Buy from our bookstore and 25% of the cover price will be given to a school of your choice to buy more books. *15% of eBooks.
Audiobooks Narrated by Simon Hester
Browse audiobooks narrated by Simon Hester, listen to samples and when you're ready head over to Audiobooks.com where you can get 3 FREE audiobooks on us
Perhaps the most famous and most accessible of Dickens' stories which can be enjoyed every year afresh at Christmas time, as we never tire of the inspirational story of Scrooge's redemption and transformation. Here performed with warmth and compelling narrative skill by Simon Hester
In a Study in Scarlet Conan Doyle fist presented to the world his unique creation Mr Sherlock Holmes almost complete.
Over successive stories we learn a little more about the man, but it is not for character development that we turn to the Chronicles of Dr John Watson M.D
An iconic figure such as Holmes is all the better for his predicatbility, and even in this, the first of his recorded cases we can be confident that our hero is all we would expect.
Part of the Complete Shelock Holmes from Head Stories Audio, narrated by Simon Hester and with specially composed theme music.
The imperturbable Englishman Phileas Fogg attempts to makes an exciting journey around the World in 80 Days. By his side is the ever resourceful and faithful Passpartout and on his heels is the determined Detective Fix.
Jules Verne's classic story brims with colour and adventure as we follow Mr Fogg around the globe through all the travails of Victorian transportation, death defying escapes and ferocious weather. Will he return to London in time to win his wager? Will he return home with more than he anticipated?
Simon Hester narrates this classic adventure story for Head Stories Audio. With original music.
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.
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.
- Jerome. K. Jerome allows us to laugh, with and at, both himself and ourselves in his writing. As we peruse his “Idle Thoughts” on subjects ranging from babies to ambition, from dogs to poverty, we find that the dust of over a hundred years have not dimmed the mirror in which we look.
Jerome, as in his other comic works presents a seeming stream of consciousness that can shift in a moment from the ridiculous to the sublime, from self-deprecation to intense longing.
Such “Idle Thoughts” will not be in vain while we can still recognise that humanity changes very little over the ages, and while we can still laugh at ourselves.
Narrated by Simon Hester with original music.
The World has always yearned for creation stories. We cannot hope to know where we are going if we do not know from where we came.
Rudyard Kipling’s whimsical tales of the origins of, amongst others, the tides, the Elephant’s trunk, the Leopard’s spots and the Cat’s stubborn independance still give as much satisfaction as when he first told them to his young daughter Josephine, using the childish pronunciations and words that she insisted upon being “just so”.
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.
It may be that we are too sophisticated in this day and age for as simple a morality tale as Carlo Collodi’s “Pinocchio”. It is certainly true that the original tale is much darker in its tone than the later versions which smooth out some of sharper edges of the narrative.
Pinocchio himself is at first a very unlikeable character; he feels only for himself, and his apparent remorse is only self-pity. His creator, Geppetto, is initially a reluctant father figure to the self-centred marionette, and the lessons that Pinocchio must endure in order to gain boyhood are often harsh.
In this classic tale, Pinocchio, through his many adventures, learns that the virtues of hard work and study, obedience to one’s parents, politeness and generosity are are the only true path to becoming a real boy.
Narrated by Simon Hester. Original music by Simon Hester.
Here are 12 specially selected tales by one of the masters of this miniature art, Saki (H.H Munro). They range from the comic deception of 'The Schartz Metterklume Method' to 'The Cobweb', a subtle meditation on life, change and death. Also included is Munro's short essay 'Birds on the Western Front', a poignant description of some of Nature's response to the devastation of war: written in the very place where Munro would tragically lose his life to a sniper's bullet in 1916.
Beautifully narrated by Simon Hester, with specially composed music.
Here is a selection of chilling tales only to be enjoyed of a dark evening when safely by the warmth of the fire.
The Monkey's Paw
In The Penal Colony
O Whistle and I'll Come to You my Lad
A Warning to the Curious
Afterwards
The Haunted and the Haunter
The Red Room
Tell Tale Heart
The Signal Man
August Heat
The Bus Conductor
In the Dark
Stories by E.Nesbit, Charles Dickens, Franz Kafka, Edgar Alan Poe, E.F Benson, H.G Wells, M.R James and others; narrated with perfect intensity by Simon Hester. Each with specially composed atmospheric music.
