Regular price: $8.39
Audie Award, Excellence in Production; Audie Award, Audio Drama, 2016. The magical storytelling and unforgettable characters in Ben Doyle and Richard Kurti's audio adaptation of this children's classic have been brought to life by many well-known voices from British film, TV, radio and comedy.
Set in the pre-Christian world of Glome on the outskirts of Greek civilization, it is a tale of two princesses: the beautiful Psyche, who is loved by the god of love himself, and Orual, Psyche's unattractive and embittered older sister, who loves Psyche with a destructive possessiveness. Her frustration and jealousy over Psyche's fate sets Orual on the troubled path of self-discovery. Lewis's last work of fiction, this is often considered his best by critics.
Here is the precursor to Jurassic Park. Victorian explorers have heard there is a remote plateau where dinosaurs still survive, and a group set outs on a dangerous mission to find out more about it.
Here are American author Howard Pyle's exciting and hilarious tales of Robin Hood and his merry band of outlaws, who reigned over Sherwood Forest doing many good deeds for the poor - and deserved misdeeds to the pompous and haughty rich.
Through Jim Burden's endearing, smitten voice, we revisit the remarkable vicissitudes of immigrant life in the Nebraska heartland, with all its insistent bonds. Guiding the way are some of literature's most beguiling characters: the Russian brothers plagued by memories of a fateful sleigh ride, Antonia's desperately homesick father and self-indulgent mother, and the coy Lena Lingard. Holding the pastoral society's heart, of course, is the bewitching, free-spirited Antonia.
"My Man Jeeves" is a collection of short stories by the master of British comedy P. G. Wodehouse, published in 1919. The stories all feature the author's most well known characters: the extremely intelligent manservant Jeeves and his dimwitted but kind employer Bertie. As always, Jeeves will be stretched to his utmost in the performance of his protective duties against manipulative stratagems, nosy relatives, shady scams and all kinds of goings on, most often aimed at taking advantage of Bertie's kindness and cluelessness... As always: pure gold for the listener!
Audie Award, Excellence in Production; Audie Award, Audio Drama, 2016. The magical storytelling and unforgettable characters in Ben Doyle and Richard Kurti's audio adaptation of this children's classic have been brought to life by many well-known voices from British film, TV, radio and comedy.
Set in the pre-Christian world of Glome on the outskirts of Greek civilization, it is a tale of two princesses: the beautiful Psyche, who is loved by the god of love himself, and Orual, Psyche's unattractive and embittered older sister, who loves Psyche with a destructive possessiveness. Her frustration and jealousy over Psyche's fate sets Orual on the troubled path of self-discovery. Lewis's last work of fiction, this is often considered his best by critics.
Here is the precursor to Jurassic Park. Victorian explorers have heard there is a remote plateau where dinosaurs still survive, and a group set outs on a dangerous mission to find out more about it.
Here are American author Howard Pyle's exciting and hilarious tales of Robin Hood and his merry band of outlaws, who reigned over Sherwood Forest doing many good deeds for the poor - and deserved misdeeds to the pompous and haughty rich.
Through Jim Burden's endearing, smitten voice, we revisit the remarkable vicissitudes of immigrant life in the Nebraska heartland, with all its insistent bonds. Guiding the way are some of literature's most beguiling characters: the Russian brothers plagued by memories of a fateful sleigh ride, Antonia's desperately homesick father and self-indulgent mother, and the coy Lena Lingard. Holding the pastoral society's heart, of course, is the bewitching, free-spirited Antonia.
"My Man Jeeves" is a collection of short stories by the master of British comedy P. G. Wodehouse, published in 1919. The stories all feature the author's most well known characters: the extremely intelligent manservant Jeeves and his dimwitted but kind employer Bertie. As always, Jeeves will be stretched to his utmost in the performance of his protective duties against manipulative stratagems, nosy relatives, shady scams and all kinds of goings on, most often aimed at taking advantage of Bertie's kindness and cluelessness... As always: pure gold for the listener!
