Literature audiobooks page 32

Voilà cinq ans que Hugues Viane est veuf. Voilà cinq ans qu’il est venu s’installer à Bruges, cette ville qui lui renvoie son image : triste et grise.

Au cours d’une de ses promenades nocturnes, il croise sa morte ou, tout au moins, une femme qui lui ressemble.
Mais alors qu’il la suit, elle disparait à un carrefour.
La retrouvera-t-il ? Est-elle vraiment telle que celle qu’il a perdue autrefois et qu’il pleure encore ?
Bruges demeurera-t-elle cette ville morte?

(par Ezwa)

Bruges-la-Morte is a short novel by the Belgian author Georges Rodenbach, first published in 1892. The title is difficult to translate but might be rendered as...

In this saga, the events that led to Eirik the Red’s banishment to Greenland are chronicled, as well as Leif Eirikson’s discovery of Vinland the Good (a place where wheat and grapes grew naturally), after his longboat was blown off-course. By geographical details, this place is surmised to be present-day Newfoundland, and is likely the first European discovery of the American mainland, some five centuries before Christopher Columbus’s journey.

A collection of short stories that chronicles the first year of the Malcolm Sage Detective Bureau.

I sing the Song of Hiawatha,
Brave of heart and strong of arm.
Daughter’s son of old Nokomis,
Fathered by the harsh West Wind.

With its regular, beating rhythm, the Song of Hiawatha has often been parodied, but in truth, it is a powerful, emotional epic; a hero’s life, his loves and suffering. The legends and traditions of the North American Indian swirl together through the tale like a mountain stream, tumbling white over the rocks, and caressing the mossy tree roots.

An unlikely pair were Neewa, the black bear cub who had been orphaned at a young age, and Miki, part Mackenzie hound, part Airedale and Spitz who had become separated from his master in the frozen reaches of northern Canada. But the two befriended one another, and these nomads fended for themselves until they too became separated in an unfortunate way. While Neewa searched for his friend, Miki was taken by northern trappers who felt he could be trained to become a good fighting dog, a valuable asset in the north. What follows is Miki's attempts to flee from his captors and search for his master, and Neewa's search for his canine friend.

Told from the perspective of a Mrs. Truax, the owner of an inn during the time of the American and French Revolutions, "The Forsaken Inn" is a locked-room mystery that keeps readers guessing about what has happened. A young couple stays at the inn for the night, and goes on their way in the morning ... and several years later, the bride's body is found in a secret room of the inn. Yet, many people saw that bride leave with her husband. How can this be? Green tells her tale through Mrs. Truax' diary, and through letters and discussions with other characters who were friends of the young couple. An entertaining and highly recommended read.

The human race has reached the stars, colonized many planets and done amazing things in all areas of scientific progress. But humans are still humans and remain both honorable and not so honorable; some with high ideals and others with very low ones indeed. So why hasn't war occurred in several centuries among the hundreds of planets? Has man really changed? Not on your life it hasn't! Read how science has given man peace but at what cost?

Abraham Mapu was born in 1808 near Kaunas, today in Lithuania. He worked as a teacher and later joined the Jewish enlightenment movement. In 1853 he published his first book, Love of Zion, which has been regarded as the first secular novel written in biblical Hebrew. It takes place at the time of the First Temple covering love stories of Yoram, his wives and his children. The book had a profound influence on Jewish youth in Eastern Europe at the time of the emergent Zionist movement.

"It might seem a little careless to lose track of something as big as a battleship ... but interstellar space is on a different scale of magnitude. But a misplaced battleship—in the wrong hands!—can be most dangerous." The world class con man and thief known as the Stainless Steel Rat (diGriz) has another very big problem to solve and this science fiction novella by the great Harry Harrison will see if he can solve it and perhaps four or five more like it before this fascinating and funny tale is finished. 'Use a thief to catch a thief' sounds great but it sometimes has unexpected results.

This is a collection of 3 of Harry Harrison marvelous early stories that were published in Galaxy, Analog and Fantastic Universe. The Repairman (1958) is a straight fun SF story of a man getting a job done. It is most typical of his later style in series like the Stainless Steel Rat; Toy Shop (1962), a short piece exploring bureaucratic blindness and one ingenious way around it and The Velvet Glove (1956), my favorite for its writing style, fun perspective, sly social commentary on the scene in 1956 and just plain delightful imagination. And he manages to pack excitement and mystery in at the same time.