Showing results by narrator "Mitchley Richard" in All Categories

Born in 1857 in Poland, Joseph Conrad became a British citizen just before he turned 30. In the intervening years he lost both parents, becoming an orphan at 11, being thereafter raised by an uncle, who let the boy go to Marseille, where he began to work on merchant ships. At age 36 his life turned from one of ships to one of literary pursuit. Conrad brought to English literature both a fresh layer of style and a deeper examination of the human psyche in a wealth of works. In this audiobook we dwell among his numerous short stories.

Toby Tucker is an orphan with a secret. He owns a chest filled with torn paper, and a strange message: Piece your family tree together and you'll find out who you are and when you come from. When he manages to put together a name, the most incredible magic happens. Toby travels back in time and becomes his ancestor! This time he is plunged back to ancient Greece, into Titus's life, where he finds himself dodging the donkey doo.

Toby Tucker is an orphan with a secret. He owns a chest filled with torn paper, and a strange message: Piece your family tree together and you'll find out who you are and when you come from. When he manages to put together a name, the most incredible magic happens. Toby travels back in time and becomes his ancestor! This time Toby hurtles back to ancient Rome, into Titus's life, and finds himself sludging through a sewer in search of riches.

Poems can evoke within us an individual response that takes us by surprise; that opens our ears and eyes to very personal feelings. Forget the idea of classic poetry being somehow dull and boring and best kept to children's textbooks. It still has life, vibrancy and relevance to our lives today.

When Delphinium presses the button marked DANGER, bells ring and sirens wail. What a way to celebrate her 10th birthday! But others on the space station are worried by the white blob on their computer screens. Could it signal an invasion? Meanwhile, Jason is enjoying a little fun aboard a skip-ship. But he and Delphinium accidentally start the machine and find themselves hurtling through space, out of control....

In these four semi-autobiographical stories Fitzgerald highlights some of the absurdities of Hollywood. They feature Pat Hobby, a down-on-his-luck scriptwriter. In the course of his adventures neither the stars, producers nor, least of all, the writers are spared from Fitzgerald's demolishing wit. These superb examples of short fiction succeed in mocking both success and failure as they deliver their sting with deadly humour.

Are the dinner ladies at your school rough and tough? Do they pour vats of hot soup over innocent children? It was exactly the same at Littlehampton Primary where Plughole, owner of the World's Weirdest Laugh, went to school.

February - the second month of the year in the Gregorian calendar brings not only the shortest month but, for lovers everywhere, Valentine's Day. On this and other themes, our poets, including Nesbit, Teasdale, and Coleridge, have much to say.

As private as she was eccentric, Emily Dickinson published only a handful of poems in her lifetime. Most of her work, much of which dealt with themes of death and immortality, was published posthumously, to mixed reviews. But it would be her unconventional poetic style, which was most criticized early on, that would ultimately gain her recognition as one of the greatest American poets of all time. Here, a lovely sampling of the poems of Emily Dickinson is presented for your listening pleasure.

Those Queens of Crime, the Dinner Ladies, invent a cunning method of robbery - the Slurp Machine. There's only one problem, they need someone small to work it - someone like the heroic third-year junior, Caroline Crisp. A very funny story about some dreadful dinner ladies, from bestselling author David Tinkler.

Poetry is often cited as our greatest use of words. The English language has well over a million of them and poets down the ages seem, at times, to make use of every single one. But often they use them in simple ways to describe anything and everything from landscapes to all aspects of the human condition. Poems can evoke within us an individual response that takes us by surprise, that opens our ears and eyes to very personal feelings.

Have you heard of Glob the Mutant? Did you know that even though he looks exactly like an ordinary boy he actually comes from another planet? This story is about him. It's also about sweet little Lucasta Smirk and how she fearlessly faced the evil Mr Crushchild and the dangerous Miss Hatchet!

A story about Blanco Polo, the great-nephew of Marco Polo, and his journey from Venice to Spain to build flying machines with the villainous Count Maleficio. Along the way he meets Eva, also bound for Spain - for an arranged marriage.

Monty is allergic to ghosts. If there's an invisible ghost around, he sneezes. As soon as Monty sets foot in the Brinsley Codd School for Sensible Thought, he knows it's haunted. Why else would he sneeze like a hurricane? Mysterious forces are clearly at work, yet Monty has problems convincing the principal, and a loathsome teacher called Sogbucket, that the school is really haunted.

Poetry is often cited as our greatest use of words. The English language has well over a million of them and poets down the ages seem, at times, to make use of every single one. But often they use them in simple ways to describe anything and everything from landscapes to all aspects of the human condition. Poems can evoke within us an individual response that takes us by surprise; that opens our ears and eyes to very personal feelings.

August - the eighth month of the year in the Gregorian calendar and the full palette of nature is on glorious display. Our poets, Wordsworth, Swinburne, Alford, Riley, and Hardy, describe and reveal their thoughts on the month and notable dates within it.

If ever a writer needed an introduction, Arthur Conan Doyle would not be considered that man. After all, Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the most well-known literary detective of any age. Add to this canon his stories, his historical novels, his political campaigning, and his efforts in establishing a Court Of Appeal, and there is little room for anything else. Except he was also a poet. Not perhaps the finest but his distinctive voice is certainly evident amongst his lines and verses. And it’s a voice worth listening to; something very different from what you might expect.

This collection of short stories contains several gothic tales to bear macabre and chilling witness to writers as diverse as Thomas Hardy, Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe and HP Lovecraft. These tales are designed to unsettle you, just a little, as you sit back, and take in their words as they lead you on a walk to places you’d perhaps rather not visit on your own.

March - the third month of the year in the Gregorian calendar brings with it the Spring Equinox and the promise of warmer days and shorter nights. Our selected poets, including Swift, Yeats, Morris, Swinburne, and Austin, of course provide the words to match the mood.

Death is a subject that few of us talk about, but many think about and more than a few of us dread. Whether it is the actual end of our life’s journey or merely a transit point to heavenly glory, its actual point of impact is, obviously, life-changing. But what do poets think of it? How do their minds tangle with the subject and make sense of this? That’s what we wondered, too. Poets as rich and diverse as Longfellow, Hood, Bronte, Burns, and Gibran here share their words, thoughts and visions with us.