Showing results by narrator "Peter Coates" in All Categories

An Odyssey of the North is a short story by Jack London that explore the wild and rugged nature of the northern coast of British Columbia. This story is filled with adventure and capture the beauty of nature and the mysteries of the sea. Naass, a young Aleut man, wins a young woman of the tribe, Unga, only to have her stolen from him on the night of their marriage celebration by a seven-foot-tall, yellow-haired white man, Axel Gunderson. Naass spends years tracking his nemesis, determined to claim his bride and take vengeance.

"The Great Wall of China" is a short story by Franz Kafka. While written in 1917, it was not published until 1930, seven years after his death. Its first publication occurred in Der Morgen, a German literary magazine. A year later, Max Brod included it in Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer, the first posthumous collection of short stories by Franz Kafka. Contained within the story is a parable that was separately published as "A Message from the Emperor" ("Eine kaiserliche Botschaft") in 1919 in the collection Ein Landarzt (A Country Doctor).

In a quiet farmhouse, the ordinary folds into the unseen. A Jury of Her Peers turns a simple domestic scene into a mirror of justice, conscience, and the unspoken weight of women's lives. With spare, careful strokes, Susan Glaspell reveals how silence can testify and how understanding sometimes takes root where authority fails.

Plato is, by any reckoning, one of the most dazzling writers in the Western literary tradition and one of the most penetrating, wide-ranging, and influential authors in the history of philosophy. This audiobook contains Plato's most notable books. Contents:The Apology; Crito; Charmides; Laches; Lysis; Menexenus; Ion; Meno

Lysis is a dialogue of Plato which discusses the nature often translated as friendship, while the word's original content was of a much larger and more intimate bond. It is generally classified as an early dialogue. The main characters are Socrates, the boys Lysis and Menexenus who are friends, as well as Hippothales, who is in unrequited love with Lysis and therefore, after the initial conversation, hides himself behind the surrounding listeners.

The Adventure of the Yellow Face, one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is the third tale from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. It was first published in Strand Magazine in 1893 with original illustrations by Sidney Paget. One of Doyle's sentimental pieces, the story is remarkable in that Holmes' deduction during the course of it proves incorrect. According to Dr. Watson:"...where he failed it happened too often that no one else succeeded... Now and again, however, it chanced that even when he erred the truth was still discovered."

The Adventure of the Empty House, one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 13 stories in the cycle collected as The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Public pressure forced Conan Doyle to bring the sleuth back to life, and explain his apparently miraculous survival of a deadly struggle with Professor Moriarty. This is the first Holmes story set after his supposed death at the Reichenbach Falls, as recounted in "The Final Problem". The Hound of the Baskervilles had seen the return of a pre-Reichenbach Falls Sherlock Holmes, which only served to whet readers' appetites.

In Humility, Andrew Murray explores the profound yet often overlooked virtue of humility as essential to the Christian life. Drawing from biblical teachings and personal reflections, Murray offers a compelling argument for the importance of humility in relationship with God and others. Through insightful analysis and practical advice, Murray reveals humility as the foundation of true spiritual growth and intimacy with God. He highlights humility as the antidote to pride and self-centeredness, leading readers on a journey toward deeper dependence on God and greater sensitivity to the needs of others.

Kahlil Gibran was a Lebanese-American writer, poet, activist, and visual artist. Deeply thoughtful and spiritual, Gibran was also considered a philosopher although he rejected the title. Gibran is celebrated as a literary hero in Lebanon. He is widely considered the single most important influence on Arabic poetry and literature during the first half of the twentieth century. Contents: Sand and Foam, The Prophet, The Madman, His Parables And Poems.

The Valley of Fear is the fourth and final Sherlock Holmes novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is loosely based on the Molly Maguires and Pinkerton agent James McParland. The story was first published in the Strand Magazine between September 1914 and May 1915. The novel starts with Sherlock Holmes receiving a cipher message from Fred Porlock, a pseudonymous agent of Professor Moriarty. After Porlock sends the message, however, he changes his mind for fear of Moriarty's discovering that he is a traitor. He decides not to send the key to the cipher, but he sends Holmes a note telling of this decision.

