Nigel Patterson has narrated 81 audiobooks on Listento.it by 70 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 1,149 ratings. The most-rated is Frankenstein.
Frankenstein
Summary
Audie Award Finalist, Solo Narration - Male, 2013 Audie Award Finalist, Classic, 2013 Narrator Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey) presents an uncanny performance of Mary Shelley's timeless gothic novel, an epic battle between man and monster at its greatest literary pitch. In trying to create life, the young student Victor Frankenstein unleashes forces beyond his control, setting into motion a long and tragic chain of events that brings Victor to the very brink of madness. How he tries to destroy his creation, as it destroys everything Victor loves, is a powerful story of love, friendship, scientific hubris, and horror.
Public Domain (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The Beginning After the End: Publisher's Pack 2
Summary
The Beginning After the End: Publisher's Pack 2 contains books 3 and 4 of The Beginning After the End series. Beckoning Fates (book 3): Was I taking this life for granted? Having this amount of power at my age had made me lose some of the sense of rationality I’d had in my former life. No longer a king, no longer tied down by rules and politics, I’d become careless. In this world, my potential was boundless. Though Arthur Leywin would like nothing more than to pursue his studies at the esteemed Xyrus Academy, where he hopes to push his already potent magical abilities to new plateaus and perhaps discover something more about his reincarnation into this world, he finds the politics of the school’s halls even more challenging to navigate than those of the council chambers he once inhabited as King Grey. Arthur faces inept professors, jealous classmates, and an overeager director while fending off the affection of an old friend and the aggression of an old enemy. Then a routine class trip into a low-level dungeon turns out to be anything but, and Arthur discovers something that will change his life forever. Horizon's Edge (book 4): In my past life I hadn’t had anyone I would have given my life to protect. I had that now, but I didn’t have the strength to protect them - not against what was about to come. In another life, Arthur Leywin was a king and no stranger to war. He was not ready, however, to find himself at the heart of a conflict that will reshape his entire new world. Despite his abilities, it seems as if the danger only increases with every discovery he makes. His oldest friend succumbs to a power that may destroy her, a power Arthur gave her. His most constant foe accepts a dark gift to challenge Arthur’s strength, an act that threatens all of Xyrus Academy. How can he keep his family safe if his very presence is the thing that draws danger to them? Can he dispel the specters of war before it is too late?
©2016 TurtleMe (P)2020 Podium Publishing
Me Before You
Summary
Romantic, poignant and endearingly honest throughout, Me Before You is the bittersweet tale of an unusual but powerful love. Often funny, sometimes bitterly sad, it won't leave you the same person you were when you began. Shortlisted for: Popular Fiction Book of the Year – Specsavers National Book Awards 2012 Lou Clark knows a lot of things. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop, and she might not love her boyfriend Patrick. Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live, and now everything feels small and joyless. What Will doesn't know is that Lou is about to burst into his world. And neither of them knows they're going to change the other for all time.
©2012 Jojo Moyes (P)2012 W F Howes Ltd
Blood Red Snow
Summary
Gunter Koschorrek wrote his illicit diary on any scraps of paper he could lay his hands on. As keeping a diary was strictly forbidden, he sewed the pages into the lining of his thick winter coat and deposited them with his mother on infrequent trips home on leave. The diary went missing, and it was when he was reunited with his daughter in America some 40 years later that it came to light and became Blood Red Snow. The author was a keen recruit at initial training, and his excitement at the first encounter with the enemy in the Russian Steppe is obvious. The horror and confusion of fighting in the streets of Stalingrad are brought to life by his descriptions of the others in his unit; their differing manners and techniques for dealing with the squalor and death. He is also posted to Romania and Italy, assignments he remembers fondly compared to his time on the Eastern Front. This book stands as a memorial to the huge numbers on both sides who did not survive and is, over five decades later, the fulfillment of a responsibility he feels to honor the memory of those who perished. Gunter K. Koschorrek was a machine-gunner on the Russian front in WWII. He lives in Germany, having retired from his job as managing director of a sales company.
©2002 Greenhill Books (P)2018 Tantor
Perfume
Summary
In the slums of 18th-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift - an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille's genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and fresh-cut wood. Then one day, he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the "ultimate perfume" - the scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brilliance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity.
