Showing results by narrator "Bob Neufeld" in All Categories

World War II has ended, and Sicily lies in ruins. As money flows in from Italy, the black market becomes the lifeblood of the island's inhabitants. At the same time, with the defeat of Mussolini and fascism, an old nemesis re-emerges from the ashes—the mafia. Exiled during Mussolini's dictatorship, the Mafia has returned to fight for control of the black market.

The Lost World is a novel released in 1912 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle concerning an expedition to a plateau in the Amazon basin of South America where prehistoric animals (dinosaurs and other extinct creatures) still survive.

Deacon Shader is a child out of time, removed as a baby from his ancient-world parents and raised on the Isle of Maranore. On his seventh birthday, the philosopher Aristodeus arrives to commence the boy’s training with sword and mind. Nothing short of excellence will suffice, if Deacon is to fulfill his destiny and avert the Unweaving of all things. But as Aristodeus pushes him to the limits, reavers are spotted approaching the coast, and a cloud of horror descends upon the village. For these are no ordinary pirates. They sail under the Impaled Man, the grisly flag of Verusia, land of the undead and realm of the Lich Lord. Ward of the Philosopher is a novella of 15,500 words introducing the character of Deacon Shader as a child. The novella serves as an introduction to the bestselling Shader series.

Thundering across the screen, Judah Ben-Hur’s iconic chariot race against his former friend turned bitter foe remains an indelible part of cinematic history, and established Charlton Heston as an international superstar. In many ways, the race was a metaphor for the actor’s dynamic life, symbolizing his struggle to establish himself in his profession.

Before its 1902 publication, "Heart of Darkness" appeared as a three part series (1899) in "Blackwood's Magazine". It was classified by the Modern Library website editors as one of the "100 best novels" and part of the Western canon. The story centers on Charles Marlow, who narrates most of the book. He is an Englishman who takes a foreign assignment from a Belgian trading company as a river boat captain in Africa.

"Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" is a short story by the American writer Herman Melville, first serialized anonymously in two parts in the November and December 1853 issues of Putnam's Magazine, and reprinted with minor textual alterations in his The Piazza Tales in 1856. A Wall Street lawyer hires a new clerk who, after an initial bout of hard work, refuses to make copy and any other task required of him, with the words "I would prefer not to".

In the spring of 1864, the newly installed Union commander Ulysses S. Grant did something none of his predecessors had done before: He threw his army against the wily, audacious Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia over and over again. At Spotsylvania Court House, the two armies shifted from stalemate in the Wilderness to slugfest in the mud. Most commonly known for the horrific 22-hour hand-to-hand combat in the pouring rain at the Bloody Angle, the battle of Spotsylvania Court House actually stretched from May 8 to 21, 1864 - 14 long days of battle and maneuver.

Ethan Frome is a book published in 1911 by the Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Edith Wharton. It is set in the fictitious town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. The novel was adapted into a film, Ethan Frome, in 1993.

Jebediah Skayne has been hunting husks his entire adult life, but there's something different about the trail leading to the fishing town of Portis on the shores of the Chalice Sea: no spoor, no footprints; nothing save the unmistakable feeling of wrongness. Finding a husk in Portis would be near impossible for someone who didn't have the sixth sense, but the instant Jeb arrives, all trace of the incursion vanishes.

Beginning with the Continental Navy, Small Boats and Daring Men traces maritime missions through the wars of the early republic, from the coast of modern-day Libya to the rivers and inlets of the Chesapeake Bay. Armstrong brings a uniquely informed perspective to his subject; and his work is at once an exciting narrative of danger and combat at sea and a thoroughgoing analysis of how these events fit into concepts of American sea power.

Notes from Underground, also translated as Notes from the Underground or Letters from the Underworld, is an 1864 novella by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Notes is considered by many to be one of the first existentialist novels. It presents itself as an excerpt from the rambling memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator (generally referred to by critics as the Underground Man), who is a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg.

Today the Space Race is widely viewed poignantly and fondly as a race to the Moon that culminated with Apollo 11 "winning" the Race for the United States. In fact, it encompassed a much broader range of competition between the Soviet Union and the United States that affected everything from military technology to successfully launching satellites that could land on Mars or orbit other planets in the Solar System.

Heart of Darkness is a short novel by Polish novelist Joseph Conrad, written as a frame narrative, about Charles Marlow's life as an ivory transporter down the Congo River in Central Africa. This book was the basis for Francis Ford Coppola's classic Vietnam film Apocalypse Now.

Although the Declaration of Independence is now considered one of the most important political documents in history, the men that drafted it did not initially favor such a move at the start of the American Revolution. Despite its assumption of governing duties, the Second Continental Congress never intended, at least initially, to become the governing body of a new nation. Instead, it merely hoped to transform the relationship between Britain and her colonies to allow for greater self-government on their side of the Atlantic.

"Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" is a novella by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, first published in 1886. London lawyer Utterson is driven to investigate Edward Hyde, the unlikely protégé of his friend Dr. Henry Jekyll, suspecting the relationship to be founded on blackmail. The truth is worse than he could have imagined. Jekyll's "full statement of the case", the final chapter of the book, explores the idea of dual personality that led him to his experiments, and his inexorable and finally fatal descent into evil.

Personalities. Characters. History. John C. Waugh, the author of the popular and award-winning The Class of 1846, presents forty of the most memorable and impactful individuals he has come across during his three decades of researching and writing about the American Civil War—or as he calls them, his “Unforgettables” in the aptly titled, Unforgettables: Winners, Losers, Strong Women, and Eccentric Men of the Civil War Era.

Enter the captivating world of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Twice Told Tales." This collection of short stories takes listeners on a journey through the mysterious and dark corners of the human psyche. Hawthorne's masterful storytelling skillfully weaves together elements of the supernatural, romance, and allegory, creating a rich tapestry of narratives that explore the complexities of human nature. Each tale is beautifully crafted, immersing the listener in atmospheric settings and thought-provoking themes.

Boule de Suif (1880) is a short story by the late-19th century French writer Guy de Maupassant. It is arguably his most famous short story, and is the title story for his collection on the Franco-Prussian War, entitled "Boule de Suif et Autres Contes de la Guerre" ("Boule de Suif and Other Stories of the War"). John Ford said that his film Stagecoach was in many ways a western rewrite of Boule de Suif.

The main characters are police officer Tom Jennings, obese as a mutant Idaho potato in a jiggling gelatin suit; James Odessa-Smith, with his schizoaffective disorder; and young Suanna Morningcloud, a person with albinism, half Nez Perce Indian and half Caucasian. Meeting during a botched bank robbery in Prairie Grove, Kansas, they experience tragedy and trauma. Forever changed and connected, they are forced to ask, “Who am I and where do I belong?"

Metamorphosis is a novella written by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. One of Kafka's best-known works, Metamorphosis tells the story of salesman Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a huge insect and subsequently struggles to adjust to this new condition. In popular culture and adaptations of the novella, the insect is commonly depicted as a cockroach.