The three Theban plays by Sophocles - Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone - are one of the great landmarks of Western theatre. They tell the story of Oedipus, King of Thebes, who was destined to suffer a terrible fate - to kill his father, marry his mother, and beget children of the incestuous union. He does this unknowingly but still has to suffer terrible consequences, which also tragically affect the next generation.
Booker T. Washington fought his way out of slavery to become an educator, statesman, political shaper, and proponent of the "do-it-yourself" idea. In his autobiography, he describes his early life as a slave on a Virginia plantation, his steady rise during the Civil War, his struggle for education, his schooling at the Hampton Institute, and his years as founder and president of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, which was devoted to helping minorities learn useful, marketable skills.
A young man commits all types of sins, but only his portrait shows the ravages of his life. Oscar Wilde's Faustian classic. Gothic horror at its best.
Twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding knows Green Town, Illinois, is as vast and deep as the whole wide world that lies beyond the city limits. It is a pair of brand-new tennis shoes, the first harvest of dandelions for Grandfather's renowned intoxicant, the distant clang of the trolley's bell on a hazy afternoon. It is yesteryear and tomorrow blended into an unforgettable always. But as young Douglas is about to discover, summer can be more than the repetition of established rituals whose mystical power holds time at bay.
Hard-boiled detective Sam Spade is hired to locate a client's sister by tailing the sister's companion. Spade's partner Miles Archer takes on the assignment, and quickly both Archer and the man he was shadowing are murdered. As Spade pursues the mystery of his partner's death, he is drawn into a circle of colorful characters, and they are all after a legendary statuette of a falcon that had long ago been made for King Charles of Spain. Encrusted with jewels, it is worth a fortune.
A collection of the best-loved of Aesop's fables including: "The Fox and the Grapes", "The Hare and the Tortoise," and "The Town Mouse & the Country Mouse."
One of the most celebrated thrillers ever written, The Day of the Jackal is the electrifying story of an anonymous Englishman who in, the spring of 1963, was hired by Colonel Marc Rodin, operations chief of the O.A.S., to assassinate General de Gaulle.
Golden Globe-winning actor Michael C. Hall (Six Feet Under) performs Truman Capote's masterstroke about a young writer's charmed fascination with his unorthodox neighbor, the "American geisha" Holly Golightly. Holly - a World War II-era society girl in her late teens - survives via socialization, attending parties and restaurants with men from the wealthy upper class who also provide her with money and expensive gifts. Over the course of the novella, the seemingly shallow Holly slowly opens up to the curious protagonist.
In teeming Victorian London, where lavish wealth and appalling poverty live side by side, Edward Pierce charms the most prominent of the well-to-do as he cunningly orchestrates the crime of the century. Who would suspect that a gentleman of breeding could mastermind the daring theft of a fortune in gold? Who could predict the consequences of making the extraordinary robbery aboard the pride of England's industrial era, the mighty steam locomotive?
Mattie Ross, a 14-year-old girl from Dardanelle, Arkansas, sets out to avenge her Daddy who was shot to death by a no-good outlaw. Mattie convinces one-eyed "Rooster" Cogburn, the meanest U.S. marshal in the land, to ride along with her. In True Grit, we have a true American classic, as young Mattie, as vital as she is innocent, outdickers and outmaneuvers the hard-bitten men of the trail in a legend that will last through the ages.
Mrs. Laetitia Rodd, aged 52, is the widow of an archdeacon who makes her living as a highly discreet private investigator. Her brother, Frederick Tyson, is a criminal barrister living in nearby Highgate with his wife and 10 children. Frederick finds the cases, and Laetitia solves them using her arch intelligence and her immaculate cover as an unsuspecting widow. When a case arises involving the son of the highly connected Sir James Calderstone, Laetitia sets off for Lincolnshire undercover as the family's new governess.
