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Audiobooks Narrated by Ralph Cosham
Browse audiobooks narrated by Ralph Cosham, listen to samples and when you're ready head over to Audiobooks.com where you can get 3 FREE audiobooks on us
Enjoy two seafaring adventures by a beloved classic adventure writer in Kidnapped and Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Robert Louis Stevenson was one of the early masters of the action and adventure genre. His books were adventurous and smart, and written to entice audiences into indulging in high-seas fantasies. Both titles in this collection focus on young men sent on difficult journeys aboard ships as they search for things amid a cast of quirky, dangerous characters.
Kidnapped – This book’s narrator is David, a 17-year-old orphan who is set into the world to make a place for himself. He winds up living with his uncle at a family estate, but soon learns that he is the true heir to the estate. Unwilling to give up his wealth, his uncle arranges for David to be kidnapped into service aboard a ship. This event sends him on a perilous path around the seas, trying to get back to his rightful home.
Treasure Island – Treasure Island is a coming-of-age story that follows Jim Hawkins, a young man on a journey to find a legendary treasure. Jim leaves his home in search of the treasure after a pirate gives him a map. He assembles a crew to explore the seas and find the treasure, but along the way face dangers and betrayal. This is one of the most beloved adventure novels, and has been adapted countless times for stage and screen.
Race across the world and explore the depths of the caverns below in this pair of adventure stories: Around the World in 80 Days and Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne.
Jules Verne was an early pioneer in the science fiction genre and wrote novels that send readers and listeners exploring the most outer reaches of the world. His books are known for their sense of adventure and action, as well as their adoption of scientific processes and discoveries as the basis for any fantasy technologies within.
Around the World in 80 Days – Phileas Fogg has money beyond what he needs, and lives a humble, lonely life. When a railway opens up that claims it is possible to travel around the world in 80 days, Phileas decides to use his money to take a bet that he can, in fact, make that journey. His trip is full of action as he races against the clock to make it around the world and back, meeting many wonderful friends along the way.
Journey to the Centre of the Earth – After finding a secret coded message in an ancient manuscript, Otto Lidenbrock discovers a pathway to the center of the earth through a crater in Iceland. He leaves for Iceland immediately with his nephew to explore the crater, which is located in a volcano. The two journey along with their guide into the subterranean cave, where they encounter a world preserved by time, with ancient fossils and natural wonders. The voyage is full of wonder and adventure, danger and excitement.
Settle in for an unsettling listen with this duo of two horror classics: Dracula by Bram Stoker and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. These two books are staples of the Gothic horror genre and are sure to excite, mystify, and maybe even spook listeners.
Dracula - While there have been many famous vampires in modern media, none are as well-known as Dracula, the modern introduction to the blood-drinking creatures of the night. In this epistolary horror novel, readers are introduced to Count Dracula as he attempts to move to England to find new prey and create new vampires. He is thwarted by Abraham Van Helsing, a doctor who sees Dracula’s victims and gathers hunters to fight against the growing team of vampires. With thematic elements of suspense and Gothic horror, and broad themes of colonialism, religion, sexuality, and the thin line between life and death, Dracula is a story for the ages.
Frankenstein – Frankenstein is the classic story of a mad scientist’s experiments gone horribly wrong. When Victor Frankenstein decides to experiment with creating life from non-living matter, he inadvertently creates a creature that will reflect both the best and worst parts of humanity. Created from a hodge-podge of human remains, the Creature’s appearance is ghastly and horrific, and his lack of a soul makes him predisposed to violence and destruction. But he gains intelligence and reasoning skills, which he uses to demand better treatment from Victor, with threats of violence as his bargaining chip. Victor’s reluctance to help his creation live a fulfilled life leads to a horrific streak of murders and violence. Frankenstein is an important work that asks readers to consider human nature, ethical responsibility, and the intrinsic value of all life forms.
