Roy McMillan has narrated 52 audiobooks on Listento.it by 58 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.6★ across 828 ratings. The most-rated is Beyond Good and Evil.
Love Is Blind
Summary
When he is hired as the personal piano tuner for a brilliant pianist, Brodie Moncur suddenly finds himself swept up into a life of luxury that he could never have imagined. But while accompanying his new employer on tours from Paris to St. Petersburg, Brodie falls madly in love with the Russian soprano, Lika Blum: beautiful, worldly, seductive - and forbidden. Though seemingly doomed from the start, Brodie’s passion for Lika only grows as their lives become increasingly more intertwined, more secretive, and, finally, more dangerous. A tale of dizzying passion and brutal revenge; of artistic endeavor and the illusions it can create; of the possibilities that life offers and the cruel speed with which they can be snatched away, Love Is Blind is a dazzling work of historical fiction that unfolds across fin de siècle Europe.
©2018 William Boyd (P)2018 Random House Audio
Treasure Island
Summary
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Following the demise of bloodthirsty buccaneer Captain Flint, young Jim Hawkins finds himself with the key to a fortune. For he has discovered a map that will lead him to the fabled Treasure Island. But a host of villains, wild beasts and deadly savages stand between him and the stash of gold. Not to mention the most infamous pirate ever to sail the high seas....
Public Domain (P)2019 Penguin Books Ltd
The Second Sleep
Summary
From the international best-selling author of Fatherland and Munich, a gripping mystery and a fascinating cautionary tale. "All civilizations consider themselves invulnerable; history warns us that none is." 1468. A young priest, Christopher Fairfax, arrives in a remote English village to conduct the funeral of his predecessor. The land around is strewn with ancient artifacts - coins, fragments of glass, human bones - that the old parson used to collect. Did his obsession with the past lead to his death? As Fairfax is drawn more deeply into the isolated community, everything he believes - about himself, his faith, and the history of his world - is tested to destruction.
©2019 Canal K Limited (P)2020 Penguin Random House Canada
Heaven's Command
Summary
The Pax Britannica trilogy is Jan Morris’s epic story of the British Empire from the accession of Queen Victoria to the death of Winston Churchill. It is a towering achievement: informative, accessible, entertaining and written with all her usual bravura. Heaven’s Command, the first volume, takes us from the crowning of Queen Victoria in 1837 to the Diamond Jubilee in 1897. The story moves effortlessly across the world, from the English shores to Fiji, Zululand, the Canadian prairies and beyond. Totally gripping history!
©1973 A P Watt Limited (P)2011 Naxos AudioBooks
Conundrum
Summary
This remarkable memoir is the classic account of the transgender journey. It is all the more extraordinary because it is the life story of a figure who, it seemed, seamlessly and publicly charted a course through the English establishment - James Morris, outstanding journalist, historian and travel writer, famed for a peerless writing style. But all the while he was concealing a very different inner world: from the age of four he felt that, despite his body, he was really a girl. Determined to be true to an undeniable inner impulse, James Morris, in his 40s, became Jan Morris. It was the 1970s, a time and culture far from our 21st century, where such matters have now become commonplace. What was it that impelled him to take such a frightening and irrevocable step? He faced the mental and physical challenges - the operation had to be done in Morocco and, as a well-known figure, attention from the world media could not be avoided. What pressures would that put on the family - a loving wife and growing children living in a North Wales village? But that inner impulse could not be denied. Jan Morris tells the story in a clear and honest manner, without a trace of sentimentality or sensationalism. She recounts the emotional, physical, sexual and social issues that abound on such a journey in detail and, through this highly personal memoir, presents a memorable insight into the 'conundrum'. Jan is modest by nature, and it is only by implication that one becomes aware of the immense courage and integrity needed to see the transition through. This is a deeply moving, beautifully written, unforgettable memoir. Sensational - yes, in a quiet way. Revealing - yes; no punches are pulled. But in the end, it is humane and uplifting. Jan Morris, now in her 90s, has written a new introduction for this recording. Roy McMillan has recorded Morris' major historical work, the Pax Britannica trilogy (available on Audible), and is the ideal reader for Conundrum.
