Fiction audiobooks page 40

Austin Ford, the London correspondent of the New York Republic, is spending some idle time in the American Embassy chatting with the Second Secretary, when suddenly a note is brought in. This note is an appeal for help, found in the gutter in a dark alley. The writer claims to be a young girl, who is kept against her will locked up in a lunatic asylum by her uncle. Although the Second Secretary tries to convince him that there is nothing to it, the journalist is determined to follow the lead...

O Alienista follows a famous psychiatrist obsessed with discovering the universal panacea to cure every kind of mental malady. In his missionary zeal, he consigns not just the mentally dysfunctional but also perfectly healthy and well adjusted ones to his newly opened asylum, since he believes that prevention is better than a cure. A revolt breaks out among the villagers. The good doctor now believes that “normalcy” is a malady and needs to be cured which takes the story on a bizarre turn.

O Alienista is a satire written by the Brazilian writer Machado de Assis. It first appeared in a Rio de Janiero newspaper in 1881-82 in serial form and was translated into Eng...

Thomas Carnacki was a detective of the supernatural, created for a series of short stories by Wiliam Hope Hodgson. Hodsgon, also a noted photographer and bodybuilder, might have created more stories for this intrepid sleuth of the occult, but he unfortunately died at the youthful age of 40 in World War I. (Introduction by Samanem)

First Published in 1908, The Elusive Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy is the 4th book in the classic adventure series about the Scarlet Pimpernel.

In this world of modern day spying, Joseph Conrad's spy story, The Secret Agent, is very pertinent. It deals with the over reaching influence of politics in everyday life, the sordid underbelly that lies beneath our civilization's sophisticated veneer, the strange persuasive power of anarchy, unbridled capitalism and its tragic consequences and the scourge of terrorism, exploitation and espionage.

In an uncannily prophetic plot, The Secret Agent portrays a sinister scheme to bomb the famous Greenwich Observatory in London. Mr. Adolf Verloc is a lazy, indolent shopkeeper (who had “an air of having wallowed all day fully dressed in an unmade bed”) and owns a tiny ...

The book describes the love triangle between a young woman, Elfride Swancourt, and her two suitors from very different backgrounds. Stephen Smith is a socially inferior but ambitious young man who adores her and with whom she shares a country background. Henry Knight is the respectable, established, older man who represents London society.

The plot concerns two – literally starcrossed – lovers: Swithin St. Cleeve, a very young amateur astronomer, and Viviette Constantine, an unhappily married and abandoned woman 8 or 9 years his senior. Each night Swithin climbs the old tower of the title, in the grounds of the Constantine estate. Lady Constantine, whose husband has been absent some years on an extended hunting and exploring journey to Africa, joins the young man in his stargazing, and supports his astronomical ambitions by buying him equipment, though his dreams of scientific renown are disappointed.Their relationship then deepens and takes several twists and turns.

This novel is subtitled The Mellstock Quire, A Rural Painting of the Dutch School. The Quire is the group of musicians who accompany the hymns at the local church and we follow the fortunes of one member, Dick Dewy, who falls in love with the new school mistress, Fancy Day. Another element of the book is the battle between the traditional musicians of the Quire and the local vicar, Parson Maybold, who installs a church organ. This battle illustrates the developing technology being introduced in the Victorian era and its threat to traditional country ways. The novel was published anonymously in 1872 and is often seen as Thomas Hardy’s most gentle and pastoral novel. In 2005 Under the Gr...

Juha on Juhani Ahon vuonna 1911 ilmestynyt romaani. Sitä pidetään yhtenä kirjailijansa merkittävimmistä teoksista. Juhan ilmestyessä Aho oli jo vakiinnuttanut paikkansa Suomen "kansalliskirjailijana". Romaania on luonnehdittu Ahon teoksista klassisimmaksi ja samalla nykyaikaisimmaksi. Eeppisestä muodostaan huolimatta Juha on täynnä sisäistä draamaa.

Juha sijoittuu tarkasti määrittelemättömään historialliseen aikaan, tarinassa viitatun kaskenpolton ja heimosotien perusteella kenties 1600- tai 1700-luvulle. Ajankohtaa ei kuitenkaan pidetä erityisen tärkeänä, sillä kyse on ikuisesta, ajattomasta aiheesta. Tapahtumapaikka on yhtä epämääräinen, kenties Kainuu tai Pohjois-Karjala, joka t...

The war with the Yucks from Proxima Centauri was claimed to be a stalemate but they were really winning. The mine belts they laid seemed to propagate themselves and were slowly strangling Terran planets. How did they do that? What was their secret? The answer was baffling and the best human minds could only conclude that their ships and mines were somehow alive. So, the next desperate step was to ask "If they are using organic ships, why can't we do the same?". Thus Mr. Spaceship was conceived and carried out. But will a conscious warship do what the generals wish? Perhaps and perhaps something entirely surprising!