Audiobooks narrated by Kirsten Wever

"I went often to look at the collection of curiosities in Heidelberg Castle, and one day I surprised the keeper of it with my German. I spoke entirely in that language. He was greatly interested; and after I had talked a while he said my German was very rare, possibly a 'unique'; and wanted to add it to his museum. If he had known what it had cost me to acquire my art, he would also have known that it would break any collector to buy it. Harris and I had been hard at work on our German during several weeks at that time, and although we had made good progress, it had been accomplished under great difficulty and annoyance, for three of our teachers had died in the mean time. A person who has not studied German can form no idea of what a perplexing language it is."

Mark Twain (Author), Kirsten Wever (Narrator)

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The Second Father Brown Collection: The Incredulity of Father Brown & The Secret of Father Brown

"The Second Father Brown Collection includes two collections of short stories featuring Father Brown. Father Brown is a fictional Roman Catholic priest and amateur detective who is featured in 53 short stories published between 1910 and 1936 written by English novelist G.K. Chesterton. Father Brown solves mysteries and crimes using his intuition and keen understanding of human nature. Chesterton loosely based him on the Rt Rev. Msgr. John O'Connor (1870-1952), a parish priest in Bradford, who was involved in Chesterton's conversion to Catholicism in 1922. Included in this collection: 1. The Incredulity of Father Brown (1926): The Resurrection of Father Brown / The Arrow of Heaven / The Oracle of the Dog / The Miracle of Moon Crescent / The Curse of the Golden Cross / The Dagger With Wings / The Doom of the Darnaways / The Ghost of Gideon Wise 2. The Secret of Father Brown (1927): The Mirror of the Magistrate / The Man With Two Beards / The Song of the Flying Fish / The Actor and the Alibi / The Vanishing of Vaudrey / The Worst Crime in the World / The Red Moon of Meru / The Chief Mourner of Marne / The Secret of Flambeau"

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (Author), Kirsten Wever (Narrator)

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The Bartlett Mystery

"This is a fast-paced mystery, set in New York City, has two or three really interesting ('round') characters, a solid plot, no cheap plot-twists, two full-fledged sub/urban battles and some real surprises. Winifred Bartlett, a beautiful and poor orphan, suddenly finds herself homeless and out of a job. Prince Charming (nee Rex Carshaw) comes on to her by accident and begins to take an interest. As strange, apparently unconnected disasters continue to batter poor Winnie, Rex and two police detectives (the most interesting characters in the book) probe the causes and forces threatening the dear girl's well-being and, ultimately, her very life and liberty. It turns out that it is Winifred's close resemblance to her mother, who died long ago in Vermont, that threatens certain powerful interests in contemporary (1913) New York. An unusually large cast of bad guys - each with a different motive for getting rid of Winifred - includes a US Senator, and unsuccessful book binding supervisor, an influential NY society belle, and gun-slinging Western gangster 'Mick the Wolf.' The mystery becomes increasingly complex with every new assault on the girl's well-being, and the efforts of the NY police and the ever-faithful Rex."

Louis Tracy (Author), Kirsten Wever (Narrator)

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The Doctor's Wife

"When The Doctor's Wife was first published in 1864, Mary Elizabeth Braddon was well known for her scandalous bestseller, Lady Audley's Secret. Adultery, death, and the spectacle of female recrimination and suffering are the elements that combine to make The Doctor's Wife a classic women's 'sensation' novel. Yet it is also Braddon's most self-consciously literary work and her rewriting of Madame Bovary. Like Emma Bovary, Braddon's heroine, Isabel Gilbert, is trapped in a marriage to a man incapable of understanding her imaginative life. But Braddon's novel differs vastly from Flaubert's in the nature and consequences of Isabel's 'affair'."

Mary Elizabeth Braddon (Author), Kirsten Wever (Narrator)

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The Lifted Veil (Version 2)

"George Eliot’s 1859 novella, The Lifted Veil, departs radically from the grounded realism of her longer and better known works, such as Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda. Its tone calls to mind the works of middlebrow Sensationists, like Wilkie Collins (The Moonstone), and of some of the better known authors of Victorian era horror writings, such as Bram Stoker (Dracula) and Mary Shelley (Frankenstein). Eliot here explores mystical themes, considering the world of phenomena which are felt but not seen. Yet in doing so she suggests that the apparent clairvoyance of her main character, Latimer, may in fact be, at least in part, psychological expressions of his early life experiences. This view is supported by the fact that most of Latimer’s vision-based predictions of how people will behave and events unfold do not, in the end, turn out as he had foretold. Much of this work’s power and complexity lie in Latimer’s relationship with Bertha, whom he ultimately, unhappily, marries. Bertha is the one person whose thoughts and feelings he is not able to read, raising the question: What is it about Bertha that renders her inaccessible to his psychic penetration – and what does this tell us about her, and about him. (Introduction by Kirsten Wever)"

George Eliot (Author), Kirsten Wever (Narrator)

