Simon Vance has narrated 434 audiobooks on Listento.it by 286 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 15,736 ratings. The most-rated is Dune.
Brokenclaw
Summary
On holiday in Victoria, British Columbia, Bond becomes by intrigued Lee Fu-Chu, a half-Blackfoot, half-Chinese philanthropist who is known as "Brokenclaw" because of a deformed hand. On his return to the UK Bond is tasked to investigate the kidnapping of several scientists who have been working on a new submarine detection system. It becomes clear that Brokenclaw is behind the kidnapping and worse, he has a devastating plan to cause economic meltdown through the collapse of the dollar. Bond has no choice but to enter his lair....
©1990 Ian Fleming Publications Ltd. (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved. James Bond and 007 are registered trademarks of Danjaq LLC, used under license by Ian Fleming Publications Ltd.
Augustine for Armchair Theologians
Summary
In this book, Stephen Cooper provides an overview of one of the greatest theologians of the early church: Augustine of Hippo. Through the discussing the Confessions, Cooper introduces the life and thought of Augustine and examines his theological views that emerged through the important controversies of his time.
©2002 Stephen A Cooper (P)2008 christianaudio.com
Phineas Redux
Summary
His beloved wife having died in childbirth, Phineas Finn finds Irish society and his job as a poorhouse inspector dull and unsatisfying, particularly after the excitement of his former career as a Member of Parliament. Back in England, the Whigs are determined to overturn the Tory majority in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Since Finn had once been considered the most promising of the younger set, he is encouraged to run for office again. Bribery, romance, and murder are peppered throughout this Trollope novel. The fourth novel in the Palliser series, Phineas Redux stands alone as a compelling work of political intrigue, personal crisis, and romantic jealousy.
Public Domain (P)2012 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Dragon's Doom
Summary
Hawkril the mighty warrior, Embra the beautiful sorceress, and Craer the crafty thief mourn their lost companion but now must forge new alliances in their roles as overdukes of Aglirta, a land that has been torn asunder by double-crossing royals, savage warlords, and sinister high priests. Now the kingdom is threatened by a mystical berserker plague that is promoting anarchy among the citizenry, while serpentine acolytes move in the shadows to try and resurrect a new Serpent. Will a new Dragon rise to vanquish it? And if so, who will it be, and can it avoid the fate of its predecessor? The fate of Aglirta lies in balance in the triumphant conclusion of this cycle of Band of Four novels.
©2002 Ed Greenwood (P)2004 Blackstone Audiobooks
Clausewitz's 'On War'
Summary
Perhaps the most important book on military strategy ever written, Carl von Clausewitz's On War has influenced generations of generals and politicians, has been blamed for the unprecedented death tolls in the First and Second World Wars, and is required reading at military academies to this day. But On War, which was never finished and was published posthumously, is obscure and fundamentally contradictory. What Clausewitz declares in book 1, he discounts in book 8. The language is confusing and the relevance not always clear. For a book that has truly changed the world, On War is extremely difficult for the general reader to approach, to reconcile with itself, and to place in context. Hew Strachan, one of the world's foremost military historians, answers these problems in this fascinating book. He explains how and why On War was written, elucidates what Clausewitz meant, and offers insight into the impact it made on conflict and its continued significance in our world today.
©2007 Hew Strachan (P)2007 Tantor Media Inc.
The Rainbow Abyss
Summary
When Rhion the banker's son met the Master Wizard Jaldis, Jaldis said, "Come." Rhion came, leaving everything behind to answer the call in his blood. And through long years of drudgery and persecution, he had no regrets. Thus he became a wizard. A noble burned out Jaldis' eyes to please some god; Rhion made magic glasses so he could see. Together, they opened the dark well to the Abyss between universes, and a cry for help came from a world that had lost all magic. Could that happen to their world? Though forced to flee again, Jaldis was determined to reach that world through the Abyss, to help and to find how the magic was lost. Rhion had nightmares over that. Jaldis was blind without magic. Rhion could not let him go alone. Yet the Abyss terrorized Rhion. Guided only by a voice without magic, they might land on the wrong world or drift forever in the hell of the void. And how could they ever return? The idea made Rhion shudder to the depths of his soul. Yet he was sure that someday the nightmare must come true!
