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.
First World War for Dummies
Summary
From the Somme to Gallipoli to the home front, First World War for Dummies provides an authoritative, accessible, and engaging introduction to the War to End All Wars. It takes a global perspective of this global conflict, proving insight into the actions and motivations of the participants and how each nation's story fits into the wider one. Coverage also includes: the origins of the war and a snapshot of what the world looked like at the beginning of the 20th century; the battles of Western Europe, and action in the Southern and Eastern Fronts; the war at home - the civilian war, propaganda, opposition, politics, protests, and more; 1918: The German spring offensive, the Allied success, and the beginning of the end; and the Treaty of Versailles, the League of Nations, and the effect on the future. First World War for Dummies is the go-to source for listeners seeking to learn more about the fundamental event of the 20th century.
©2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. (P)2019 Tantor
2389: A Space Horror Novel
Summary
Latest novel by best-selling horror and suspense author, Iain Rob Wright! The Happiest Place in the Universe... Grand Galaxies is the most expensive amusement park ever created, built on the surface of the moon. For a decade now, rich families and honeymooning couples have gone there to have the time of their lives, and no one has ever returned unhappy. But communications with the moon has been lost. Someone needs to go up there and see what's wrong. Commander Boss Sharman is the man for the job, SABA's most respected leader, but he might end up regretting his decision to bring along his daughter, Lexi, for the mission. Something has gone very wrong at Grand Galaxies, and once Boss and his team travel the 238,900 miles to the moon, they might find that there's no way of getting back home again.
©2015 Iain Rob Wright (P)2015 Iain Rob Wright
The Sartious Mage
Summary
At just seventeen years old, Jek Trayden's power with Sartious Energy could be the greatest in the world, but that power comes at a price - a darkness within him that attacks while he sleeps, producing nightmares so real they leave him bruised and bloody. With the attacks worsening, Jek can't refuse an opportunity to end his nightmares for good when the King promises him a cure in exchange for a task. But after the King's true intentions are revealed, Jek finds himself in a fit of rage, stealing the King's fearless and livid daughter from the palace - on her wedding day - and fleeing the city with the wrath of her father on his tail. Jek's about to find out there are some things in this world worse than his darkness.
©2013 B.T. Narro (P)2014 B.T. Narro
How to Write a Mystery
Summary
From the most successful mystery writers in the business, an invaluable guide to crafting mysteries - from character development and plot to procedurals and thrillers - a must-have for every aspiring mystery writer. Mystery Writers of America (MWA) is known for providing unparalleled resources on the craft, art, and business of storytelling, helping writers of all levels improve their skills for nearly a century. Now, this new handbook helps authors navigate the ever-shifting publishing landscape - from pacing, plotting, the business side of publishing, to the current demand for diversity and inclusivity across all genres, and more. Featuring essays by a new generation of best-selling experts on various elements of the craft and shorter pieces of crowd-sourced wisdom from the MWA membership as a whole, the topics covered can be categorized as follows: Before writing (rules; genres; setting; character; research; etc.) While writing (outlining; the plot; dialogue; mood; etc.) After writing (agents; editors; self-pub; etc.) Other than novels (short stories; true crime; etc.) Other considerations (diverse characters; legal questions; criticism) Also included is a collection of essays from MWA published authors - including Jeffery Deaver, Tess Gerritsen, and Charlaine Harris - selected by best-selling authors Lee Child and Laurie King, and arranged thematically, answering, “What piece of writing advice do you wish you’d had at the beginning of your career?” Highly anticipated and incredibly useful, this new and trusted guide from MWA’s experts provides practical, current, easily digestible advice for new and established authors alike.
©2021 Mystery Writers of America, Inc. All rights reserved. (P)2021 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
Is He Popenjoy?