The definitive biography of Napoleon, revealing the true man behind the legend
"What a novel my life has been!" Napoleon once said of himself. Born into a poor family, the callow young man was, by twenty-six, an army general. Seduced by an older woman, his marriage transformed him into a galvanizing military commander. The Pope crowned him as Emperor of the French when he was only thirty-five. Within a few years, he became the effective master of Europe, his power unparalleled in modern history. His downfall was no less dramatic.
The story of Napoleon has been written many times. In some versions, he is a military genius, in others a war-obsessed tyrant. Here, historian Adam Zamoyski cuts through the mythology and explains Napoleon against the background of the European Enlightenment, and what he was himself seeking to achieve. This most famous of men is also the most hidden of men, and Zamoyski dives deeper than any previous biographer to find him. Beautifully written, Napoleon brilliantly sets the man in his European context.
From the bestselling author of On Tyranny, the definitive history of Hitler's and Stalin's wars against the civilians of Europe in World War Two
Americans call the Second World War "The Good War."But before it even began, America's wartime ally Josef Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens--and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was finally defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war's end, both the German and the Soviet killing sites fell behind the iron curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness.
Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single history, in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands will be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history.
Bloodlands won twelve awards including the Emerson Prize in the Humanities, a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Leipzig Award for European Understanding, and the Hannah Arendt Prize in Political Thought. It has been translated into more than thirty languages, was named to twelve book-of-the-year lists, and was a bestseller in six countries.
What does it mean to be truthful? What role does truth play in our lives? What do we lose if we reject truthfulness? No philosopher is better suited to answer these questions than Bernard Williams. Writing with his characteristic combination of passion and elegant simplicity, he explores the value of truth and finds it to be both less and more than we might imagine. Modern culture exhibits two attitudes toward truth: suspicion of being deceived (no one wants to be fooled) and skepticism that objective truth exists at all (no one wants to be naive). This tension between a demand for truthfulness and the doubt that there is any truth to be found is not an abstract paradox. It has political consequences and signals a danger that our intellectual activities, particularly in the humanities, may tear themselves to pieces.Williams's approach, in the tradition of Nietzsche's genealogy, blends philosophy, history, and a fictional account of how the human concern with truth might have arisen. Without denying that we should worry about the contingency of much that we take for granted, he defends truth as an intellectual objective and a cultural value. He identifies two basic virtues of truth, Accuracy and Sincerity, the first of which aims at finding out the truth and the second at telling it. He describes different psychological and social forms that these virtues have taken and asks what ideas can make best sense of them today.Truth and Truthfulness presents a powerful challenge to the fashionable belief that truth has no value, but equally to the traditional faith that its value guarantees itself. Bernard Williams shows us that when we lose a sense of the value of truth, we lose a lot, both politically and personally, and may well lose everything. The book is published by Princeton University Press.
Random House presents the audiobook edition of Postwar by Tony Judt, read by Ralph Cosham.
Tracing the story of post-war Europe and its changing role in the world, Judt's magnificent history of the continent of our times investigates the political, social and cultural history of Europe from the wreckage of post-war Europe to the expansion of the EU into the former Soviet empire. Judt's stress is on the continent as a whole, from Greece to Norway, from Portugal to Russia.
This, uniquely, is a hstory that pays due attention to both Western and Eastern Europe, to cultural and social developments as to political and diplomatic events. Throughout Judt shows how politics, society, culture and popular culture influenced each other. A masterly and definitive history of our continent in a crucial period of its history, Europe in our time.
Chaos is coming, old son.
With those words the peace of Three Pines is shattered. Everybody goes to Olivier's Bistro including a stranger whose murdered body is found on the floor. When Chief Inspector Gamache is called to investigate, he is dismayed to discover that Olivier's story is full of holes. Why are his fingerprints all over the cabin that's uncovered deep in the wilderness, with priceless antiques and the dead man's blood? And what other secrets and layers of lies are buried in the seemingly idyllic village?
