Showing results by narrator "NICHOLAS BOULTON" in All Categories

The Diary of a Madman and Other Stories is a bizarre and colorful collection containing the finest short stories by the iconic Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. From the witty and Kafkaesque "The Nose", where a civil servant wakes up one day to find his nose missing, to the moving and evocative "The Overcoat", about a reclusive man whose only ambition is to replace his old, threadbare coat, Gogol gives us a unique take on the absurd.

Completed six years after Dostoyevsky's own term as a convict, The House of the Dead is a semi-autobiographical account of life in a Siberian prison camp, and the physical and mental effects it has on those who are sentenced to inhabit it. Alexandr Petrovitch Goryanchikov, a gentleman of the noble class, has been condemned to 10 years of hard labor for murdering his wife.

In Mountolive, the third volume in Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, the events surrounding the interwoven community of Nessim, Justine, Narouz, Pursewarden and the other major characters are given a very different perspective. The intrigues and complex relationships are seen through the political prism of a world plunging toward war. David Mountolive, once emotionally involved with Nessim’s set, now returns to Egypt as the British ambassador....

In the wake of the Rwandan genocide, 24-year-old spy Lachlan Kite and his girlfriend, Martha Raine, are sent to Senegal on the trail of a hunted war criminal. The mission threatens to spiral out of control, forcing Kite to make choices that will have devastating consequences not only for his career at top-secret intelligence agency BOX 88, but also for his relationship with Martha.

In the Name of the Family - as Blood and Beauty did before - holds up a mirror to a turbulent moment of history, sweeping aside the myths to bring alive the real Borgia family: complicated, brutal, passionate and glorious. Here is a thrilling exploration of the House of Borgia's doomed years, in the company of a young diplomat named Niccolo Machiavelli.

Underneath the patina of civilized society lies the Sadean demimonde: a bundle of lustful appetites fueled by momentary impulse and a desire for unfettered indulgence. And the target of this savagery: Justine de Bertole, a pious and virginal heroine. Grotesque, inhumane, and compelling, Sade’s novel overturns Rousseau’s views of the social contract, and the common trope that punishment only visits sinners, to deliver a passionate treatise on good and evil, virtue and sin.

The British Classics Collection – Volume 2 steps into the grand world of 18th, 19th, and 20th-century British literature to create a compelling anthology featuring iconic works that span time and genres. From the whimsy of Alice in Wonderland to the mystery of The Woman in White, the philosophical insights of The Waste Land and the unforgettable detective stories of Sherlock Holme, this volume offers a rich variety of British literary masterpieces.

Marius Valstar doesn’t know which is worse: the dead body in his greenhouse or the naked fae prince on his desk. The only rakes of interest to Marius are garden tools, not fae princes. Certainly not the arrogant, selfish fae prince he has the misfortune to have a history with. But when Prince Rakken turns up naked and bleeding in Marius’s college the same day a body appears in his greenhouse, scruples must take second place to solving a murder that could unravel the delicate balance between humans and fae.

After the jealous tyrant Don Rodrigo foils their wedding, young Lombardian peasants Lucia and Lorenzo must separate and flee for their safety. Their difficult path to matrimony takes place against the turbulent backdrop of the Thirty Years War, where lawlessness and exploitation are at their height. Lucia takes refuge in a convent, where she is later abducted and taken on a nightmarish journey to a sinister castle, while Lorenzo goes to Milan, where he witnesses famine, riots, and plague - all evoked through meticulous description and with stunning immediacy.

William Butler Yeats remains one of the most popular poets of the 20th century.

"The Lake Isle of Innisfree," "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven," "Down by the Salley Gardens," "The Secret Rose": these are just a few of the poems that made William Butler Yeats an international figure. Born in Dublin in 1865, Yeats drew strength from the Irish tradition, as can be seen in this special audiobook, which presents the most important poems in the context of his life and ambitions.

