Mike Grady has narrated 22 audiobooks on Listento.it by 21 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.3★ across 601 ratings. The most-rated is The Hidden Life of Trees.
The Hidden Life of Trees
Summary
How do trees live? Do they feel pain or have awareness of their surroundings? Research is now suggesting trees are capable of much more than we have ever known. In The Hidden Life of Trees, forester Peter Wohlleben puts groundbreaking scientific discoveries into a language everyone can relate to. In The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben shares his deep love of woods and forests and explains the amazing processes of life, death and regeneration he has observed in the woodland and the amazing scientific processes behind the wonders, of which we are blissfully unaware. Much like human families, tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them and support them as they grow, sharing nutrients with those who are sick or struggling and creating an ecosystem that mitigates the impact of extremes of heat and cold for the whole group. As a result of such interactions, trees in a family or community are protected and can live to be very old. In contrast, solitary trees, like street kids, have a tough time of it and in most cases die much earlier than those in a group. Drawing on groundbreaking new discoveries, Wohlleben presents the science behind the secret and previously unknown lives of trees and their communication abilities; he describes how these discoveries have informed his own practices in the forest around him. As he says, a happy forest is a healthy forest, and he believes that ecofriendly practices not only are economically sustainable but also benefit the health of our planet and the mental and physical health of all who live on Earth. After a walk through the woods with Wohlleben, you'll never look at trees the same way again.
©2015, 2016 Ludwig Verlag, Munich, part of the Random House GmbH publishing group. Jane Billinghurst. Tim Flannery. “Note from a Forest Scientist” by Dr. Suzanne Simard. (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers
The Inner Life of Animals
Summary
Through vivid stories of devoted pigs, two-timing magpies, and scheming roosters, The Inner Life of Animals weaves the latest scientific research into how animals interact with the world with Peter Wohlleben's personal experiences in forests and fields. Horses feel shame, deer grieve, and goats discipline their kids. Ravens call their friends by name, rats regret bad choices, and butterflies choose the very best places for their children to grow up. In this, his latest book, Peter Wohlleben follows the hugely successful The Hidden Life of Trees with insightful stories into the emotions, feelings, and intelligence of animals around us. Animals are different from us in ways that amaze us - and they are also much closer to us than we ever would have thought.
©2017 Peter Wohlleben, Ludwig Verlag, Jane Billinghurst, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (P)2017 Novel Audio Inc.
The Chilbury Ladies' Choir
Summary
"Just because the men have gone to war, why do we have to close the choir? And precisely when we need it most!" As England enters World War II's dark early days, spirited music professor Primrose Trent, recently arrived to the village of Chilbury, emboldens the women of the town to defy the Vicar's stuffy edict to shutter the church's choir in the absence of men and instead carry on singing. Resurrecting themselves as The Chilbury Ladies' Choir, the women of this small village soon use their joint song to lift up themselves and the community as the war tears through their lives. Told through letters and journals, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir moves seamlessly from budding romances to village intrigues to heartbreaking matters of life and death. As we come to know the struggles of the charismatic members of this unforgettable outfit - a timid widow worried over her son at the front, the town beauty drawn to a rakish artist, her younger sister nursing an impossible crush and dabbling in politics she doesn't understand, a young Jewish refugee hiding secrets about her family, and a conniving midwife plotting to outrun her seedy past - we come to see how the strength each finds in the choir's collective voice reverberates in her individual life. In turns funny, charming and heart-wrenching, this lovingly executed ensemble novel will charm and inspire, illuminating the true spirit of the women on the home front, in a village of indomitable spirit, at the dawn of a most terrible conflict. This audiobook includes popular versions of classical music sung by women's choirs, including the songs "Abide with Me" and "All Creatures", "Ave Maria", and "The Lord's My Shepherd".
