Showing results by narrator "Susan Iannucci" in All Categories

Down and out John Stratton, recently robbed by two elderly gentlemen on the train to Adelaide, has one shilling left for his next meal. He is loitering near the post office when a large, sleek car pulls up with a beautiful girl and older man. The man goes into the post office, returns, and departs. There is a wallet in the street right where the man entered the car and John realizes the man dropped it. Looking down the street he can see that traffic is stopped and, if he runs, he can catch the car and return the wallet. With this one good deed, the trajectory of his life is changed.

Gogol's phantasmagorical tale about a man whose nose decides to abscond and begin living a life of its own is one of the earliest and most celebrated examples of absurdist literature. Apart from its recondite humor, it is remarkable for Gogol's skill in characterization and his ability to paint a picture of contemporary life in Russia in a few verbal brushstrokes.

Seven children home for the summer left only with their nurse and they are inclined to prank those who cross their path. Their parents and governess are away. A neighbor, Mrs. Moffat tells Mary about becoming a Christian. Mary is intrigued and she begins to read her Bible and explore what this means. As her brothers and sisters watch her life, she really wants to know if she can still have fun. Several anxious events befall she and her siblings and she learns how to pray and find God's peace. Overall, a short light hearted and humorous family story for children.

First published in 1921, Rilla of Ingleside is the 8th book in the Anne of Green Gables series. It is WWI and Canada has entered the war. Young men enthusiastically join up while mothers and sweethearts stay behind and fill the jobs that once were only for men. Rilla, the youngest of Anne and...

The always delightful and entertaining classic Anne of Green Gables is performed by actors from The Online Stage! Anne Shirley is an 11-year-old orphan adopted by a middle-aged brother and sister, Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert. They had wanted to adopt a boy to help with their farm on Prince Edward Island in the fictional town of Avonlea. Matthew persuades Marilla to give Anne a chance. Anne is a handful, and they fall in love with her.

Mistaken identity (which the Elizabethans called “Error”) is nearly always amusing, whether on the stage or in actual life. The Comedy of Errors is a play in which this situation is developed to the extreme of improbability – but we lose sight of this improbability in the roaring fun which...

A baker‘s dozen of futuristic and space travel tales await you in this audiobook of short stories, originally published in the science fiction magazine, IF (1960–61). These stories are both a sign of their times and a testament to the imaginative powers of writers in the era between Sputnik...

In 1907 New Thought author James Allen published a verse anthology entitled Poems of Peace. Included in the collection is his sole dramatic work, Eolaus, which describes the journey of a troubled pilgrim from the wilderness of worldly despair to the heights of personal realization.

First published in 1881, the subtitle of this book tells us that it was written “for children and those who love children”. Heidi, a 5-year-old orphan, is handed off by her young Aunt Dete to live with her grandfather in the Swiss Alps. Though her new life is foreign, Heidi soon falls in...

When Olaf Jenson discovers a secret hidden world within the bowels of the earth, he has no idea that it will be as hard to leave as it was to find it. This subterranean, Edenic civilization is inhabited by a race of scientifically advanced giants who worship the “smoky God” in the center of the earth.

When Mr. Burton Crane leases a house in the country, he expects it to be fully staffed. Except—it isn’t. Mr. Crane enlists the help of his friend, Mrs. Falkener, to interview his prospective cook, butler, housemaid, and general helper. She, however, doesn’t like them—but Mr. Crane is especially drawn to the cook and overrules his friend. But was Mrs. Falkener right to be suspicious? Who are these servants, really? Soon the helper, the housemaid, and the butler are dismissed, leaving only the cook—a most improper scenario!

Based on H. G. Wells’s own life experience in the drapery trade, this comic novel presents our anti-hero, Alfred Polly, miserable, timid, and without direction, but with a gift for creating incomprehensible conversational “epithets” to express himself. No one quite understands what he has just said to them … Was it a compliment? An insult? Was it profound or absurd?

European tourists travel languidly along the Nile River to Abousir, at the southern frontier of Egypt, aboard “a turtle-bottomed, round-bowed stern-wheeler,” the Korosko. But Dervish warriors threaten danger and then attack and kidnap the tourists. In this novel, Doyle explores themes of...

Freckles and A Girl of the Limberlost are two of Gene Stratton Porter's most famous novels. Set primarily in the Limberlost Swamp of Indiana, USA, Freckles follows the story of Freckles, a lame orphan whose innate character rises above his circumstances. A Girl of the Limberlost is the story of Elnora, blamed for her father's death by her mother, who nevertheless meets every challenge that comes her way with admirable resilience.

Deception, mystery, romance, inheritance—this novel has it all! Written by Anna Katharine Green and published in 1923, it is one of her best. Wealthy Edgar Quenton Bartholomew has a beautiful daughter, a great estate, and vast business holdings. It is his final wish that the man who marries his daughter will inherit it all. When he dies it is thought to be of natural causes until a young woman viewing the casket cries out that he appears to be poisoned ... and the investigation begins! Where is his final will? Who poisoned him?

Freckles is the only name he has ever known. His right hand is missing at the wrist, and he is haunted by not knowing how it happened. Raised since infancy in a Chicago orphanage, he speaks with a slight Irish accent and sings with a beautiful voice. Now, exhausted after many days of walking, he applies for a job with the Grand Rapids Lumber Company, guarding timber in the Limberlost Swamp from timber thieves. His Swamp Angel declares her love for him and promises that she will find his parents and prove that Freckles comes from "a race of men that have been gentlemen for ages."

Anna Katharine Green (1846-1935) was one of the first crime novelists and paved the way for later female writers of detective novels, like Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Ngaio Marsh. Among her prolific output are twelve novels featuring her main character, detective Ebenezer Gryce of the New York Metropolitan Police Force. This collection contains the third group of three novels in the series: Initials Only (1911), One of My Sons (1901), and The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow (1917).

R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) is a science-fiction drama that was first presented in Czech in 1921. It introduced the term "robot", which is derived from a Czech word meaning "worker," to international vocabulary. The action opens in a factory that has successfully produced thousands of robots, who are essentially mindless drones. An idealistic humanitarian activist launches a plan to imbue some of the robots with human traits. The robots which have been humanized then assume leadership over the other robots and seek to organize them in a revolution to take over the world.

Queen Marguerite de Navarre was one of the most powerful women of her age. Her masterpiece, The Heptameron, is a collection of some 72 stories told by five gentlemen and five ladies who find themselves stranded in an abbey. Proposed as an edifying way of passing the time while a bridge is being repaired, the tale-telling - as well as the conversations that follow each story - quickly becomes a battle of wits between the sexes, with tales concerning illicit lovers, romantic conquests, lecherous monks, manly honor, and women's virtue.

Newly married Mrs. Jeffrey is found in the library of the old family mansion dead with a pistol tied to her wrist, and everyone is suspect. The library in the family mansion has a reputation for harboring dead men, and no one knows how or why this is so. First published in 1903, Green delivers a well-written mystery again. Who is innocent and who is not?