Showing results by narrator "Paul Woodson" in All Categories

In 1900, the U.S. sent three doctors to Cuba to discover how yellow fever was spread. There, they launched one of history's most controversial human studies. Compelling and terrifying, The American Plague depicts the story of yellow fever and its reign in this country - and in Africa, where even today it strikes thousands every year. With "arresting tales of heroism," it is a story as much about the nature of human beings as it is about the nature of disease.

Marcas Matheson’s life has spiraled out of control. A fatal illness has ravaged his clan, taking not only his parents and his wife, but so many others of the clan. It’s called the curse of Black Isle. Worse, as heir to the chieftain, now Marcas must be both leader and savior to his people - but they are losing faith in him. Already there are murmurs that his poor decisions brought the curse, causing him to doubt his own ability to head the clan. But when his small daughter takes sick, Marcas has no problem making a decision: He must find a healer.

Today the names of H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, and Clark Ashton Smith, all regular contributors to the pulp magazine Weird Tales during the first half of the twentieth century, are recognizable even to casual readers and listeners of the bizarre and fantastic. And yet despite being more popular than them all during the golden era of genre pulp fiction, there is another author whose name and work have fallen into obscurity: Seabury Quinn. Quinn's short stories were featured in well more than half of Weird Tales's original publication run.

In 1940, with the Nazis sweeping through France, Henri Matisse found himself at a personal and artistic crossroads. His marriage had ended, he was gravely ill, and after decades at the forefront of modern art, he was beset by doubt. As scores of famous figures escaped the country, Matisse took refuge in Nice, with his companion, Lydia. By defiantly remaining, Matisse was a source of inspiration for his nation.

Heroes are made, not born. From the moment he first sees Sela Seton, Connor Grant is drawn to the woman known as the Ice Queen. Although his cousins assume she’s as guilty as the men she serves, the unscrupulous smugglers of the Channel of Dubh, Connor is convinced she’s being coerced. His mother was abused and controlled, and he suspects the same is true of Sela. For five years, Sela has known only misery, with one exception: her sweet daughter, Claray.

Harry Smith was, in the words of Robert Frank, "the only person I met in my life that transcended everything." In Cosmic Scholar, John Szwed patches together, for the first time, the life of one of the twentieth century's most overlooked cultural figures.

James Romm seamlessly weaves together the life and written words, the moral struggles, political intrigue, and bloody vengeance that enmeshed Seneca the Younger in the twisted imperial family and the perverse, paranoid regime of Emperor Nero, despot and madman.

David Drummond could not be more satisfied with life. He’s betrothed to the woman he loves, heir to his mother’s lairdship, and his family is both loving and supportive. But a strange attack on his betrothed shakes the foundation of everything he holds dear. Though Anna cannot remember what happened to her, evidence indicates she may have been raped, and her sire immediately cancels the betrothal. Though David is still desperate to marry Anna, he is informed she has been betrothed to another.

Set in the 1860s, The Leopard tells the spellbinding story of a decadent, dying Sicilian aristocracy threatened by the approaching forces of democracy and revolution. The dramatic sweep and richness of observation, the seamless intertwining of public and private worlds, and the grasp of human frailty imbue The Leopard with its particular melancholy beauty and power, and place it among the greatest historical novels of our time.

When Moray Allen is left in charge of Muir Castle the fortnight before Yule, he doesn't anticipate any excitement. The excitement is all down south, where the Grant and Ramsay cousins are embroiled in their final battle with the Channel of Dubh, smugglers who trade in human cargo. But the chieftain hasn’t been gone for more than a day when Moray spots a golden-haired lass in the wilds surrounding Castle Muir. He suspects she’s lost and in need of food, but she runs from him.

Lord Graham Findlay, the shamelessly virile Viscount Northridge, has a disgraceful secret, one he'll do anything to hide. Holding his passions at bay, Gray has sworn off the fairer sex. But when temptation comes in the form of an intriguing woman he cannot easily avoid, Gray's integrity - and his most depraved desires - are put to the ultimate test.

Philippe Girard shows how Toussaint Louverture transformed himself from lowly freedman into revolutionary hero as the mastermind of the bloody slave revolt of 1791. By 1801, Louverture was governor of the colony where he had once been a slave. But his lifelong quest to be accepted as a member of the colonial elite ended in despair: he spent the last year of his life in a French prison cell. His example nevertheless inspired anticolonial and Black nationalist movements well into the 20th century.

Fergus is back on Earth at last, trying to figure out how to live a normal life. However, it seems the universe has other plans for him. When his cousin sends him off to help out a friend, Fergus accidently stumbles across a piece of an ancient alien artifact that some very powerful people seem to think means the entire solar system is in danger. And since he’s the one who found it, they’re certain it’s also his problem to deal with.

Tyrant magus Edrin Walker destroyed the monster sent by the Skallgrim, but not before it laid waste to Setharis, and infested their magical elite with mind-controlling parasites. Edrin's own Gift to seize the minds of others was cracked by the strain of battle, and he barely survives the interrogation of a captured magus. There's no time for recovery though: a Skallgrim army is marching on the mountain passes of the Clanhold. Edrin and a coterie of villains race to stop them, but the mountains are filled with gods, daemons, magic, and his hideous past.

Lily Sutton has been running wild for years beneath her siblings’ noses. Born and raised in the rookeries, she is not afraid of anything or anyone. And she is most certainly not cowed by arrogant scoundrels like the owner of London’s most prestigious shop, Bellingham and Co. She is determined to right the wrongs of her world, even if it means resorting to devious methods, such as absconding with some overpriced fripperies and baubles.

The transcontinental railroads of the late 19th century were the first corporate behemoths. Their attempts to generate profits from proliferating debt sparked devastating panics in the US economy. Their dependence on public largess drew them into the corridors of power, initiating new forms of corruption. Their operations rearranged space and time, and remade the landscape of the West. As wheel and rail, car and coal, they opened new worlds of work and ways of life.

Listen to the next in the family saga of the historical Scottish Grant and Ramsay clans. She convinces her brother's best friend to help her stop a war. But will they provoke one instead?

Banana combines a pop-science journey around the globe, a fascinating tale of an iconic American business enterprise, and a look into the alternately tragic and hilarious banana subculture (one does exist) - ultimately taking us to the high-tech labs where new bananas are literally being built in test tubes, in a race to save the world's most beloved fruit.

Until recent years, very little was known of the tens of thousands of foreign nationals from Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France, and Spain who served voluntarily in the military formations of the German army and the German Waffen-SS. In Kaisergruber's book, the listener discovers important issues of collaboration, the apparent contributions of the volunteers to the German war effort, their varied experiences, their motives, the attitude of the German High Command and bureaucracy, and the reaction to these in the occupied countries.  

When The Centurions was first published in 1960, readers were riveted by the thrilling account of soldiers fighting for survival in hostile environments. They were equally transfixed by the chilling moral question the novel posed: how to fight when the "age of heroics is over". As relevant today as it was half a century ago, The Centurions is a gripping military adventure, an extended symposium on waging war in a new global order, and an essential investigation of the ethics of counterinsurgency.