Summary
Originally published in 1878, Is He Popenjoy? is a delightful comic novel written late in the career of author Anthony Trollope. The plot revolves around the themes of property and inheritance, as the relatives of the Marquis of Brotherton question the legitimacy of a foreign-born heir to the family estate. Lord George Germain, as the younger brother of the marquis, can neither inherit the family title nor enjoy the income from the estate. He occupies the ancestral home, Manor Cross, only by grudging permission of his elder brother, who lives abroad. But he does find happiness in his marriage to Mary Lovelace, the sweet-natured young daughter of the Dean of Brotherton, who brings a family legacy that provides an immediate solution to his financial problems. Lord George’s new-found contentment is thrown into turmoil, however, when the marquis announces that he is returning to England, having married an Italian widow who has borne him a son - Lord Popenjoy, as the heir to the title is traditionally known. Lord George, his wife, his mother and sisters, must therefore leave the house to make way for his brother. On his return, the marquis shows himself to be a despicable bully who treats his family and all around him with supercilious condescension. But Mary’s father, the Dean, suspects that the marquis’ son may not be a legitimate heir - that Popenjoy may in fact not be Popenjoy - and determines to make enquiries as to the validity of the marquis’ marriage and his son’s claim to the title. The story is full of entertaining characters and twists and turns, including love affairs, jealousy, and the rights of women - all told with Trollope’s liberal satire and entertaining wit.
Public Domain (P)2020 Spoken Realms
The Dominici Affair
Summary
Sir Jack Drummond, with his wife, Lady Anne, and their 10-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, were on holiday on the French Riviera when they stopped to make camp just off the road near a farm called La Grand' Terre in Provence. The family was found murdered the next morning. More than two years later, the barely literate, 75-year-old proprietor of La Grand' Terre, Gaston Dominici, was brought to trial, convicted, and condemned to death by guillotine. When Dominici was convicted, there was general agreement that the ignorant, pitiless, and depraved old peasant had gotten what he deserved. At the time, he stood for everything backward and brutish about a peasantry left behind in the wake of France's postwar transformation and burgeoning prosperity. But with time perspectives changed. Subsequent inquiries coupled with widespread doubts and misgivings prompted President de Gaulle to order his release from prison in 1960, and, by the 1980s, many in France came to believe - against all evidence - that Gaston Dominici was innocent. He had become a romanticized symbol of a simpler, genuine, and, somehow, more honest life from a bygone era.
©2017 Martin Kitchen (P)2017 Tantor
The Big Book of Jack the Ripper
Summary
Of the real-life serial killers whose gruesome acts have been splashed across headlines, none has reached the mythical status of Jack the Ripper. In the Ripper's wake, terror swept through the streets of London's East End in the fall of 1888. As quickly as his nightmarish reign came, Saucy Jack vanished without a trace - leaving future generations to speculate upon his identity and whereabouts. He was diabolical in a way never seen before - a killer who taunted the police, came up with his own legendary monikers, and, ultimately, got away with his heinous crimes. More than a century later, the man "from hell" continues to live on in our imaginations - and in some of the most spectacularly unnerving stories, both fiction and nonfiction, ever written. The Big Book of Jack the Ripper immerses you in the utterly chilling world of Red Jack's London, where his unprecedented evil still lurks. This anthology includes legendary stories by Marie Belloc Lowndes, Robert Bloch, and Ellery Queen; captivating essays from George Bernard Shaw, Stephen Hunter, and Peter Underwood; riveting new stories by contemporary masters Jeffrey Deaver, Loren D. Estleman, Lyndsay Faye, and many more; and astonishing theories from the world's foremost Ripperologists.
