throw himself into the cauldron of war and the most terrible battle Britain has ever experienced. Only fate can decide the outcome. The epic story of how England was made concludes in War Lord, the magnificent finale to the Last Kingdom series.
©2020 Bernard Cornwell (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
Death of Kings
Summary
The master of historical fiction presents the iconic story of King Alfred and the making of a nation. As the ninth century wanes, England appears about to be plunged into chaos once more. For the Viking-raised but Saxon-born warrior, Uhtred, whose life seems to shadow the making of England, this presents him with difficult choices. King Alfred is dying and his passing threatens the island of Britain to renewed warfare. Alfred wants his son, Edward, to succeed him but there are other Saxon claimants to the throne as well as ambitious pagan Vikings to the north. Uhtred‘s loyalty - and his vows - were to Alfred, not to his son, and despite his long years of service to Alfred, he is still not committed to the Saxon cause. His own desire is to reclaim his long lost lands and castle to the north. But the challenge to him, as the king’s warrior, is that he knows that he will either be the means of making Alfred’s dream of a united and Christian England come to pass or be responsible for condemning it to oblivion. This novel is a dramatic story of the power of tribal commitment and the terrible difficulties of divided loyalties. This is the making of England magnificently brought to life by the master of historical fiction.
©2019 Bernard Cornwell (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
Blindside
Summary
When New York City's Mayor is desperate to find his missing daughter, Detective Michael Bennett steps in to help the Mayor and strike a deal to save his son in prison. Bennett and the mayor have always had a tense relationship, but now the mayor sees in Bennett a discreet investigator with family worries of his own. Just one father helping another. The detective leaps into the case and sources lead him to a homicide in the Bronx. The victim has ties to a sophisticated hacking operation - and also to the mayor's missing daughter, Natalie, a 21-year-old computer prodigy. The murder is part of a serial killing spree, one with national security implications. And suddenly Bennett is at the center of a dangerous triangle anchored by NYPD, FBI, and a transnational criminal organization. Michael Bennett has always been an honorable man, but sometimes - when the lives of innocents are at stake - honor has to take a back seat. Survival comes first.
©2020 James Patterson and James O. Born (P)2020 Little, Brown & Company
The Burning Land
Summary
The fifth novel in Bernard Cornwell’s epic and best-selling series on the making of England and the fate of his great hero, Uhtred of Bebbanburg. BBC2’s major Autumn 2015 TV show The Last Kingdom is based on the first two books in the series. In the last years of the ninth century, King Alfred of Wessex is in failing health, and his heir is an untested youth. The Danes, who have failed so many times to conquer Wessex, smell opportunity.... First comes Harald Bloodhair, a savage warrior leading a Viking horde, who is encouraged to cruelty by his woman, Skade. But Alfred still has the services of Uhtred, his unwilling warlord, who leads Harald into a trap and, at Farnham in Surrey, inflicts one of the greatest defeats the Vikings were ever to suffer. This novel, the fifth in the magnificent series of England's history tells of the final assaults on Alfred's Wessex, that Wessex survived to become England is because men like Uhtred defeated an enemy feared throughout Christendom.
©2019 Bernard Cornwell (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
The Dark Net
Summary
In this important and revealing book, Jamie Bartlett takes us deep into the digital underworld and presents an extraordinary look at the Internet we don't know. Beginning with the rise of the Internet and the conflicts and battles that defined its early years, Bartlett reports on trolls, pornographers, drug dealers, hackers, political extremists, Bitcoin programmers, and vigilantes - and puts a human face on those who have many reasons to stay anonymous. Rich with historical research and revelatory reporting, The Dark Net is an unprecedented, eye-opening look at a world that doesn't want to be known.
©2015 Jamie Bartlett (P)2017 Tantor
Reservoir 13
Summary
In midwinter in an English village, a teenage girl has gone missing and everyone is called upon to join the search. The villagers fan out across the moors as the police set up roadblocks, and a crowd of news reporters descends on what is usually a place of peace. Meanwhile, there is work that must still be done: cows milked, fences repaired, stone cut, pints poured, beds made, sermons written, a pantomime rehearsed. As the seasons unfold and the search for the missing girl goes on, there are those who leave the village and those who are pulled back; those who come together and those who break apart. There are births and deaths, secrets kept and exposed, livelihoods made and lost, small kindnesses, and unanticipated betrayals. An extraordinary novel of cumulative power and grace, Reservoir 13 explores the rhythms of the natural world and the repeated human gift for violence, unfolding over 13 years as the aftershocks of a tragedy refuse to subside.
©2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc. (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Last Man
Summary
The Last Man is Mary Shelley's apocalyptic fantasy of the end of human civilisation. Set in the late 21st century, the novel unfolds a sombre and pessimistic vision of mankind confronting inevitable destruction. Interwoven with her futuristic theme, Mary Shelley incorporates idealised portraits of Shelley and Byron, yet rejects Romanticism and its faith in art and nature.
Public Domain (P)2013 W F Howes Ltd
Jimmy the Hand
Summary
Jimmy the Hand, boy thief of Krondor, lived in the shadows of the city. Though gifted beyond his peers, Jimmy is merely a pickpocket with potential - until he aids Prince Arutha in the rescue of Princess Anita from Duke Guy du Bas-Tyra and runs afoul of "Black Guy's" secret police. Facing a choice between disappearing on his own or in a weighted barrel at the bottom of Krondor's harbor, Jimmy chooses the former. Forced to flee the only home he's ever known, Jimmy finds himself among the unsuspecting rural villagers of Land's End, where he hopes to prosper with his talents for con and thievery. But Land's End is home to many who tread the crooked path - and to a dark, dangerous presence even the local smugglers don't recognize. And suddenly Jimmy's youthful bravado and courage are leading him into the maw of chaos...and, quite possibly, to his doom.