From a problematic meeting with an alien princess to a horde of space tourists on a holiday from hell, life on the cruiser is never less than eventful. Indecisive Captain Taylor is faced with disaster when another of the fleet’s spaceships, The Indestructible III, suddenly explodes; relentlessly nice Communications Officer Karen embarks on a forbidden romance with ship’s engineer Stuart; and medical scientist Clive 55 causes chaos when he is arrested for murdering his 136 clones, and experiments with dark matter to catastrophic effect.

G.W. Pabst, one of cinema's greatest, perhaps the greatest director of his era: when the Nazis seized power he was filming in France, to escape the horrors of the new Germany he flees to Hollywood. But under the blinding California sun, the world-famous director suddenly looks like a nobody. Not even Greta Garbo, who he made famous, can help him. And thus, almost through no fault of his own, he finds himself back in his homeland of Austria, which is now called Ostmark.

Captain Sir Sheridan Drake is no knight in shining armor, even if he happens to be famous for his heroism. An exiled princess with revolutionary ideas is just a convenient opportunity to get himself out of debt. Princess Olympia isn't precisely fairy-tale royalty herself; she's plump and a little shy, and desperate to do something of importance in the world. But though their meeting begins with her hopeless hero worship, a harrowing journey to the bleak edge of the world will transform them both.

Set in the financial centres of 1820s Frankfurt and London, Jezebel’s Daughter (1880) tells the story of two widows: Madame Fontaine, who will go to any lengths to secure her daughter’s marriage, and Mrs Wagner, who devotes herself to her late husband’s social reforms. In pursuit of her endeavours, Mrs Wagner befriends Jack Straw, a former inmate of Bedlam, who plays a pivotal role as the action, full of plotting and counterplotting, unfolds, culminating in the morgue, where several lives hang in the balance.

The child of a reputable family and a faithful son of the Church, Robert of Locksley had no intention of becoming an outlaw. But the relentless cruelty and tyranny by the elite nobility of England demanded that someone rise up to give answer. And so Robert of Locksley became Robin Hood, a man thrown into a fierce struggle to balance his deep faith with a call to action in a violent age. Featuring over 60 actors, cinematic sound, and original music, The Legends of Robin Hood is an exciting 12-part audio drama from the award-winning Augustine Institute.

Naples '44 is an unflinching autobiographical account of a year in Naples after the armistice and Allied landings in Sorrento in 1943. Working as a British counterintelligence officer under the Allied occupation, Lewis documents the rich pageant of life in the city and its surrounding areas. There is suffering and squalor: Criminal gangs are on the rise, along with typhus and black market commerce, and the female population is forced into part-time prostitution. But there is farce and humor, too, witnessed in the Roman uncle paid handsomely simply to appear at funerals.

Like his actor namesake, Ronald Coleman is a suave, well-spoken English gentleman. But although he's a movie buff, Coleman is no film star - he's a copper, and a Detective Inspector to boot. Together with his down-to-earth Scottish partner, DS Fred Astor, he sets about solving cases on two very different patches - rural Kirkcaldy and inner-city Southampton.

Father Ambrosio, the most pious and venerated monk in all of Madrid, is held as a paragon of virtue. But after 30 years of study and prayer, evil thoughts begin to permeate his mind. As two plots cleverly converge, torture, murder, incest, rape, poison, and magic prevail, sustained by an elegance in the writing of the 19-year-old Matthew Lewis.

Justine is the first volume in the Alexandria Quartet, four interlinked novels set in the sensuous, hot environment of Alexandria just before the Second World War. Within this polyglot setting of richly idiosyncratic characters is Justine, wild and intense, wife to the wealthy businessman Nessim, a Mari complaisant. Her emotional and sexual wildness fuels a highly charged atmosphere.

Gogol's great Russian classic is the Pickwick Papers of Russian literature. It takes a sharp but humorous look at life in all its strata but especially the devious complexities in Russia, with its landowners and serfs. We are introduced to Chichikov, a businessman who, in order to trick the tax authorities, buys up dead 'souls', or serfs, whose names still appear on the government census. Despite being a dealer in phantom crimes and paper ghosts, he is the most beguiling of Gogol's characters.