©1991 Barbara Hambly (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
The Reservoir Tapes
Summary
Returning us to the extraordinary territory of Jon McGregor's Man Booker Prize long-listed novel Reservoir 13, The Reservoir Tapes take us deep into the heart of an English village that is trying to come to terms with what has happened on its watch. A teenage girl has gone missing. The whole community has been called upon to join the search. And now an interviewer arrives, intent on capturing the community's unstable stories about life in the weeks and months before Becky Shaw vanished. Each villager has a memory to share or a secret to conceal, a connection to Becky that they are trying to make or break. A young wife pushes against the boundaries of her marriage, and another seeks a means of surviving within hers. A group of teenagers dare one another to jump into a flooded quarry, the one weak swimmer still awaiting his turn. A laborer lies trapped under rocks and dry limestone dust as his fellow workers attempt a risky rescue. And meanwhile a fractured portrait of Becky emerges at the edges of our vision - a girl swimming, climbing, and smearing dirt onto a scared boy's face, images to be cherished and challenged as the search for her goes on.
©2018 Jon McGregor (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Fallen
Summary
A provocative epic of a story we know so well, or do we? Once expelled from the Garden, Adam and Eve had to find their way past recriminations and bitterness to build a new life in a harsh land. In Fallen, David Maine has drawn a convincing, enthralling portrait of a family driven (and riven) by familiar passions and jealousies. The result is a staggering achievement and intimate, hilarious, and utterly original telling of temptation and murder, and of exile and loss.
©2005 David Maine (P)2005 Tantor Media
The Vanishing Face of Gaia
Summary
In The Vanishing Face of Gaia, British scientist James Lovelock predicts global warming will lead to a Hot Epoch. Lovelock is best known for formulating the controversial Gaia theory in the 1970s, with Ruth Margulis of the University of Massachusetts, which states that organisms interact with and regulate Earth's surface and atmosphere. We ignore this interaction at our peril. An “unwilling Cassandra,” he is nevertheless an "an optimistic pessimist" and thinks we will survive the coming Hot Epoch, but predicts climate change will reduce our population from 9 billion to around one billion or less."I don't think nine billion is better than one billion," Lovelock writes. He compares humans to the “first photosynthesisers, which, when they first appeared on the planet, caused enormous damage by releasing oxygen a nasty, poisonous gas.” Oxygen turned out to be beneficial to the life forms that evolved to utilize it, including us, but a global anaerobic ecosystem gave way in the face of this atmospheric change. If simple microbial life forms could effect such a change, why is it hard to believe that humans could do so, too? And we are, unwittingly at first, but many have recognized the danger for some time now, and time is running out. There are factions at work today trying to convince the public that global warming is a leftwing conspiracy, a liberal hoax. They claim that scientists perpetuate this “myth” to obtain government grants, and point to “independent” scientists (usually funded by the oil industry) who refute climate change science. Dr. Lovelock may be the antidote to these claims, as he is a truly independent scientist. Lovelock, a chemist and inventor by profession and a climate activist, is not beholden to any government, university, or granting agency. Let those determined to bury their heads in the sands of right wing silliness do so. The rest of us, young and old, have work to do. Lovelock's book sets out an important agenda to follow.
©2009 James Lovelock (P)2011 Post Hypnotic Press
The Lost Books of the Odyssey
Summary
A brilliant and beguiling reimagining of one of our greatest myths by a gifted young writer. Zachary Mason’s brilliant and beguiling debut novel, The Lost Books of the Odyssey, reimagines Homer’s classic story of the hero Odysseus and his long journey home after the fall of Troy. With brilliant prose, terrific imagination, and dazzling literary skill, Mason creates alternative episodes, fragments, and revisions of Homer’s original that taken together open up this classic Greek myth to endless reverberating interpretations. The Lost Books of the Odyssey is punctuated with great wit, beauty, and playfulness; it is a daring literary pause resister that marks the emergence of an extraordinary new talent. Cover and title design by Chin-Yee Lai.
©2010 Zachary Mason (P)2010 Macmillan Audio
The Lazarus Curse
Summary
London, 1782. The sole survivor of an ill-fated expedition to Jamaica has gone missing upon his return home. Dr. Thomas Silkstone had been entrusted to catalog all the New World specimens and therefore feels compelled to investigate the disappearance. Meanwhile, a rumor circulates that a potion with the power to raise the dead is afoot, and the formula is thought to be in the missing botanist's journal. As he investigates, the good doctor is drawn into a world of trafficking in corpses for profit. When a headless corpse is discovered, Silkstone uncovers the sinister motives of those who would stop at nothing to possess the Lazarus potion. Inspired by true-life physician Dr. William Shippen Jr., this delightful series has been hailed as "CSI meets The Age of Reason" (Karen Harper, New York Times bestselling author).
