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Audiobooks Narrated by Martha H. Weller
Browse audiobooks narrated by Martha H. Weller, listen to samples and when you're ready head over to Audiobooks.com where you can get 3 FREE audiobooks on us
"Picture a cozy cottage nestled in the Pennsylvania mountains where a hard-working and virtuous young brother and sister live in quiet contentment. Add a love-struck doctor who is too timid to tell Norine, the sister, how much he adores her! He is about to announce his love when fate brings a stranger into their home, to be nursed back to health by the impressionable Norine. As the story unfolds, we learn the true natures of all we encounter. There are exciting twists and turns and not a few coincidental interventions! Will love and virtue triumph?
Written in the late nineteenth century, this book reflects and reinforces the attitudes of the time. Virtue is lauded and slander is to be avoided. Still, Norine and her brother Jim are more fully developed characters than appear in similar books of the period. Jim, in particular, is considered “eccentric,” yet well respected by his community."
"Few of Emily Dickinson’s poems were published in her lifetime. Her posthumous fame is largely due to the efforts of her editors and supporters Thomas W. Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd.
In the foreword to this second collection, published in 1891, Mabel Loomis Todd wrote: “The eagerness with which the first volume of Emily Dickinson’s poems has been read shows very clearly that all our alleged modern artificiality does not prevent a prompt appreciation of the qualities of directness and simplicity in approaching the greatest themes—life and love and death. That ‘irresistible needle-touch,’ as one of her best critics has called it, piercing at once the very core of a thought, has found a response as wide and sympathetic as it has been unexpected even to those who knew best her compelling power. This second volume, while open to the same criticism as to form with its predecessor, shows also the same shining beauties.”"
"The Girls is the story of three spinsters living in Chicago—an aunt, her niece, and her niece’s niece. The aunt has memories of the Civil War, and all three women have adjusted to the outbreak of the First World War. Generational changes, particularly in regard to romantic attachments, are a central feature of the book, which is also a fascinating portrait of the Chicago lifestyle of the time. The emerging political and social power of women is also a significant feature of the story."
"H. G. Wells first published The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth in 1904. He called it “a fantasia on the change of scale in human affairs… I had hit upon [the idea] while working out the possibilities of the near future in a book of speculations called Anticipations (1901).”
This novel is about a group of scientists that invent food that accelerates the growth of children turning them into giants upon becoming adults. There have been many B-movie adaptations. This is Wells at his finest with a science experiment gone wrong."
"Writing this novel in 1923, H. G. Wells called it a “scientific fantasy.” He featured a utopia located in a parallel universe. “The grabbers and fighters, the persecutors and patriots, the lynchers and boycotters and all the riff-raff of short-sighted human violence, crowded on to final defeat. Even in their lives they know no happiness, they drive from excitement to excitement and from gratification to exhaustion. Their enterprises and successes, their wars and glories, flare and pass. Only the true thing grows, the truth, the clear idea, year by year and age by age, slowly and invincibly as a diamond grows amidst the darkness and pressures of the earth.” Enjoy H. G. Wells writing 100 years later and find the ideas still relevant!"
"Diverging Roads, set sometime between 1912 and 1919, is one of Lane’s earliest published novels (1919). It is somewhat autobiographical and depicts the life of Helen Davies.
We meet Helen when she is about to graduate from high school and is in love with a fellow student, Paul. Both of their families are struggling financially. Paul must support his widowed mother; he begins work immediately—and over the course of the novel proves to be a good, hard-working man whose greatest ambition is to provide for his loved ones, Helen included.
Initially, Helen doesn’t want to work, but her family needs money. Also, she hopes that her working might hasten the day when she and Paul can marry. But Helen is naïve when she leaves for Sacramento to learn telegraphy.
This book is gently feministic—we see Helen struggle against prejudice and poverty, and also discover her own indomitable spirit. She pursues telegraphy, then real estate, and finally writing. She makes mistakes, learns from them, and eventually comes to a solid understanding of her own nature.
Lane is a wonderful storyteller. She paints vivid pictures of the world Helen encounters and the work she pursues. While touching on sensitive topics such as a woman’s role in the world, the novel is never mean-spirited. It is an uplifting tale of one woman’s journey along the many paths life presents her."
