Showing results by narrator "Ron Richard" in All Categories

Stephen Leacock (1869-1944) may be considered the Canadian counterpart to Mark Twain. For many years he was professor of economics at Magill University and published a number of well-regarded texts on economics and political science. However, he is best known today for his many volumes of humorous fiction. During the 1920s he was one of the most widely read authors in the English-speaking world and was considered by Jack Benny and Groucho Marx to be one of the greatest comic writers of all time.

In the first 20 years of the 21st century, New York City has been convulsed by terrorist attack, blackout, hurricane, recession, social injustice, and pandemic. New Yorkers weaves the voices of some of the city's best talkers into an indelible portrait of New York in our time—and a powerful hymn to the vitality and resilience of its people.

Serena Brimstone, fierce warrior woman of the Northlands, awoke to find the enormous diamond she had recently claimed from a dying stranger embedded in her chest. Suddenly, old sparring partners refuse to fight her. Enemies throw down their weapons and profess their undying love for her. When Serena and three magicians are recruited by the enigmatic leader to seek out a legendary wizard and promised their hearts' desires in return, she hopes she has finally found a way to be rid of the diamond and the adoration it causes others to feel for her.

This book contains two plays by Henrik Ibsen. Norma is a satirical opera designed as a dramatic parody of Vincenzo Bellini's opera Norma, in which the characters are portrayed as central figures in the political life of contemporary Norway. St. John's Night is a fairy-tale comedy that takes place during a midsummer feast on a farm in Telemark. It is inspired by many sources, most notably A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare, and features many of the same themes.

Franz Kafka was one of the first and greatest masters of dystopian literature. In his bleak world view, man is presented as helpless and ineffectual, his destiny determined by distant, obscure and essentially unfriendly agencies. In none of his works is this savage and unreasoning enslavement presented more vividly than in Metamorphosis, a novella in which Gregor Samsa, a respectable employee and dutiful son, wakes to find himself transformed into a gigantic insect.

After killing mutant monsters, defeating an evil vizier, and gaining and losing a queen’s ransom in days, Group Six is more than ready for a real vacation. Which part of the Treskan Imperium will they find most amusing – the mountain pass haunted by the ghosts of an ancient battle, the skirmishes between the relentless Treskan army and the scrappy insurgents resisting their conquest, the wrath of the tyrannical Imperator Merak, or the to-the-death gladiatorial games of Stadium?

One little mistake and Tresado's magical formula lands Group Six in a wasteland crawling with mutant monsters, a deadly disease, and creeping insanity that soon has them at each other's throats. Their rescue by the militia from Abakaar seems providential.