Tiger in the Well

Tiger in the Well ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by Anton Lesser
13:7

Sally Lockhart, trying to put her troubled past behind her after her fiance’s death, has settled into a comfortable life with her daughter, Harriet, her career, and her London friends. But her world comes crashing down around her when a complete stranger claims to be both her husband and Harriet’s father, casting doubt on her spotless reputation.  Seeking the answers to this terrible dilemma, Sally realizes with growing horror that there is a guiding hand behind all this deceit; someone who hates her so passionately that he has devoted years to bringing about her ruin. She has no choice but to escape with her child into the crime-ridden slums of London’s East End. Suddenly it isn’t only Sally’s reputation that is in danger.

Read Full Post »

Heresy

Heresy ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by John Lee
13:9

Set in the 16th-century England, Giordano Bruno, monk, poet, scientist, and magician is on the run from the Roman Inquisition on charges of heresy for his belief that the Earth orbits the sun and that the universe is infinite. Bruno’s pursuit of rare knowledge brings him to London, where he is unexpectedly recruited by Queen Elizabeth I and is sent undercover to Oxford University on the pretext of a royal visitation. Officially Bruno is to take part in a debate on the Copernican theory of the universe; unofficially, he is to find out whatever he can about a Catholic plot to overthrow the queen.   His mission is dramatically thrown off course by a series of grisly murders and a spirited and beautiful young woman. As Bruno begins to discover a pattern in these killings, he realizes that no one at Oxford is who he seems to be. Bruno must attempt to outwit a killer who appears obsessed with the boundary between truth and heresy.

Read Full Post »

Nefertiti

Nefertiti  ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by Cassandra Campbell
13 discs

Nefertiti and her younger sister, Mutnodjmet, have been raised in a powerful family that has provided wives to the rulers of Egypt for centuries. Ambitious, charismatic, and beautiful, Nefertiti is destined to marry Amunhotep, an unstable young pharaoh. It is hoped by all that her strong personality will temper the young Amunhotep’s heretical desire to forsake Egypt’s ancient gods, overthrow the priests of Amun, and introduce a new sun god for all to worship. From the moment of her arrival in Thebes, Nefertiti is beloved by the people. Her charisma is matched only by her husband’s perceived generosity: Amunhotep showers his subjects with lofty promises. The love of the commoners will not be enough, however, if the royal couple is not able to conceive an heir, and as Nefertiti turns her attention to producing a son, she fails to see that the powerful priests, along with the military, are plotting against her husband’s rule. The only person wise enough to recognize the shift in political winds—and brave enough to tell the queen—is her younger sister

Read Full Post »

The Anatomy of Deception

The Anatomy of Deception ♥ ♥
Read by David Ackroyd
9 discs

Dr. Ephraim Carroll came to Philadelphia to study with a leading professor, the brilliant William Osler, believing that he would gain the power to save countless lives. As America hurtles toward a new century, medicine is changing rapidly, in part due to the legalization of autopsy–a crime only a few years before. But Carroll and his mentor are at odds over what they glimpsed that morning in the hospital’s Dead House. And when a second mysterious death is determined to have been a ruthless murder, Carroll can feel the darkness gathering around him–and he ignites an investigation of his own. Soon he is moving between the realm of elite medicine, Philadelphia high society, and a teeming badlands of criminality and sexual depravity along the city’s fetid waterfront. With a wealthy, seductive woman clouding his vision, the controversial artist Thomas Eakins sowing scandal, and the secrets of the nation’s powerful surgeons unraveling around him, Carroll is forced to confront an agonizing moral choice–between exposing a killer, undoing a wrong, and, quite possibly, protecting the future of medicine.

Read Full Post »

Charles and Emma: The Darwin’s Leap of Faith

Charles and Emma: The Darwin’s Leap of Faith  ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by Rosalyn Landor
6 Discs

Charles Darwin published The Origin of Specie, his revolutionary tract on evolution and the fundamental ideas involved, in 1859 and nearly 150 years later, the theory of evolution continues to create tension between the scientific and religious communities.  That same debate raged within Darwin himself, and played an important part in his marriage: his wife, Emma, was quite religious, and her faith gave Charles a great deal to consider as he worked on a theory that continues to spark intense debates.  Charles and Emma is a thought-provoking account of the marriage behind evolutionary theory: how their personal lives affected his work and vice versa. 

Read Full Post »

A Murderous Procession

A Murderous Procession  ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by Jill Tanner
10 discs

Medieval forensic pathologist Adelia Aguilar has been an enjoying a quiet life in the countryside with her daughter and friends. Then Henry II demands that she accompany his daughter, Joan, and her formal procession to Italy and offers to keep her daughter with Queen Eleanor until her safe return. But death stalks the procession, and Adelia and her loyal friends soon realize that the killer is someone from her past bent on revenge.  -Booklist

Read Full Post »

Pictures at an Exhibition

Pictures at an Exhibition ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by Mark Bramhall
7 discs

Born to an art dealer and his pianist wife, Max Berenzon is forbidden from entering the family’s business for reasons he cannot understand. He reluctantly attends medical school, reserving his true passion for his father’s beautiful gallery assistant, Rose. When Paris falls to the Nazis, the Berenzons survive in hiding, returning in 1944 to find that their priceless art collection has vanished. In Max’s obsessive hunt to recover his father’s paintings, he navigates a torn city of corrupt art dealers, black marketers, Râesistants, and collaborators, uncovering not only paintings but the stories of Rose’s heroism, and the truth behind a devastating family secret.

Read Full Post »

Mockingjay

Mockingjay   ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by Carolyn McCormick
11 hrs 43 mins

Katniss has survived her ordeal at the Quarter Quell, and she and her family are safe in District 13. Gale is there as well, but Peeta is being held at the Capitol as President Snow’s very special prisoner. Events move quickly, but realization unfolds slowly as Katniss learns that she has been a pawn in more ways than she ever supposed and that her role as the face of the revolution is one with unanticipated consequences, including a climbing death toll for which she holds herself personally responsible. -Booklist

Read Full Post »

Pope Joan

Pope Joan ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by Barbara Rosenblat
19 hrs 24 mins

There are few historical heroines as fascinating and controversial as Pope Joan, a woman whose hunger for knowledge and independent nature led her to pass as a man and ultimately to attain the high seat in Rome. Pope Joan is a spellbinding tale of a woman who gave up everything, even her very name, for the sake of knowledge.

Read Full Post »

Parrot and Olivier in America

Parrot and Olivier in American  ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by Humphrey Bower
Download (17hrs 35mins)

Olivier is the traumatized child of aristocratic survivors of the French Revolution. Parrot is the motherless son of an itinerant English printer. They are born on different sides of history, but their lives will be connected in the United States by an enigmatic one-armed marquis.

Read Full Post »