©2017 Jennifer Ryan (P)2017 Random House Audio
TheTiger's Prey
Summary
The New York Times best-selling author of Desert God and Pharaoh adds another chapter to his popular historical saga featuring the seafaring Tom Courtney, the hero of Monsoon and Blue Horizon, with this magnificent swashbuckling saga set in the 18th century and packed with action, violence, romance, and rousing adventure. Tom Courtney, one of four sons of master mariner Sir Hal Courtney, once again sets sail on a treacherous journey that will take him across the vast reaches of the ocean and pit him against dangerous enemies in exotic destinations. But just as the winds propel his sails, passion drives his heart. Turning his ship toward the unknown, Tom Courtney will ultimately find his destiny - and lay the future for the Courtney family. Wilbur Smith, the world's greatest storyteller, once again recreates all the drama, uncertainty, and courage of a bygone era in this thrilling saga of the sea.
©2017 Orion Mintaka (UK) Ltd. (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
Desert God
Summary
New York Times best-selling author Wilbur Smith - hailed by Stephen King as the "best historical novelist" and one of the world’s biggest-selling authors - returns to Ancient Egypt in this breathtaking epic that conjures the magic, mystery, romance, and bloody intrigue of a fascinating lost world. Game of Thrones meets Ancient Egypt in this magnificent, action-packed epic. On the gleaming banks of the Nile, the brilliant Taita - slave and advisor to the Pharaoh - finds himself at the center of a vortex of passion, intrigue, and danger. His quest to destroy the Hyksos army and form an alliance with Crete takes him on an epic journey up the Nile, through Arabia and the magical city of Babylon, and across the open seas. With the future of Egypt itself on his shoulders, Taita enters a world where the line between loyalty and betrayal shifts like the desert sands, evil enemies await in the shadows, and death lingers on the edges of darkness.
©2014 Wilbur Smith (P)2014 Harper Collins Publishers
The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England
Summary
Organized as a travel guide for the time-hopping tourist, The Time-Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England is an entertaining popular history with a twist. Historian Ian Mortimer reveals in delightful (and occasionally disturbing) detail how the streets and homes of 16th century looked, sounded, and smelled for both peasants and for royals; what people wore and ate; how they were punished for crimes and treated for diseases; and the complex and contradictory Elizabethan attitudes toward violence, class, sex, and religion. Mortimer also indulges readers in the lives of literary luminaries such as Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Sir Walter Raleigh.
©2012 Forrester Mortimer Ltd. (P)2013 W.F. Howes
Pharaoh
Summary
An epic historical adventure set in ancient Egypt from the New York Times best-selling legend Stephen King has called the "best historical novelist". One of the world's best-selling authors, Wilbur Smith returns to ancient Egypt in a breathtaking epic that conjures the magic, mystery, romance, and bloody intrigue of a fascinating lost world. Taita, the pharaoh's advisor and hero of Desert God and River God, once again finds himself caught up in a whirlpool of ruthless intrigue that threatens the very foundations of the beloved empire he has pledged his life to protect. Plunged into dangerous and deadly waters more treacherous than the Nile, he must use his intelligence, alchemy, and cunning to protect his pharaoh and keep safe all he loves. Filled with danger, passion, and a thrilling battle for power, Pharaoh will leave fans of George R. R. Martin, Bernard Cornwell, and Dan Brown rejoicing.
©2016 Wilbur Smith (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers
The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England
Summary
What was it actually like to live in Elizabethan England? If you could travel to the past and walk the streets of London in the 1590s, where would you stay? What would you eat? What would you wear? Would you really have a sense of it being a glorious age? And if so, how would that glory sit alongside the vagrants, diseases, violence, sexism and famine of the time? In this book Ian Mortimer answers the key questions that a visitor to late 16th-century England would ask.
