Showing results by narrator "Mike Vendetti" in All Categories

How far would you go to get your family out if you were convinced that America was doomed? Would you build an underground bunker and stockpile it with ammunition and supplies? Buy a cabin in the woods and start growing all your own food? Not if you were obsessed with boats the way Terry Bailey is obsessed. Terry has an escape plan to sail to the very ends of the earth; the only real option left to survive what's coming, according to him.

The story takes place on Mars, where a lone narrator lives in a well, waiting patiently for unsuspecting Earth explorers to arrive on Mars, only to fall victim to his terrifying presence. Ray Bradbury's masterful storytelling and vivid descriptions bring the eerie atmosphere of the Martian landscape to life. The story explores themes of isolation, loneliness, and the consequences of human curiosity. Bradbury's ability to create a sense of unease and apprehension keeps readers engaged from start to finish.

Award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti reads "Ode to a Nightingale", a personal poem that describes Keats's journey into a state of negative capability. The tone of the poem rejects the optimistic pursuit of pleasure found within Keats's earlier poems and, instead, explores the themes of nature, transience, and mortality, the latter being particularly relevant to Keats.

Award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti narrates "The War Prayer", a short story or prose poem by Mark Twain, a scathing indictment of war and particularly of blind patriotic and religious fervor as motivations for war.

The "meat" of The Mueller Report is contained in his summaries of the report. Did the Russians interfere in our 2016 election? Did the Trump campaign collude with the Russians? Did Trump attempt to obstruct the investigation? Mueller presents the evidence but does not make judgments.

Finding a house on the back roads of New England near Arkham in a storm in H.P. Lovecraft's time might seem a bit of luck. This is, until you discover the ancient text that tended to fall open to itself at Plate XII, which represented in gruesome detail a butcher's shop of the cannibal Anziques, followed by a heavy tread upstairs when you thought the house was empty. A chilling tale of horror by the master of weird fiction.

Read by award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti, this short story by Philip K. Dick takes us where the powers of earth had finally exterminated the last of the horrible tribes of mutant freaks spawned by atomic war. Menace to homo sapien supremacy was about ended - but not quite. For out of the countryside, came a great golden, godlike youth whose extraordinary mutant powers, combining the world's oldest and newest methods of survival, promised a new and superior type of mankind.

"Annabel Lee" tells the story of young love cut short by tragedy. As the speaker (often assumed to be based on Poe himself, whose young wife died shortly before he wrote this poem) discusses his relationship with the now-deceased Annabel Lee, he presents the love between them as pure, eternal, and all-conquering. The love between the speaker and Annabel Lee may have been short-lived, but it remains too powerful to be defeated, even by death. Through describing this intensely idealized love, the poem argues that love is the strongest force on earth.

Award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti recites "Sonnet 18" by William Shakespeare.

Henry, or the youth as Crane refers to him leaves his home a naïve boy with visions of grandeur and glory; yet he runs from his first battle only to later join the walking wounded as an imposter. He wished that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage. He falls in with men who will shortly die from their wounds. One, a spectral soldier with a terrible wound, turns out to be his friend Jim Conklin.

E. M. Forster provides a view of the future from 1909. He comes alarmingly close. Humanity has lost the ability to live above ground, but they communicate magnificently through the Machine. As a matter of fact the Machine handles just about everything, taking the freedom of choice, or the need to choose away from humankind. But when the machine breaks, can humanity survive?

Mr. Washington was born a slave. His family, freed after the Civil War, struggled for a livelihood under terrible conditions. Mr. Washington, however, was determined to be educated, and he took advantage of every opportunity to learn available to him. He rose from poverty and ignorance to help found Tuskegee University. This audiobook should be an inspiration to all who listen.

"Bride of the Serpents" is a listen for fans of pulp fiction, offering a unique and tantalizing listening experience. Its ability to merge elements of sensuality, suspense, and snakes will transport listeners to a gripping world of hidden desires, shocking revelations, and lingering mysteries that will leave them yearning for more.

There comes a time in the course of a battle when a soldier leaves his fate in the hands of the Gods of war. He carries on with the battle at hand, the only way he knows how - fight now, think later. Stephen Cranes’ classic novel ‘The Red Badge of Courage’ offers us an insight into the mind of a young soldier. As he delves into the black depths of both PTSD and trauma, Cranes’ striking descriptions and masterful prose make this captivating novel unmissable for fans of Jack London, John Steinbeck, and Edith Wharton.

Barred from life and death alike, she waited - waited for the key that could unlock the sinister talisman that held her prisoner of eternity. Taken from The King in Yellow, often referred to in "True Detective" this is one creepy short story.

This clever and thought-provoking short story by Isaac Asimov, one of the masters of science fiction, suggests that a higher power can step in and steer us from our reckless ways. After all, we may be inhabitants of a universal barnyard overseen by a master farmer.

Award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti reads Acres of Diamonds, originally a lecture that Dr. Russell Conwell delivered in over 6,000 towns, villages, and cities.

Robert Bloch and H. P. Lovecraft were contemporaries of sorts, with Bloch at the beginning of his career as a science fiction and horror writer and Lovecraft near the end of his career in 1935, when "Shambler from the Stars" was published. In this well-crafted short story, the narrator's friend from Arkham, Lovecraft, is killed by a monster he evokes.

The fear of being buried alive was alive and well in the 19th century. It is said that Poe himself harbored this fear. An excellent audiobook to accompany a nighttime visit to a lonely graveyard.

We travel with The Hawk, or Carl Ericson, son of Norwegian immigrants, born at the end of the 19th century, through the first three adventurous periods of the young man's life. We see him as an adventurous boy, running away with Gertie Cowels, the girl that lives in the big house in the better part of town, only to be rescued by Bone Stillman, a backwoods philosopher and influence on Carl. He leaves his childhood, Gertie and Joralemon behind, for a short attempt at higher education, then to pursue the hobo life, a Bowery bartender, an engineer in Panama, and an aviator.