Showing results by narrator "John Burlinson" in All Categories

Oedipus the King is the story of a man whose life is destroyed by his own good intentions. When a terrible secret from his past is brought to the light of day, the consequences are chilling - and ineluctable.

Moby Dick, which has been considered the great American novel, was first published in 1851. For material, Melville drew on his experience on whaling ships between 1841 and 1844, the sinking of the whaling vessel Essex in 1820, and extensive perusal of literature on whaling and many other subjects.

North of Boston, first published in 1914, was Robert Frost's second collection of poetry. Many of the poems take the form of conversations and hence are very suitable for presentation in a dramatic format.

As the first important, book-length academic study in English of four of Shakespeare's major tragedies—Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth—Bradley's work both influenced and enabled modern Shakespearean literary criticism even as it engaged with, and often rebutted, conventional Romantic and Victorian interpretations of the plays and their author. Bradley's achievement has been widely praised for its philosophical and psychological insights and has never been out of print.

After the death of their father, Oedipus, Antigone and Ismene return to Thebes. The ruler is their unyielding uncle by marriage, Creon, who assumed command after the death of the sons of Oedipus, Eteocles, and Polynices in a fratricidal struggle to take control of the city. Creon has the body of one brother buried with full civic honors but forbids the burial of the body of the other, whom he regards as a traitor. Antigone's challenge to Creon's decree, which she considers unjust, results in the extinction of the family line of Oedipus.

Bernard Shaw based his "religious pantomime" Androcles and the Lion on the ancient fable of the runaway slave who pulls a painful thorn from a lion's paw, thereby making a lifelong friend. This tale of a puny Greek tailor triumphing over the Roman emperor is, as always with Shaw, a commentary on the politics of his time, with the emperor standing in for the British government and, indeed, all repressive regimes.

In the introduction to this selection of tales of the macabre, anthologist Arthur Reeve writes: "What is the fascination we feel for the mystery of the ghost story? Man is incurably fascinated by the mysterious. If all the ghost stories of the ages were blotted out, man would invent new ones. For, do we not all stand in awe of that which we cannot explain, of that which, if it is not in our own experience, is certainly recorded in the experience of others, of that of which we know and can know nothing?"

This collection contains a mixture of stories about ghosts and contacts from spirits, some by celebrated authors, together with essays on psychical research. As Joseph French notes in the preface, even for the skeptic, tales of ghostly activity retain a distinct fascination. The widespread interest in psychic phenomena in the early twentieth century proved to be a significant stimulus to literary production.

In this volume we meet the novelist, Felix Kennaston, who lives in parallel worlds. One of these is with his wife in their suburban Virginia home and genteel society. The other is with the beautiful Lady Ettarre, who shares his travels through space and time to meet, among many others, Oliver Cromwell, Napoleon, and the Emperor Tiberius. Lusty and magical, romantic and rueful, subtly erotic and laced with sardonic humor, this absorbing book is highly regarded as a masterwork of Fantasy literature.

In the early 1900s, two families in Scurry and Kent counties in West Texas united in a marriage of 14-year-old Gladys Johnson to 21-year-old Ed Sims. Billy Johnson, the father, set up Gladys and Ed on a ranch, and the young couple had two daughters. But Gladys was headstrong and willful, and Ed drank too much, and both sought affection outside their marriage.

"My boy, may an old man's curse rest upon you, if you do not try to avenge your father!" Answering those words, young Frank Eaton determines to settle with each of the six men who had riddled his father full of lead. Frank's thirst for a reckoning takes him across the lawless Indian Territory, to Southwest City, Missouri, to the wide-open mesa lands of eastern New Mexico and, finally, to Albuquerque.

Any of us could receive a diagnosis - a curable sickness, chronic disease, serious condition, or a terminal illness. Today, dying is usually an elongated process. So, how can we live well while suffering, and avoid being bullied by the obsessive inner voices of anxiety that leave us disconnected from the very life we hope to save? Instead, we can learn to embrace mystery, to understand that all of life’s suffering can be transformative, leaving behind a legacy of pure, powerful, and eternal love.

This translation, by an unknown hand, of D'Aurevilly's salacious miscellany, which consists of six novellas, was published in 1900 under the title Weird Women and is in the public domain. When the collection was first published in France in 1874, it caused up an uproar; it was declared a danger to public morality and the prosecutor issued orders for its seizure on the grounds of blasphemy and obscenity.

Of all the Texas feuds, the one between the Sutton and Taylor forces lasted longer and covered more ground than any other. The Sutton-Taylor Feud in Texas began shortly after the Civil War ended, and continued into the 1890s. William E. Sutton was the only Sutton involved, but he had many friends to wage warfare against the large Taylor family.

Much Ado About Nothing appears to have been written about 1599, shortly before As You Like It and Twelfth Night. The action combines two narrative threads: the spirited comedy of the courtship of Benedick and Beatrice, and the somber tale of confused love between Hero and Claudio. The first is a creation by Shakespeare and the second appears to have been drawn from an Italian source, either by Bandello or Ariosto. The action takes place in Messina. Eponymous lovers Hero and Claudio seem to be ideally matched and nearly everyone is looking forward to their impending marriage.

In Volume Four, Dumas relates the 1819 murder of German dramatist August von Kotzebue by Karl Ludwig Sand, the campaign to destroy Father Urbain Grandier in 1634, who was successfully convicted of witchcraft and put to a brutal death, and the consequences of the amorous relationship between the prince of Brancaleone and Nisida.

Mr. Hoopdriver is a frustrated draper’s assistant in Putney, London. He is badly paid, over-worked, and he needs a holiday. He also owns a bicycle—though he is an awkward rider. When his annual ten days’ holiday comes around, Mr. Hoopdriver sets out on a bicycling tour of the “Southern Coast.” Wells wrote this at the height of the bicycling craze and before the automobile. The bicycle gave freedom to the working class, weakened the English class structure and gave a boost to female emancipation. In his story he explores these changes.

Ten years after a tragic incident on the lake, an AA meeting in a small, religious town in the deep south of the USA descends into bitterness and chaos when a flood hits. Trapped within the local church, tempers escalate and well-buried secrets begin to emerge. Personalities clash, reputations are dissected and questioned, and everybody's demons are laid bare.

Anshel Brusilow started playing violin in 1933 at age five, in a Russian Jewish neighborhood of Philadelphia where practicing your instrument was as ordinary as hanging out the laundry. His playing wasn’t ordinary, though. At 16, he was soloing with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Brusilow turned in his violin bow for the baton and created his own Philadelphia Chamber Symphony. Next he took on the then-troubled Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Brusilow played with or conducted many top-tier classical musicians and has something to say about each one. He also made many recordings.

A collection of Christmas radio plays by Mike Murphy: Six heartwarming tales celebrating the festive season performed by members of The Online Stage.