©2014 Tessa Harris (P)2014 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
A Dragon's Ascension
Summary
Aglirta, known as the Kingless Land, has fallen into lawlessness. Now, a powerful warlord has come to take control through force, while the diabolic minions of the Serpent move into position for a climactic battle that will scar the valiant Band of Four forever.
©2002 Ed Greenwood (P)2004 Blackstone Audiobooks
Ever By My Side
Summary
New York Times best-selling author Nick Trout has captivated audiences with his books that take us behind the scenes into the heartwarming - and sometimes heartrending - world of veterinary medicine. In a perfect follow-up to his first two books, he turns his lens inward and offers a funny, moving, and thoughtful, memoir about the animals he's had all his life. Nostalgic, warm, and insightful, Ever By My Side is about the power of animals to shape our lives, to teach us, and to bear witness to our struggles, triumphs, hopes, and fears.
©2011 Dr. Nicholas Trout (P)2011 Tantor
The Last Bookaneer
Summary
The best-selling author of The Dante Club takes us deep into a shadowy era in publishing ruled by a forgotten class of criminals. A golden age of publishing on the verge of collapse. For a hundred years, loose copyright laws and a hungry reading public created a unique opportunity: Books could be published without an author's permission with extraordinary ease. Authors gained fame but suffered financially - Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, to name a few - but publishers reaped enormous profits while readers got their books on the cheap. The literary pirates who stalked the harbors, coffeehouses, and printer shops for the latest manuscript to steal were known as bookaneers. Yet on the eve of the twentieth century, a new international treaty is signed to protect authors and grind this literary underground to a sharp halt. The bookaneers, of course, would become extinct. In The Last Bookaneer, Matthew Pearl gives us a historical novel set inside the lost world of these doomed outlaws and the incredible heist that brought their era to a close. On the island of Samoa, a dying Robert Louis Stevenson labors over a new novel. The thought of one last book from the great author fires the imaginations of the bookaneers, and soon two adversaries - the gallant Pen Davenport and the monstrous Belial - set out for the south Pacific island. Pen Davenport - a tortured criminal genius haunted by his past - is reluctantly accompanied by Fergins, the narrator of our story, who has lived a quiet life of bookselling before being whisked across the world on his friend's final caper. Fergins soon discovers the supreme thrill of aiding Davenport in his quest: to steal Stevenson's manuscript and make a fortune before the new treaty ends the bookaneers' trade forever. Yet Samoa holds many secrets of its own, and the duo's bookish concerns clash with the island's violent destiny. A colonial war is afoot between the British, American, and German powers even as Stevenson himself quietly supports native revolutionaries from high in his mountain compound. Soon Pen and Fergins are embroiled in a conflict larger, perhaps, than literature itself. Illuminating the heroics of the bookaneers even while conjuring Stevenson himself to breathtaking life, Pearl's The Last Bookaneer is a pause-resisting journey to the dark heart of a forgotten literary era.
©2015 Matthew Pearl (P)2015 Penguin Audio
Beast
Summary
Beast plunges you into the world of Edward Buckmaster, a man alone on an empty moor in the west of England. What he has left behind we don't yet know. What he faces is an existential battle with himself, the elements, and something he begins to see in the margins of his vision: some creature that is tracking him, the pursuit of which will become an obsession. This short, shocking, and exhilarating novel is a vivid exploration of isolation, courage, and the search for truth that continues the story set 1000 years earlier in Paul Kingsnorth's bravura debut novel, The Wake. It extends that book's promise and confirms Kingsnorth as one of our most daring and rewarding contemporary writers.