©1985 Diogenes Verlag AG; copyright 1986 by Alfred A. Knopf (P)2018 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Panzer Ace
Summary
Richard Freiherr von Rosen was a highly decorated Wehrmacht soldier and outstanding panzer commander. After serving as a gunlayer on a Pz.Mk.III during Barbarossa, he led a company of Tigers at Kursk. Later he led a company of King Tiger panzers at Normandy and in late 1944 commanded a battle group (12 King Tigers and a flak company) against the Russians in Hungary in the rank of junior, later senior lieutenant (from November 1944, his final rank). Only 489 of these King Tiger tanks were ever built. They were the most powerful heavy tanks to see service, and only one kind of shell could penetrate their armor at a reasonable distance. Every effort had to be made to retrieve any of them bogged down or otherwise immobilized, which led to many towing adventures. The author has a fine memory and eye for detail. His account is easy to listen to and not technical, and adds substantially to the knowledge of how the German Panzer Arm operated in the Second World War.
©2017 Verlagshaus Würzburg GmbH & Co. KG; English language translation copyright 2018 by Greenhill Books; Robert Forczyk foreword copyright 2018 by Greenhill Books (P)2018 Tantor
How Asia Works
Summary
In the 1980s and 1990s, many in the West came to believe in the myth of an East-Asian economic miracle, with countries seen as not just development prodigies but as a unified bloc, culturally and economically similar, and inexorably on the rise. In How Asia Works, Joe Studwell distills extensive research into the economics of nine countries - Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, and China - into an accessible narrative that debunks Western misconceptions, shows what really happened in Asia and why, and for once makes clear why some countries have boomed while others have languished. Impressive in scope, How Asia Works is essential listening for anyone interested in a region that will shape the future of the world.
©2013 Joe Studwell (P)2017 Tantor
Earth Unrelenting
Summary
A fugitive captured. A hero forsaken. A secret revealed. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Three days. That’s what they promised. But on Earth, the danger is unrelenting, and promises are hard to keep. Now Sheriff Duke is the one on the run, chased by an unexpected enemy eager to finish what they started. An enemy with an agenda that begins with killing him but ends with something worse. Much, much worse. Once the secret is out, the universe will never be the same.
©2018 M.R. Forbes (P)2018 Podium Publishing
The Great Anglo-Boer War
Summary
The Great Boer War (1899-1902) - more properly the Great Anglo-Boer War - was one of the last romantic wars, pitting a sturdy, stubborn pioneer people fighting to establish the independence of their tiny nation against the British Empire at its peak of power and self-confidence. It was fought in the barren vastness of the South African veldt, and it produced in almost equal measure extraordinary feats of personal heroism, unbelievable examples of folly and stupidity, and many incidents of humor and tragedy. Byron Farwell traces the war's origins, the slow mounting of the British efforts to overthrow the Afrikaners, the bungling and bickering of the British command, the remarkable series of bloody battles that almost consistently ended in victory for the Boers over the much more numerous British forces, political developments in London and Pretoria, the sieges of Ladysmith, Mafeking and Kimberley, the concentration camps into which Boer families were herded and the exhausting guerrilla warfare of the last few years when the Boer armies were finally driven from the field. This audiobook is a definitive history of a dramatic conflict by a master story teller and historian. Byron Farwell served as an officer in the North African and Italian campaigns in World War II and also in the Korean War. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1964, and is the author of Queen Victoria's Little Wars.
©2017 Byron Farwell (P)2019 Tantor
The Vory
Summary
Mark Galeotti is the go-to expert on organized crime in Russia, consulted by governments and police around the world. Now, Western listeners can explore the fascinating history of the vory v zakone, a group that has survived and thrived amid the changes brought on by Stalinism, the Cold War, the Afghan War, and the end of the Soviet experiment. The vory - as the Russian mafia is also known - was born early in the 20th century, largely in the Gulags and criminal camps, where they developed their unique culture. Identified by their signature tattoos, members abided by the thieves' code, a strict system that forbade all paid employment and cooperation with law enforcement and the state. Based on two decades of on-the-ground research, Galeotti's captivating study details the vory's journey to power from their early days to their adaptation to modern-day Russia's free-wheeling oligarchy and global opportunities beyond.