©2012 Ian Mortimer (P)2012 W F Howes Ltd
Drowned Ammet
Summary
The second book in the spellbinding, epic adventure series from 'the Godmother of Fantasy', Diana Wynne Jones. For centuries Dalemark has been a land divided by the warring earldoms of the North and South. Now, with the help of the Undying, the mysterious gods of Dalemark, four extraordinary young people must join forces to reunify their beloved land. After his father mysteriously goes missing, Mitt joins a group of freedom fighters plotting to overthrow the tyrannical ruler of Holand. But when his assassination attempt against the earl backfires, Mitt stows away onboard a ship heading out to sea. As the boat is battered by storms, Mitt finds himself alone among his enemies - except for the figure of Drowned Ammet....
©1977 Diana Wynne Jones (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers
The Pyrates
Summary
The Pyrates is all the swashbucklers that ever were, rolled into one great technicoloured pantomime - tall ships and desert islands, impossibly gallant adventurers and glamorous heroines, buried treasure and black spots, devilish dons and ghastly dungeons, plots, duels, escapes, savage rituals, tender romance and steaming passion, all to the accompaniment of ringing steel, thunderous broadsides, sweeping film music, and the sound of cursing extras falling in the water and exchanging period dialogue. Even Hollywood buccaneers were never like this.
©2015 George MacDonald Fraser (P)2015 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
Footprints
Summary
What will the world look like in 10,000 years - or 10 million? What kinds of stories will be told about us? In Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils, the award-winning author David Farrier explores the traces we will leave for the very distant future. Modern civilization has created objects and landscapes with the potential to endure through deep time, whether it is plastic polluting the oceans and nuclear waste sealed within the earth or the 30 million miles of roads spanning the planet. Our carbon could linger in the atmosphere for 100,000 years, and the remains of our cities will still exist millions of years from now as a layer in the rock. These future fossils have the potential to reveal much about how we lived in the 21st century. Crossing the boundaries of literature, art, and science, Footprints invites us to think about how we will be remembered in the myths and stories of our distant descendants. Traveling from the Baltic Sea to the Great Barrier Reef, and from an ice-core laboratory in Tasmania to Shanghai, one of the world's biggest cities, Farrier describes a world that is changing rapidly, with consequences beyond the scope of human understanding. As much a message of hope as a warning, Footprints will not only alter how you think about the future; it will change how you see the world today.
©2020 David Farrier (P)2020 Tantor
The Wychford Poisoning Case: A Detective Story Club Classic Crime Novel (The Detective Club)
Summary
Mrs. Bentley has been arrested for murder. The evidence is overwhelming: arsenic she extracted from fly papers was in her husband's medicine, his food and his lemonade, and her crimes are being plastered across the newspapers. Even her lawyers believe she is guilty. But Roger Sheringham, the brilliant but outspoken young novelist, is convinced that there is too much evidence against Mrs. Bentley and sets out to prove her innocence. Written by Anthony Berkeley, a founder of the celebrated Detection Club who also found fame under the pen name Francis Iles, the story saw the return of Roger Sheringham, the Golden Age's breeziest - and booziest - detective.
©1926 Anthony Berkeley (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
The Shadow of Vesuvius
Summary
When Pliny the Elder perished at Stabiae during the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, he left behind an enormous compendium of knowledge, his 37-volume Natural History, and a teenaged nephew who revered him as a father. Grieving his loss, Pliny the Younger inherited the Elder's notebooks - filled with pearls of wisdom - and his legacy. At its heart, The Shadow of Vesuvius is a literary biography of the younger man, who would grow up to become a lawyer, senator, poet, collector of villas, and chronicler of the Roman Empire from the dire days of terror under Emperor Domitian to the gentler times of Emperor Trajan. A biography that will appeal to lovers of Mary Beard books, it is also a moving narrative about the profound influence of a father figure on his adopted son. Interweaving the younger Pliny's Letters with extracts from the Elder's Natural History, Daisy Dunn paints a vivid, compelling portrait of two of antiquity's greatest minds.