Gamache follows a trail of clues and treasures from first editions of Charlotte's Web and Jane Eyre to a spiderweb with a word mysteriously woven in it into the woods and across the continent, before returning to Three Pines to confront the truth and the final, brutal telling.
Richard Adams, the author of Watership Down, creates a lyrical and engrossing tale, a remarkable journey into the hearts and minds of two canine heroes, Snitter and Rowf.
After being horribly mistreated at a government animal-research facility, Snitter and Rowf escape into the isolation—and terror—of the wilderness. Aided only by a fox they call “the tod,” the two dogs must struggle to survive in their new environment. When the starving dogs attack some sheep, they are labeled ferocious man-eating monsters, setting off a great dog hunt that is later intensified by the fear that the dogs could be carriers of the bubonic plague.
“Thousands and thousands of people will love this book!”—Boston Globe
"Many mystery buffs have credited Louise Penny with the revival of the type of traditional murder mystery made famous by Agatha Christie...The book's title is a metaphor not only for the month of April but also for Gamache's personal and professional challenges--making this the series standout so far."
--Sarah Weinman
Welcome to Three Pines, where the cruelest month is about to deliver on its threat.
It's spring in the tiny, forgotten village; buds are on the trees and the first flowers are struggling through the newly thawed earth. But not everything is meant to return to life. . .
When some villagers decide to celebrate Easter with a séance at the Old Hadley House, they are hoping to rid the town of its evil--until one of their party dies of fright. Was this a natural death, or was the victim somehow helped along?
Brilliant, compassionate Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec is called to investigate, in a case that will force him to face his own ghosts as well as those of a seemingly idyllic town where relationships are far more dangerous than they seem.
"What happened here last night isn't allowed," said Madame Dubois.
It was such an extraordinary thing to say it stopped the ravenous Inspector Beauvoir from taking another bite of his roast beef on baguette.
"You have a rule against murder?" he asked.
"I do. When my husband and I bought the Bellechasse we made a pact....Everything that stepped foot on this land would be safe."
It is the height of summer, and Armand and Reine-Marie Gamache are celebrating their wedding anniversary at Manoir Bellechasse, an isolated, luxurious inn not far from the village of Three Pines. But they're not alone. The Finney family rich, cultured, and respectable has also arrived for a celebration of their own.
The beautiful Manoir Bellechasse might be surrounded by nature, but there is something unnatural looming. As the heat rises and the humidity closes in, some surprising guests turn up at the family reunion, and a terrible summer storm leaves behind a dead body. It is up to Chief Inspector Gamache to unearth secrets long buried and hatreds hidden behind polite smiles. The chase takes him to Three Pines, into the dark corners of his own life, and finally to a harrowing climax in A Rule Against Murder.
Happily retired in the village of Three Pines, Armand Gamache, former Chief Inspector of Homicide with the Sûreté du Québec, has found a peace he'd only imagined possible. On warm summer mornings he sits on a bench holding a small book, The Balm in Gilead, in his large hands. “There is a balm in Gilead,” his neighbor Clara Morrow reads from the dust jacket, “to make the wounded whole.”
While Gamache doesn't talk about his wounds and his balm, Clara tells him about hers. Peter, her artist husband, has failed to come home. Failed to show up as promised on the first anniversary of their separation. She wants Gamache's help to find him. Having finally found sanctuary, Gamache feels a near revulsion at the thought of leaving Three Pines. “There's power enough in Heaven,” he finishes the quote as he contemplates the quiet village, “to cure a sin-sick soul.” And then he gets up. And joins her.
Together with his former second-in-command, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, and Myrna Landers, they journey deeper and deeper into Québec. And deeper and deeper into the soul of Peter Morrow. A man so desperate to recapture his fame as an artist, he would sell that soul. And may have. The journey takes them further and further from Three Pines, to the very mouth of the great St. Lawrence river. To an area so desolate, so damned, the first mariners called it The land God gave to Cain. And there they discover the terrible damage done by a sin-sick soul.
