Mostrando resultados por narrador "David Shaw-Parker" en Todas las categorías

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on the 16 October 1854 in Dublin, Ireland. The son of Dublin intellectuals, Oscar proved himself an outstanding classicist at Trinity College and then at Oxford. Wilde then moved to London and its fashionable cultural and social circles. With his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the most well-known personalities of his day.

In The Last Chronicle of Barset, Trollope concludes his saga of ecclesiastical life. At the heart of the novel is the plight of Josiah Crawley, a proud, impoverished clergyman who faces difficult legal circumstances. Caught amid poverty, Josiah appears to have stolen a check and is forced to stand trial - despite the fact that he cannot remember its origins. To make matters worse, his daughter, Grace, desperately seeks the approval of Archdeacon Grantly, whose son she intends to marry.

In the English language ‘bittersweet’ is that most pivotal of words. The mixture of sadness and happiness that suggest both but often bringing us smartly to earth, smack dab in-between them both, with little of either.

Almost always when we think of Ghost Stories, we first think of those written by the Victorians. If you want a really good ghost story to bring that edge of chill, that foreboding of dread, that feeling that in an empty house we are not quite alone and that sometimes the sharp, sheer shock of what just happened is upon us then look no further than ‘The Victorian Ghost Story’ for your listening pleasure.

Before Sir Florian Eustace dies, he gives his beloved wife Lizzie a beautiful and expensive diamond necklace valued over £10,000. Dispute soon rages between the Eustace family and the manipulative and conniving Lizzie: it's claimed that the diamonds are a precious family heirloom, but Lizzie argues they were a gift. Is she lying? As the family's lawyer determines to reunite them with the jewels, Lizzie resorts to increasingly desperate measures, until one day the jewels are stolen. Who is responsible? The Eustace Diamonds is a wonderfully absorbing blend of cynicism and humor.

Many nations, peoples and special interest groups believe that violence will advance their cause. Warfare has changed greatly since the Second World War; it continued to change during the late 20th century, and this process is still accelerating. Political, technological, social and religious forces are shaping the future of warfare, but most Western armed forces have yet to evolve significantly from the Cold War era when they trained to resist a conventional invasion by the Warsaw Pact.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. The Russian Literary Tradition has justly earned a magnificent reputation. The Russian Empire of the Czars was a huge and disparate patchwork of peoples ruled by an overbearing elite that employed a middle-class bureaucracy to keep the working class firmly underfoot. Within its vaulted ranks are a role call of many of the greatest literary talents of the ages.

Ryūnosuke Niihara was born in Kyōbashi, Tokyo in Japan on the 1st March 1892. Sadly, his mother suffered severe mental illness after his birth and so, at only eight months old, he was sent to be raised by his maternal uncle and aunt, from whom he received the Akutagawa family name. Akutagawa published "Rashōmon" in 1915 and whilst it was disliked by his friends everyone else knew better. As other short stories followed so did his growing literary reputation as the father of the Japanese short story.

The fifth novel in the Chronicles of Barsetshire, The Small House at Allington, concerns the lives of the two Dale girls, Lily and Bell, who live at the Small House. While Bell is in love with the local doctor James Crofts, Lily is pursued by two men: the worldly, rich and handsome Adolphus Crosbie and the poor but honest Johnny Eames. With each determined to gain her hand in marriage, who will she choose?

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society. In this volume we offer up a small selection of talents whose time has now come again.

In this series we listen to short stories that are NOT by perhaps the most well-known author of this type. But the many other rich talents in the volume may have treated the subject matter a little differently, or were perhaps just overlooked in the stampede to applaud the winner, but these authors are of equal merit.

Someone has to die.... Henning Juul sits in a boat on a dark lake. A man with a gun sits opposite him. At the man's feet is a body that will be soon be dumped into the water. Henning knows that the same fate awaits him. And he knows that it's his own fault. Who started the fire that killed Henning's young son? How is his sister, Trine, involved? Most importantly, who can be trusted?

Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 in the Russian province of Tula to a wealthy noble family. As a child, he had private tutors but he showed little interest in any formal education. When he went to the University of Kazan in 1843 to study oriental languages and law, he left without completing his courses. Life now was relaxed and idle but with some writing also taking place. In 1852 ‘Childhood’ was published to immediate success and was followed by ‘Boyhood’ and ‘Youth’. His experience in the army and the horrors he witnessed resulted in ‘The Cossacks’ in 1862 and the trilogy ‘Sevastopol Tales’.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. In this decade the equality of the sexes is now law. In real life it’s patchy. Power refuses to ebb or cede. In literary terms though women are again second to none with writing that strides confidently forward addressing the issues, the characters and the stories in unique and individual ways.

Visible Gods is an imaginary dialogue between Socrates and four fictitious modern-day characters. Socrates' worldview is of a living cosmos with man only half-way up the hierarchy of all beings; above him reign suprahuman beings of great majesty and power - the visible gods. The moderns with whom Socrates converses disdain his ancient Greek cosmos as primitive and false.

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society. In this volume we offer up a small selection of talents from the literary landscape of Continental Europe and its male authors whose time has now come again.

Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise he is brought face to face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?

Trains have always held a special place for most of us. We’re intrigued by the mere fact that we can sit down in one place and arrive in another and enjoy the adventure and time in between. In this volume we explore both the journeys and the workers who run and maintain the railway network.

In this volume we examine the German language. Or rather the authors who wrote in German but are here translated into English. German is most often called the language of philosophers due to its precision and clarity. However, if you’ve studied German, you will know that sentence construction can be difficult to grasp. However, within these stories the language of these great talents express themselves in dazzling prose and searching narratives. And the characters? Clearly the works of genius.

Blast off into space and discover the planets in our Solar System and beyond in this jam-packed encyclopedia for children. Learn what living in space is like for an astronaut, then take a whirl around planet Earth and the moon. Then go beyond where any human has gone before, and marvel at the...