©2018 Mark Galeotti (P)2018 Tantor
The Neanderthals Rediscovered
Summary
In recent years, the common perception of the Neanderthals has been transformed, thanks to new discoveries and paradigm-shattering scientific innovations. It turns out that the Neanderthals' behavior was surprisingly modern: they buried the dead, cared for the sick, hunted large animals in their prime, harvested seafood, and communicated with spoken language. Meanwhile, advances in DNA technologies are compelling us to reassess the Neanderthals' place in our own past. For hundreds of thousands of years, Neanderthals evolved in Europe parallel to Homo sapiens evolving in Africa, and, when both species made their first forays into Asia, the Neanderthals may even have had the upper hand. In this important volume, Dimitra Papagianni and Michael A. Morse compile the first full chronological narrative of the Neanderthals' dramatic existence - from their evolution in Europe to their expansion to Siberia, their subsequent extinction, and ultimately their revival in popular novels, cartoons, cult movies, and television commercials.
©2015 Dimitra Papagianni and Michael A. Morse (P)2017 Tantor
Devil Take the Hindmost
Summary
Devil Take the Hindmost is a lively, original, and challenging history of stock market speculation from the 17th century to the present day. Edward Chancellor traces the origins of the speculative spirit back to ancient Rome and chronicles its revival in the modern world: from the tulip scandal of 1630s Holland, to "stockjobbing" in London's Exchange Alley (where wine sold at auction by an "inch of a candle"), to the infamous South Sea Bubble of 1719, which prompted investor Sir Isaac Newton to comment, "I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people." Here are brokers underwriting risks that included highway robbery and the "assurance of female chastity;" credit notes and lottery tickets circulating as money; wise and unwise investors from Alexander Pope and Benjamin Disraeli to Ivan Boesky and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
©1999 Edward Chancellor (P)2019 Tantor
Power, Sex, Suicide
Summary
Mitochondria are tiny structures located inside our cells that carry out the essential task of producing energy for the cell. They are found in all complex living things, and in that sense, they are fundamental for driving complex life on the planet. But there is much more to them than that. Mitochondria have their own DNA, with their own small collection of genes, separate from those in the cell nucleus. It is thought that they were once bacteria living independent lives. Their enslavement within the larger cell was a turning point in the evolution of life, enabling the development of complex organisms and, closely related, the origin of two sexes. Unlike the DNA in the nucleus, mitochondrial DNA is passed down exclusively (or almost exclusively) via the female line. That's why it has been used by some researchers to trace human ancestry daughter-to-mother, to "Mitochondrial Eve". Mitochondria give us important information about our evolutionary history. And that's not all. Mitochondrial genes mutate much faster than those in the nucleus because of the free radicals produced in their energy-generating role. This high mutation rate lies behind our ageing and certain congenital diseases. The latest research suggests that mitochondria play a key role in degenerative diseases such as cancer, through their involvement in precipitating cell suicide. Mitochondria, then, are pivotal in power, sex, and suicide. In this fascinating and thought-provoking book, Nick Lane brings together the latest research findings in this exciting field to reveal how our growing understanding of mitochondria is shedding light on how complex life evolved, why sex arose (why don't we just bud?), and why we age and die. This understanding is of fundamental importance, both in understanding how we and all other complex life came to be, but also in order to be able to control our own illnesses, and delay our degeneration and death.
©2005 Nick Lane (P)2019 Tantor
The Age of Walls
Summary
The globe has always been a world of walls, from the Great Wall of China to Hadrian's Wall to the Berlin Wall. But a new age of isolationism and economic nationalism is upon us, visible not just in Trump's obsession with building a wall on the Mexico border or in Britain's Brexit vote but in many other places as well. China has the Great Firewall, holding back Western culture. Europe's countries are walling themselves against immigrants, terrorism, and currency issues. South Africa has heavily gated communities, and massive walls or fences separate people in the Middle East, Korea, Sudan, India, and other places around the world. In fact, at least 65 countries, more than a third of the world's nation-states, have barriers along their borders. There are many reasons why walls go up, because we are divided in many ways: wealth, race, religion, and politics, to name a few. Understanding what is behind these divisions is essential to understanding much of what's going on in the world today. The Age of Walls examines how walls (which Marshall calls "monuments to the failure of politics"), borders, and barriers have been shaping our political landscape for hundreds of years, and especially since 2001, and how they figure in the diplomatic relations and geopolitical events of today.