©2009 Raymond E. Feist and S.M. Stirling (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers
Reservoir 13
Summary
A Guardian Book of the Year A Financial Times Book of the Year A TLS Book of the Year An Observer Book of the Year A Telegraph Book of the Year From the award-winning author of If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things. Reservoir 13 tells the story of many lives haunted by one family's loss. Midwinter in the early years of this century. A teenage girl on holiday has gone missing in the hills at the heart of England. The villagers are called up to join the search, fanning out across the moors as the police set up roadblocks and a crowd of news reporters descends on their usually quiet home. Meanwhile, there is work that must still be done: cows milked, fences repaired, stone cut, pints poured, beds made, sermons written, a pantomime rehearsed. The search for the missing girl goes on, but so does everyday life. As it must. An extraordinary novel of cumulative power and grace, Reservoir 13 explores the rhythms of the natural world and the repeated human gift for violence, unfolding over 13 years as the aftershocks of a stranger's tragedy refuse to subside. Winner of the 2017 Costa Novel Award Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize
©2017 Jon McGregor (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
Exorcising Hitler
Summary
In Exorcising Hitler, Frederick Taylor tells the story of Germany's year zero and what came after. Not since the end of the Roman Empire, almost 1500 years earlier, is there a parallel, in Europe at least, to the fall of the German nation in 1945. As Taylor describes the final Allied campaign, the hunting down of the Nazi resistance, the vast displacement of peoples in central and eastern Europe, the attitudes of the conquerors, the competition between Soviet Russia and the West, the hunger and near starvation of a once proud people, the initially naive attempt at expunging Nazism from all aspects of German life and the later more pragmatic approach, we begin to understand that despite almost total destruction, a combination of conservatism, enterprise and pragmatism in relation to former Nazis enabled the economic miracle of the 1950s. And we see how it was only when the '60s generation (the children of the Nazi era) began to question their parents with increasing violence that Germany began to awake from its sleep cure.
©2011 Frederick Taylor (P)2011 Audible Ltd
Lucifer Falls
Summary
A killer stalks the streets of London.... When a priest is found crucified in a derelict North London chapel, it makes a dramatic change for DI Charlie George and his squad at Essex Road. The brutal murder could not be further from their routine of domestic violence and stabbings on the estates. And that's only the beginning.... On Christmas Eve, a police officer goes missing, and his colleagues can't help but anticipate the worst. It turns out they're right to when eventually the body is found and they discover he's been stoned to death. As tensions rise, it's up to Charlie and his team to venture into the city's cold underbelly to try to find an answer to the madness...before anyone else dies a martyr's death.
©2018 Colin Falconer (P)2018 Hachette Audio UK
On Practice and Contradiction (Revolutions Series)
Summary
These early philosophical writings underpinned the Chinese revolutions and their clarion calls to insurrection remain some of the most stirring of all time. Drawing on a dizzying array of references from contemporary culture and politics, Zizek's firecracker commentary reaches unsettling conclusions about the place of Mao's thought in the revolutionary canon.
©2007 Verso (editorial matter), Slavoj Zizek (P)2011 Audible Ltd
Churchill's Hellraisers
Summary
From award-winning war reporter Damien Lewis, the untold story of the heroic hellraisers who stormed a Nazi fortress-in one of the most daring raids of World War II.... It is the winter of 1944. Allied forces have succeeded in liberating most of Axis-occupied Italy - with one crucial exception: the Nazi headquarters north of the Gothic Line. Heavily guarded and surrounded by rugged terrain, the mountain fortress is nearly impenetrable. But British Prime Minister Winston Churchill is determined to drive a dagger into the "soft underbelly of Europe." The Allied's plan: drop two paratroopers into the mountains-and take the fortress by storm.... The two brave men knew the risks involved, so they recruited an equally fearless team: Italian resistance fighters, escaped POWs, downed US airmen, even a bagpipe-playing Scotsman known as "The Mad Piper." Some had little military training, but all were willing to fight to the death to defeat the Nazi enemy. Ultimately, the mission that began in broad daylight, in the enemy's line of fire, would end one of the darkest chapters in history - through the courage and conviction of the unsung heroes who dared the impossible....
©2018 Omega Ventures (P)2020 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Blood and Silk
Summary
Thought-provoking and eye-opening, Blood and Silk is an accessible, personal look at modern Southeast Asia, written by one of the region's most experienced outside observers. This is a first-hand account of what it's like to sit at the table with deadly Thai Muslim insurgents, mediate between warring clans in the Southern Philippines and console the victims of political violence in Indonesia - all in an effort to negotiate peace and understand the reasons behind endemic violence. Peering beyond brand new shopping malls and shiny glass towers in Bangkok and Jakarta, Michael Vatikiotis probes the heart of modern Southeast Asia. Why are the region's richest countries such as Malaysia riddled with corruption? Why do Myanmar, Thailand and the Philippines harbour unresolved violent insurgencies? How do deepening religious divisions in Indonesia and Malaysia and China's growing influence affect the region and the rest of the world? Vatikiotis tells the story of modern Southeast Asia using vivid portraits of the personalities who pull the strings, mixed with revealing analysis that is underpinned by decades of experience in the countries involved, from their silk-sheathed salons to blood-spattered streets. The result is a fascinating study of the dynamics of power and conflict in one of the world's fastest growing regions.
©2017 Michael Vatikiotis (P)2017 Audible, Ltd