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.
Enchantress
Summary
An empire divided by magic. A nation on the brink of rebellion. After losing their parents in the last doomed uprising, two siblings will find themselves at the center of an epic struggle for power. When Ella witnesses an enchanter saving her brother's life, she knows what she wants to be. But the elite Academy expects tuition fees and knowledge. Meanwhile her brother, Miro, dreams of becoming one of the world's finest swordsmen, wielding his nation’s powerful enchanted weapons in defense of his homeland. After Miro departs for war, the void he leaves in Ella's life is filled by a mysterious foreigner, Killian. But Killian has a secret, and Ella’s actions will determine the fate of her brother, her homeland, and the world. Published in 2014, the highly acclaimed Evermen Saga is a worldwide bestseller. Revised edition: This edition of Enchantress includes editorial revisions.
©2014 James Maxwell (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
The Wandering Fire
Summary
Two-time Aurora Award-winning author Guy Gavriel Kay has earned three nominations for the World Fantasy Award. In The Wandering Fire, college students Dave, Paul, Kim, Kevin, and Jennifer return to the magical land of Fionavar to battle the minions of Rakoth Maugrim. But this time, Jennifer is pregnant with a god's baby - one destined to "take the longest road" of any child ever born. "A passionate battle between good and evil. Delights the spirit." (Star-Phoenix)
©1986 Guy Gavriel Kay (P)2009 Penguin Audio
The Mortal Mage
Summary
In this epic culmination of the series, in a war in which thousands are dying, Desil must protect the only thing that can stop the massacre. But there is little he can do with only two allies. They must somehow elude their many enemies while figuring out how to unite their comrades, who face seemingly insurmountable challenges of their own. There is no room for error, no time to hide. The only way success even seems possible is with a plan that might just destroy part of Desil’s world.
©2017 B. T. Narro (P)2018 Podium Publishing
The King's Sorcerer
Summary
On the anniversary of his father’s passing, Jon leaves home in search of answers. The land is full of mystery and intrigue, and Jon wants to explore it all with the dream of one day becoming a sorcerer. But when Jon receives an invite to the castle for training, he starts to believe there has to be a catch. A long time ago, Jon’s father was once a guard near the capital city. Now Jon finds himself back where his father used to work, and he’s beginning to learn why his father had wanted to raise him away from here. He will discover that, along with certain threats to the kingdom, there are also many magical arts to learn. Some seem stronger than others, but all have their use. Jon must come to understand the complexities of sorcery as he uncovers the mysteries and threats to the kingdom. But he also must learn to deal with the other sorcerers who have come to train at the castle at the same time as him...some of whom are hard to trust.
©2020 B.T. Narro (P)2020 Podium Audio
No Simple Victory
Summary
If history really belongs to the victor, what happens when there's more than one side declaring victory? That's the conundrum Norman Davies unravels in his groundbreaking book No Simple Victory. Far from being a revisionist history, No Simple Victory instead offers a clear-eyed reappraisal, untangling and setting right the disparate claims made by America, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union in order to get at the startling truth. In detailing the clash of political philosophies that drove the war's savage engine, Davies also examines how factors as diverse as technology, economics, and morale played dynamic roles in shaping battles, along with the unsung yet vital help of Poland, Greece, and Ukraine (which suffered the highest number of casualties). And while the Allies resorted to bombing enemy civilians to sow terror, the most damning condemnation is saved for the Soviet Union, whose glossed-over war crimes against British soldiers and its own people prove that Communism and Nazism were two sides of the same brutal coin. No Simple Victory is an unparalleled work that will fascinate not only history buffs but anyone who is interested in discovering the reality behind what Davies refers to as "the frozen perspective of the winners' history".
©2007 Norman Davies (P)2007 Tantor Media Inc.
The Dig
Summary
Reimagining the Sutton Hoo dig, the greatest Anglo-Saxon archaeological discovery on British soil, John Preston brilliantly dramatizes three months of intense activity on a small estate when locals fought outsiders, professionals thwarted amateurs, and love and rivalry flourished in equal measure. In the long hot summer of 1939, Britain is preparing for war, but on a riverside farm in Suffolk there is excitement of another kind. Mrs. Pretty, a widowed farmer, has had her hunch proved correct that the strange mounds on her land hold buried treasure. As an archaeological dig proceeds against a background of mounting national anxiety, it becomes clear that this is no ordinary find, and the discovery leads to a host of jealousies and tensions. Elegantly crafted with great tenderness and a poignant attention to detail, The Dig is more than a novel about archaeology. At its very core, this is a novel about the traces of life we all leave behind.
