Some recent AudioBooks

Below are a few recent books narrated by me and available for sale on Audible and iTunes.  My average rating from  the last 173 reviews I have received is 4.8 out of 5.  I do receive free credits from Audible  for some books, both US and UK,  to give away to people willing to post a review of the book on the Audible website.  If you are interested in reviewing any of these, please contact me via the contact page.

Below is a list of my books recorded for Librivox

All of these audiobooks are freely available from the Librivox.org website. Follow the title links.

Angel of the Revolution.  By George Griffith

A lurid mix of Jules Verne’s futuristic air warfare fantasies, the utopian visions of News from Nowhere and the future war invasion literature of Chesney and his imitators, it tells the tale of a group of terrorists who conquer the world through airship warfare. Led by a crippled, brilliant Russian Jew and his daughter, the ‘angel’ Natasha,

The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones by  John Mastin

This is a good basic introduction to gemstones and their analysis. Admittedly a lot of the scientific tests have been superseded, but the basic properties never change. The first part of the book concentrates on physical properties of most common gems, then outlines the cutting process and ends with several chapters on each of the gemstone families. A useful little book if you are interested in gems

The Chronicles of Crime Vol 1. By Camden Pelham

This catalogue of human weakness and at times downright atrocity has been brought together by Camden Pelham, a barrister-at-law of the Inner Temple during the second half of the 19th century. It is given in chronological order, the first case listed is from 1700, and the final case in Volume 1 being in 1816. Some of the most famous cases of the age are listed, from Dick Turpin and Captain Kidd, to the assassination of Spencer Perceval MP, and the Luddites. Some cases will shock with descriptions of horrific murders, whilst others will amuse with the idiocy of the perpetrators. These 275 cases give a fascinating insight into life during 18th and 19th century Britain

Cupid in Africa.  By P C Wren

Bertram Greene, brilliant student, aesthete, intellectual and shy, decides to make his military father proud of him at last and joins the colonial Indian Army Reserve as a second Lieutenant at the start of Great War. Feeling a complete fish out of water, he is dispatched to India without any training whatsoever, and is expected to take charge of a company of native soldiers. He is then posted to East Africa to join the British fighting force there, and finds out what real soldiering means. This amusing, and at times harrowing tale gives a comprehensive description of the life and conditions of a soldier in the tropics, obviously written by someone who has experienced them. The author, P. C. Wren, is the author of the famous Beau Geste books.

The Emperor’s Candlesticks.  By Baroness Orczy

When a group of Russian anarchists kidnap a Russian prince in Vienna there are repercussions. On learning that the Cardinal d’Orsay has agreed to convey some hollow candlesticks from the Emperor to the Princess Marionoff in St Petersburg, two spies both see the possibility of using them to convey messages safely into Russia. One is an eager young idealist involved in the plot against the prince, the other is Madame Demidoff, a beautiful agent of the Tsar. When the candlesticks go missing at the border, the two engage in a race to get them back, both realizing that their very lives could depend on the retrieval.

Empire.   By Clifford D Simak

In a future time, the solar system is powered by one energy source, controlled by one huge organisation, which has plans to use this control to dominate the planets. Unknown to them, a couple of maverick scientists accidentally develop a completely new form of energy supply and threaten the corporation’s monopoly. Naturally, the corporation can’t allow this to happen… A stunning story about the manipulation of pure energy, climaxing in interstellar conflict.

Four-Fifty Miles to Freedom.  By MAB Johnston and KD Yearsley
Four-Fifty Miles to Freedom is the true but little known story of the escape of eight British Prisoners-of-War from a Turkish POW camp during the First World War. The story, written by two of the escapees, describes their life in the various POW camps in Turkey in which they were moved around, and then their well-planned and executed escape from the camp at Yozgad. They were then faced with a trek of over three hundred miles across arid deserts, and a mountain range, constantly searching for water, all the while attempting to avoid detection by soldiers and the local population. A further 120 miles of hostile ocean faced them when eventually reaching the coast before they eventually set foot on friendly soil. A ‘boys own’ story of derring-do and survival against all odds. A must listen-to story!

Frey and his Wife.  By  Henry Hewlett

Frey and his Wife is a Nordic Saga, but written in a saga style by a 20th Century Englishman. It tells the tale of Gunnar, a Norwegian wrongly accused of murder who flees across the mountains to the pagan forests of Sweden. There he meets ‘Frey’ a Norse god, and a young woman who has become his wife. Animosity develops between Frey and Gunnar over the local ritual of human sacrifice which leads to an interesting outcome. The tale develops themes of religion, idolatory, and love, set in the time when Christianity was starting to displace pagan religion in Scandinavia.

The Leavenworth Case.  By Anna Green

The Leavenworth Case is a gripping detective novel set in New York, and is one of the first detective fiction novels to be written by a female. Indeed, it was the first novel by Anna Katharine Green who came to be known as ‘the mother of the detective novel’, and ‘The Leavenworth Case’ was cited by Agatha Christie as an influence on her own fiction. The story plot twists and turns leaving the reader uncertain as to the identity of the murderer until the very end. This is one of the best detective stories you will ever hear.

Memoir and Correspondence of Caroline Herschel.  By Margaret Herschel

For many people, the name Caroline Herschel will be unfamiliar, but she was one of the most significant women on the English scientific scene during the late 18th and early 19th century. Sister of the well known William Herschel (he of the discovery of Uranus and its moons and many other significant scientific discoveries), she first worked as his assistant in his astronomical works, and then went on to become a noted astronomer in her own right. She discovered eight new comets in her lifetime, and was the first woman to be paid for her contribution to science, and was awarded a Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, made an Honorary Member of the Royal Astronomical Society, an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy of Science and was presented with a Gold Medal for Science by the King of Prussia on her 96th birthday. This book tells the fascinating story of her life through her letters, and commentary by her nephew’s wife. Caroline Herschel was an important woman whose contributions to science should be more widely known. 

