Showing results by narrator "Karen David" in All Categories

For many people, Beethoven is the greatest composer who ever lived. In this portrait-in-sound, actors’ readings combine with his music to reveal a titanic personality, both vulnerable and belligerent, comic and tragic, and above all heroic, as he comes to grips with perhaps the greatest disability a musician can suffer. No man’s music is more universal; few men’s lives are more inspiring. In every sense but one - his modest height - he was a giant. The great bonus of this audio-biography is that the development of Beethoven’s music can be heard in the context of his life.

Brahms is one of the best loved yet most controversial of all the Romantics. Almost uniquely, his works have never suffered the slightest period of eclipse. Profoundly emotional yet governed by an iron discipline, the music, like the man, is a fascinating, entertaining, often deeply moving blend of opposites. He had a gift for friendship and a capacity for love far beyond the ordinary, yet no man could be ruder or more hurtful.

When pop megastar Zach Crystal dies in a fire at his remote mansion, his mysterious demise rips open the bitter divide between those who adored his music and his endless charity work, and those who viewed him as a despicable predator who manipulated and abused young and vulnerable girls. Online journalist Scott King, whose Six Stories podcasts have become an internet sensation, investigates the accusations of sexual abuse and murder that were levelled at Crystal before he died. But as Scott begins to ask questions and rake over old graves, some startling inconsistencies emerge.

The Claxton Lore and Apparition Warehouse is located on a remote private property in the deep swamps of Louisiana, and overseen by a robot designed by Mr. Claxton, called CLAW. The warehouse is filled with a maze of crates labeled with things like The Beast, Mr. Mason’s Jars, Snap, The Atomic Ants, which are filled with the things of legend, and it is CLAW’s job to make sure the objects don’t get out. But CLAW is a curious robot, and what lay inside these crates just may make their way out and haunt the imaginations of listeners everywhere.

John Rourke knows that there are six people left on Earth - his loved ones. After five centuries of sleep, they wake to discover a world unlike the one they knew...and they are not alone. New and old enemies live to kill and kill to live. It could be the ultimate test of Rourke's skills as The Survivalist.

Mortals fall, Ascended rise, and Gods consume. The planar energy crisis is now fact; proof written into the very air of the Nexusplane. For the first time in immeasurable history, the eternally luminescent Realm of the Gods knows night. Everything has changed…The Council continues to operate as it doesn’t; with seemingly no consideration to those outside itself. Within its labyrinth of bureaucracy, officials and agents play their petty games. Not even they can tell if their actions bear any relevance to the imminent threat.

First published nearly a quarter-century ago and one of the very few short-story collections to win the PEN/Faulkner Award, this is American fiction at its most vital - each narrative a masterpiece of sustained power and seemingly effortless literary grace.

Tchaikovsky is one of the most popular composers of all time. His melodies are known to many people who may never have heard his name. They crop up on mobile telephones, alarm clocks and answering machines as often as on records and concert programs. Like his music, the man himself was widely loved, but his inner life was fraught with sufferings, confusions and a deep vein of self-doubt. The drama of his emotional life is vividly reflected in his music, letters and diaries, all of which play a major part in this intimate portrait-in-sound.

Two centuries after Skydark, Earth remains chained to a sinister destiny spawned by hybrids and human traitors manipulating humankind from deep inside the chaos of forgotten worlds. Once a stone-cold protector of the ruling order, Kane and his compatriots strike back against the tide of extinction threatening to engulf the human race in a conflict with no boundaries in time, space or reality....

As the 22nd century emerges from the blight of nuclear damnation, humanity is slowly coming to terms with the bizarre new world of Deathlands, where each new generation holds the promise of renewal and redemption — in men like Ryan Cawdor and his son, Dean. Ryan Cawdor and companions emerge from a gateway into the ravaged world of the Rockies. It's old hunting grounds for Ryan and the Titan-haired Krysty Worth — her home and the place where they first came together.

