Showing results by narrator "Robert Bethune" in All Categories

As in the first two volumes of this series, our interest in these poems is not so much the poetry itself as the promise of what is to come. In these poems, mostly written in the years just before Byron left England to tour in Europe, it is fascinating to see how his power as a poet is constantly growing and to see how his enormously romantic heart and soul goes about fashioning itself.

This presentation of the beloved tale tells the classic story of the long night Ebenezer Scrooge spent with the ghosts of Christmas, the lessons it taught him, the change it made in his life, and the joy it brought to him and all who knew him. It tells the story the way Dickens wrote it, including scenes and descriptions other versions skip over.On this recording, the story is not merely read, it comes to life with voices and music.

Carl Sandburg fixed his eyes on the people of his time and place. He ignored or scorned the wealthy, the comfortable, the complacent, the powerful and those who serve them; he had no time for the ruling class. His eyes were open to the immigrant, the laborer, the hobo, the farmer, the man who works with his hands, the woman who runs a family, the soldier who goes to war for them.

Three stories by Rudyard Kipling, all about the marvelous nature of elephants. In "The Elephant's Child", we learn how the elephant got his trunk - one of the favorite tales from the Just-So Stories. In "Moti Guj, Mutineer", we learn what happens when an elephant has made a bargain - and humans have failed to do their part! In "Toomai of the Elephants", we learn how a special child and his relationship to a special elephant allow him to see something no one in the world has ever seen before. These marvelous stories, told with wit and wonder by Rudyard Kipling, are for young and old of all ages.

Here are two terrifying and sobering stories of ghosts who will stop at nothing. In Henry James' "The Romance of Certain Old Clothes", a woman's envy of her dead sister threatens to destroy her. In "Lost Hearts", three children learn that a classical scholar's love of the past has led him into a terrible and bloody delusion.

Renowned experts delve into the stark reality of the Alien presence on Earth. Riveting case studies of Air Force and Naval Alien encounters, UFO crash retrievals, interactions with E.T.'s, suppressed Alien technology and more are explored suggesting a foreboding and spellbinding conclusion for the fate of Mankind.

The beautiful, elegant, heartbreakingly sad story of Lancelot, Guinevere and Arthur is Edwin Arlington Robinson's subject in his 1920 novella in verse, Lancelot. His focus throughout is on one side of the triangle, that of Lancelot and Guinevere. Robinson does not give us Malory's tales of jousts and tournaments; he sets his poem instead in the quiet moments of reflection, hope, anger, forgiveness, remorse and honesty that allow him to explore the meaning of this, one of literature's most enduring love stories, in the depths of the hearts and minds of his characters.

In this, the 10th of the series, Dumas places us at the court of Joan of Naples, a beautiful, emotional, highly capable woman at the center of 30 years of plotting, betrayal, intrigue, war, beauty, love, and death. Hers is a world at war between both secular and ecclesiastical centers of power: the Pope at Avignon, the king in France, the emperor in Germany, and most importantly for her story, the kings of Hungary, so far away in culture and temperament, so close across the Adriatic Sea.

To paraphrase the note from the translator, The Celebrated Crimes of Alexandre Dumas père was not written for children. The novelist has spared no language - has minced no words - to describe violent scenes of violent times. In this, the third of the series, Dumas tells the story of three centuries of sectarian violence and civil war between the Protestants and the Catholics of the south of France.

In this set of "Uncanny Tales," Mary Louisa Molesworth deftly makes us feel the shiver of ghostly mystery without actually giving us a ghost! Or, to put it another way, she's interested in a different kind of ghostly presence. In "The Man with the Cough", it is the ghostly presence of a secret agent, and the ghostly experience of events that seem like a dream, but have real-world consequences. In "Halfway Between the Stiles", it is the ghostly presence of old memories of love that will not die away, and again, the real world responds. In "Will Not Take Place", it is a man who almost becomes a ghost.

Three great tales of meetings with ghosts, and perhaps more than ghosts: "The Vacant Lot" by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman; "On the Brighton Road" by Richard Middleton; and "Sister Johanna" by Amelia B. Edwards.

Here are three of the most wonderful Christmas stories ever written, presented for you along with two short pieces that just can't be left out of any Christmas collection worth its salt.

Rupert Brooke possessed one of the most amazingly sensitive, amazingly sensual poetic minds of the 20th century. Born into a world swiftly sliding into war, torn between highly idealized, romanticized relationships with men and conflicted, often bitter love for women, he expressed his complex emotions and vivid perceptions in verse of startling force, striking sensory intensity, and sometimes sly and biting humor. He left us just under 100 poems before his terribly untimely death of sepsis while serving in the British Navy.

In this, the twelfth of the series, Dumas, the novelist-historian, is back in full force. His subject is a well-documented historical fact: that a man named Arnaud du Thil was able to pass for two years as Martin Guerre, deceiving villages, neighbors, friends, family, and even the wife of Martin Guerre with equal success, even to the point of becoming the father of two children by Martin Guerre's wife.

To paraphrase the note from the translator, the Celebrated Crimes of Alexandre Dumas père was not written for children. The novelist has spared no language - has minced no words - to describe violent scenes of violent times.In this, the ninth of the series, Dumas uses the lives of two women, Angelique-Louise de Guerchi and Josephine-Charlotte Boullenois, and the men who, to put it bluntly, control their lives.

What Spoon River Anthology does for a Midwestern small town, Turns and Movies does for the world of vaudeville. Like Masters, like Aiken: passions, betrayals, secrets, sins, victories, defeats, and inevitable losing struggles against age and death are the stuff of this work. And that's only the first part of the book.

For those who love Byron’s poetry, the value of this work is not so much the poetry itself as the promise of what is to come, it is fascinating to see how his power as a poet is constantly growing and to see how his enormously romantic heart and soul goes about fashioning itself.What sort of poems are these? They are the work of an enormously talented young man, whose skills as a poet are still developing.

In this, the fourth volume of this series, we hear the poetry in which Byron began to make his mark on the world. Though his major breakthrough with Childe Harold is yet to come, his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers was a definite hit in its time, establishing Byron as a known poet and ensuring that his reputation as a literary bad-boy was off to a good start.

In this, the fifth volume of the work, William Hazlitt takes us through Napoleon's fall from power. He shows us the situation in Europe at that time: England controlling the sea, and England, Austria, Russia, and Prussia massed on the borders of France, ready to consummate their 25-year struggle to restore the Bourbon monarchy. Nor were these the only enemies confronting Napoleon.

In this, the second volume of the work, William Hazlitt takes us through the history of Napoleon's campaigns in Italy and Egypt. In the course of these campaigns, and in Napoleon's life in Paris between them, we can see a young, brilliant military leader starting to transform himself from a leader of armies into a leader of nations. His brilliant successes on the battlefield bring him to the adoring attention of the French people and the rather alarmed attention of the French government.