©2019 Daisy Dunn (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Royal Rabbits of London
Summary
Life is an adventure. Anything in the world is possible - by will and by luck, with a moist carrot, a wet nose, and a slice of mad courage! Shylo has always been the runt of the litter, the weakest and quietest of all of his family. His siblings spend their days making fun of him for not being like the rest of them. But when Shylo stumbles across a band of ratzis and overhears their evil plan to take a photo of the queen in her nightie, it's up to this unlikely hero to travel to London and inform the Royal Rabbits of London about the diabolical plot! The Royal Rabbits of London have a proud history of protecting the royal family, and now the secret society need to leap into action to stop the ratzis.... But can a rabbit as feeble and shy as Shylo convince them the queen is in danger? The Hobbit meets Fantastic Mr. Fox meets Watership Down in this charming novel from best-selling authors Santa and Sebag Montefiore, which proves even the smallest rabbit can be the biggest hero.
©2016 Simon Sebag Montefiore, Santa Montefiore (P)2016 W.F. Howes
Population 10 Billion
Summary
Before May 2011 the top demographics experts of the United Nations had suggested that world population would peak at 9.1 billion in 2100, and then fall to 8.5 billion people by 2150. In contrast, the 2011 revision suggested that 9.1 billion would be achieved much earlier, maybe by 2050 or before, and by 2100 there would be 10.1 billion of us. What's more, they implied that global human population might still be slightly rising in our total numbers a century from now. So what shall we do? Are there too many people on the planet? Is this the end of life as we know it? Distinguished geographer Professor Danny Dorling thinks we should not worry so much and that, whatever impending doom may be around the corner, we will deal with it when it comes. In a series of fascinating chapters he charts the rise of the human race from its origins to its end-point of population 10 billion. Thus he shows that while it took until about 1988 to reach 5 billion we reached 6 billion by 2000, 7 billion eleven years later and will reach 8 billion by 2025. By recording how we got here, Dorling is able to show us the key issues that we face in the coming decades: how we will deal with scarcity of resources; how our cities will grow and become more female; why the change that we should really prepare for is the population decline that will occur after 10 billion. Population 10 Billion is a major work by one of the world's leading geographers and will change the way you think about the future. Packed full of counter-intuitive ideas and observations, this book is a tool kit to prepare for the future and to help us ask the right questions.
©2013 Danny Dorling (P)2013 Audible Ltd
Catullus' Bedspread
Summary
A vivid narrative that re-creates the life of Gaius Valerius Catullus, Rome's first modern poet, and follows a young man's journey through a world filled with all the indulgences and sexual excesses of the time, from doomed love affairs to shrewd political maneuvering and backstabbing - an accessible, appealing look at one of history's greatest poets. Born to one of Verona's leading families, Catullus spent most of his young adulthood in Rome, mingling with the likes of Caesar and Cicero and chronicling his life through his poetry. Famed for his lyrical and subversive voice, his poems about his friends were jocular, often obscenely funny, while those who crossed him found themselves skewered in raunchy verse, sudden objects of hilarity and ridicule. These bawdy poems were disseminated widely throughout Rome. Many of his poems recalled his secret longstanding affair with the seductive older Clodia. While Catullus and Clodia made love in the shadows, the whole of Italy was quaking as Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus forged a doomed alliance for power. During these tumultuous years, Catullus increasingly turned to darker subject matter, and he finally composed his greatest work of all: a poem about the decoration on a bedspread, which forms the heart of this biography, a work of beauty that will achieve immortality and make Catullus a legend.