In the aftermath of the apocalypse, little remains except age-old evils of greed, perversion, and force. But a small group of survivalists cherishes the legacy of human courage and hope. Led by the charismatic Ryan Cawdor, they persevere in a brutal world through warrior skills and a bold desire to regain the promised future. The fertile bayous teem with mutant life-forms and altered species. Off on a trek with his son, Ryan fends off the dangers from marauders and Nature's traps, but also finds signs of hope for humanity's new future.

For years, like millions of other Americans, John Thomas Rourke had planned for what seemed inevitable — the destruction of civilization. There were various possible causes: global economic collapse, some uncontrollable pestilence, a world famine — or nuclear war. And the rumbling signaling the coming of Total War was becoming increasingly strong as Rourke, ex-CIA Covert Operations Officer, weapons expert, and survival authority, made his last desperate gambit to save his estranged wife and two children before the button was pressed.

John Thomas Rourke, M.D., ex-CIA Covert Operations Officer, weapons expert, and survival authority, has accomplished one of his goals — he's helped his young friend Paul Rubinstein locate his parents. Now, Rourke's search for his own family must continue, hampered by severe storms raging along the Eastern Seaboard caused by the earthquakes which destroyed Florida.

As the Ice Age ends and the glaciers release their hold on North America, a brave band of people make their way into the new continent. The climate is changing and the game is scarce. A hostile tribe pursues them, driving them ever southward. In their midst rises a young shaman, who receives a Dream from the spirit of the Wolf, a vision of paradise on the other side of the impenetrable ice.

Kane finds himself 25 years into a parallel future, a world where the mysterious Imprator has seemingly restored civilization to America, overthrowing the baronial oligarchy — with the help of the Cerberus exiles. In this alternate reality, only Kane and Grant survived the battle and its spilled blood has left them estranged. Yet Kane is certain that somewhere in time lies a different path to tomorrow's reality...and his obsession may be humanity's last chance to battle evil in two worlds — the past and the future — where a sinister madman controls the heart of the world.

The loyalties that united the Cerberus warriors have become undone, as a bizarre messenger from the future provides a look into encroaching horror and death. Kane and his band have one option: Fix two fatal fault lines in the time continuum — and rewrite history before it happens. But first they must restore power to the barons who dare to defy the greater evil: the mysterious new Imperator.

Bianca Xing has spent a lifetime on a provincial planet, dreaming of travelling the stars. When her planet is annexed by the Barony of Letnev, Bianca finds herself being taken into custody, told that she’s special–the secret daughter of a brilliant scientist, hidden away on a remote planet for her own safety. But the truth about Bianca is stranger. There are secrets hidden in her genetic code that could have galaxy altering consequences.

Weary, sick, and hungry, the group barely survives a trek through the torturous deserts of the Southwest which leads into the bayous of what was once Louisiana, a place one of their own first called home. The eerie, lifeless silence of the swamps warns of trouble ahead. But nothing can prepare them for Dr. Jean, a madman who has harnessed pre-Dark tech to create an army of crazed zombies marching toward his own twisted vision of Deathlands domination.

World War III was only the beginning. Inevitable death now awaits every soul who lived through the holocaust as the earth's atmosphere is about the explode into a searching blaze of fire. But one man refuses to die, refuses to accept the horror: John Thomas Rourke, the ex-CIA Covert Operations Officer, weapons expert and survival authority.

Esmay Suiza and Brun Meager should be friends - they're both bright, brave, likable and adventurous. But true friendship doesn't run any smoother than true love. Brun thinks Esmay's a stuck-up prig, and Esmay thinks Brun's a spoiled rich brat who's making a play for Barin Serrano, Esmay's first love. So when Brun falls into the hands of a repressive religious militia movement, Esmay finds herself in disgrace, suspected of conniving at the capture. Even Barin, now being pursued by the beautiful and ambitious Casea Ferradi, has turned against her.