©1974 Jan Morris (P)2017 Ukemi Productions Ltd
![Cover art for The Tractor Who Wants to Fall Asleep [UK English]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61FqQiHcXNL._SL500_.jpg)
The Tractor Who Wants to Fall Asleep [UK English]
Summary
Do you struggle to get your child to sleep? Discover the miracle book and reclaim bedtime! Join millions of parents all over the world and embrace a bedtime routine that will help your child to relax and fall fast asleep. Let your child be lulled to sleep with Tractor Alex in a sleep-inducing ride around the farm. Along the way they meet Yawning Carrot, Half-Asleep Leon, Sleeping Apples and other friends, who tell them what they do to fall asleep at night. Your child will have a soothing and relaxing experience and can fall asleep quickly - at naptime and bedtime. "The Tractor Who Wants to Fall Asleep" is the third part in the bestselling, sleep-inducing series that makes children fall asleep around the world - parents say it's almost like magic! The author Carl-Johan Forssén Ehrlin uses innovative techniques that have been approved by parents and psychologists. A sequel to the groundbreaking bestseller "The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep", an Amazon bestseller with over 2.3 million copies sold worldwide.
©2017 Ehrlin Publishing. Translated by Neil Smith (P)2018 Ehrlin Publishing
Fatal Inheritance
Summary
Get swept away to the enchanting South of France with this “exquisite and shimmering” (Lisa Jewell, New York Times best-selling author of Then She Was Gone) suspenseful historical novel, where perilous secrets lurk under the glitz and glam of seaside wealth. She didn’t have an enemy in the world...until she inherited a fortune. London, 1948: Eve Forrester is stuck in a loveless marriage, isolated in her gray and gloomy house, when out of the blue, she receives a letter. A wealthy stranger has left her a mysterious inheritance, but in order to find out more, she must travel to the glittering French Riviera. There, Eve discovers she has been bequeathed an enchanting villa overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, and suddenly, life could not be more glamorous. But while she rubs shoulders with the rich and famous, challengers to her unexplained fortune begin to emerge - challengers who would love to see Eve gone forever. Alone in paradise, Eve must unlock the story behind her surprise bequest - before her unexpected twist of fate turns deadly.... With Rachel Rhys’ “thrilling, seductive, and utterly absorbing” (Paula Hawkins, number-one best-selling author of The Girl on the Train) prose, Fatal Inheritance is an intoxicating story of dysfunctional families and long-hidden secrets, set against the decadence of the Côte d’Azur.
©2019 Rachel Rhys (P)2019 Simon & Schuster
The Plant Messiah
Summary
Penguin Audio presents The Plant Messiah by Carlos Magdalena, read by Roy McMillan. Carlos Magdalena of Kew Gardens is not your average botanical horticulturist. He's a man on a mission to save the world's most endangered plants from ecological destruction and thieves hunting for wealthy collectors. He is a plant messiah. From the planet's tiniest waterlily - the Nymphaea thermarum - to Huarango trees with roots over 50 metres long, Carlos has a miraculous ability to bring breathtakingly beautiful plants back from the brink of extinction. He has travelled to the most remote and dangerous parts of the world - from the mountains of Peru to isolated Indian Ocean islands to the deepest Australian outback - in search of the rarest exotic species. Then, back in the Tropical Nursery at Kew, he uses pioneering, left-field techniques to help them propagate and prosper. Now he's here to spread the gospel. The Plant Messiah is the inspirational story of a man who has devoted - and risked - his life to save incredible species, all in the name of making this Earth a greener and happier place. Amen to that.
©2017 Carlos Magdalena (P)2018 Penguin Books Ltd
Pax Britannica
Summary
The Pax Britannica trilogy is Jan Morris’s magnificent history of the British Empire from 1837 to 1965. Huge in scope and ambition, it is always personal and immediate, bringing the story vividly to life. Pax Britannica, the second volume, is a snapshot of the Empire at the Diamond Jubilee of 1897. It looks at what made up the Empire —from adventurers and politicians to communications and infrastructure, as well as anomalies and eccentricities. This humane overview also examines the muddle of jumbled ideologies behind it, and how it affected its 370 million people.
©1968 Jan Morris (P)2011 Naxos AudioBooks
Farewell the Trumpets
Summary
The Pax Britannica trilogy is Jan Morris’ magnificent history of the British Empire from 1837 to 1965. It is an extraordinary achievement, as entertaining as it is informative, and as vivid and immediate as it is huge in scope and ambition. This final volume charts the decline and dissolution of what was once the largest empire the world had known. From the first signs of decay in the imperial ambition in the Boer Wars, through the global shifts in power evident in the two World Wars, it offers a perspective that is honest, evocative, and occasionally elegiac.
