Literature audiobooks page 90

Arthur Chamberlain has problems. His one-man engineering firm is faltering and his pretty secretary Estelle barely notices him. But these problems are put aside when his Manhattan office building falls into the fourth dimension. Madison Square is filled with wigwams and it’s up to Arthur to engineer a way to make his building to fall back to the future. – The Runaway Skyscraper first appeared in the February 22, 1919 issue of Argosy magazine.

In "Tarrano the Conqueror" is presented a tale of the year 2430 A.D.--a time somewhat farther beyond our present-day era than we are beyond Columbus' discovery of America. My desire has been to create for you the impression that you have suddenly been plunged forward into that time--to give you the feeling Columbus might have had could he have read a novel of our present-day life.

To this end I have conceived myself a writer of that future time, addressing his contemporary public. You are to imagine yourself reading a present day translation of my original text--a translation so free that a thousand little colloquialisms will have crept into it that could not possibly have their coun...

"This 1922 book by poet and sometime cultural critic Vachel Lindsay might have been the first to treat the then-new medium of moving pictures as an art form, one that was potentially as rich, complex, mysterious as far older ones, and whose physical and aesthetic properties were only starting to be understood. The highlight of the book might be “The Motion Picture of Fairy Splendor,” which examines the relationship between film storytelling, magic, myths, legends and bedtime stories. It’s discombobulating, in a good way, to read Lindsay’s attempts to grapple with what, precisely, cinema is. Being supposedly sophisticated 21st century people, we all feel as though we know what cinema is, a...

Devotions upon Emergent Occasions is a 1624 prose work by the English writer John Donne. It is a series of reflections that were written as Donne recovered from a serious illness, believed to be either typhus or relapsing fever. (Donne does not clearly identify the disease in his text.) The work consists of twenty-three parts describing each stage of the sickness. Each part is further divided into a Meditation, an Expostulation, and a Prayer.

The seventeenth meditation is perhaps the best-known part of the work. It contains the following passage:
“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the...

Ostensibly a love story, the novel really revolves around a highly mythologized version of the Johnson County War in 1890’s Wyoming … The novel takes the side of the large ranchers, and depicts the lynchings as frontier justice, meted out by the protagonist, who is a member of a natural aristocracy among men.

A milkmaid, Margery, encounters a mysterious foreigner and perhaps prevents him from committing suicide. In gratitude, the man offers her any reward she can name. She tells him she wants to go to a ball. He takes her, admittedly a bit reluctantly, to a yeoman's ball in a neighboring county. From there the story continues because of course, a lot happens after the ball. She happens to already have an engagement to a local lad but his hold over her seems to grow of its own accord. This Hardy story may not end the way you wish, but that is often true of stories by this master writer.

Guy Newell Boothby (1867 – 1905) was a prolific Australian writer. He moved to London in 1894 and became most well-known for his Dr.Nikola mysteries. This book is the first in a series of five and introduces the good doctor himself. Dr Nikola Is a criminal mastermind with an occult twist and like much fiction of that era this book and the following are more about how others fall under his spell and into his web. Here we have an adventure and love story that sweeps us from Australia, the South Seas, the Middle East and rural Hampshire with our lovestruck hero constantly battling against Dr Nikola and his cohorts. The sense of mystery and the exotic settings are exceptionally well portrayed...

Paul is a poor boy who grew up in London, in the household of his mother and stepfather. His journey to greatness is the subject of our story. But his desired success comes at a very high price.

Au cours d’une promenade, le comte Henri de Marsay, un dandy féroce investi d’un pouvoir qui lui permet de plier toute personne à sa volonté rencontre Paquita, une jeune femme d’une exceptionnelle beauté. A partir de cet instant, le comte n’aura de cesse de tenter de se l’approprier et lance une expédition pour l'enlever. Mais Paquita est jalousement gardée par la Marquise de San-Réal qui est follement amoureuse d’elle. Celle-ci finira par tuer sa maîtresse... La Fille aux yeux d’or est le troisième volet de l’Histoire des Treize qui regroupe Ferragus, La Duchesse de Langeais et La Fille aux yeux d’or. (Résumé par Graigolin)

Stephen Vincent Benét (July 22, 1898 – March 13, 1943) was an American author, poet, short story writer and novelist. He is best known for his book-length narrative poem of the American Civil War, John Brown’s Body (1928), for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1929, and for two short stories, “The Devil and Daniel Webster” and “By the Waters of Babylon”.

It was a line of Benét’s poetry that gave the title to Dee Brown’s famous history of the destruction of Native American tribes by the United States: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.