Showing results by narrator "William Roberts" in All Categories

After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly 3 million Americans believed they had been abducted by aliens - as he later put it, "It was clear my people needed me." They were greeted by a new and improved America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental-floss hotlines, and the staunch conviction that ice is not a luxury item.

The Declaration of Independence is one of the most pivotal documents in Western history, along with the Magna Carta and Emancipation Proclamation. Almost 250 years after the founding fathers signed the Declaration and heralded the birth of the United States, the story of how America overthrew the British is as meaningful today as when the ink was still wet on the page. This audiobook explains the story of every major military action with comprehensive timelines for every stage of the Revolutionary War.

I’m sleeping with someone who doesn’t recognize me from our past. And who also doesn’t know I’m having his baby in the future. I’ve been crushing on Nick since high school. Back then, he was the popular jock and I was his nerdy tutor. Now he’s a star athlete and I run into him again on campus. He loves my curvy, hourglass figure. But he doesn’t even know I’m the same girl. One thing leads to another, and I find myself in his arms. And in his bed. And he finds himself in my panties. Then I find myself pregnant, with his baby.

In 1950, a young doctor, Norton Perina, signs on with the anthropologist Paul Tallent for an expedition to the remote island of Ivu'ivu in search of a rumored lost tribe. They succeed, finding not only that tribe but also a group of forest dwellers they dub "The Dreamers," who turn out to be fantastically long-lived but progressively more senile. Perina suspects the source of their longevity is a hard-to-find turtle but he soon discovers that its miraculous property comes at a terrible price.

At the Mountains of Madness first appeared in 1936, in the February, March and April editions of the American magazine Astounding Stories. One of H.P. Lovecraft’s most chilling works, it draws on Edgar Allan Poe’s Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, as well as Lovecraft’s deep fascination with the Antarctic. The sinister discoveries made by a group of explorers in At the Mountains of Madness are testament to the author’s enormous powers of imagination.

A retired university professor has just been diagnosed with a rare degenerative disease. Returning home from the doctor’s office, he witnesses a pretty young girl being kidnapped. Believing the police are dragging their feet, he vows to find her on his own. He knows that if he doesn’t act, she may never be found alive. Jennifer Riggins, the kidnapped girl, is being held prisoner by a depraved couple who have started an exclusive website called What Comes Next. Viewers can watch her terrifying ordeal in real time.

In March 1621, when Plymouth’s survival was hanging in the balance, the Wampanoag sachem (or chief), Ousamequin (Massasoit), and Plymouth’s governor, John Carver, declared their people’s friendship for each other and a commitment to mutual defense. Later that autumn, the English gathered their first successful harvest and lifted the specter of starvation. Ousamequin and 90 of his men then visited Plymouth for the 'First Thanksgiving'. The treaty remained operative until King Philip’s War in 1675, when 50 years of uneasy peace between the two parties would come to an end.

After nearly two decades in Britain, Bill Bryson, the acclaimed author of such best sellers as The Mother Tongue and Made in America, decided it was time to move back to the United States for a while. This was partly to let his wife and kids experience life in Bryson's homeland, and partly because he had read that 3.7 million Americans believed that they had been abducted by aliens at one time or another. It was thus clear to him that his people needed him.

This collection features a selection of classic short stories and poems by legendary Western authors Stephen Crane, Bret Harte, and Jack London.

Henry Huggins’s adventures are finally all in one location! Come join Henry on Kilckitat Street as he gets into hijinks – usually with the help of Ribsy and none other than Ramona Quimby. This collection includes: Henry Huggins, Henry and Beezus, Henry and Ribsy, Henry and the Paper Route, Henry and the Clubhouse, and Ribsy.

In Neither Here nor There Bill Bryson brings his unique brand of humour to bear on Europe as he shoulders his backpack, keeps a tight hold on his wallet, and journeys from Hammerfest, the northernmost town on the continent, to Istanbul on the cusp of Asia.

At the heart of these stories, as with all the best of Lovecraft’s work, is the belief that the Earth was once inhabited by powerful and evil gods, just waiting for the chance to recolonise their planet. Cthulhu is one such god, lurking deep beneath the sea until called into being by cult followers who – like all humans – know not what they do.

Fred Underhill is a young cop on the rise in Los Angeles in the early 1950s - a town blinded to its own grime by Hollywood glitter; a society nourished by newspaper lies that wants its heroes all-American and squeaky clean. A chance to lead on a possible serial killing is all it takes to fuel Underhill's reckless ambition - and it propels him into a dangerous alliance with certain mad and unstable elements of the law enforcement hierarchy. When the case implodes with disastrous consequences, it is Fred Underhill who takes the fall. His life is in ruins, his promising future suddenly a dream of the past.

For 83 blood-soaked days, the fighting on the island of Okinawa plumbed depths of savagery as bad as anything seen on the Eastern Front. When it was over, almost a quarter of a million people had lost their lives, making it by far the bloodiest US battle of the Pacific. In Okinawa, the death toll included thousands of civilians lost to mass suicide, convinced by Japanese propaganda that they would otherwise be raped and murdered by the enemy. On the US side, David argues that the horror of the battle ultimately determined President Truman’s choice to use atomic bombs in August 1945.

The Nazis and the Occult reveals the true nature of the Third Reich's link with arcane influences and of evil itself, as well as explaining how an ill-educated, psychologically unbalanced nonentity succeeded in mesmerizing an entire nation. Forget what you have read, seen, and heard. This is the real secret history of Nazi Germany and its dark Messiah - Adolf Hitler.

An alternative history of the US space programme, dramatised by Dirk Maggs. What if John F. Kennedy survived the assassination attempt and developed the space programme? President Nixon, with the help of former president JFK, has just green-lit NASA’s first manned expedition to Mars. Aboard the expedition is Natalie York, a geologist who risks everything she loves for the chance to go to space; Phil Stone, former X-15 test pilot; and Ralph Gershon, a Vietnam War hero intent on being the first African American to reach another planet.

Hanson died quickly - with a knife in his back. Carole was next - covered with acid and tortured to death. Now it's Judd's turn - a New York pschoanalyst, he'd known them both. Two faceless executioners on a murderous mission, searching for a secret which is unknown to Judd. Not safe at home or at work, Judd feels his professional grip slipping while he faces constant threat of imminent attack. To whom can he ultimately turn?

The Shadow over Innsmouth and The Whisperer in Darkness are counted among H. P. Lovecraft's most popular stories. In the first we are transported to the decrepit coastal town of Innsmouth, whose amphibianlike citizens betray a dark and sinister secret. The second takes us to Vermont, where a university professor becomes embroiled in a mind-bending celestial mystery after strange things are seen floating in the rivers.

H.P. Lovecraft never found fame during his lifetime and died in 1937 in relative obscurity. But in the decades that followed his death, his importance as a unique and original visionary in the genre of science fantasy and 'weird fiction' has grown monumentally, so that even talents such as author Stephen King and film-maker John Carpenter have described him as a prime influence upon their creative lives. Here, then, is a selection of his stories.

Nine long years have passed since the killer last struck - nine years since eight helpless young women were brutally slaughtered by an icepick-wielding maniac. The trail grew cold and the book was unofficially closed on a serial killer who stopped killing. But now "The Icepick Prowler" has confessed - but only to seven of the killings. Not only does he deny the eighth, he has an airtight alibi. Barbara Ettinger's family had almost come to accept that the young woman was the victim of a random killing.