©2016 Daisy Dunn (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers
Vienna Series 01
Summary
Three brand-new adventures for glamorous bounty hunter Vienna Salvatori. 'Dead Drop' by Mark Wright. Dwarfed by the burning star of the Hyspero system, two devastating battle fleets face each other across the stars. On one side the Dyarid Primary Vanguard, commanded by Admiral Salaron aboard the starship Custodian. On the other a Chtzin battle cluster. Bounty hunter Vienna Salvatori’s latest assignment brings her aboard the Custodian - but completing her mission and earning some poldaks is the easy bit. When all hell breaks loose with the Chtzin and the Custodian is left crippled and plunging towards the sun, a simple assignment turns into a battle for survival for the galaxy’s deadliest assassin. 'Bad Faith' by Nev Fountain. Vienna Salvatori has seen the light. Time was if you lost everything, at least you still had your faith - but not any more. Faith stealing is the latest commodity to light up the criminal underworld - extract somebody’s faith and sell it to the highest bidder. On the trail of a faith stealing ring, Vienna Salvatori comes into the orbit of the charismatic Bax Spendlove, spiritual leader of the Church of New Wonderment, a breakaway sect of the Church of Old Wonderment. Bax has an important mission for his latest convert - and Vienna is a willing disciple. But when Bax’s followers start to be murdered, it seems Vienna isn’t the only killer keeping the faith.... 'Deathworld' by Jonathan Morris. The planet Mercator. Twenty trained assassins enter a game arena, armed only with their wits to compete against each other in a harsh environment. Twenty killers go in. One comes out. Amongst the killers is Vienna Salvatori. This is the moment she has trained her whole life for, honing her skills as an assassin to become the best in the galaxy.
©2014 Big Finish Productions (P)2014 Big Finish Productions
The Memory Trap
Summary
Even in the era of glasnost, a defector is worth having, especially if he is a senior computer specialist in Russian military intelligence. But when the defection goes wrong, the British are left with three bodies and two inadequate clues to the nature of the information they might have been offered, and which now lies buried somewhere in the collective memories of David Audley and his one-time colleague Major Peter Richardson.But what is the secret that Audley shares with the half-Italian Richardson, now frightened into hiding somewhere in Italy? For once, David Audley has no idea and the race is on to find the elusive Major. But Audley's objective is fast being overtaken by modern political imperatives, ones very different from the black and white certainties of the old Cold War days.
©1989 Anthony Price (P)2012 Audible Ltd
The Silk Stocking Murders: A Detective Story Club Classic Crime Novel (The Detective Club)
Summary
Investigating the disappearance of a vicar's daughter in London, the popular novelist and amateur detective Roger Sheringham is shocked to discover that the girl is already dead, found hanging from a screw by her own silk stocking. Reports of similar deaths across the capital strengthen his conviction that this is no suicide cult but the work of a homicidal maniac out for vengeance - a desperate situation requiring desperate measures. Having established Roger Sheringham as a brilliant but headstrong young sleuth who frequently made mistakes, trusted the wrong people and imbibed considerable liquid refreshment, Anthony Berkeley took his controversial character into much darker territory with The Silk Stocking Murders, a sensational novel about gruesome serial killings by an apparent psychopath bent on targeting vulnerable young women.
©1928 Anthony Berkeley (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
An Impeccable Spy
Summary
Bloomsbury presents An Impeccable Spy by Owen Matthews, read by Mike Grady. Richard Sorge was a man with two homelands. Born of a German father and a Russian mother in Baku in 1895, he moved in a world of shifting alliances and infinite possibility. A member of the angry and deluded generation who found new, radical faiths after their experiences on the battlefields of the First World War, Sorge became a fanatical communist - and the Soviet Union’s most formidable spy. Like many great spies, Sorge was an effortless seducer, combining charm with ruthless manipulation. He did not have to go undercover to find out closely guarded state secrets - his victims willingly shared them. As a foreign correspondent, he infiltrated and influenced the highest echelons of German, Chinese and Japanese society in the years leading up to and including the Second World War. His intelligence regarding Operation Barbarossa and Japanese intentions not to invade Siberia in 1941 proved pivotal to the Soviet counteroffensive in the Battle of Moscow, which in turn determined the outcome of the war. Never before has Sorge’s story been told from the Russian side as well as the German and Japanese. Owen Matthews takes a sweeping historical perspective and draws on a wealth of declassified Soviet archives - along with testimonies from those who knew and worked with Sorge - to rescue the riveting story of the man described by Ian Fleming as 'the most formidable spy in history'.
©2019 Owen Matthews (P)2019 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc