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Audiobooks Narrated by Simon Hester
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In the pursuit of Christian maturity and guidance, few works have stood the test of time with as much reverence and wisdom as The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. Written in the 15th century, its profound insights continue to resonate with seekers of truth across generations.
This timeless masterpiece simply and clearly points us towards Jesus Christ as the authour of faith and the exemplar of Christian living.
Head Stories Audio presents 'The Imitaion of Christ', narrated by Simon Hester. With original music.
“It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed…”
C.S Lewis
The Book of Psalms is at the heart of the Christian Bible.Throughout voice of the Psalmist cries out to God with a voice, at times of despair or supplication, at times in frustration and penitence and, of course ultimately, in Praise.
Half of the Psalms were likely written by the Shepherd-King, King David, a man described in the Bible as “a man after God’s own heart”. Indeed, the Psalms express a true heart cry to the Creator, with no pseudo religiosity, but with a refreshing honesty that has kept the Psalms at the core of worship for thousands of years.
Here they are read in the King James Authorised translation by Simon Hester, with original music, sparingly used, to enhance the readings.
Edward Prendick finds himself floating perilously in the ocean after having been shipwrecked. He is picked up and his life saved by the curious Dr Montgomery, a medical man travelling with a cargo of various wild animals. Prendick soon finds himself once again adrift at sea after an argument with a hostile and drunken captain.
For a second time Montgomery appears as his saviour and he is hauled ashore on the Island of Dr Moreau, Montgomery’s mysterious colleague and mentor.
As he encounters some of the deformed and bestial inhabitants on the island, Prendick soon comes to realise that he has heard of this infamous Dr Moreau before. Now begins a nightmarish existence as the full truth of Moreau’s scientific ambitions become horribly apparent.
Head StoriesAudio presents 'The Island of Dr Moreau' by H.G. Wells. Narrated by Simon Hester. With original music.
Who better to travel to Italy with than Charles Dickens? From the travails of 19th century travel to the wonder of discovering the great art of western civilization, all are brought to life with the characteristic humour, wryness, sentimentality, fervour and love that are poured into the best of the author’s fiction.
Modern readers will recognise many of Italy’s historical treasures that millions have enjoyed since Dickens described them over 150 years ago; in that sense surprisingly, little has changed.
What might be more interesting to us today are the nature and mechanics of tourism in 1846. So used are we to the relative comfort and speed of global transport that we forget the discomforts (and at times horrors) undertaken by those few that would endeavour to see the world in previous centuries. By comparison we journey at our leisure whereas Dickens’ journal is more the record of a pilgrim and pioneer.
Far be it from him however to dwell on the rigours of Victorian tourism, indeed he saves his pithiest wit for such times and is much more interested, as he always is, in the humanity of all he encounters.
His vibrant and colourful description of the Roman Festival is as joyful as his reserved observation of an execution is sombre and reserved. Dickens is not enamoured of all he experiences and is quick to let us know when he suspects sham commercialism, hypocrisy or injustice.
In the third of his series of Father Brown short stories G.K Chesterton is almost reticent in putting his clerical detective at the forefront of the narrative.
In the majority of the tales the diminutive priest makes a somewhat unremarkable entrance as almost an afterthought; a seemingly inconsequential individual whom the colourful personalities that populate the stories might easily overlook. But the beauty of Chesterton’s creation is that Father Brown in his anonymity is precisely placed to observe and penetrate both the souls and minds of men.
So accustomed are we to numerous cinematic films depicting Dinosaurs (resurrected from their extinction through various dramatic devices) running amok amongst the human race, from King Kong to Jurassic Park, that we forget that it was the creator of Sherlock Holmes who was amongst the first to imagine such a scenario.
After so many years of the cerebral Holmes, Conan Doyle must have revelled in his colourful new character of Professor Challenger. He is a bear of a man with an appetite for self-advancement, adventure and controversy who leads an expedition into the forests of South America to vindicate his claim that a lost world lay hidden in that vast continent.
This is Conan Doyle away from the constraints of Baker Street and one gets the feeling that the author makes the most of the possibilities, pitting his heroes against dinosaurs, treacherous guides, inhospitable terrain and not least a race of vicious ape men.
Conan tells his rip-roaring adventure with all his usual descriptive skill and verve.
Head Stories presents Conan Doyle's 'The Lost World' narrated by Simon Hester. With original music.
The Father Brown stories sit in relation to other detective literature much as the diminutive and seemingly unworldly Priest himself often sits; quietly, thoughtfully and often to be overlooked. However, when he at lasts speaks it is with such understanding of human knowledge that the self-styled sophisticates that surround him are dumbfounded. C.K Chesterton is not concerned with the procedural minutiae of the detective’s work, nor with leaving a trail of red herrings with which to keep us guessing. Father Brown reaches his conclusions through staring into the human psyche, indeed, at times, into the human soul.
Conan Doyle had attempted to bring his Sherlock Holmes stories to a fitting close in 1893 with “The Final Problem” but public outrage both persuaded him to resurrect his famous detective.
It was therefore not through a dramatic struggle with the evil Professor Moriarty atop an Alpine waterfall that Holmes was to leave the literary world, but instead he was to bow out gracefully and patriotically in the series of stories published in 1917 under the title “His Last Bow”.
These short stories are as full as ever of the author’s imaginative skill in providing puzzles and conundrums for his creation. Within these tales Holmes at last meets an official detective who comes a little closer to employing his acute methods of reasoning. There is a story of crazed jealousy which produces a grisly souvenir of the crime. Holmes and Watson encounter in the streets of London a Mafia like organisation intent on revenge and in the wilds of Cornwall revenge of a different kind in connection with an horrific and macabre murder.
The final story places Holmes in the very specific time frame of the First World War, persuaded out of retirement and calling once again upon his old and trusted friend Watson, to capture an enemy spy.
Head Stories Audio presents 'His Final Bow' by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - narrated by Simon Hester. With original music.
When stripped of the musical and cinematic additions which have clung to the story over the last 100 years, Gaston Leroux's tragic tale still sounds fresh and engaging. A beautifully crafted tale with at its heart the brooding, monstrous, yet pitiful figure of the Phantom. Around him swirl the young and naive lovers and the almost comic comings and goings of the 18th century Paris Opera House.
Head Stories Audio present this classic tale narrated by Simon Hester. With original music.
Andrew Lang (1844–1912) in collaboration with his wife Leonora Blanche Alleyne (1851-1933) published The Blue Fairy Book in 1889 and it was to become the first of a series of twenty five collections of fantastical tales from around the world, ending with “The Strange Story Book” published in 1923.
In this first collection we find many of the traditional favourites from the “Fairy Tale” world, including amongst others “Goldilocks”, “Sleeping Beauty”, “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”, Tom Thumb' “Rumpelstiltskin” and “Jack the Giant Killer”. While many of these have some vestige of the narrative we may be accustomed to through many sanitised adaptations, there are many surprises!
The telling of these stories in the “Blue Fairy Book” are by no means the cosy bedtime stories we might expect. You will search in vain for the three friendly bears in “Goldilocks”, or the accommodating dwarves in” Snow-white”. There is no attempt to soften the edges or the expunge the blood thirsty fates that befall may of the unfortunate characters.
Head Stories Audio presents ' The Blue Fairy Book', narrated by Simon Hester. With original music.
In 1905 Conan Doyle reluctantly decided to bring his most famous creation Sherlock Holmes back to life. It is no easy thing to convincingly resurrect a man whom you have so decisively thrown over a Swiss waterfall. There is however no sense of reluctance in the collection of short stories that make up The Return of Sherlock Holmes. The great detective reenters the stage with convincing aplomb and his usual theatricality, albeit at the expense of the bemused and shocked Watson.
The “Return” contains some of the most popular adventures of the Holmes canon, including the melodramatic “Solitary Cyclist”, the ingenious “Six Napoleons” (with Lestrade’s surprisingly warm endorsement of Holmes at the end). We have the clever “Second Stain” and the inventive “Dancing Men” The stories also have some memorable villains, (who could so easily pale in the dark memory of Professor Moriarty), not least the despicable Charles Augustus Milverton.
Head Stories Audio presents “The Return of Sherlock Holmes” narrated by Simon Hester. With original music. Performed by Simon Hester and Carmine Lauri.
Far from its popular image, the story of Frankenstein as told by Mary Shelley is not a tale that finds horror in a hideous 'monster' or a 'crazed' scientist. The darkness in the narrative is found in the profound loneliness of both Creator and Created as they seek one another in a tragic cycle of unfulfilled longing and revenge.
This powerful novel, first published in 1818, still surprises and shocks us with the fundamental questions about the moral boundaries of human discovery and helps us to question what it means to be human.
