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Audiobooks Narrated by David Shaw Parker
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Random House presents the audiobook edition of Dark Age, written by James Wilde, read by David Shaw Parker.
Bridging the gap between 'Game of Thrones' and Bernard Cornwell comes the second chapter in James Wilde's epic adventure of betrayal, battle and bloodshed . . .
It is AD 367, and Roman Britain has fallen to the vast barbarian horde which has invaded from the north. Towns burn, the land is ravaged and the few survivors flee. The army of Rome - once the most effective fighting force in the world - has been broken, its spirit lost and its remaining troops shattered.
Yet for all the darkness, there is hope. And it rests with one man. His name is Lucanus who they call the Wolf. He is a warrior, and he wears the ancient crown of the great war leader, Pendragon, and he wields a sword bestowed upon him by the druids. With a small band of trusted followers, Lucanus ventures south to Londinium where he hopes to bring together an army and make a defiant stand against the invader.
But within the walls of that great city there are others waiting on his arrival - hidden enemies who want more than anything to possess the great secret that has been entrusted to his care. To seize it would give them power beyond imagining. To protect it will require bravery and sacrifice beyond measure. And to lose it would mean the end of everything worth fighting for.
Before Camelot. Before Excalibur. Before all you know of King Arthur. Here is the beginning of that legend . . .
In the last few decades secular society has become more tolerant of homosexuality. Now, in the West, we live in a time when to be gay is a matter of fact rather than a despised and criminal act. We celebrate sexual diversity but for much of the centuries past, religious interpretations and society's dogma have placed this 'forbidden love' into hell on earth; unable to be fully expressed or accepted. Poets went to unusual lengths at times to disguise their intentions. With camouflage and veil, their lines were accepted for what they said not for their intent. Indeed the word 'Lesbian' did not even gain acceptance in the OED until 1976.In this volume we gather together verse from Lesbian poets that is deeply personal and at times overwhelming. It is not just a search for physical love but a journey through the spiritual to completeness, to becoming whole.However we recognise that the label Lesbian might be anachronistic and so also include those who stand by their side, or who have a view in verse that helps us to revel in their love. For in the end that is all our journey is about. This volume comes to you from Portable Poetry, a specialized imprint from Deadtree Publishing. Our range is large and growing and covers single poets, themes, and many compilations.
Random House presents the unabridged downloadable audiobook edition of Pendragon by James Wilde, read by David Shaw Parker.
Here is the beginning of a legend. Long before Camelot rose, a hundred years before the myth of King Arthur was half-formed, at the start of the Red Century, the world was slipping into a Dark Age...
It is AD 367. In a frozen forest beyond Hadrian's Wall, six scouts of the Roman army are found murdered. For Lucanus, known as the Wolf and leader of elite unit called the Arcani, this chilling ritual killing is a sign of a greater threat.
But to the Wolf the far north is a foreign land, a place where daemons and witches and the old gods live on. Only when the child of a friend is snatched will he venture alone into this treacherous world - a territory ruled over by a barbarian horde - in order to bring the boy back home. What he finds there beyond the wall will echo down the years.
A secret game with hidden factions is unfolding in the shadows: cabals from the edge of Empire to the eternal city of Rome itself, from the great pagan monument of Stonehenge to the warrior kingdoms of Gaul will go to any length to find and possess what is believed to be a source of great power, signified by the mark of the Dragon.
A soldier and a thief, a cut-throat, courtesan and a druid, even the Emperor Valentinian himself - each of these has a part to play in the beginnings of this legend...the rise of the House of Pendragon.
Takes In Vein by Diotima Sophia. These stories reveal the truth about Vampires as told by a rather special vampire. Not the romantic or even the really nastily horrific stories that the non-vampires amongst us have dreamed up. Tracing a life lived over centuries from Ancient Rome, right through to the more modern Texas, these stories are linked by the narrator with interludes of explanation. Subtly dark and with enough horror behind to send a shudder down the spine in places, but with gentle humour and a facility for twisting the historic truth just so much that the fictitious explanation makes sense in context.
Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise he is brought face to face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth? A thoroughly absorbing and, at times, terrifying glimpse into the abyss of death, it is also a strong testament to the possibility of finding spiritual salvation.
Young, attractive and wealthy, Alice Vavasor is a woman in the prime of her life. And yet one question torments her: ‘What should a woman do with her life?’ Torn between the kind but dull Mr Grey and her dangerous and exciting cousin George, she is prone to constant indecision and uncertainty, much to the detriment of Mr Grey. Can You Forgive Her? is a crisp and engaging novel, brimming with romance, humor and pathos. It is the first of six in Trollope’s celebrated Palliser series.
The fifth novel in the Chronicles of Barsetshire, The Small House at Allington, concerns the lives of the two Dale girls, Lily and Bell, who live at the Small House. While Bell is in love with the local doctor, James Crofts, Lily is pursued by two men: the worldly, rich and handsome Adolphus Crosbie and the poor but honest Johnny Eames. With each determined to gain her hand in marriage, who will she choose? Enshrined as a literary classic, The Small House takes the reader on a delightful visit to rural England, and presents an insightful, compassionate and amusing examination of human nature, along with Trollope's signature flashes of genius.
In Framley Parsonage, the fourth novel of Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire, the author leaves the confines of Barchester and looks to the countryside, where he relates the moral difficulties of Mark Robarts, the young clergyman who has recently been appointed Vicar of Framley. Desperate to keep up socially with the local aristocracy, the country parson is persuaded to underwrite the debts of Sowerby, a well-respected peer. However, when the debts are called in, Robarts finds himself in a serious predicament. Written with acute insight, together with a great deal of warmth and humour towards his characters' attendant charms and foibles, Framley Parsonage is sure to delight.
Pamela, Samuel Richardson’s tale of a beautiful teenage servant-girl protecting her virtue from the amorous advances of her master, created a furore on its publication in 1740. The reading public was split into two factions: those who accepted the story as an encouragement to virtuous behaviour, and those who saw it as disguised pornography. Written in the form of a series of letters from Pamela to her parents, Pamela is a landmark in the development of the English novel.
For three hundred years The Pilgrim’s Progress has remained perhaps the best loved and most read of devotional fictions. In plain yet powerful and moving language, Bunyan tells the story of Christian’s struggle to attain salvation and the Gates of Heaven. He must pass through the Slough of Despond, ward off the temptations of Vanity Fair and fight the monstrous Apollyon… In Part Two, his wife and children follow the same path, helped and protected by Great-Heart, until for them too ‘the trumpets sound on the other side’.
John Clare was the forgotten Romantic poet, until the late twentieth century. Known by his contemporaries as the ‘Peasant Poet’ he recorded in his poems the natural landscape of rural England before the Industrial Revolution. His poems rival Wordsworth’s for their sensitivity to nature and pantheism: ‘I feel a beautiful providence ever about me,’ Clare wrote. But his life was a long struggle against poverty and mental collapse. Some of his finest poems were written in the local asylum.
The first novel in Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire, The Warden is a compassionate portrait of the gentle, thoughtful warden and precentor of Barchester Cathedral, Mr Septimus Harding. Loved and appreciated by all with whom he works, Harding lives an ordered, regular life in his protected religious environment. Then one day, a young reformer feels he has uncovered a mismanagement of funds and Harding is held to blame. The accusation comes as a shock not only to Harding himself but also to the cathedral community. It then comes to wider notice when the cause is taken up by a national newspaper. Trollope's insight into character, his abundant imagination, and his sheer narrative skill are at their peak in The Warden.
