Mostrando resultados por narrador "Nicholas Boulton" en Todas las categorías

One of the most important and influential Russian writers of the 19th century, Fyodor Dostoevsky is admired worldwide for his great realist novels, exploring questions of morality, philosophy and the nature of existence. This compilation contains the BBC radio productions of his four most famous novels - as well as three lesser-known works and two bonus documentaries - collected together for the first time.

Pursued by her enemies, flattered and courted for her lands, a powerful, devious princess is desperate to reach refuge. Haunted by the shadow of the young assassin set upon her, Princess Melanthe knows that an ice cold countenance is her only protection. To succumb to love is the greatest danger of all. She can trust only one man amid the lies, the mysterious Green Knight - a true knight who never wavers once he gives his heart; a man who cannot comprehend deceit.

The first three tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, the famed necromancers from the Malazan Book of the Fallen, collected in one volume.

In a fragile time of peace, a covert team monitors a suspect vehicle, ensuring the safety of a recovering community. Families relax, children play, and a cash-strapped Sam Ireland seeks work abroad. But the tranquility shatters when the operatives witness, in vivid technicolor, the car exploding in real-time.

Naples '44 is an unflinching autobiographical account of a year in Naples after the armistice and Allied landings in Sorrento in 1943. Working as a British counterintelligence officer under the Allied occupation, Lewis documents the rich pageant of life in the city and its surrounding areas. There is suffering and squalor: Criminal gangs are on the rise, along with typhus and black market commerce, and the female population is forced into part-time prostitution. But there is farce and humor, too, witnessed in the Roman uncle paid handsomely simply to appear at funerals.

Considered one of the first existentialist novels, Notes from Underground contains one of the most unsettling characters in 19th-century fiction. Resentful, cruel, entitled, and pitiful, Dostoyevsky's Underground Man is a disturbing human being bent on humiliating others for his own amusement. The Gambler is perhaps the most personal of Dostoyevsky's novels. Written to pay off the author's own gambling debts, the book follows the obsessions and anxieties of Alexey Ivanovitch, a sympathetic character who has given in to the forces of addiction.

Justine is the first volume in the Alexandria Quartet, four interlinked novels set in the sensuous, hot environment of Alexandria just before the Second World War. Within this polyglot setting of richly idiosyncratic characters is Justine, wild and intense, wife to the wealthy businessman Nessim, a Mari complaisant. Her emotional and sexual wildness fuels a highly charged atmosphere.

Underneath the patina of civilized society lies the Sadean demimonde: a bundle of lustful appetites fueled by momentary impulse and a desire for unfettered indulgence. And the target of this savagery: Justine de Bertole, a pious and virginal heroine. Grotesque, inhumane, and compelling, Sade’s novel overturns Rousseau’s views of the social contract, and the common trope that punishment only visits sinners, to deliver a passionate treatise on good and evil, virtue and sin.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the most astonishing child prodigy in the history of music, is felt by many people to be the greatest composer who ever lived. Dominated and shaped by a highly intelligent but frustrated and ambitious father, his story sees the development of a unique genius, from precocious and often endearing childhood to liberated fulfillment, unexpected poverty, and a tragically early death. Generously illustrated by Mozart’s music, from his fifth to his final year, this portrait-in-sound reveals a fascinating yet elusive character, drawing richly on the words of the composer himself and those who knew him.

First appearing in 1782, Dangerous Liaisons is one of the most scandalous and controversial novels in European literature. The plot unfolds through a series of letters as the two main protagonists, the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil, attempt to bring about the seduction of a young woman. The epistolary nature of the novel gives a multi-faceted perspective of the action, which places the book firmly in the tradition of libertine literature.

After the jealous tyrant Don Rodrigo foils their wedding, young Lombardian peasants Lucia and Lorenzo must separate and flee for their safety. Their difficult path to matrimony takes place against the turbulent backdrop of the Thirty Years War, where lawlessness and exploitation are at their height. Lucia takes refuge in a convent, where she is later abducted and taken on a nightmarish journey to a sinister castle, while Lorenzo goes to Milan, where he witnesses famine, riots, and plague - all evoked through meticulous description and with stunning immediacy.