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The Belton Estate

"Clara Amedroz is the virtuous, intelligent, and quick-witted heroine of this novel. Like all women of her time, she has few options other than to marry. She is lucky enough to have two eligible suitors, and chooses the more urbane and worldly of the two. Alas, however, she realizes fairly quickly that Captain Aylmer is not a nice person. Throughout much of the novel we find her trying hard not to recognize that Will Belton - the suitor she rejected, and who still loves and wants to marry her - is. As in all of Trollope's novels, the sub-plots are at least as engaging as the main story: here, we find Clara associated with, and ultimately for some time dependent on, Mr. and Mrs. Askerton, who - having perforce lived together for some time before they were married - are social outcasts. Clara is courageous enough to remain loyal to these friends, knowing that thus she, too, risks social condemnation and reduces her value on the marital market-place. She becomes wiser, more generous, and more forgiving as her outlook on the world matures in various trials-by fire: the experiences she endures as a result of her mistaken allegiance to Captain Aylmer; her friendship with the Askertons; and the malicious gossip and social ostracization attendant on her loyalty to them. The question that will decide her ultimate happiness is whether she can be as generous and forgiving of herself. (Summary by Kirsten Wever)"

Anthony Trollope (Author), Kirsten Wever (Narrator)

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Miss Mackenzie

"The thirty-five year-old (hence utterly over-the-hill) Miss Margaret Mackenzie, having devoted her life to others, suddenly finds herself with no one to care for, and in possession of a moderate fortune. Having money, she is now much sought-after and no longer universally deemed too old to marry. Partly because she has spent her life taking care of the brother whose money she has now inherited, she has no experience of wealth or popularity. Miss Mackenzie is the definition of "other-oriented. (Indeed, Trollope originally considered naming the novel, and his heroine, "Griselda", presumably to invoke the folkloric character's qualities of stolid obedience and endless patience.) These circumstances are the perfect set-up for classic Trollopian swipes and snipes at various fortune-hunters and other obsequies, and more broadly at society's sexism, classism, and Mammonism. She comes into her own and begins to try to enjoy life, at first juggling, but ultimately rejecting, three serious suitors. As the story unfolds, the particulars of her deceased brother's life and death reveal themselves, Miss Mackenzie becomes increasingly able to know who she is and what she wants, and both she and the reader are better able to discern the true colors of those around her. The question is: Will her self-knowledge overcome both her personal history and various social prejudices, so as to allow her to fall in love with - and say "yes" to - a really good man? (Summary by Kirsten Wever)"

Anthony Trollope (Author), Kirsten Wever (Narrator)

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The Doctor's Wife

"This is one of the Victorian "Sensationist" Mary Elizabeth Braddon's many novels (best known among them: "Lady Audley's Secret"). It is extremely well written, fluid, humorous and, in places, self-mocking: one of the main characters is a Sensation Author. The motifs of the-woman-with-a-secret, adultery, and death are classic "sensationist" material. Yet this is also a self-consciously serious work of literature, taking on various social themes of the day. Specifically, Braddon presents the psychological struggle and cognitive dissonance which are the inevitable plight of the married middle-class woman with a strong sense of self, who is essentially constrained to live the life of her husband. In this, it echoes Flaubert's "Madame Bovary." The heroine, Isabel Sleaford, was driven early in her childhood to bury herself in, and develop her sense of self through, romantic novels and poetry. She is thus ill-adapted to the conventional, provincial structures and strictures laid upon her when she marries the very good and adoring, but also boring and unimaginative, Dr. George Gilbert. Isabel forms friendships with men (including her husband's best friend) who are more amenable to her romantic inclinations, and inevitably encounters social condemnation as a result. The book shows how life's tragedies and the world's cruel judgments shape Isabel, as she grows more mature, somewhat embittered, but also - true to her nature - beautifully resilient. (Summary by Kirsten Wever)"

Mary Elizabeth Braddon (Author), Kirsten Wever (Narrator)

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The Awful German Language (Version 2)

"This long essay is a work of mock philology, one of several appendices to Twain's travel novel, A Tramp Abroad. In it, Twain explains, complains about, and shows how one might improve upon various aspects of the (awful) German language. His examples of precisely how the German language is awful include the famed "separable verb" - which allows one to put the first part of a given verb at the beginning - and its second part at the end - of a given clause or sentence (which may, indeed, be very long). He also makes fun of the extreme length of certain compound nouns (which are created by tacking two - or more - words together, without using hyphens to clarify where one ends and the next begins), as well as the many noun and verb forms one must master (memorize) in order to use German cases properly. As the essay progresses, Twain includes a few hilarious passages that are partly or mostly in (his own, awful) German. Nevertheless, the work is easily understandable even by people who don't know any German at all. (In the novel, A Tramp Abroad, Twain details his journey with his friend, Harris, through Germany, the Alps, and Italy, where he encounters various ridiculous situations. Here, much of the humor lies in his silly, often over-stated characterization of the circumstances as quickly grasped and easily explained by such a seasoned tourist as himself, while he also make plain throughout the profoundly strange nature of many of his experiences, and the various pitfalls he and Harris run into as they try to navigate their unfamiliar terrain.) (Introduction by Kirsten Wever)"

Mark Twain (Author), Kirsten Wever (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Kirsten Wever

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