Ric Jerrom has narrated 62 audiobooks on Listento.it by 36 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 1,020 ratings. The most-rated is Master and Commander.
The Commodore
Summary
Having survived a long and desperate adventure in the Great South Sea, Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin return to England to very different circumstances. For Jack it is a happy homecoming, at least initially, but for Stephen it is disastrous: his little daughter appears to be autistic, incapable of speech or contact, while his wife, Diana, unable to bear this situation, has disappeared, her house being looked after by the widowed Clarissa Oakes. Much of The Commodore takes place on land, in sitting rooms and in drafty castles, but the roar of the great guns is never far from our hearing. Aubrey and Maturin are sent on a bizarre decoy mission to the fever-ridden lagoons of the Gulf of Guinea to suppress the slave trade. But their ultimate destination is Ireland, where the French are mounting an invasion that will test Aubrey's seamanship and Maturin's resourcefulness as a secret intelligence agent. The subtle interweaving of these disparate themes is an achievement of pure storytelling by one of our greatest living novelists.
©1994 Patrick O'Brian (P)2014 Audible, Ltd
Gridlinked
Summary
In outer space you can never feel sure that your adversary is altogether human. The runcible buffers on Samarkand have been mysteriously sabotaged, killing many thousands and destroying a terraforming project. Agent Cormac must reach it by ship to begin an investigation. But Cormac has incurred the wrath of a vicious psychopath called Pelter, who is prepared to follow him across the galaxy with a terrifying android in tow. Despite the sub-zero temperature of Samarkand, Cormac discovers signs of life: they are two 'dracomen', alien beasts contrived by an extra-galactic entity calling itself 'Dragon', which is a huge creature consisting of four conjoined spheres of flesh each a kilometre in diameter. Caught between the byzantine wiles of the Dragon and the lethal fury of Pelter, Cormac needs to skip very nimbly indeed to rescue the Samarkand project and protect his own life. Gridlinked is the first sci-fi thriller in Neal Asher's compelling Agent Cormac series.
©2009 Neal Asher (P)2017 Macmillan Digital Audio
Blue at the Mizzen
Summary
Napoleon has been defeated at Waterloo, and the ensuing peace brings with it both the desertion of nearly half of Captain Aubrey's crew and the sudden dimming of Aubrey's career prospects in a peacetime navy. When the Surprise is nearly sunk on her way to South America - where Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are to help Chile assert her independence from Spain - the delay occasioned by repairs reaps a harvest of strange consequences. The South American expedition is a desperate affair; and in the end Jack's bold initiative to strike at the vastly superior Spanish fleet precipitates a spectacular naval action that will determine both Chile's fate and his own.
©1999 Patrick O'Brian (P)2014 Audible Studios
I Think, Therefore I Play
Summary
Andrea Pirlo is one of the finest footballers of his generation - a World Cup and Champions League winning playmaker who has redefined his position at the base of midfield, and one of the most deadly free-kick takers the game has known. This is his story, in his words. It is written with a level of humour and insight which confound his image as a dead-eyed assassin on the field of play. All the big names are in there: Lippi, Ancelotti, Conte, Maldini, Shevchenko, Seedorf, Buffon, Kaka, Nesta, Balotelli, Costacurta, Gattuso, Berlusconi and Ronaldo ('the real one'). But they're not always in their work clothes. We hear Berlusconi playing the piano and telling 'various types of jokes' at Milan's training ground. We see Pirlo and Daniele De Rossi drawing Nesta's ire as they take him on a mystery tour of the German countryside in a hire car days before a World Cup semifinal. And we smell the aftermath of Filippo Inzaghi's graphically described prematch routine. With the 2014 World Cup being his last international tournament, this is a timely salute to a special talent who may yet have one final chapter left to write.
©2014 Andrea Pirlo (P)2017 Audible, Ltd
Brass Man
Summary
Brass Man is the third novel in Neal Asher's popular Agent Cormac series. On the primitive world Cull, a knight errant called Anderson hunts a dragon, not knowing that elsewhere is a resurrected brass killing machine, Mr Crane, assisting in a similar hunt. Learning that this old enemy still lives, agent Cormac pursues while scientist Mika begins discovering the horrifying truth about an ancient alien technology. Each day is a survival struggle for the people of Cull. Ferocious insectile monsters roam their planet as they try to escape to their forefathers' starship, still orbiting far above them. But an entity with questionable motives, calling itself Dragon, assists them with genetic by-blows created out of humans and the hideous local monsters. And now the supposedly geologically inactive planet itself is increasingly suffering earthquakes....