©2016 Otto Penzler (introduction and compilation) (P)2020 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Sea Sick
Summary
Police Officer Jack Wardsley's life ended the moment his partner died, stabbed to death by a deranged druggie. Now, years later, Jack is a changed man, with a head full of secrets driving him insane. His recent record of police brutality and a reputation for not following the rules has prompted his seniors to give him an ultimatum: take a few weeks off, relax, and find some way to let go of all the anger - or else find another job. That's why Jack is about to board the Spirit of Kirkpatrick, a cruise liner built for relaxation and fun. Pretty soon, however, Jack realizes that a little R and R is the last thing he's ever going to get aboard the cursed ship. There's a virus onboard, making people insane and bleeding from the eyes. The whole ship is overrun with blood and death, and there is nowhere to escape. But, just when Jack thinks his number is up and that his life is over, he wakes up. The day is exactly the same. In fact everything is the same. Jack is forced to witness the viral outbreak again and again as it ravages the ship and its passengers over and over, day after day. Jack quickly finds himself trapped in a repeating hell. It isn't be long before Jack realizes that there are others onboard just like him - and some of them know more about the situation then they're letting on. more about the situation then they're letting on.
©2012 Iain Rob Wright (P)2015 Iain Rob Wright
The Gates of Hell
Summary
Matt Drake, broken by the murder of his loved ones, betrayal, and the threat to his friends, sets out to cancel the blood vendetta imposed by the underworld linchpin, the Blood King. Revenge, terrible and personal, drives Drake in his quest to stop the man who has become his nemesis. The mercenary Boudreau, now in the hands of his enemies, sits stone-faced and unflinching as Hayden Jaye desperately tries to extract the information she needs to save the lives of hundreds. After several failed attempts, she becomes painfully aware that it's going to take extreme measures to make him talk. Meanwhile, the Blood King finally sets into motion his long-term plan to enter the Gates of Hell and finish something his idol, Captain Cook, could never do: discover the shocking secrets hidden within while launching multiple terrorist attacks and an all-out war against the islands of Hawaii. With nothing more than an ancient map left behind by Captain Cook, Drake and his team must follow the Blood King through a deadly maze in the heart of a volcano. He risks everything to track down the most dangerous man of modern times and help unravel the mysteries surrounding the bones of Odin.
©2012 David Leadbeater (P)2017 Tantor
Tar
Summary
How do you go on living when you're already dead? The world has ended, yet a few places still cling to life, dragging out their final, dwindling moments until the last second. The United Kingdom is one of those places still left alive, but it is only a matter of time before it too is wiped from the face of the earth. The Tar is coming, covering every inch of the globe. There is no escape. It means the clock is ticking for Finn, who needs to find the monster that murdered his sister. The world might be over, but vengeance never dies. By best-selling author, Iain Rob Wright, comes an apocalypse like no other. Follow a broken brother's vengeance as he seeks to kill a man who is already dead.
©2016 Iain Rob Wright (P)2017 Iain Rob Wright
Goethe
Summary
In 1878 the Victorian critic Matthew Arnold wrote: "Goethe is the greatest poet of modern times...because having a very considerable gift for poetry, he was at the same time, in the width, depth, and richness of his criticism of life, by far our greatest modern man." In this Very Short Introduction Ritchie Robertson covers the life and work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832): scientist, administrator, artist, art critic, and supreme literary writer in a vast variety of genres. Looking at Goethe's poetry, novels, and drama pieces, as well as his travel writing, autobiography, and essays on art and aesthetics, Robertson analyzes some of the key themes in his works: love, nature, religion, and tragedy. Dispelling the misconception of Goethe as a sedate Victorian sage, Robertson shows how much of his art was rooted in turbulent personal conflicts, and draws on recent research to present a complete portrait of the scientific work and political activity which accompanied Goethe's writings.
©2016 Ritchie Robertson (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Mutants
Summary
Stepping effortlessly from myth to cutting-edge science, Mutants gives a brilliant narrative account of our genetic code and the captivating people whose bodies have revealed it - a French convent girl who found herself changing sex at puberty; children who, echoing Homer's Cyclops, are born with a single eye in the middle of their foreheads; a village of long-lived Croatian dwarves; one family, whose bodies were entirely covered with hair, was kept at the Burmese royal court for four generations and gave Darwin one of his keenest insights into heredity. This elegant, humane, and engaging book "captures what we know of the development of what makes us human" (Nature).