Kholstomer is a work by Leo Tolstoy that has been referred to as "one of the most striking stories in Russian literature". It was started in 1863 and left unfinished until 1886, when it was reworked and published as Kholstomer: The Story of a Horse. This story prominently features the technique of defamiliarization by adopting the perspective of a horse to expose some of the irrationalities of human conventions. Kholstomer's altruistic life is recounted parallel to that of his selfish and useless owner. At the end of the story horse dies but his corpse gives birth to a new life - that of wolf cubs.

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), published in 1889, is a humorous account by English writer Jerome K. Jerome of a two-week boating holiday on the Thames from Kingston upon Thames to Oxford and back to Kingston. The book was initially intended to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of local history along the route, but the humorous elements took over to the point where the serious and somewhat sentimental passages seem a distraction to the comic novel.

P. T. Barnum, the great American showman of the 19th century, wrote this short book about making and keeping money. He certainly had life experiences that qualify him for the subject--he started a small newspaper in his twenties, bought and transformed a museum into a showplace for curiosities, built a circus empire that gave performances in America and Europe, promoted a performing tour of a singer, fell into debt in the 1850s and pulled himself out by lecture tours, was a mayor, and founded a hospital.

Jack London was an outstanding American writer, publicist and public figure, the author of numerous adventure stories and tales. Jack London is famous for his short stories and novels, but he also enthusiastically studied poetry and even made an attempt to establish a reputation for himself as a poet.

A child's toy, a cursed relic, a mystery that refuses to stay hidden. In The Haunted Dolls' House , M. R. James weaves a tale of exquisite unease, where the innocent facade of a dollhouse reveals a terrifying world of spirits long forgotten. Here, the past and present collide, and the boundaries between the living and the dead blur in unsettling silence. With his signature restraint and an eye for the uncanny, James transports the listener to a place where even the most innocent of objects can conceal a dark history—and a terrible secret that demands to be uncovered.

A picture that changes. A scholar who watches. A nightmare unfolding one shadow at a time. Forget jump scares—this is horror in its most refined form. The Mezzotint is a slow-burn classic where dread creeps in like fog and nothing is ever quite as it seems. M. R. James delivers a ghost story that gets under your skin—and stays there. Mysterious, unsettling, and quietly terrifying.

There are times when life requires initiative, decisiveness, and a certain strength of character. Fortunately for Bertie Wooster, he has Jeeves. Between the delicate politics of high society and the quiet catastrophes of everyday existence, authority proves to be a surprisingly fluid arrangement — one that Jeeves manages with unruffled calm, alarming precision, and impeccable timing. With P. G. Wodehouse, no predicament is ever quite as serious as it seems, and no social disaster beyond elegant correction — provided the right gentleman is in attendance. When in doubt… leave it to Jeeves.

A landmark of Enlightenment thought, Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is accompanied here by two shorter works that shed light on it: A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh, Hume's response to those accusing him of atheism, of advocating extreme skepticism, and of undermining the foundations of morality; and his Abstract of A Treatise of Human Nature, which anticipates discussions developed in the Enquiry.

Emerson's Nature is not just an essay—it's a rebellion against confinement, an argument against secondhand wisdom. He strips away artifice, forcing us to confront the raw, untamed presence of the world. To walk through the woods, he suggests, is to be undressed of civilization, to shed the weight of customs, history, and ego. Nature demands no commentary, no theory—it simply is. This is not the sentimental nature of poets, nor the docile landscape of painters. Emerson's nature is unsettling, absolute.

In Hellhounds of the Cosmos, Clifford D. Simak takes listeners on a thrilling journey through space and time. The story follows a group of explorers who encounter terrifying, mysterious creatures on a distant planet. As they navigate strange landscapes and face deadly threats, they uncover shocking secrets about the universe and their place within it. With Simak's signature blend of science fiction and philosophical musings, this gripping tale explores themes of humanity, survival, and the unknown.