Mostrando resultados por narrador "Bill Homewood" en Todas las categorías

In the grotesque bell-ringer Quasimodo, Victor Hugo created one of the most vivid characters in classic fiction. Quasimodo's doomed love for the beautiful gypsy girl Esmeralda is an example of the traditional love theme of beauty and the beast. Yet, set against the massive background of Notre Dame de Paris and interwoven with the sacred and secular life of medieval France, it takes on a larger perspective.

Romance, treachery, courage... The Three Musketeers has it all! In one of the greatest adventure stories ever written, the dashing young swordsman D'Artagnan and his daredevil companions Athos, Aramis, and Porthos, become embroiled in duels, love-tangles, and sinister intrigues which threaten the future of King, Queen, and France herself.

The year is 1866; the American Civil War is at its height. Five prisoners of war hatch an audacious plan to escape their camp by balloon. After a perilous 6,000-mile journey in a fierce storm, they are ‘shipwrecked’ on an unknown Pacific island. What follows is a thrilling tale of resourcefulness, courage and suspense. Together with our heroes we learn to hunt, to make weapons and pottery, to calculate our position by the sun, to extract iron and even to make explosives from the island’s remarkable natural resources.

Edgar Wallace’s classic vigilante detective series The Four Just Men – involving four wealthy and resourceful individuals determined to take the law into their own hands – has maintained its popularity for over a century In this, the opening volume, the mysterious Four Just Men punish by death those who are beyond the reach of the law. When Foreign Secretary Sir Philip Ramon’s proposed Aliens Extradition Bill threatens the safety of a Spanish resistance leader, the men warn Sir Sir Philip that he must either withdraw the legislation, or face death.

The heroic and honorable Zorro, an ace with a whip and a demon with a sword, fights for the poor and oppressed - a far cry from the effete young aristocrat Don Diego, who spends his days reading poetry and dreaming of the beautiful Lolita Pulido. When Lolita's family faces ruin and accusations of treason, Zorro must step in to save her family and her honor. But who is this masked caballero?

In the brutal Prussian winter of 1807, Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte’s Grande Armée suffered massive losses to the Russians in the Battle of Eylau. Many thousands died. Young Colonel Chabert falls heroically, his actions having turned the tide of the battle, but he is buried anonymously on the battlefield in a mass grave. Incredibly, he is alive, but severely injured, and digs himself out. On his eventual return to Paris, he finds his wife, the beautiful and ambitious Rosine, now remarried, and his fortune gone.

The story begins in Hamburg, 1863. The brilliant Professor Lidenbrock, inspired by an ancient, encoded manuscript, impetuously decides to take his reluctant nephew Axel on a seemingly insane mission: to travel down volcanic tunnels to the very center of the earth.

Somewhere in Africa, a tiny, primitive tribe, the Amahaggers, live secretly amongst the debris of a lost Egyptian civilization, ruled by the beautiful semi-goddess Ayesha, or She-who-must-be-obeyed. Ludwig Horace Holly, a Cambridge academic, is reluctantly drawn into plans for a voyage in search of this legendary queen. With his adopted son, Leo, he sets out on a brave journey, following a trail of clues. Shipwrecked and captured by cannibals, their voyage soon turns into a nightmare.

The swashbuckling sequel to The Mark of Zorro (The Curse of Capistrano), The Further Adventures of Zorro sees the daring hero out for revenge once more. After Captain Ramon kidnaps the beautiful Lolita Pulido, Zorro takes to the seas and battles pirates in a bid to win her back. Swordfights, death traps, and disastrously tight corners await him. But it is never much more than a challenge as the gallant caballero laughs in the face of danger - nothing can faze him.

Once again, the intrepid Zorro fights for justice! In the fourth of Naxos AudioBooks' Zorro titles, our hero's assistance is sought when the devious Pedro Morelos threatens the fortune of a wealthy heir, Vicente Canchola. Morelos hatches a plot to kidnap the Governor of California and extort profitable trade concessions from him. Zorro overhears this, but will he be able to foil the evil scheme, and stop the Canchola estate from falling into the wrong hands?

King Solomon’s Mines is set in nineteenth-century Africa. Allan Quartermain, hunter, is commissioned by the valiant Sir Henry Curtis and his jovial friend Captain Good to lead them to the fabled lost mines of King Solomon. In the company of these dauntless men we undertake the most exciting safari ever described. We hunt big game, we go to war with the terrifying King Twala of Kukuanaland and his diabolical henchwoman Gagaoola - and are amazed by the twist at the end.

The Count of Monte Cristo is a tale of revenge and retribution. Edmond Dantes, a young, energetic sailor, is falsely accused of treason on his wedding day and incarcerated in the forbidding Chateau d'If prison. His escape and ultimate revenge on those who wronged him makes this one of the most thrilling stories in French literature, as compelling now as when it was first published in 1846.

Here are 35 of the greatest poems in the French language, carefully selected and read in French by Bill Homewood, the bilingual English classical actor who has spent half his life in France. To help those English speakers with just a little French to appreciate the glories of these poems, he provides his own clear English translations.

Les Miserables is set in Paris after the French Revolution. In the sewers and back streets we encounter "the wolf-like tread of crime," and assassination for a few sous is all in a day's work. We weep with the unlucky and heartbroken Fantine, and exult with the heroic revolutionaries of the barricades; but above all we thrill to the steadfast courage and nobility of soul of ex-convict Jean Valjean, always in danger from the relentless pursuit of the diabolical Inspector Javert.

Taking the visionary epic, forbidden history, and conspiracy to new levels. Genesis Antarctica is a multi-faceted work "based on ancient documents discovered under the Antarctic ice in 1962 by the Australian Vostok Traverse Expedition". Known as the "Haakon Urn" texts, these unique writings predate all other early civilizations (including legendary Atlantis, Lemuria, and Mu) by several tens of thousands of years.

The tale of social-climbing arriviste Julien Sorel brilliantly captures the contradictions and hypocrisies permeating French society under the Bourbon Restoration. Using his formidable intellect, innate cunning and charm, Julien clambers his way to the top, manipulating and seducing those who have the power to give him the social status he desires.

In his Four Just Men series, Edgar Wallace comes up with something different: the ‘villains’ are not necessarily bad people, and the pursuers of justice, the Four Just Men, as they call themselves, are acting outside the law. They argue that their actions are for the public good, and dispassionately eke the ultimate revenge — death — on their victims. In their turn, the Four Just Men are pursued by the police, but somehow remain our heroes.

The Man in the Iron Mask continues the adventures of the dauntless heroes of The Three Musketeers - Aramis, Athos, Porthos and d'Artagnan. In old age their swashbuckling ought to have been replaced by a more gentle way of life, but the veteran warriors find themselves at the center of a plot in which both hearts and heads are broken, and the very throne of France is at stake.

Many of the greatest lovers, and the greatest love scenes in Western literature, are to be found in Shakespeare. The fresh but impassioned Romeo and Juliet, the resilient wit of Petruchio and Kate, the ardent exchanges of Lorenzo and Jessica ,and the anguished tragedies of Othello and Desdemona and Antony and Cleopatra - they all show love and courtship in its many forms.

Reina de los Angeles is being terrorized by a masked swordsman who marks the faces of his victims with Zorro's trademark Z. But is this the real Zorro? The governor of California offers a reward for the capture of Don Diego Vega (who is known to have previously been Zorro) dead or alive, while an army - led by the ruthless Captain Rocha - is in hot pursuit of the outlaw. Assisted by a coterie of allies and the native Cocopah tribe, Don Diego seeks to establish his innocence and unmask the evil imposter.