©2007 John Preston (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
A Bend in the River
Summary
In this incandescent novel, V.S. Naipaul takes us deeply into the life of one man, an Indian who, uprooted by the bloody tides of Third World history, has come to live in an isolated town at the bend of a great river in a newly independent African nation. Naipaul gives us the most convincing and disturbing vision yet of what happens in a place caught between the dangerously alluring modern world and its own tenacious past and traditions.
©1979 V.S. Naipaul (P)2004 Blackstone Audiobooks
The Whole Art of Detection
Summary
Internationally best-selling author Lyndsay Faye became enamored with tales of Sherlock Holmes and his esteemed biographer, Dr. John Watson, as a child and later began spinning these quintessential characters into her own works of fiction - from her acclaimed debut novel, Dust and Shadow, which pitted the famous detective against Jack the Ripper, to a series of short stories for the Strand Magazine, whose predecessor published the very first Sherlock Holmes short story in 1891. In "The Lowther Park Mystery", the unsociable Holmes is forced to attend a garden party at the request of his politician brother and improvises a bit of theater to foil a conspiracy against the government. "The Adventure of the Thames Tunnel" brings to Holmes' attention the baffling murder of a jewel thief in the middle of an underground railway passage. With Holmes and Watson encountering all manner of ungrateful relatives, phony psychologists, wronged wives, plaid-garbed villains, and even a peculiar species of deadly red leech, The Whole Art of Detection is a must-listen for Sherlockians and any fan of historical crime fiction with a modern sensibility.
©2017 Lyndsay Faye (P)2017 HighBridge, a Division of Recorded Books
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher
Summary
In June of 1860, three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all of England and led to a national obsession with detection - ironically destroying, in the process, the career of perhaps the greatest detective in the land. At the time, the detective was a relatively new invention; there were only eight detectives in all of England and rarely were they called out of London, but this crime was so shocking that Scotland Yard sent its best man to investigate, Inspector Jonathan Whicher. Whicher quickly believed the unbelievable - that someone within the family was responsible for the murder of young Saville Kent. Without sufficient evidence or a confession, though, his case was circumstantial and he returned to London a broken man. Though he would be vindicated five years later, the real legacy of Jonathan Whicher lives on in fiction: the tough, quirky, knowing, and all-seeing detective that we know and love today - from the cryptic Sergeant Cuff in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone to Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher is a provocative work of nonfiction that reads like a Victorian thriller, and in it author Kate Summerscale has fashioned a brilliant, multilayered narrative that is as cleverly constructed as it is beautifully written.
©2008 Kate Summerscale (P)2008 HighBridge Company.
The Books of Blood: Volume 6
Summary
"Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we're opened, we're red." - Clive Barker Few authors can claim to have marked a genre so thoroughly and personally that their words have leaked into every aspect of modern pop culture. Clive Barker is such an author, and the Books of Blood marked his debut - his coming out to the world - in brilliant, unforgettable fashion. Crossroad Press is proud to present Clive Barker's Books of Blood in digital for the first time. The Books of Blood combine the ordinary with the extraordinary while radiating the eroticism that has become Barker's signature. Weaving tales of the everyday world transformed into an unrecognizable place, where reason no longer exists and logic ceases to explain the workings of the universe, Clive Barker provides the stuff of nightmares in packages too tantalizing to resist. Never one to shy away from the unimaginable or the unspeakable, Clive Barker breathes life into our deepest, darkest nightmares, creating visions that are at once terrifying, tender, and witty. The Books of Blood confirm what horror fans everywhere have known for a long time: We will be hearing from Clive Barker for many years to come. In this, the sixth and final volume of Clive Barker's Books of Blood, with a new introduction by Mark Miller, five new stories of darkness unleashed: “The Life Of Death” - Hidden in the crypt of a derelict church she found Decay and Corruption in hits terrible glory. But such glamour can prove infectious.... “How Spoilers Bleed” - They committed a crime no jury could convict them for. But there were other judges...other punishments... “Twilight At The