M'lady's name is Shadowless, cos she's the fastest ship in the sky. And she ain't no everyday airship, she's an aethership, meaning she don't need engines nor turbines nor nowt but an aethermancer and the stars t' guide her. When luckless Dil falls half-dead onto the deck of the skyship Shadowless, he joins an outlaw crew haunted by visions of maelstrom. Driven by a ruthless captain, guided by a pilot with madness in her eyes, they hunt the power that holds up the clouds. Until it turns - to hunt them.

Dumas' novel became one of the great love stories from its first publication in 1848. The title role of the consumptive heroine and her ultimate sacrifice inspired actresses from Sarah Bernhardt to Greta Garbo and led Giuseppe Verdi to write La traviata. In the hands of Nicholas Boulton, the story of passion and conflict is as fresh and moving as when it was first written.

As a Frenchwoman of highly questionable upbringing, Marie-Anne de Vauteuil was shunned by genteel society. But then, an invitation to London on a mission of mercy from the very family who cast her aside lands her back in society - and into the arms of a man who is nothing but trouble. Wealthy American businessman Mason is a) accidentally engaged, b) desperate to get out of it, and c) neither wealthy nor a businessman. When he meets Marie-Anne, she makes him rethink his life as a fraud, and hoping for something he never believed possible: A proper life with a not-so-proper wife.

Daphnis and Chloe is a gem from the pen of the otherwise unknown second-century CE Greek writer Longus. It is the only work of his to survive, and little is known of him. Though perhaps overshadowed by the Roman magnificence of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (dating from a century earlier), Longus’ story entranced the choreographer Michel Fokine, who persuaded the French composer Maurice Ravel to write music for a ballet on the love story as part of the Ballets Russes’ season in Paris in 1912. Ravel, inspired, produced one of the most ravishing scores of the Impressionist period.

For reasons of his own, Stephen Hampton, Lord Summerdale, is determined to learn the truth behind the tangled tale of Helen's ruin. There is nothing he abhors so much as scandal - nothing he prizes so well as discretion - and so he is shocked to find that he cannot help but admire her. But how can she trust a man so steeped in the culture of high society, who conceals so much? And how can he, so devoted to the appearance of propriety, ever love a fallen lady?

Praised by Chekhov as his favorite writer, Nikolai Leskov occupies a unique place in Russian literature. His original stories often seem like folk-tales, their larger-than-life characters including soldiers, Tsars, priests and gypsies. Leskov's storytelling, simple in its style, combines a deep religious spirit with comic absurdity. The Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, Leskov's best-known work, is a realist account of a young woman who escapes from her loveless marriage through adultery, leading to violence and murder

In this masterful exploration of the human condition, three outpatients from a mental hospital—a music hall artist, reclusive writer, and a woman just awoken from a long coma—experience the history of London from the Blitz to the late 1980s through a chaotic experience of sensory delusions. Believing themselves to hear voices from London’s past, their fragmented and poignant stories create a tapestry of episodes, snippets, and sidelines that capture the essence of those living on society’s fringes.

Like his actor namesake, Ronald Coleman is a suave, well-spoken English gentleman. But although he's a movie buff, Coleman is no film star - he's a copper, and a Detective Inspector to boot. Together with his down-to-earth Scottish partner, DS Fred Astor, he sets about solving cases on two very different patches - rural Kirkcaldy and inner-city Southampton.

Charlotte Sauvin has always seen the world differently. At home on 33 Place Brugmann, in the heart of Brussels, her father and her closest friends and neighbours – the Raphaëls from the fourth floor, and Masha from the fifth – have ensured her secret is safe. But when the Nazis invade Belgium, and Masha and the Raphaëls disappear, Charlotte must navigate her new world alone.