©2016 Paul Kingsnorth (P)2017 Tantor
Beatles '66
Summary
A riveting look at the transformative year in the lives and careers of the legendary group whose groundbreaking legacy would forever change music and popular culture They started off as hysteria-inducing pop stars playing to audiences of screaming teenage fans and ended up as musical sages considered responsible for ushering in a new era. The year that changed everything for the Beatles was 1966 - the year of their last concert and of Revolver, their first album created to be listened to rather than performed. This was the year the Beatles risked their popularity by retiring from live performances, recording songs that explored alternative states of consciousness, experimenting with avant-garde ideas, and speaking their minds on issues of politics, war, and religion. It was the year their records were burned in America after John's explosive claim that the group was "more popular than Jesus", the year they were hounded out of the Philippines for "snubbing" its First Lady, the year John met Yoko Ono, and the year Paul conceived the idea for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Music journalist and Beatles expert Steve Turner investigates in detail the enormous changes that took place in the Beatles' lives and work during 1966. He looks at the historical events that had an impact on the group, the music they made that in turn profoundly affected the culture around them, and the vision that allowed four young men from Liverpool to transform popular music and serve as pioneers for artists from Coldplay to David Bowie, Jay-Z to U2. By talking to those close to the group and by drawing on his past interviews with key figures such as George Martin, Timothy Leary, and Ravi Shankar - and the Beatles themselves - Turner gives us the compelling, definitive account of the 12 months that contained everything the Beatles had been and anticipated everything they would still become.
©2016 Steve Turner (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Ash House
Summary
An unsettling, gripping middle-grade debut about searching for a sense of belonging in the wrong places, and the bravery it takes to defy those who seek to control us. When 11-year-old Sol arrives at the Ash House, desperate for a cure for his complex pain syndrome, he finds a community of strange children long abandoned by their mysterious Headmaster. The children at the Ash House want the new boy to love their home as much as they do. They give him a name like theirs. They show him the dorms and tell him about the wonderful oasis that the Headmaster has created for them. But the new boy already has a name. Doesn’t he? At least he did before he walked through those gates.... This was supposed to be a healing refuge for children like him. Something between a school and a summer camp. With kids like him. With pain like his. But no one is allowed to get sick at the Ash House. No one. And then The Doctor arrives.... Strange things are about to happen at the mysterious Ash House. And the longer Sol spends on the mysterious grounds, the more he begins to forget who he is, the more the other children begin to distrust him, and the worse his pain becomes. But can he hold onto reality long enough to find an escape? And better yet, can he convince the others?
©2021 Angharad Walker (P)2021 Scholastic Inc.
Cry Witch
Summary
Jack Frey was a street thief, saved from the gallows and forced to join a mysterious order of warrior priests known as the Black Dogs. Their mission is to keep the country of Abios safe from the flesh-eating demons known as the Nostros. But the Black Dogs have other enemies. Before Jack can take his vows and become a Black Dog, he's asked to help on a simple mission. He thinks it's an easy job, but he soon discovers the war is closer to home than he thought.
©2018 Mike Morris (P)2021 Podium Audio
Marx's Das Kapital
Summary
In this brilliant book, Francis Wheen, the author of the most successful biography of Karl Marx, tells the story of Das Kapital and Marx's 20-year struggle to complete his unfinished masterpiece. Born in a two-room flat in London's Soho amid political squabbles and personal tragedy, the first volume of Das Kapital was published in 1867 to muted praise. But after Marx's death, the book went on to influence thinkers, writers, and revolutionaries, from George Bernard Shaw to V. I. Lenin, changing the direction of 20th-century history. Wheen shows that, far from being a dry economic treatise, Das Kapital is like a vast Gothic novel whose heroes are enslaved by the monster they created: capitalism. Furthermore, Wheen argues, as long as capitalism endures, Das Kapital demands to be read and understood.
©2006 Francis Wheen (P)2007 Tantor
King's Guard
Summary
The Mercenary Code has been broken, and a new Protectorate Empire has arisen. In league with renegade mages known as the Fallen, the Protectorate will stop at nothing to expand its reach and unify the factions of Old Caledun by any means necessary. The few who escaped the coup are now in a tenuous struggle against the growing influence of this corrupt new Order. Mercenary companies loyal to the old ways race to defend one of the last bastions of freedom in the South. In the capable hands of its ardent commander, one city prepares for the decisive battle that will shape the future of Kal Maran. New allies have joined the cause, but can they turn the tide? In the depths of an ancient subterranean library, two unlikely companions continue to explore the mysteries of a long-vanished race. While in the distant Drayen Lands, a foreign noblewoman is thrust to the fore in the midst of an enemy invasion by sea. And in the North, hope has been rekindled. Surviving the trials of the Wilds and reaching the lands of the Iron Shield, the An'Dari - legendary protector of Kings - has returned. Searching for Caledun’s true heir, his memories hold the key to absolving the sins of the past.
©2019 Emmet Moss (P)2020 Podium Audio