©2009 Neal Asher (P)2017 Macmillan Digital Audio
Polity Agent
Summary
Polity Agent is the fourth novel in Neal Asher's popular Agent Cormac series. From 800 years in the future, a runcible gate is opened into the Polity. Those coming through it have been tasked with taking the alien 'Maker' back to its home civilization in the Small Magellanic cloud. Once these refugees are safely through, the gate itself is rapidly shut down - because something alien is pursuing them. From those who get through, agent Cormac learns that the Maker civilization has been destroyed by a pernicious virus known as the Jain technology. This raises questions: why was Dragon, a massive bio-construct of the Makers, really sent to the Polity; why did a Jain node suddenly end up in the hands of someone who could do the most damage with it? Meanwhile, an entity called the Legate is distributing toxic Jain nodes...and a renegade attack ship, The King of Hearts, has encountered something very nasty outside the Polity itself....
©2009 Neal Asher (P)2017 Macmillan Digital Audio
The Line of Polity
Summary
The Line of Polity is the second audiobook in Neal Asher's popular Agent Cormac series. Outlink station Miranda has been destroyed by a nanomycelium, and the very nature of this sabotage suggests that the alien bioconstruct Dragon - a creature as untrustworthy as it is gigantic - is somehow involved. Sent out on a titanic Polity dreadnought, the Occam Razor, agent Cormac must investigate the disaster. Meanwhile, on the remote planet Masada, the long-term rebellion can never rise aboveground, as the slave population is subjugated by orbital laser arrays controlled by the Theocracy in their cylinder worlds, and by the fact that they cannot safely leave their labour compounds. For the wilderness of Masada lacks breathable air...and out there roam monstrous predators called hooders and siluroynes, not to mention the weird and terrible gabbleducks.
©2017 Neal Asher (P)2017 Macmillan Digital Audio
No Matter the Wreckage
Summary
Following the success of her breakout poem, "B", Sarah Kay releases her debut collection of poetry featuring work from the first decade of her career. No Matter the Wreckage presents listeners with new and beloved poetry that showcases Kay's talent for celebrating family, love, travel, and unlikely romance between inanimate objects ("The Toothbrush to the Bicycle Tire"). Both fresh and wise, Kay's poetry allows listeners to join her on the journey of discovering herself and the world around her. It is an honest and powerful collection.
©2016 Sarah Kay (P)2016 Hachette Audio
Hungry as the Sea
Summary
Hungry as the Sea is an enthralling story of revenge, adventure and romance from best-selling author Wilbur Smith. 'Nick went head down, finning desperately to catch the swirling body which tumbled like a leaf in high wind. He had a fleeting glimpse of Baker's face, contorted with terror and lack of breath, the glass visor of his helmet already swamping with icy water as the pressure spurted through the non-return valve. The Chief's headset microphone squealed once and then went dead as the water shorted it out.' Robbed of his wife and ousted from his huge shipping empire, Nick Berg is hell-bent on vengeance. It is the sea which gives him his opportunity. When his arch-rival's luxury liner is trapped in the tempestuous Antarctic, Nick stakes all to pit his powerful salvage tug, the Warlock, in a desperate race against time and the elements....
©2018 Wilbur Smith (P)2019 Audible, Ltd
The Real Global Warming Disaster
Summary
This original audiobook considers one of the most extraordinary scientific and political stories of our time: how in the 1980s a handful of scientists came to believe that mankind faced catastrophe from runaway global warming, and how today this has persuaded politicians to land us with what promises to be the biggest bill in history. Christopher Booker interweaves the science of global warming with that of its growing political consequences, showing how just when the politicians are threatening to change our Western way of life beyond recognition, the scientific evidence behind the global warming theory is being challenged like never before. The audiobook exposes the myth that the global warming theory is supported by a 'consensus of the world's top climate scientists'. It shows how the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is run by a small group of 'global warming' zealots, who have repeatedly rigged evidence to support their theory. But the politicians, pushed by the media, have so fallen for its propaganda that, short of dramatic change, our Western world now faces an unprecedented disaster.
©2009, 2010 Christopher Booker (P)2013 Audible Inc.
