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Audio Entertainment
Simon Vance
About Simon Vance
A British actor with a long-time love of audiobook narrating, Simon lives in Northern California with his wife and two children.
He began his 'vocal' career in the UK as a producer/presenter at one of the BBC's first local radio stations, Radio Brighton. From there he moved to London where he joined the select band of announcers/newsreaders for Radio 4, the BBC's national speech-based network. At that time he 'cut his teeth' as an audiobook narrator by donating time to the Royal National Institute for the Blind's Talking Bo...
A British actor with a long-time love of audiobook narrating, Simon lives in Northern California with his wife and two children.
He began his 'vocal' career in the UK as a producer/presenter at one of the BBC's first local radio stations, Radio Brighton. From there he moved to London where he joined the select band of announcers/newsreaders for Radio 4, the BBC's national speech-based network. At that time he 'cut his teeth' as an audiobook narrator by donating time to the Royal National Institute for the Blind's Talking Bo...
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Simon Vance's Most Recent Performances
The Lost Books of the Odyssey
By Zachary Mason
Narrated by Simon Vance
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 work that marks the emergence of an extraordinary new talent.
- 4 hours and 44 min.
Sample
The Runner
By Peter May
Narrated by Simon Vance
Battling to save his career and preparing for marriage, Li Yan knows that the key to the case lies with a champion runner - the only member of the athletics team prepared to talk. But when the runner disappears, time starts running out in the race to catch the killer.
- 10 hours and 53 min.
Sample
The Return of the Native
By Thomas Hardy
Narrated by Simon Vance
One of Thomas Hardy's classic statements about modern love, courtship, and marriage, The Return of the Native is set in the pastoral village of Egdon Heath. The fiery Eustacia Vye, wishing only for passionate love, believes that her escape from Egdon lies in her marriage to Clym Yeobright, the returning "native", home from Paris and discontented with his work there.
- 13 hours and 17 min.
Sample
The New Catacomb
By Arthur Conan Doyle
Narrated by Simon Vance
Though Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is best known for his detective stories, he also wrote other short stories that are masterpieces of mystery and suspense. In some stories, a supressed uneasiness gradually builds up and evolves into sheer horror; in others, the story line unexpectedly changes and comes to an unlikely conclusion.
In "The New Catacomb", deceit and revenge are buried in the deep recesses of a Roman archeological site.
- 31 min.
Sample
Essential Listening
Start your listening with these ultimate performances!
An Unpardonable Crime
By Andrew Taylor
Narrated by Simon Vance
Edgar Allan Poe is an American boy in England, a child standing on the edge of mysteries. In 1819, two Americans arrive in London. Soon afterward a bank collapses. A man is found horribly mutilated on a building site and an heiress flirts with her inferiors. All the while, Poe's young schoolmaster struggles to understand what is happening before he and his loved ones are destroyed. But the truth has its origins in the New World and the Old, in a bitter episode of corruption during the War of 1812.
- 16 hours
Sample
UNABRIDGED
In this remarkable period thriller, Simon Vance's rich narration brings individuality to a wide cast of Victorian characters, including a 10 year-old Edgar Allen Poe.
The Prestige
By Christopher Priest
Narrated by Simon Vance
In 1878, two young stage magicians clash in the dark during the course of a fraudulent séance. From this moment on, their lives become webs of deceit and revelation as they vie to outwit and expose each other. In the course of pursuing each other's ruin, they will deploy all the deception their magician's craft can command. Their rivalry will take them to the peaks of their careers, but with terrible consequences.
- 12 hours and 19 min.
Sample
UNABRIDGED
Envy, ambition, and deceit collide in this gothic novel about the rivalry of two 19th century London stage magicians. Simon Vance's haunting performance sweeps the listener away into the depths of the dark Victorian sensationalism.
Lost on Planet China
By J. Maarten Troost
Narrated by Simon Vance
When the travel bug bit, J. Maarten Troost took on the world's most populous and intriguing nation. As Troost relates his gonzo adventure - dodging deadly drivers in Shanghai, eating yak in Tibet, deciphering restaurant menus (offering local favorites such as cattle penis with garlic), and visiting with Chairman Mao (still dead) - he reveals a vast, complex country on the brink of transformation that will soon shape the way we all work, live, and think.
- 10 hours and 52 min.
Sample
UNABRIDGED
Brought to life by Simon Vance's narration, famed travel writer J. Maarten Troost has charmed listeners again with his witty and humorous exploration o the world's most populous and intriguing nation.
Master and Commander
By Patrick O'Brian
Narrated by Simon Vance
This, the first in the series of Jack Aubrey novels, establishes the friendship between Captain Aubrey, R.N., and Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and intelligence agent, against the thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Details of life aboard a man-of-war in Nelson's navy are faultlessly rendered: the conversational idiom of the officers in the ward room and the men on the lower deck, the food, the floggings, the mysteries of the wind and the rigging.
- 13 hours and 17 min.
Sample
UNABRIDGED
In this first of the Jack Aubrey novels, Simon Vance takes the listener into the bowels of a man-of-war in Nelson's navy. From the distinct period conversation, to the sights and smells of the lower decks, to the mysteries of the ship's rigging, life at sea is flawlessly rendered against t...
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Casino Royale
By Ian Fleming
Narrated by Simon Vance
Introducing James Bond: charming, sophisticated, handsome, chillingly ruthless, and licensed to kill. This, the first of Ian Fleming's tales of secret agent 007, finds Bond on a mission to neutralize a lethal, high-rolling Russian operative called "Le Chiffre" by ruining him at the Baccarat table, forcing his Soviet spymasters to "retire" him. It seems that lady luck has sided with 007 when Le Chiffre hits a losing streak. But some people just refuse to play by the rules.
- 4 hours and 39 min.
Sample
UNABRIDGED
As captured by narrator Simon Vance, Bond is as suave, British, and ultra-competent as you'd expect, but he's also startlingly vulnerable, falling victim to both his enemies and his own doubts. With a wry, knowing delivery, Vance excels at capturing the tension in Fleming's prose: he wring...
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