Jubilee tells the true story of Vyry, the child of a white plantation owner and his black mistress. Vyry bears witness to the South's antebellum opulence and to its brutality, its wartime ruin, and the promises of Reconstruction. Weaving her own family's oral history with 30 years of research, Margaret Walker's novel brings the everyday experiences of slaves to light. Jubilee churns with the hunger, the hymns, the struggles, and the very breath of American history.
A thrilling tale of mystery and suspense set during the French Revolution, where a dashing English aristocrat risks his life to enter France and save innocents from the guillotine. Baroness Orczy's marvelously romantic tale of an English bonvivant, Sir Percy Blakeney, and his secretive plots to secure the escape of beleaguered French aristocrats from the clutches of "Madame la Guillotine".
The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel is a secret society of English aristocrats who are determined to rescue their French counterparts from execution. Their leader is the mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel, whose name comes from the drawing of a red flower he uses to sign his messages.
Table of Contents:
Chapter 01: Paris: September, 1792
Chapter 02: Dover: "The Fisherman's Rest"
Chapter 03: The Refugees
Chapter 04: The League Of The Scarlet Pimpernel
Chapter 05: Marguerite
Chapter 06: An Exquisite Of '92
Chapter 07: The Secret Orchard
Chapter 08: The Accredited Agent
Chapter 09: The Outrage
Chapter 10: In The Opera Box
Chapter 11: Lord Grenville's Ball
Chapter 12: The Scrap Of Paper
Chapter 13: Either
Chapter 14: One O'Clock Precisely!
Chapter 15: Doubt
Chapter 16: Richmond
Chapter 17: Farewell
Chapter 18: The Mysterious Device
Chapter 19: The Scarlet Pimpernel
Chapter 20: The Friend
Chapter 21: Suspense
Chapter 22: Calais
Chapter 23: Hope
Chapter 24: The Death
Chapter 25: The Eagle And The Fox
Chapter 26: The Jew
Chapter 27: On The Track
Chapter 28: The Pere Blanchard's Hut
Chapter 29: Trapped
Chapter 30: The Schooner
Chapter 31: The Escape
Baroness Orczy
Baroness Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála "Emmuska" Orczy de Orczi (1865–1947) was a Hungarian aristocrat, raised in Britain.
Baroness Orczy was a novelist and painter, famed for her Scarlett Pimpernel series about an English aristocrat who donned a disguise to rescue French aristocrats threatened by the guillotine.
There are a round dozen recordings of The Scarlet Pimpernel available at Audible. Unabridged, abridged, a radio play featuring the great Leslie Howard and even a version in Italian. I chose the one by David Thorn for three reasons: it is unabridged, it is by far the cheapest and, to my ear anyway, it is the best performance. I’ll add a fourth: it isn’t in Italian.
These impeccable reasons overcame my uneasiness at the cover art: a sort of CGI nightmare of two humanoids in non-period costumes swooning woodenly toward each other (if that’s possible) in the sort of faux-medieval atmosphere familiar to dedicated gamers (or “Barbie Princess” video viewers). But the real problems started when I hit “play”.
First, my eager ears were saluted by a gaggle of kids chanting, “This is Audible Kids!” Really? This tale of intrigue and guillotines, set in the complex political atmosphere of Revolutionary, Republican France, riddled with references to Gluck and Burke and Fox, is a kid’s story? Granted, what the good baroness wrote is not great literature—in the pantheon I’d put her somewhere near Ian Fleming: a gifted spinner of tales, observer of people and writer of dialogue. Her book is one of the best examples of an iffy genre: popular historical fiction. I can’t recall another story I’ve seen spoofed more often. Still, this isn't kid’s stuff.
Next came the musical accompaniment at the beginning and end of every chapter. I suppose it’s meant to cast a spell of mystery and intrigue. What sounds like a synthesized guitar (or harp?) wanders up and down the scale hand-in-hand with a toy piano—or possibly a miniature xylophone? I didn’t know what it reminded me of. And then I got it: 70’s lounge music. I could see the shag-carpeted electric piano, the cocktails with little umbrellas. Next thing I expected was Bill Murray belting out, “Sta-a-a-a-a-r Wars, nothing but Sta-a-a-a-a-r Wars!” (Youtube it if you’re too young to remember.)