©2003 Armand Marie Leroi (P)2019 Tantor
Sam
Summary
When washed-up priest Angela Murs and skittish ghost hunter Tim Golding are summoned to a vast country manor to help a sick little boy, they have no idea what to expect. While it's clear that young Sammie is a very disturbed child, there's surely no way he could have been behind the recent spate of accidents or the death of his father. The child is dirty, malnourished, and perhaps the victim of a negligent mother, but as Angela and Tim's investigations take them deeper into the mystery, they realize there is much more going on than they ever could have imagined. When the blood begins to flow, there will be no escape, and little Sammie will finally be forced to show his true nature.
©2013 Iain Rob Wright (P)2015 Iain Rob Wright
Brothers in Arms
Summary
Whilst en route to investigate an assassination threat, Drake and Mai Kitano are blown out of the skies and cast adrift in a storm-tossed ocean before being marooned on a deserted island. Back home, the clock is ticking, but the deadly jigsaw puzzle of events refuses to fit together. Assassins stalk the streets of Washington DC. Civilians are being murdered by ordinary-seeming Americans turned expert killers, for no apparent reason. Hayden and her team search for the fateful link between five total strangers. Mai tries to almost single-handedly capture the enemy island, and Drake storms his way over land from North Korea and across China and Europe, destroying a human trafficking ring as he goes. As the pieces finally come together and time is running out, the new team are thrust into a literal race against time: a deadly interstate contest of vehicular warfare, where only the hardest, fastest, and most capable men and women will make it out alive.
©2013 David Leadbeater (P)2017 Tantor
The Blood King Conspiracy
Summary
In this much awaited sequel to The Bones of Odin, Matt Drake takes his thirst for adventure to an even higher level when an incredible device dating back millennia is salvaged from Blackbeard's ship, the Queen Anne's Revenge. With the answer to the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle in their hands, America is attacked on its own soil by the Blood King - an underworld figure so powerful his very existence is a mere myth: a man who coerces people at the highest levels of government and society; a man who sends an army to first storm a USS destroyer guarded by hundreds of marines and Special Forces soldiers and then to steal the secret of the Bermuda Triangle - a source of power that will allow its owner to hold any civilized government to ransom. Matt Drake and his friends must follow a treasure trail through rich pirate history that leads beyond the death of Blackbeard himself, through modern sea battles and warfare on the streets of Key West to a showdown with the most dangerous, well-connected, and feared man in the world - the Blood King.
©2013 David Leadbeater (P)2015 David Leadbeater
Something Wicked
Summary
From Kerry Wilkinson, the best-selling author of the Jessica Daniel novels, comes a new crime series. Nicholas Carr disappeared on his 18th birthday and the world has moved on. His girlfriend has gone to university, his friends have got jobs, the police have other things to look into. But his father, Richard, is still stuck on the three fingers the police dug up from a sodden Manchester wood. What happened to Nicholas on the night he disappeared, and why did he never come home? Private investigator Andrew Hunter is Nicholas' last hope - but Andrew has his own problems. There's something about his assistant that isn't quite right. Jenny's brilliant but reckless, and he can't figure out what she gets from their working relationship. By the time he figures out who's a danger and who's not, it might all be too late...
©2014 Pan Macmillan (P)2014 Kerry Wilkinson
Soldier of Rome - The Sacrovir Revolt
Summary
It has been three years since the wars against Arminius and the Cherusci. Gaius Silius, legate of the 20th Legion, is concerned that the barbarians - though shattered by the war - may be stirring once again. He also seeks to confirm the rumors regarding Arminius' death. What Silius does not realize is that there is a new threat to the empire, but it does not come from beyond the frontier; it is coming from within, where a disenchanted nobleman looks to sow the seeds of rebellion in Gaul. Legionary Artorius has greatly matured during his five years in the legions. He has become stronger in mind, his body growing even more powerful. Like the rest of the legion, he is unaware of the shadow growing well within the empire's borders, where a disaffected nobleman seeks to betray Emperor Tiberius. A shadow looms, one that looks to envelope the province of Gaul as well as the Rhine legions. The year is AD 20.