Mr Munchausen.  By J K Bangs

The author has discovered for us in this volume the present stopping place of that famous raconteur of dear comic memory, the late Hieronymous Carl Friederich, sometime Baron Munchausen, and he transmits to us some further adventures of this traveler and veracious relator of merry tales. There are about a dozen of these tales, and, judging by Mr. Bangs’ recital of them, the Baron’s adventures on this mundane sphere were no more exciting than those he has encountered since taking the ferry across the Styx. Mr. Bangs proves himself well worthy of the task of reintroducing this merry old wag to modern fun-lovers, and in selecting from the tales the Baron has related to him he has chosen with an eye to the humorous which is unfailing in its clearness and keenness of perception.

Mr. Sponge’s Sporting Tour by R S Surtees

Mr. Sponge’s Sporting Tour is a delightful comic satire of the fox-hunting fraternity of the mid 19th Century. Surtees takes great pleasure in creating comic personalities and dialogue and resembles the later Pickwick Papers of Dickens, whose style may well have been influenced by Surtees. The story follows the eponymous Soapy Sponge, a Victorian freeloader and confidence trickster, who manages to work his way around the gentrified houses of southern England, fox-hunting as he goes

My Path to Atheism. By Annie Besant

My Path to Atheism is a remarkable document in many ways, not least that it was written by a woman in Victorian England, not the most open free-thinking of societies, especially for women at that time. It needed a remarkable woman to write such a revolutionary and to 19th century minds, heretical document in a society where the Church had such a stronghold. Besant herself was originally married to a clergyman, but her increasingly anti-religious views and writings led to a legal separation. She went on to become a member of the National Secular Society and thence to co-edit the National Reformer, which put forth ideas on revolutionary ideas at the time such as trades unions, national education, birth control and so on. In 1877 Besant published this book ‘My Path to Atheism’ which was compiled from a series of lectures in which she surgically dissects the basic tenets of Christianity. As one reads the chapters, one can follow the evolution of her ideas from Theism to Atheism, ending up with a stunning refutation of the Church of England Catechism.

The Notting Hill Mystery. By Charles Felix

Charles Felix was the pseudonym of Charles Warren Adams, an English Lawyer and publisher and is now known to have been the author of “The Notting Hill Mystery”, thought to be the first full length detective novel in English. The story first appeared as an eight part serial in a weekly magazine in 1862, and was subsequently published as a single volume novel in 1865.

The story deals with the then newly emerging field of ‘mesmerism’ which we now know as hypnotism, and its use in the planning and execution of three truly devious crimes. The novel, unsually, is written wholly in the form of a series of letters and reports gathered by the investigator from the various witnesses in the case, and the reader is left to decide themselves the guilt or otherwise of the chief suspect. 

The Shrieking Pit.  By Arthur Rees

The Shrieking Pit is one of Arthur Rees’s earlier works, and is a good old fashioned murder mystery story. Grant Colwyn, a private detective, is holidaying in East Anglia when he notices a young man at a nearby table behaving peculiarly. The young man later leaves the hotel without paying his bill, and turns up in a nearby hamlet in the Norfolk marshes where he takes lodgings at the village inn. The next day, another guest at the inn is found dead, and the young man is missing. Can Colwyn sort out the mystery and prove the young man’s innocence one way or the the other?

Stories of Old Greece and Rome.  By Emile Kip Baker

The Stories of Old Greece and Rome is an easy to read summary of all of the famous and not so famous Greek and Roman mythological stories. All of the famous Heroes are here: Theseus, Jason, Hercules, and all of the well known Deities. These stories tell the real detail of the myths, not the ones that have become sanitized (and dare I say it, ‘Disneyfied’) over the centuries. These are not stories for children, as the old gods and heroes were vengeful and some might say sadistic in their treatment of minor slights and misdemeanors. Putting out of eyes and ripping out of tongues is commonplace, and punishment by death is ever present. It is however fascinating to see how these tales have affected and influenced our culture and have woven themselves into our own myths and stories. 

The Talleyrand Maxim.  By J S Fletcher

John Mallathorpe, a wealthy Yorkshire industrialist and land owner dies in an accident, apparently without making a will. His estate goes to his wife and two children and they live the good life for a number of years. However, an old bookseller, whilst clearing some old books passed on from the Mallathorpe estate, finds a copy of Mallathorpe’s will inside one of the books, and unfortunately for the family the will bequeaths the whole estate minus a small endowment for the family, to the city authorities. The bookseller takes the will to the local solicitor to seek advice, but unfortunately dies in the solicitor’s office. The clerk on duty sees an opportunity to benefit himself from the knowledge of the existence of the will. This is a gripping detective story, with many twists and turns, based in Edwardian England

The Worst Journey in the World, Vol 1   and Vol 2  by Apsley Cherry-Garrard
The Worst Journey in the World is a memoir of the 1910–1913 British Antarctic Expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott. It was written and published in 1922 by a survivor of the expedition, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, and has earned wide praise for its frank treatment of the difficulties of the expedition, the causes of its disastrous outcome, and the meaning (if any) of human suffering under extreme conditions.

All of the above audiobooks are freely downloadable from the Librivox.org website.

These books were recorded some time ago with somewhat inferior equipment to that which I currently use, and whilst I was still ‘learning the trade’ but hopefully this should not impair your enjoyment.​