Showing results by narrator "Wanda McCaddon" in All Categories

When they were little girls, Cassandra and Julia played a game in which they entered an alternate world modeled on the landscapes of Arthurian romance. Now, the sisters are grown and have become hostile strangers—until a figure from their past, a man they once both loved and suffered over, reenters their lives. It is the skittish, snake-obsessed Simon who draws Julia and Cassandra into his charismatic orbit … and into menacing proximity to each other, their discarded selves, and the game that neither of them has completely forgotten.

Almost 200 years after her death, Austen remains a hot topic, and the current flare in the cultural zeitgeist echoes the continuous revival of her works, from the time of original publication through the 20th century. In Jane's Fame, Claire Harman gives us the complete biography of the author and analyzes her lasting cultural influence, making this essential listening for anyone interested in Austen's life, works, and remarkably potent fame.

Kate Croy is secretly engaged to Merton Denscher, a journalist who lacks money. By chance, Kate befriends Milly, an American heiress, and learns she is suffering from a fatal illness. Kate devises a scheme to maximize their combined assets: she encourages Merton to take an interest in Milly and marry her. Kate intends to make him a rich widower whom she herself can marry. But such well-laid plans are not enough for the subtlety of the heart.

Jenni Clark is a ghostwriter. She loves to immerse herself in other people's stories--it's a respite from her own life and from a relationship that appears to be nearing its end. Jenni's latest assignment takes her to a coastal hamlet in England, where she has agreed to pen the memoir of an elderly farm owner named Klara. Jenni assumes the project will be easy: a quiet, ordinary tale of a life well lived. But Klara's story is far from quiet.

Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award

With rare subtlety, impressive scope, and a keen eye for detail, Gita Mehta lays bare the complexities of Indian culture and history in Raj, the remarkable story of a woman of royal birth coming of age during India’s fight for independence.

For Marcia Davenport, the research and writing of Mozart was truly a labor of love, during which she retraced every journey he made, saw every dwelling (then extant) in which he had ever lived, every theatre where his works were first performed, and every library and museum where his manuscripts were then to be seen. In this eloquent work of historical reconstruction, Davenport lets her characters tell their own stories.

A traveling tinker, John Bunyan accepted long imprisonment rather than give up preaching the Gospel. He explained the life of the Spirit in language the common people could understand and in pictures that stuck in the mind. When he wrote Pilgrim's Progress, his fame spread rapidly, and within 50 years of his death, the book was reputed to be in most English homes. John Brown's biography of John Bunyan remains the standard, despite the lapse of over 100 years since it was first published. The author was one of Bunyan's successors as minister of the church in Bedford.

January 1888. Vera Arti carries The Communist Manifesto in Armenian through Istanbul’s streets, unaware of the men following her. When the police discover a shipload of guns and the Imperial Ottoman Bank is blown up, suspicion falls on a socialist commune Arti’s friends organized in the eastern mountains. Special Prosecutor Kamil Pasha is called in to investigate. He soon encounters his most ruthless adversary to date.

This classic biography should be mandatory listening for all academicians. Winsor, a historian, poet, literary critic, and fiction writer, retraces every important aspect of Columbus' fascinating life, from his family origins to his beliefs and convictions. Columbus emerges as a living, breathing human being with passions and ideas: a man possessing intellect and imagination enough to believe that the earth was round, not flat. Winsor's opus represents an honest search for the truth.

Sir Henry Fortune, celebrity curator, has vanished. So too has his partner in love and money, disreputable art dealer Jason Pringle. Panic spreads throughout the London art world when more people go missing. No one can locate Anastasia Holliday, sensational Abject artist; Jake Thorogood, the critic who catapulted her into stardom; or Dr. Hortense Wilde, notorious for having influenced generations of art students to despise craftsmanship. Hysteria hits the media when it is found that the common link between the victims is that their careers blossomed when they embraced newly fashionable conceptual art.

When Sir William Temple (1628 - 1699) and Dorothy Osborne (1627 - 1695) began their passionate love affair, civil war was raging in Britain, and their families - parliamentarians and royalists, respectively - did everything to keep them apart. Yet the couple went on to enjoy a marriage and a sophisticated partnership unique in its times.

Wuthering Heights is the name of a rustic old house situated above the Yorkshire moors and dominated by its new master, Heathcliff. It is a famous story of love, passion, and the nature of man.

London, 1937. Following the gloomy days of the abdication of King Edward VIII, the entire city is elated to welcome King George. Just one of the many planned festivities for the historic coronation is a BBC radio adaptation of Queen of Scots, and the original playwright, Josephine Tey, has been invited to sit in on rehearsals. Soon, however, Josephine gets wrapped up in another sort of drama. The lead actress has been sleeping with Britain's most venerable newsman, Anthony Beresford - and his humiliated wife happens to work in the building.

Sarah Crewe is treated like a princess at Miss Minchin's boarding school - until her father dies, leaving her peniless. Now she must struggle as a servant to evil Miss Minchin, but the intellgent, kind-hearted girl never loses hope. From her garrett, she soon makes friends and finds incredible adventures. And good will and imagination ultimately triumph by this book's glorious ending. This beloved classic has been continuously in publication since 1905. Experienced Shakespearean actress Wanda McCaddon captures all the drama of Sarah Crewe's adventures as well as the accents of Miss Minchin, the scullery maid, and Sarah herself.

A Million a Minute is the inside story of the mysterious and wildly influential world of trading. In our interconnected global markets, traders have become the front-line, free-market warriors closest to the money, closest to the action. Their reactions to world events can topple governments and cause currencies to rise or plummet. They affect the prices we pay for the food we eat, the gasoline we use, even our homes and mortgages.

Thomas Hardy's moving story of star-crossed lovers shows human beings at the mercy of forces beyond their control, setting a tragic drama of human passion against a backdrop of space and scientific discovery. Unhappily married, Lady Constantine defies social standards when she falls in love with the youthful and socially inferior Swithin St. Cleeve. In an ancient monument converted into an astronomical observatory, they isolate themselves from society and create their own private universe.

This is the story of a lifelong friendship between two women that passionately lasts despite long separations and differences in time, geography, and lifestyle. Deirdre and Bernadette, who share a childhood and an Australian convent school education, each make different choices, landing them in places as diverse as Vietnam, England, and Argentina, but they remain alert and emotionally connected through their friendship.

On Midsummer’s Eve, Dan and Una enact A Midsummer Night’s Dream three times over - right under Pook’s Hill. That is how they meet Puck, “the oldest Old Thing in England” and the last of the People of the Hills. Through Puck, they are introduced to the nearly forgotten pages of old England’s history and to characters that can illuminate their own historical predicaments. Originally published in 1906, these 10 stories and accompanying poems were intended for both adults and children.

Hear the stories of the scientists who have shaped the past 2,000 years. This audiobook provides an absorbing and intimate account of the lives of 20 eminent scientists who reached the heights of human achievement, including Archimedes, Bacon, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, and more.

London 1887. For Maribel Campbell Lowe, the beautiful bohemian wife of a maverick politician, it is the year to make something of herself. A self-proclaimed Chilean heiress educated in Paris, she is torn between poetry and the new art of photography. But it is soon plain that Maribel's choices are not so simple. As her husband's career hangs by a thread, her real past, and the family she abandoned, come back to haunt them both.