Showing results by narrator "Robert Bethune" in All Categories

Five wonderful stories by Ambrose Bierce, full of vivid characters, precise and evocative language, surprises, and suspense. Written more than a century ago, these stories still capture the imagination with vivid, precise language that bites - and may even draw blood! This Freshwater Seas production presents these five classic stories performed by Susie Berneis and Robert Bethune, with subtle musical underscoring to enhance and enrich Bierce's words.

As in the first two volumes of this series, our interest in these poems is not so much the poetry itself as the promise of what is to come. In these poems, mostly written in the years just before Byron left England to tour in Europe, it is fascinating to see how his power as a poet is constantly growing and to see how his enormously romantic heart and soul goes about fashioning itself.

Three stories by Rudyard Kipling, all about the marvelous nature of elephants. In "The Elephant's Child", we learn how the elephant got his trunk - one of the favorite tales from the Just-So Stories. In "Moti Guj, Mutineer", we learn what happens when an elephant has made a bargain - and humans have failed to do their part! In "Toomai of the Elephants", we learn how a special child and his relationship to a special elephant allow him to see something no one in the world has ever seen before. These marvelous stories, told with wit and wonder by Rudyard Kipling, are for young and old of all ages.

A Shropshire Lad is A. E. Housman's reflections on love, death, and the eternal uncertainty of the human condition, placed in an idealized world of rural England, unpolluted by the taint of the city, but still a place where love can fail, evil can come to good people, and human beings can find themselves torn deeply by conflicting desires and feelings. Housman had great faith in his work even when he could not find a publisher and had to bring it out himself. His faith was rewarded.

Here are two terrifying and sobering stories of ghosts who will stop at nothing. In Henry James' "The Romance of Certain Old Clothes", a woman's envy of her dead sister threatens to destroy her. In "Lost Hearts", three children learn that a classical scholar's love of the past has led him into a terrible and bloody delusion.

George Gordon, later Lord Byron, published Fugitive Pieces in 1806 when he was only 18 years old. It was printed, but Byron's friends, particularly Reverend Thomas Beecher, advised him that it contained poems that were scandalously amorous, particularly the poem "To Mary". Byron suppressed it by having all the copies destroyed - or so he thought. As it happened, Thomas Beecher himself kept his copy, and there were three other copies that were not destroyed.

There's a long tradition of English Christmas stories, sometimes serious, sometimes humorous, often revolving around ghosts and apparitions. Dickens drew on it in a serious vein in A Christmas Carol; here, Jerome K. Jerome tells hilarious stories from around an English Christmas fireside.

Here are three of the most wonderful Christmas stories ever written, presented for you along with two short pieces that just can't be left out of any Christmas collection worth its salt.

William Hazlitt is one of the foremost writers of the English language. His fame as a critic, essayist, and social commentator ranks with the likes of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell. He considered his justly famous Life of Napoleon as his most important work. In this, the fifth volume of the work, William Hazlitt takes us through Napoleon's captivity on the island of St. Helena, his decline and his death.

In this, the fifth volume of the work, William Hazlitt takes us through Napoleon's fall from power. He shows us the situation in Europe at that time: England controlling the sea, and England, Austria, Russia, and Prussia massed on the borders of France, ready to consummate their 25-year struggle to restore the Bourbon monarchy. Nor were these the only enemies confronting Napoleon.

In this, the fourth volume of the work, William Hazlitt takes us through the great turning point in Napoleon's life: his invasion of Russia. He shows us the situation in Europe at that time: England controlling the sea, France controlling the land, and only Russia left as a land-based threat to France. He also explores the changes in Napoleon's life and mind: his divorce from Josephine, his marriage to Maria Louisa, his friendship with Emperor Alexander...a friendship that turned to deep enmity.

In this, the sixth of the series, Dumas tells the story of Urbain Grandier, a Catholic priest, little known to the English-speaking world, but famous among French speakers; he was the target of a religous and political conspiracy that began among his personal and political enemies in the town of Loudon and ended at the highest levels of political and religious power in the kingdom of France, with the direct involvement of Cardinal Richelieu and possibly of the king himself.

In this, the fourth of the series, Dumas tells the story of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots - a story both strikingly touching and almost morbidly violent. Never one to allow a mere fact to stand in the way of a good story, though very sympathetic to Mary, Dumas puts all the most sensational accusations made against her - mostly by her enemies - to circumspect yet full use, which certainly distorts history, but makes for a great tale.

In Charnel Rose, Conrad Aiken takes the plunge into a deeply metaphysical and surrealistic world, capturing the essence of one aspect of quintessential humanity: how we create and pursue a deeply personal, intensely idealistic, physically and emotionally draining search for love, and how some of us turn away from real love when we do find it, preferring instead to re-invent and re-amplify our idealistic vision of passionate perfection. He does this through an amazing combination of highly imaginative imagery conveyed through strikingly simple and beautiful poetry, musically complex....

What Spoon River Anthology does for a Midwestern small town, Turns and Movies does for the world of vaudeville. Like Masters, like Aiken: passions, betrayals, secrets, sins, victories, defeats, and inevitable losing struggles against age and death are the stuff of this work. And that's only the first part of the book.

Stephen Crane's poetry is torn by a sense of his own sin, outraged by the capricious behavior of a God he rejected, his poems brim with bitteness, yet carry with them a sane and sarcastic humor as well. Tremendously laconic and always moving directly to the point, he demands his listener's full attention, and rewards it.

Pity Sir Simon de Canterville, the poor Ghost of Canterville Chase! He killed his wife and was then starved to death by her brothers, but ever since then he's been happily haunting the family's mansion, always inventing fresh characters and costumes and blood-curdling shrieks.

Three great tales of meetings with ghosts, and perhaps more than ghosts: "The Vacant Lot" by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman; "On the Brighton Road" by Richard Middleton; and "Sister Johanna" by Amelia B. Edwards.

In this, the twelfth of the series, Dumas, the novelist-historian, is back in full force. His subject is a well-documented historical fact: that a man named Arnaud du Thil was able to pass for two years as Martin Guerre, deceiving villages, neighbors, friends, family, and even the wife of Martin Guerre with equal success, even to the point of becoming the father of two children by Martin Guerre's wife.

Here is part of the byroads-and-backwaters side of Lord Byron - poems you probably won't hear elsewhere, poems he wrote casually and sometimes never published, but poems that offer a side of him not seen elsewhere.