"Three Lives was written in 1905/06 and published in 1909 at the author’s expense. The work consists of three independent novellas: The Good Anna, Melanctha, and The Gentle Lena. Each of the titular characters lives in Bridgepoint, a fictional town based on Baltimore.
The Good Anna explores the life of strong-willed Anna Federner, a woman of “solid lower middle-class south German stock.” The story follows the relationships Anna develops with the women in the households in which she works as a servant, and explores in particular the theme of bonding between women.
Melanctha is an unconventional novella in which Stein explores what it is to seek meaning and fulfillment amidst the complexities and challenges of life. Melanctha, the daughter of a black father and a mixed-race mother, is unsatisfied with her life in segregated Bridgepoint. She launches into a passionate search for knowledge and power, within complicated cross-currents of race, sex and gender.
The Gentle Lena recounts the life of Lena, who (like Anna in the first story) is an immigrant from Germany, now living in Bridgepoint. Lena is also a servant, but ends up marrying Herman Kreder, at the behest of the elders in their lives. In contrast to Anna Federner, who is willful and determined, Lena’s life is marked by a consistent passivity, which Stein explores throughout the narrative.
The three lives presented by Stein are compelling, and reflect the author’s philosophical and literary values. Her use of repetition is particularly pronounced in both Melanctha and The Good Lena."
"Dark of the Moon was first published in 1926. Its 92 poems are divided into 9 sections: There Will be Stars; Pictures of Autumn; Sand Drift; Portraits; Midsummer Nights; The Crystal Gazer; Berkshire Notes; Arcturus in Autumn; and The Flight.
Teasdale repeatedly expresses the joy, wonder and freedom she feels when she is immersed in nature. Yet nature is not sufficient. She yearns for love and the rapture of “Two Minds” who have “freed themselves from cautious human clay.”
Many of the poems in this collection are tied to specific places. In “Late October (Bois de Boulogne)”, Teasdale, in the space of eight lines of verse, evokes the sounds of her surroundings and recognizes the wisdom of being both present in and attentive to the passage of time, represented by “autumn.”
The poet returns often to the theme of autumn, both in the seasonal sense and in her own personal autumn. There are regrets and longings, but she also wants people to know that she has loved her life and honors the memory of those whom she has loved."
"In Lavender and Old Lace, we are presented with a poignant and humorous tale of four romances along with dashes of mystery and even a touch of the supernatural.
Ruth Thorne, a newspaper reporter in the city, comes to stay in the home of Jane Hathaway, an aunt whom she has never met. Aunt Jane is on a trip abroad but instructs Ruth via a letter to place a lantern in the attic window each night. No one knows why.
A fellow reporter, Carl Winfield, is suffering from eye problems and has been sent to the same small town. Ruth and Carl are thrown together through a recommendation from Ruth’s boss and a gentle then passionate courtship ensues. In comic parallel, the maid Hepsey and the town carriage driver Joe pursue their own romance.
Meanwhile, Aunt Jane is briefly missing from the organized trip abroad and when she abruptly returns to her home – well, that’s a revelation and another romance!
Hepsey provides a clue to the mysteries by mentioning Aunt Jane’s friendship with Miss Ainslie, a woman much beloved by the villagers and yet considered somewhat crazy. Her story and lost love holds the key to understanding everything!"
"Writing a century later than Jane Austen, Whitby’s work examines many of the same themes: women and marriage, concepts of honor and pride, passion and love, and self-sacrifice. In The Awakening of Mary Fenwick, we find a naïve young woman who has been raised in a sheltered and isolated home by a grieving father. Mary, calm and responsible, is contrasted with her younger sister Cicely, whose birth resulted in the death of her mother. Cicely is a freer spirit and her exuberance and the painful association with his wife’s death leads the father to send her off to Paris to be raised by an aunt.
Following the death of the father, the aunt assumes a guardianship over Mary and, within a short time, introduces Mary to Godfray Fenwick. Their wedding is a drab affair and on the same day Mary is inadvertently presented with a letter written by Godfray’s sister congratulating him on his successful acquisition of an heiress.
The stage is set and we experience Mary’s humiliation and rude awakening to the realities of her situation. As the novel progresses, both Mary and Godfray evolve and awaken to their desires and disappointments. Whitby handles these evolutions masterfully and intersperses vignettes of village life and personalities.
If you enjoy the works of Jane Austen, you will find this book full of life, love, tragedy and triumph."
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