Then I discovered that the chapter divisions on my iPod didn’t sync up with the chapter divisions in the book. Instead, my menu showed eight “chapters”, each an hour-and-some-odd minutes long, each containing several actual chapters. In other words, lose your place and you’re lost.
And in between every chapter was wedged a generous slab or two of the lounge music. But I shouldn't complain. Those oases of synthesized smarminess served as the next best thing to chapter divisions, making the job of finding your place a little easier.
But the real problem, the thing that makes this recording a tragedy, is that there are words missing.
At first it wasn’t so bad. At the end of chapter 5, the last few words of the final sentence actually begin to fade away in order to make room for the dreadful muzak. But at least I could hear them.
Then, at the end of chapter six, the final sentence didn’t make sense at all. Looking up The Scarlet Pimpernel on the Guttenberg Project, I discovered that the sentence was missing its entire second half—words that reveal a detail I very much needed to hear if the story was to make any sense later on. The same thing happens at the end of chapter seven, the middle of chapters thirteen and fourteen and, I have no doubt elsewhere in places I didn’t notice. Admittedly, these later gaps are not nearly as crucial. Still, they’re flaws any competent producer would have caught.
I called this a tragedy but that’s too strong a word. This is simply a waste. Because David Thorn’s performance—his delineation of character, his pacing, his ability to keep several simultaneous voices (and the narration) distinct and vivid—is very good. It is a shame that his fine performance should be marred by such slipshod production. And it’s a shame that such a good yarn—a story that has come, like the Three Musketeers, to define our collective image of the period in which it is set—should be robbed of it’s full vigor.
I can give you no better proof of that vigor than by saying that, in spite of all the production flaws, I persevered because I was hopelessly hooked. It really is a glorious, swashbuckling rip-snorter of a story. Yes, at heart it is a bodice-ripper. The horns of Lady Blakeney’s various dilemmas are dwelt upon ad nauseum. One more reference to “a woman’s heart” and I probably would have given up. But there is good writing here and even shrewd insights.
For example, this description of an empty dining room is something of a tour de force:
“When Chauvelin reached the supper-room it was quite deserted. It had that woebegone, forsaken, tawdry appearance, which reminds one so much of a ball-dress, the morning after.
“Half-empty glasses littered the table, unfolded napkins lay about, the chairs—turned towards one another in groups of twos and threes—very close to one another—in the far corners of the room, which spoke of recent whispered flirtations, over cold game-pie and champagne; there were sets of three and four chairs, that recalled pleasant, animated discussions over the latest scandal; there were chairs straight up in a row that still looked starchy, critical, acid, like antiquated dowager; there were a few isolated, single chairs, close to the table, that spoke of gourmands intent on the most recherche dishes, and others overturned on the floor, that spoke volumes on the subject of my Lord Grenville's cellars.
“It was a ghostlike replica, in fact, of that fashionable gathering upstairs; a ghost that haunts every house where balls and good suppers are given; a picture drawn with white chalk on grey cardboard, dull and colourless, now that the bright silk dresses and gorgeously embroidered coats were no longer there to fill in the foreground, and now that the candles flickered sleepily in their sockets.”
Not bad. Not bad at all.
Then there are keen observations that get at the heart of the paradoxes of the French Revolution and, indeed, of all modern totalitarianism:
“On seeing the strangers…[the innkeeper] paused in the middle of the room… looked at them, with even more withering contempt than he had bestowed upon his former guests, and muttered, "Sacrrree soutane!"
“[One of the newcomers] had taken a quick step forward towards Brogard. He was dressed in the soutane, broad-brimmed hat and buckled shoes habitual to the French cure, but as he stood opposite the innkeeper, he threw open his soutane for a moment, displaying the tri-colour scarf of officialism, which sight immediately had the effect of transforming Brogard's attitude of contempt, into one of cringing obsequiousness.”