©1978 Jan Morris (P)2011 Jan Morris
Vulcan 607
Summary
Random House presents the audiobook edition of Vulcan 607 by Rowland White, read by Roy McMillan. It was to be one of the most ambitious operations since 617 Squadron bounced their revolutionary bombs into the dams of the Ruhr Valley in 1943.... When Argentine forces invaded the Falklands in the early hours of 2 April 1982, Britain's military chiefs were faced with a real-life Mission Impossible. Its opening shot, they decided, would be Operation Black Buck: to strike a body blow at the occupying army and make them realise that nothing was safe - not even Buenos Aires.... The idea was simple: to destroy the vital landing strip at Port Stanley. The reality was more complicated. The only aircraft that could possibly do the job was three months from being scrapped, and the distance it had to travel was 4,000 miles beyond its maximum range. It would take 15 Victor tankers and 17 separate in-flight refuellings to get one Avro Vulcan B2 over the target and give its crew any chance of coming back alive. Yet less than a month later, a formation of elderly British jets was launched from a remote island airbase to carry out the longest-range air attack in history. At the tip of the spear was a single aircraft, six men, and 21 thousand-pound bombs, facing a hornet's nest of modern weaponry: the radar-guided guns and missiles of the Argentine defences. There would be no second chances. It was the end of an era - the last time the RAF flew heavy bombers into combat before they were replaced by their digital, fly-by-wire, laser-guided successors. There were many who believed it couldn't be done. Drawing on extensive interviews with the combatants, Falklands residents and British High Command, and with unprecedented access to contemporary military records, Rowland White takes us, for the first time, to the beating heart of the legendary raid. Vulcan 607 is a story of ingenuity, courage and sheer bloody-mindedness that's destined to become a classic.
©2010 Rowland White (P)2018 Random House Audiobooks
The Burning Kingdoms
Summary
The heart-pounding conclusion to the daring Smoke Thieves trilogy. In this conclusion to the epic Smoke Thieves trilogy, the world has erupted into all-out war. King Aloysius is mining powerful demon smoke and using it to fuel an unstoppable army of children. March, now banished for treason, has joined up with this boy army. Forbidden from ever seeing Edyon again and overwhelmed by his own betrayal, March no longer cares if he lives or dies. Catherine - now queen of Pitoria - must find a way to defeat the boy army, while also grappling with her own troubles: her secret demon smoke addiction and unresolved tension with her former lover, Ambrose. Catherine seeks military support from Calidor by reaching out to her illegitimate cousin Edyon, who has been proclaimed heir to the Calidorian throne. But Edyon has almost no power as he's entangled in the unfamiliar machinations and manipulations of the royal court, finding that being the claimed son of a prince may be no easier than being a bastard. With Catherine, his love, now married off and moving on, and his brother and sister tortured and executed before him, Ambrose doesn't know what his role in this world is any more. He leads an expedition into the demon world, hoping to destroy the boy army's stores of demon smoke. In this underground world, he runs into Tash, whom everyone had believed dead. She has survived in this new world using magical abilities that, prior to now, only demons had. Aloysius will send his demon smoke-powered boy army to kill them all, if he can. But what nobody knows is that there is more to the smoke than meets the eye....
©2020 Sally Green (P)2020 Listening Library
The French Revolution - In a Nutshell
Summary
The fifth in the new Naxos audioooks series "In a Nutshell", The French Revolution is a short and accessible introduction to one of the most important periods in European history. It brings vividly to life the implacable Robespierre, the frightened Marie Antoinette and the iconic image of the guillotine. But it also demonstrates the key role the Revolution played in the development of European politics.
©2009 Naxos Audiobooks (P)2009 Naxos Audiobooks
Notes from Walnut Tree Farm
Summary
Brought to you by Penguin. Calming, thought-provoking, poetic and honest, Notes from Walnut Tree Farm is a collection of writing and musing by documentary-maker, environmentalist and author of Waterlog Roger Deakin. For the last six years of his life, Roger Deakin kept notebooks. In them, he wrote his daily thoughts, impressions, feelings and observations about and around his Suffolk home, Walnut Tree Farm. Collected here are the very best of these writings, capturing his extraordinary, restless curiosity about nature as well as his impressions of our changing world. Perfect for fans of Robert Macfarlane and Colin Tudge, this is a book that fills listeners with a desire to explore the world around them.
©2020 Roger Deakin (P)2020 Penguin Audio
Waterlog
Summary
Brought to you by Penguin. Roger Deakin set out in 1996 to swim through the British Isles. The result is a uniquely personal view of an island race and a people with a deep affinity for water. From the sea, from rock pools, from rivers and streams, tarns, lakes, lochs, ponds, lidos, swimming pools and spas, from fens, dykes, moats, aqueducts, waterfalls, flooded quarries, even canals, Deakin gains a fascinating perspective on modern Britain. Detained by water bailiffs in Winchester, intercepted in the Fowey estuary by coastguards, mistaken for a suicide on Camber sands, confronting the Corryvreckan whirlpool in the Hebrides, he discovers just how much of an outsider the native swimmer is to his landlocked, fully dressed fellow citizens. Encompassing cultural history, autobiography, travel writing and natural history, Waterlog is a personal journey, a bold assertion of the native swimmer's right to roam and an unforgettable celebration of the magic of water.