Line War
Summary
The Line War is the fifth audiobook in Neal Asher's popular Agent Cormac series. The Polity is under attack from a 'melded' AI entity with control of the lethal Jain technology, yet the attack seems to have no coherence. When one of Erebus' wormships kills millions on the world of Klurhammon, a high-tech agricultural world of no real tactical significance, agent Ian Cormac is sent to investigate, though he is secretly struggling to control a new ability no human being should possess...and beginning to question the motives of his AI masters. Further attacks and seemingly indiscriminate slaughter ensue but serve only to bring some of the most dangerous individuals in the Polity into the war. Mr Crane, the indefatigable brass killing machine, sets out for vengeance while Orlandine, a vastly augmented haiman who herself controls Jain technology, seeks a weapon of appalling power and finds allies from an ancient war. Meanwhile Mika, scientist and Dragon expert, is again kidnapped by that unfathomable alien entity and dragged into the heart of things: to wake the makers of Jain technology from their five-million-year slumber. But Erebus' attacks are not so indiscriminate after all and could very well herald the end of the Polity itself....
©2017 Neal Asher (P)2017 Macmillan Digital Audio
Overture to Death
Summary
It was planned as an act of charity: a new piano for the parish hall, an amusing play to finance the gift. But its execution was doomed when Miss Campanula sat down to play. A chord was struck, a shot rang out and Miss Campanula was dead. A case of sinister infatuation for the brilliant Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn.
©1939 Original Text of 1939 by Ngaio Marsh (P)2015 Hachette Audio
Harry's Last Stand
Summary
As one of the last remaining survivors of the Great Depression and the Second World War, I will not go gently into that good night. I want to tell you what the world looks like through my eyes, so you can help change it.... In November 2013, 91-year-old Yorkshireman, RAF veteran, and ex-carpet salesman Harry Leslie Smith’s Guardian article – "This year, I will wear a poppy for the last time" – was shared almost 60,000 times on Facebook and started a huge debate about the state of society. Now he brings his unique perspective to bear on NHS cutbacks, benefits policy, political corruption, food poverty, the cost of education – and much more. From the deprivation of 1930s Barnsley and the terror of war to the creation of our welfare state, Harry has experienced how a great civilisation can rise from the rubble. But at the end of his life, he fears how easily it is being eroded. Harry’s Last Stand is a lyrical, searing modern invective that shows what the past can teach us and how the future is ours for the taking.
©2014 Harry Leslie Smith (P)2015 Audible, Ltd
Natasha's Dance
Summary
History on a grand scale - an enchanting masterpiece that explores the making of one of the world's most vibrant civilizations. A People's Tragedy, wrote Eric Hobsbawm, did 'more to help us understand the Russian Revolution than any other book I know'. Now, in Natasha's Dance, internationally renowned historian Orlando Figes does the same for Russian culture, summoning the myriad elements that formed a nation and held it together. Beginning in the 18th century with the building of St. Petersburg - a 'window on the West' - and culminating with the challenges posed to Russian identity by the Soviet regime, Figes examines how writers, artists and musicians grappled with the idea of Russia itself - its character, spiritual essence and destiny. He skillfully interweaves the great works - by Dostoevsky, Stravinsky, and Chagall - with folk embroidery, peasant songs, religious icons and all the customs of daily life, from food and drink to bathing habits to beliefs about the spirit world. Figes' characters range high and low: the revered Tolstoy, who left his deathbed to search for the kingdom of God, as well as the serf girl Praskovya, who became Russian opera's first superstar and shocked society by becoming her owner's wife. Like the European-schooled countess Natasha performing an impromptu folk dance in Tolstoy's War and Peace, the spirit of 'Russianness' is revealed by Figes as rich and uplifting, complex and contradictory - a powerful force that unified a vast country and proved more lasting than any Russian ruler or state.
©2018 Orlando Figes (P)2018 Audible, Ltd
The Dalai Lama's Little Book of Buddhism
Summary
This little audiobook contains the core teaching on Buddhism by the Dalai Lama. It includes thought-provoking quotations about the importance of love and compassion, and the need for individual responsibility, fusing ancient wisdom with an awareness of the problems of everyday life. In addition to containing the essence of Buddhism, this audiobook offers practical wisdom for daily life. The goal of this small gift audiobook is to improve the listener's state of mind and to discover the deep peace that exists within. Here are pithy reflections on the need to rid oneself of preoccupations with mundane concerns and to find refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.
©1999 H. H. The Dalai Lama. (P)2015 Brillliance Audio, all rights reserved.
Spinsters in Jeopardy
Summary
A classic Ngaio Marsh mystery thriller combining drugs and sacrifice. High in the mountains stands the magnificent Saracen fortress, home of the mysterious Mr. Oberon, leader of a coven of witches. It is not the historic castle, however, that intrigues Roderick Alleyn, on holiday with his family, but the suspicion that a huge drugs ring operates from within its ancient portals. But before the holiday is over, someone else has stumbled upon the secret. And Mr. Oberon decides his strange and terrible rituals require a human sacrifice....