In other words, the political saviors have quickly become even more terrifying (and hateful) than even the Church that had supposedly been oppressing everyone so ruthlessly up until then.
Long story short: this is a good book and a very good performance, hampered by lamentable production. Which is probably why it was the cheapest.
12 of 13 people found this review helpful
I got this book with my Audible coupon that was recently given to me by Audible. I remember we read this book in high school way back in the early 50’s along with Sherlock Holmes stories. This is a book about the French Revolution. It also illustrates that you cannot judge a person by their appearance. Lord Percy Blakeney is a fancy dresser often starting current fads and plays the general flakey fancy party boy who married a famous French actress Marguerite St. Just. It turns out that Lord Percy is the Scarlet Pimpernel who rescues French aristocrats from the guillotine. Percy is a master of disguises and he and is merry ban give the French agent Chauvelin the slip as they continue to escape from his clutches. The book has lots of humor, action, and romance written in the style of the 19th century. Over all it is an interesting story placed in the middle of the French revolution. The book was written by Hungarian Baroness Orczy who lived in England. David Thorn did a good job narrating the story.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful
Where does The Scarlet Pimpernel rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
It's not the best but it's pretty good.
What other book might you compare The Scarlet Pimpernel to and why?
Actually, I compared it with Jane Eyre and Pride & Prejudice. The book is clearly written by a woman, and told from her perspective. It's based on the relationship between a man and a woman, and how her needs move her to get over their mutual pride.
Which character – as performed by David Thorn – was your favorite?
His French accent was so thick that at times I had a lot of difficulty understanding what they were saying.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Yes and no: I had to walk away a lot and upon return found the author was still waffling on about something completely superfluous.
Any additional comments?
I had watched the movie when I was a kid and although I don't remember the particulars, I did take away the memory of it being a swash-buckling moving, rife with swordplay etc. I was really disappointed to find that although there was a lot of build up, there was absolutely no climax. There was no confrontation, no sword play, no deaths (other than the reference to gory guillotine executions).
I was also surprised to learn it is considered Children's Fiction. I wouldn't have expected it to be any more so than Pride and Prejudice or Jane Eyre.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
Would you consider the audio edition of The Scarlet Pimpernel to be better than the print version?
No. The reader was great but the music was a little annoying to me.
What does David Thorn bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
I enjoyed the well-done French and English accents.
Any additional comments?
I really enjoyed listening to this book even though I have read it twice and seen a couple of movie versions.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
This is a constant winner. I have been reading this story since childhood, possibly over a hundred readings. You wont find a better audible reading than Thorn, he is fantastic.
The performance is so very well done.
I enjoyed the performer's accents. This is a fun story to enjoy with your family.
When I look for an audio book the hardest thing is finding a good narrator. Obviously I want to listen to this specific book, and so I generally don't research it much. I do however listen to all the audio samples, and get extremely frustrated when I can't find the one I think is the best. I can normally figure out which ones are the worst. This one I thought was one of the better ones. However 20 minutes into the book I became very confused. Who were all these different characters? They all sound exactly the same! So not wanting to quit the book quite yet, I looked up a character list and promptly spoiled the book for myself by learning who the Scarlet Pimpernel was. Don't make the same mistake I made. Get the narration by Michael Page. He was my second try, and was incredible! All the voices were distinct, and well accented. Plus his voice was pleasant to listen to during descriptions.
Overall: Don't get this version of the book. Get the one by Michael Page.
It was very well done. The French accents were a little difficult to understand, but other than that perfect.
Great performance of a overly fussy story. Too much detail , not enough action. Too much fleshing out of background images. Let's get on with the show !
This story is about the Scarlet Pimpernel the organization that worked to sneak rich aristocratic's out of the country. The story is great for kids to teach them to consider their actions before they take them. The story goes over how the actions taken by one person and how it endangers their loved ones. The story ends with them finally repairing the damage they caused. A great story for all ages.