Towers” - Ballard was the perfect spy. A man with all the cunning of an animal. Or was it vice-versa? “The Last Illusion” - (A Harry D'Amour novella) - New York had shown Harry horrors enough for a dozen lifetimes. He thought he'd seen the worst that flesh could suffer. Then the beautiful widow walked into his life, with a husband who wouldn't lie down dead, and all Hell on her hells. And suddenly Harry was face to face with forces that could teach Manhattan a lesson in depravity. “On Jerusalem Street” (a Postscript) - After the end, a new beginning: Walking the highway of the dead... ABOUT THE AUTHOR: “A visionary, fantasist, poet and painter, Clive Barker has expanded the reaches of human imagination as a novelist, director, screenwriter and dramatist. An inveterate seeker who traverses myriad styles with ease, Barker has left his indelible artistic mark on a range of projects that reflect his creative grasp of contemporary media-from familiar literary terrain to the progressive vision of his Seraphim production company. His 1998 Gods and Monsters, which he executive produced, garnered three Academy Award nominations and an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. The following year, Barker joined the ranks of such illustrious authors as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Annie Dillard and Aldous Huxley when his collection of literary works was inducted into the Perennial line at HarperCollins, who then published The Essential Clive Barker, a 700-page anthology with an introduction by Armistead Maupin. Barker's literary works include such best-selling fantasies as Weaveworld, Imajica, and Everville, the children's novel The Thief of Always, Sacrament, Galilee and Coldheart Canyon. The first of his quintet of children's books, Abarat, was published in October 2002 to resounding critical acclaim, followed by Abarat II: Days of Magic, Nights of War and Arabat III: Absolute Midnight; Barker is currently completing the fourth in the series. As an artist, Barker frequently turns to the canvas to fuel his imagination with hugely successful exhibitions across America. His neo-expressionist paintings have been showcased in two large format books, Clive Barker, Illustrator, volumes I & II.”
©1985 Clive Barker, Inc (P)2014 David N. Wilson
The Curse of Home
Summary
Separated from Ember and Max, Kael Symes turns to an old friend to help hide the afterlife tokens in Talohna’s most terrifying locales. After nearly two years and with one token left to hide, a powerful magical event hits Talohna and causes the failure of the most important spell Kael has ever cast. The horrific results leave him a wanted man and all of his efforts to form an alliance against the Ri’Tek fall apart. With the tokens hidden at last, Kael wants nothing more than to forget the past and to spend time with his family, but knowing they will never be safe no matter where they hide, he recruits Treach in a bid to scour the Arcane Library catacombs for an answer. When the fallen god discovers the location of a legendary fortress thought to exist only in myth, Kael and his allies set out to find the hidden keep in the hopes of making it a home for the children born under the rays of the Black Sun. Unfortunately for Kael and everyone he cares about, myths in Talohna are often grounded in reality and when they stumble into the cursed grounds of Solikyr Fortress, Kael prays that the last five years have hardened him enough to protect his loved ones from the gauntlet of horrors that have infected the fortress and its massive castle. Kael and his companions press further into the fortress and deeper into the curse, only to discover one of Talohna’s oldest and most dangerous secrets. One that will leave its mark on them all.
©2020 JD Franx (P)2020 Podium Audio
The Wind in the Willows (AmazonClassics Edition)
Summary
Mole, Rat, and Badger are Toad's dearest friends even as the aristocratic amphibian's wastrel ways get him into trouble. After being arrested and sentenced to jail, he returns to his ancestral home of Toad Hall to find it overrun with stoats and weasels from the Wild Wood. But his friends haven't abandoned him yet. In fact, they've conspired to help drive the villainous vermin from his home. Embracing themes of empathy and friendship under the most trying conditions, The Wind in the Willows follows the journey of its anthropomorphic characters through the changing seasons of the English countryside while providing life lessons that have endured for generations. AmazonClassics brings you timeless works from the masters of storytelling. Ideal for anyone who wants to read a great work for the first time or rediscover an old favorite, these new editions open the door to literature's most unforgettable characters and beloved worlds. Revised edition: Previously published as The Wind in the Willows, this edition of The Wind in the Willows (AmazonClassics Edition) includes editorial revisions.