©2008, 2012 James Mace (P)2016 James Mace
Matter
Summary
What is matter? Matter is the stuff from which we and all the things in the world are made. Everything around us - from desks, to books, to our own bodies - are made of atoms, which are small enough that a million of them can fit across the breadth of a human hair. Inside every atom is a tiny nucleus and orbiting the nucleus is a cloud of electrons. The nucleus is made out of protons and neutrons, and by zooming in further, you would find that inside each there are even smaller particles: quarks. Together with electrons, the quarks are the smallest particles that have been seen, and are the indivisible fundamental particles of nature that have existed since the Big Bang, almost 14 billion years ago. The 92 different chemical elements that all normal matter is made from were forged billions of years ago in the Big Bang, inside stars, and in violent stellar explosions. This Very Short Introduction takes us on a journey from the human scale of matter in the familiar everyday forms of solids, liquids, and gases to plasmas, exotic forms of quantum matter, and antimatter. Geoff Cottrell explores the latest research into matter, and shows that there is still a lot we don't know about the stuff our universe is made of.
©2019 Geoff Cottrell (P)2019 Tantor
Legion: An Apocalyptic Horror Novel
Summary
What will you do when the world ends? That's a question that needs answering quickly when the gates to Hell open up all over Earth. Taking place across the globe is an apocalypse like no other, as humanity finds itself at war against a smart and merciless foe. Follow the struggles of survival with several characters, as things go from bad to worse. Humanity is dwindling. Vamps has never been anything more than a kid on the streets, but when those streets become a war zone, he and his childhood friends are forced to step up and become heroes - not an easy thing to do for a bunch of gangsters. It doesn't help matters that a rival gang is also out for their blood and that a group of humans seem to be helping the enemy. Hernandez is a US Navy Lieutenant with a bright, neatly planned future. That is until the world ends and a chance encounter with a rogue Coast Guard Captain leaves his future in disarray. It will take a lot of hard work, planning, and manipulation to take back the reigns of his destiny, and punish those who have crossed him. Richard Honeywell is a police office at a time when being a police officer is the least safe thing a person can do. The world is at war, but Richard still has a duty to keep the peace and protect the citizens of the United Kingdom. Yet, how can he do that when his own family are in danger? People are looking to him for leadership, but how do you lead army of civilians to certain death? The world must come together and fight back against the unstoppable Legions of Hell, because no one is coming to help them. The monsters are real and they will not stop. Welcome to Hell.
©2016 Iain Rob Wright (P)2016 Iain Rob Wright
A Voice from the Main Deck
Summary
"I heard the shot strike the sides of our ship; the whole scene grew indescribably confused and horrible; it was like some awfully tremendous thunder-storm, whose deafening roar is attended by incessant streaks of lightning, carrying death in every flash and strewing the ground with the victims of its wrath: only, in our case, the scene was rendered more horrible than that, by the presence of torrents of blood which dyed our decks." This was Samuel Leech's first experience of naval warfare. He was a powder monkey aboard the HMS Macedonian when it was attacked forced to strike its colors by the USS United States in the war of 1812. Leech provides a fascinating account of life as a sailor in the War of 1812 and through early 19th century. It is a remarkable account of a man who, until the conflict with the USS United States, had fought British Navy but after that battle changed allegiance to the United States and continued sailing with her navy for a further four years. He provides brilliant insight into the contrasts that he saw between the US Navy and the British Navy during this time. It is a vivid account of life at sea in the early 19th century and a perfect addition to any sailor's library.
Public Domain (P)2018 Tantor