©1999 Roger Deakin (P)2020 Penguin Audio
The Confessions of Frannie Langton
Summary
A servant and former slave is accused of murdering her employer and his wife in this astonishing historical thriller that moves from a Jamaican sugar plantation to the fetid streets of Georgian London - a remarkable literary debut with echoes of Alias Grace, The Underground Railroad, and The Paying Guests. All of London is abuzz with the scandalous case of Frannie Langton, accused of the brutal double murder of her employers, renowned scientist George Benham and his eccentric French wife, Marguerite. Crowds pack the courtroom, eagerly following every twist, while the newspapers print lurid theories about the killings and the mysterious woman being tried at the Old Bailey. The testimonies against Frannie are damning. She is a seductress, a witch, a master manipulator, a whore. But Frannie claims she cannot recall what happened that fateful evening, even if remembering could save her life. She doesn’t know how she came to be covered in the victims’ blood. But she does have a tale to tell: a story of her childhood on a Jamaican plantation, her apprenticeship under a debauched scientist who stretched all bounds of ethics, and the events that brought her into the Benhams’ London home - and into a passionate and forbidden relationship. Though her testimony may seal her conviction, the truth will unmask the perpetrators of crimes far beyond murder and indict the whole of English society itself. The Confessions of Frannie Langton is a breathtaking debut: a murder mystery that travels across the Atlantic and through the darkest channels of history. A brilliant, searing depiction of race, class, and oppression that penetrates the skin and sears the soul, it is the story of a woman of her own making in a world that would see her unmade.
©2019 Sara Collins (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers
Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species
Summary
A picture book adaptation of Charles Darwin's groundbreaking On the Origin of Species, lushly illustrated and told in accessible and engaging easy-to-understand text for young listeners. On the Origin of Species revolutionized our understanding of the natural world. Now young listeners can discover Charles Darwin's groundbreaking theory of evolution for themselves in this stunning picture-book adaptation that uses stylish illustrations and simple text to introduce how species form, develop, and change over time.
©2019 Sabina Radeva (P)2019 Listening Library
Dunkirk
Summary
Penguin presents the unabridged downloadable audiobook edition of Dunkirk by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, read by Roy McMillan. Hugh Sebag-Montefiore's Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man tells the story of the rescue in May 1940 of British soldiers fleeing capture and defeat by the Nazis at Dunkirk. Dunkirk was not just about what happened at sea and on the beaches. The evacuation would never have succeeded had it not been for the tenacity of the British soldiers who stayed behind to ensure they got away. Men like Sergeant Major Gus Jennings, who died smothering a German stick bomb in the church at Esquelbecq in an effort to save his comrades, and Captain Marcus Ervine-Andrews VC, who single-handedly held back a German attack on the Dunkirk perimeter, thereby allowing the British line to form up behind him. Told to stand and fight to the last man, these brave few battalions fought in whatever manner they could to buy precious time for the evacuation. Outnumbered and outgunned, they launched spectacular and heroic attacks time and again, despite ferocious fighting and the knowledge that for many only capture or death would end their struggle. Hugh Sebag-Montefiore was a barrister before becoming a journalist and then an author. He wrote the best-selling Enigma: The Battle for the Code. One of his ancestors was evacuated from Dunkirk.
©2007 Hugh Sebag-Montefiore (P)2017 Penguin Random House UK
The Clumsy Ghost and Other Spooky Tales
Summary
In this entertaining anthology of seven new ghost stories, written especially for Naxos AudioBooks, we meet all kinds of phantoms in different situations: a kind-hearted but accident-prone spectre unwittingly upsetting a family home, as well as ghosts in ancient Egypt, on board a pirate ship, and in a Newcastle swimming pool. Engaging and slightly sinister, The Clumsy Ghost and Other Spooky Tales is a delightful shiver for all the family.
©2011 Alistair Jessiman (P)2011 Naxos Audiobooks
Somme
Summary
No conflict better encapsulates all that went wrong on the Western Front than the Battle of the Somme in 1916. The tragic loss of life and stoic endurance by troops who walked towards their death is an iconic image which will be hard to ignore during the centennial year. Despite this, this book shows the extent to which the Allied armies were in fact able repeatedly to break through the German front lines. The author has uncovered some remarkable stories, as yet unknown, of action and heroism in the face of battle. He weaves in these firsthand experiences, creating a remarkable portrait of life at the front.
©2016 Hugh Sebag-Montefiore (P)2016 Penguin Books Ltd