Public Domain (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
The Man Who Ate His Boots
Summary
The enthralling and often harrowing history of the adventurers who searched for the Northwest Passage, the holy grail of 19th-century British exploration. After the triumphant end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the British took it upon themselves to complete something they had been trying to do since the 16th century: find the fabled Northwest Passage, a shortcut to the Orient via a sea route over northern Canada. For the next 35 years, the British Admiralty sent out expedition after expedition to probe the ice-bound waters of the Canadian Arctic in search of a route, and then, after 1845, to find Sir John Franklin, the Royal Navy hero who led the last of these Admiralty expeditions and vanished into the maze of channels, sounds, and icy seas with two ships and 128 officers and men. In The Man Who Ate His Boots, Anthony Brandt tells the whole story of the search for the Northwest Passage, from its beginnings early in the age of exploration through its development into a British national obsession to the final sordid, terrible descent into scurvy, starvation, and cannibalism. Sir John Franklin is the focus of the book but it covers all the major expeditions and a number of fascinating characters, including Franklin's extraordinary wife, Lady Jane, in vivid detail. The Man Who Ate His Boots is a rich and engaging work of narrative history that captures the glory and the folly of this ultimately tragic enterprise.
©2010 Anthony Brandt (P)2010 Random House
Tabula Rasa
Summary
The medicus Ruso and his wife, Tilla, are back in the borderlands of Britannia, this time helping to tend the builders of Hadrian's Great Wall. Having been forced to move off their land, the Britons are distinctly on edge. Then Ruso's recently arrived clerk, Candidus, goes missing. A native boy thinks he sees a body being hidden inside the wall's half-finished stonework, and a worrying rumor begins to spread. When soldiers ransack the nearby farms looking for Candidus, Tilla's tentative friendship with a local family turns to anger and disappointment. Tensions only increase when Branan, the family's youngest son, also vanishes. As Ruso and Tilla try to solve the mystery of the two disappearances - while at the same time struggling to keep the peace between the Britons and the Romans - an intricate scheme involving slavery, changed identities, and fur trappers emerges, and it becomes imperative that Ruso find Branan before it's too late.
©2014 Ruth Downie (P)2014 Tantor
The Great Siege
Summary
Suleiman the Magnificent, sultan of the Ottoman Empire and the most powerful ruler in the world, was determined to conquer Europe. Only one thing stood in his way: a dot of an island in the Mediterranean called Malta, which was occupied by the Knights of Saint John, the cream of the warriors of the Holy Roman Empire. A clash of civilizations was shaping up, the likes of which had not been seen since Persia invaded Greece. Determined to capture Malta and use its port to launch operations against Europe, Suleiman sent an armada and an overwhelming army. A few thousand defenders in Fort Saint Elmo fought to the last man, enduring cruel hardships. When the Turks captured the fort, they took no prisoners and mutilated the defenders’ bodies. Grand Master La Vallette of the Knights reciprocated by decapitating his Turkish prisoners and using their heads to cannonade the enemy. Then the battle for Malta began in earnest: no quarter asked, none given. The Great Siege is not merely a gripping tale of brutality, courage, and tenacity but the saga of two mighty civilizations struggling for domination of the known world. Ernle Bradford (1922–1986) was a prominent British historian specializing in the Mediterranean world and naval history. He served in the Royal Navy for the duration of World War II and later traveled throughout the Mediterranean, living for a while on Malta. He was a BBC broadcaster and magazine editor, as well as the author of many acclaimed books, including biographies on Cleopatra, Hannibal, and Caesar.
©2012 Ernle Bradford (P)2012 Blackstone Audio, Inc
Forgotten Ally
Summary
The epic, untold story of China's devastating eight-year war of resistance against Japan. For decades, a major piece of World War II history has gone virtually unwritten. The war began in China two full years before Hitler invaded Poland, and China eventually became the fourth great ally, partner to the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain. Yet its drama of invasion, resistance, slaughter, and political intrigue remains little known in the West. Rana Mitter focuses his gripping narrative on three towering leaders: Chiang Kai-shek, the politically gifted but tragically flawed head of China's Nationalist government; Mao Zedong, the Communists' fiery ideological stalwart, seen here at the beginning of his epochal career; and the lesser-known Wang Jingwei, who collaborated with the Japanese to form a puppet state in occupied China. Drawing on Chinese archives that have only been unsealed in the past 10 years, he brings to vivid new life such characters as Chiang's American chief of staff, the unforgettable "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell, and such horrific events as the Rape of Nanking and the bombing of China's wartime capital, Chongqing. Throughout, Forgotten Ally shows how the Chinese people played an essential role in the wider war effort, at great political and personal sacrifice. Forgotten Ally rewrites the entire history of World War II, yet it also offers surprising insights into contemporary China. No 20th-century event was as crucial in shaping China's worldview, and no one can understand China, and its relationship with America today, without this definitive work.