©1954 Original Text of 1954 by Ngaio Marsh (P)2015 Hachette Audio
Love Among the Ruins
Summary
At 22, the war is over for RAF serviceman Harry Leslie Smith - author of the acclaimed Harry's Last Stand - but the battle for love and hope rages on. Stationed in occupied Hamburg, a city physically and emotionally ripped apart by Allied bombing, and determined to escape grinding poverty of his Yorkshire youth, Harry unexpectedly finds a reason to stay: a young German woman by the name of Friede. Their love develops uneasily, but gradually they win each other's trust, Harry taking on the responsibility of finding food for Friede's near-destitute family. But they must face both German suspicion and British disapproval of relations with "the enemy". Presenting a street-level view of a city reduced to rubble, populated with refugees, black marketeers, corrupt businessmen and cynical soldiers, Love Among the Ruins is a unique snapshot of a terrible period in Europe's history, a passionate love letter to a city, to a woman, and to life itself. Harry Leslie Smith's Guardian articles have been shared almost a quarter of a million times on Facebook and have attracted huge comment and debate.
©2015 Harry Leslie Smith (P)2015 Audible, Ltd
Endeavour
Summary
Endeavour is the story of a ship, an idea, and a way of looking at the world. It is grounded in the Enlightenment, an age of endeavors, with Britain consumed by the impulse for grand projects undertaken at speed. Endeavour was also the name given to a collier - a commonplace coal-carrying vessel - made of oak, bought by the Royal Navy in 1768. No one could have guessed it would go on to become the most significant ship in the chronicle of British exploration. As Charles Darwin wrote, Endeavour added an entire hemisphere to the civilized world when it carried Captain James Cook on his first major voyage, newly charting the existence of New Zealand and the eastern coast of Australia.
Endeavour also had a role in American history. During the battles for control of New York in 1776, she witnessed the bloody birth of the republic. As well as carrying botanists, a Polynesian priest, and the remains of the first kangaroo to arrive in Britain, she transported Hessian soldiers to American shores as well as Newcastle coal. NASA ultimately named a space shuttle in her honor. But to others she was a toxic symbol of empire, responsible for dispossession and disruption.
The first history of its kind, Peter Moore's Endeavour: The Ship That Changed the World is the epic telling of the ship's many lives. Using meticulous research, Moore tells the story of one of history's most defining sailing ships, and in turn shines new light on the ambition and consequences of the Enlightenment.
Winner of the Mary Soames Award for History. A Sunday Times (London) best seller.
©2019 Peter Moore (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Britain's War
Summary
Part two of Daniel Todman's epic history of the Second World War opens with one of the greatest disasters in British military history - the fall of Singapore in February 1942. Unlike the aftermath of Dunkirk, there was no redeeming narrative available here - Britain had been defeated by a far smaller Japanese force in her grandly proclaimed, invincible Asian 'fortress'. The unique skill of Daniel Todman's history lies in its never losing sight of the interconnectedness of the British experience. The agony of Singapore, for example, is seen through the eyes of its inhabitants, of its defenders, of Churchill's cabinet, and of ordinary people at home. Each stage of the war, from the nadir of early 1942 to the great series of victories in 1944-5, and on to Indian independence, is described both as it was understood at the time and in the light of the very latest historical research. Britain's War is a triumph of narrative, empathy and research, as gripping in its handling of individual witnesses to the war - those doomed to struggle with bombing, rationing, exhausting work and above all the absence of millions of family members - as of the gigantic military, social, technological and economic forces that swept the conflict along. It is the definitive account of a drama which reshaped our country.
©2020 Daniel Todman (P)2019 Audible, Ltd
Portobello
Summary
The Portobello area of West London has a rich personality. It also has an edge to it. There is nothing safe about Portobello.Eugene Wren was 50, with prematurely white hair. He also had an addictive personality. But he had cut back on alcohol and had given up cigarettes - which was just as well, considering he was going out with a doctor. On a shopping trip one day, Eugene, quite by chance, came across an envelope containing money. He picked it up. For some reason, rather than report the matter to the police, he wrote a note explaining what he had found and stuck it up on a lamp post near his house.This note would link the lives of very different people - each with their obsessions, problems, dreams, and despairs.
©2008 Kingsmarkham Enterprises Ltd (P)2009 BBC Audiobooks Ltd