©2018 Tim Marshall (P)2018 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Hunt the Bismarck
Summary
Hunt the Bismarck tells the story of Operation Rheinübung, the Atlantic sortie of the Nazi Germany's largest battleship in May 1941. Bismarck entered service in the summer of 1940. She was well-armed, with eight 15-inch guns as well as a powerful array of lighter weapons, while her armored protection earned her the reputation of being unsinkable. This claim was finally put to the test in May 1941, when she sortied into the Atlantic and fought the legendary battle of the Denmark Strait, destroying HMS Hood, the pride of the Royal Navy. Bismarck was now loose in the North Atlantic. However, damage sustained in the battle limited her ability to roam at will, while the Royal Navy deployed the Home Fleet to revenge the Hood. The stage was set for the greatest chase story in the history of naval warfare. Drawing on a wealth of first-hand accounts, and intertwining extensive research into a fast-paced narrative, this is the most accurate account of Bismarck's epic voyage ever produced.
©2019 Angus Konstam (P)2019 Tantor
Devil's Guard
Summary
The personal account of a guerrilla fighter in the French Foreign Legion reveals the Nazi Battalion's inhumanities to Indochinese villagers.
©1971 George Robert Elford (P)2017 Tantor
Balkan Ghosts
Summary
From the assassination that triggered World War I to the ethnic warfare in Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia, the Balkans have been the crucible of the 20th century, the place where terrorism and genocide first became tools of policy. Chosen as one of the Best Books of the Year by the New York Times, and greeted with critical acclaim as "the most insightful and timely work on the Balkans to date" (The Boston Globe), Kaplan's prescient, enthralling, and often chilling political travelogue is already a modern classic. This new edition of Balkan Ghosts includes six opinion pieces written by Robert Kaplan about the Balkans between 1996 and 2000 beginning just after the implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords and ending after the conclusion of the Kosovo War, with the removal of Slobodan Milosevic from power.
©1993, 1996, 2005 Robert D. Kaplan (P)2020 Tantor
Oxygen
Summary
Three hundred million years ago, in Carboniferous times, dragonflies grew as big as seagulls, with wingspans of nearly a meter. Researchers claim they could have flown only if the air had contained more oxygen than today - probably as much as 35 percent. Giant spiders, tree ferns, marine rock formations, and fossil charcoals all tell the same story. High oxygen levels may also explain the global firestorm that contributed to the demise of the dinosaurs after the asteroid impact. The strange and profound effects that oxygen has had on the evolution of life pose a riddle that this audiobook sets out to answer. Oxygen is a toxic gas. Divers breathing pure oxygen at depth suffer from convulsions and lung injury. Fruit flies raised at twice the normal atmospheric levels of oxygen live half as long as their siblings. Reactive forms of oxygen, known as free radicals, are thought to cause aging in people. Yet if atmospheric oxygen reached 35 percent in the Carboniferous, why did it promote exuberant growth instead of rapid aging and death? Oxygen takes the listener on an enthralling journey, as gripping as a thriller, as it unravels the unexpected ways in which oxygen spurred the evolution of life and death.
©2002 Nick Lane (P)2020 Tantor
Desert Fox
Summary
This is the strange and fascinating life of Erwin Rommel, from his days as a youth in Imperial Germany - when he had a child out of wedlock with an early girlfriend - through his lauded military exploits during World War I to his death by suicide during World War II, after he attempted a failed coup against Hitler. Rommel was a man of contradictions: a soldier who wrote a best-selling book about World War I, a commander who went from commanding Hitler's bodyguard to trying to kill him, and a serious military mind who was known for participating in practical jokes. In Desert Fox, author Samuel Mitcham (Bust Hell Wide Open) confronts the truth about Rommel and takes a close look at his military actions and reflections.
©2019 Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr. (P)2019 Tantor
Bismarck
Summary
In this compelling biography, historian A. J. P. Taylor reevaluates Bismarck's motives and methods, focusing on the chancellor's rise to power in the 1860s and his removal from office in 1890.
©1955 A. J. P. Taylor (P)2017 Tantor