©2013 Rana Mitter (P)2013 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Ghosts of the Tsunami
Summary
Masterfully narrated by Simon Vance, winner of 14 Audie Awards and 61 Earphone Awards, comes the heartbreaking true story of a natural disaster and the resilience of Japan. The definitive account of what happened, why, and, above all, how it felt when catastrophe hit Japan - by the Japan correspondent of The Times (London) and author of People Who Eat Darkness. On March 11, 2011, a powerful earthquake sent a 120-foot-high tsunami smashing into the coast of Northeast Japan. By the time the sea retreated, more than 18,000 people had been crushed, burned to death, or drowned. It was Japan's greatest single loss of life since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. It set off a national crisis and the meltdown of a nuclear power plant. And even after the immediate emergency had abated, the trauma of the disaster continued to express itself in bizarre and mysterious ways. Richard Lloyd Parry, an award-winning foreign correspondent, lived through the earthquake in Tokyo and spent six years reporting from the disaster zone. There he encountered stories of ghosts and hauntings and met a priest who exorcised the spirits of the dead. And he found himself drawn back again and again to a village that had suffered the greatest loss of all, a community tormented by unbearable mysteries of its own. What really happened to the local children as they waited in the schoolyard in the moments before the tsunami? Why did their teachers not evacuate them to safety? And why was the unbearable truth being so stubbornly covered up? Ghosts of the Tsunami is a soon-to-be classic intimate account of an epic tragedy, told through the accounts of those who lived through it. It tells the story of how a nation faced a catastrophe and the struggle to find consolation in the ruins.
©2017 Richard Lloyd Parry (P)2017 Macmillan Audio
The Man Who Was Thursday
Summary
This is quite possibly Chesterton's most famous novel. All that G. K. Chesterton's critics labeled him- devotional, impious, confounding, intelligent, humorous, bombastic - he wove into The Man Who Was Thursday. This page-turner sends characters bobbing around a delightfully confusing plot of mythic proportions. The story begins when two poets meet. Gabriel Syme is a poet of law. Lucian Gregory is a poetic anarchist. As the poets protest their respective philosophies, they strike a challenge. In the ruckus that ensues, the Central European Council of Anarchists elects Syme to the post of Thursday, one of their seven chief council positions. Undercover. On the run, Syme meets with Sunday, the head of the council, a man so outrageously mysterious that his antics confound both the law-abiding and the anarchist. Who is lawful? Who is immoral? Such questions are strangely in the presence of Sunday. He is wholly other. He is above the timeless questions of humanity and also somehow behind them.
©2008 christianaudio.com
Reformed Pastor
Summary
His introduction begins, "Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood." This charge from Acts 20:28 only is the beginning of a solemn and overarching task to be personally involved and disciple all of your congregants. Richard Baxter's plea for shepherding his flock continues with a charge to pastors to verify their own spiritual walk and then walks them through various disciplines, strategies and goals to guide and instruct their congregation.
©2007 Richard Baxter (P)2008 christianaudio.com
Sin Eater
Summary
"I shall baptize you, sir, and my baptism will burn your folly and flesh away!" A year has passed since Auric Manteo descended into the haunted depths of a Djao ruin to return a lethal artifact, only to face down a bloodthirsty, imprisoned god. Now, his daughter, Agnes, comes to bring him back to the capital with promises of hidden secrets finally revealed. But the city decays, poisonous disorder is rife, and whispered prophecy foretells of cataclysm and doom. Summoned by their no-longer human queen, Auric and Agnes are commanded to carry out an impossible task, one that can be accomplished only with the mysterious blade, Szaa’da’shaela, gifted to Auric on a lunatic's whim. Can Auric and his daughter survive a journey fraught with blood, menace, and madness? And can they pay the price demanded by a being every bit as evil as the Aching God?
©2019 Mike Shel (P)2019 Podium Publishing