Showing results by narrator "Frederick Davidson" in All Categories

Swept off course by a raging storm, a Swiss pastor, his wife, and their four sons are shipwrecked on an uncharted tropical island. As they struggle to survive in the wilderness, the Robinsons discover their own amazing ingenuity and courage, each of the sons utilizing his own unique nature as...

One of the classic volumes of autobiography, My Early Life is a lively and colourful account of a young man's quest for action, adventure and danger. Churchill's schooldays are undistinguished, but he is admitted to Sandhurst and embarks on a career as a soldier and a war correspondent, seeing action in Cuba, in India, in the Sudan - where he took part in the battle of Omdurman, of which he gives us a stirring account - and finally in South Africa.

Hector Munro, writing under the pseudonym of Saki, is justly renowned for his urbane and witty short stories. His eccentric characters, humorous dialogue and engaging domestic situations all reveal a penetrating and sometimes disturbing insight into human nature. As a quixotic tour guide, Saki leads the reader from garden party to pig sty to political convention with the ease of one who is intimately familiar with the cares and foibles of the human condition, showing us this vista of life through the well tempered lens of his gentle, British irony. In this definitive collection of stories we can browse and sightsee at our leisure, cross borders of fresh insight, admire and enjoy each whimsical tale as we journey through the imaginative landscape of a truly artful writer.

Kirk, an impecunious artist of perfect physique, and Ruth, a spoilt heiress, were blissfully happy through their early days of marriage and the birth of their first son. But when Kirk returns from a trip to Columbia to find Ruth under the thumb of her Aunt Laura, an advocate of eugenics, parenting philosophies divide them. It takes a series of comic mishaps, featuring a galaxy of vintage Wodehouse characters, to retrieve the family’s happiness from the overbearing aunt.

Arthur is King - but treachery runs rampant throughout the beleaguered Isle of the Mighty. Darkest evil descends upon Britain's shore in many guises. Fragile alliances fray and tear, threatening all the noble liege has won with his wisdom and his blood. His most trusted counselor - the warrior, bard, and kingmaker whom legend will name Merlin - is himself to be tested on a mystical journey back through his own extraordinary past. So in a black time of plague and pestilence, it is Arthur who must stand alone against a great and terrible adversary. For only this way can he truly win immortality - and the name to treasure above all others: Pendragon.

Robertson's story, written 14 years before the historic event it presaged, parallels the descriptions and fate of the Titanic with psychic precision. His tale, however, doesn't end with the passengers' watery demise; rather, it chronicles the detective work instigated by members of Lloyd's of London, embroiling Scotland Yard, when word comes in that the heavily insured ship has sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

Who but P.G. Wodehouse could have extracted high comedy from the most noble and ancient game of golf? And who else could have combined this comedy with a real appreciation of the game, drawn from personal experience? Wodehouse's brilliant but human brand of humor is perfectly suited to these stories of love, rivalry, revenge, and fulfillment on the links.

Wilhemina 'Billie' Bennett, red-haired daughter of an American millionaire, loves golf, dogs, and Tennyson ¿ and is to marry Eustace Hignett, the weak, poetry-writing son of a famous English writer on theosophy. Enter San Marlowe, Eustace's tournament golfing cousin, and Jane Hubbard, Billie's big-game-hunting friend, and another romp in the inimitable Wodehouse style unfolds.

Generally considered to be his masterpiece, Vanity Fair is Thackeray's resplendent social satire that exposes the greed and corruption raging in England during the turmoil of the Napoleonic wars. Subtitled "A Novel Without a Hero", it traces the changing fortunes of two unforgettable women: the scheming opportunist Becky Sharp, one of literature's most resourceful, engaging, and amoral heroines, and her foil, the faithful, naive Amelia Sedley.

Reluctantly posing as a pacifist, Richard Hannay infiltrates an anti-war league to capture an unimpeachable German spy. The only instructions he's given are to take up his old identity as a mining engineer from South Africa and pose as a staunch pacifist. As Hannay himself puts it: "To go into Germany as an anti-British Afrikaner was a stoutish adventure, but to lounge about at home talking rot was a very different-sized job."

Francis Cornish was always good at keeping secrets. From the well-hidden family secret of his childhood to his mysterious encounters with a small-town embalmer, an expert art restorer, a Bavarian countess, and various masters of espionage, the events in Francis' life were not always what they seemed. This wonderfully ingenious portrait of an art expert and collector of international renown is told in stylish, elegant prose and endowed with lavish portions of Davies' wit and wisdom.

When noted English writer William Somerset Maugham set off for the South Seas to regain his health, he gathered the materials and wrote the stories represented here. These are among Maugham's best, and the best stories ever written about the exotic South Seas.

All effective debaters, whether they know it or not, employ Aristotle's 3 basic principles of effective argument that form the spine of Rhetoric. In Poetics, Aristotle draws a dramatic distinction between poetry and history. This collection also includes Aristotle's body of work that has come to be identified as Logic.

Three young truants from a church meeting on Sunday make their way to a seashore hideaway, where they observe a huge black man muttering incantations and performing weird rites. When the man discovers the children, he chases them with a knife. In defense, Davy Crawfurd flings a rock at him, and they narrowly escape. Years later, young David Crawfurd goes to South Africa to make his fortune and is caught in the very heart of a great native uprising. Under strange circumstances, he comes face-to-face with its leader, only to recognize the strange blazing eyes of the black man he had encountered as a child on the beach.

Hudson Taylor is one of the most remarkable of Christianity's heroes. A gawky, determined Yorkshire boy of commonplace origins, mediocre education, and uncertain health, Hudson Taylor lived in the assurance that under God's direction he would someday evangelize China's 400 million souls. Today he is remembered both as the founder of the world-famous China Inland Mission and one of history's great men of faith.

The discovery of a secret stairway running to the top of the castle leads Princess Irene to a revelation even more weighty than the fiendish plans of the goblin community that miner boy Curdie has discovered. Will the Princess and Curdie understand the significance of what they have found, or will Harelip and the goblins successfully execute their evil plan?

Since the Renaissance, Julius Caesar has been idolized as a superman. There is no doubt that Caesar was an extraordinary man. But as General Fuller points out, Caesar was more extraordinary for his reckless ambition, matchless daring, and ruthless tyranny than for his skills as a military commander. Caesar continually had to extricate himself from the results of mistaken judgments. His unpremeditated Gallic conquest was just one of Fuller's many examples.

In this spirited and romantic saga, a young heir named David Balfour meets his miserly uncle Ebenezer, who has illegally taken control of the Balfour estate. Ebenezer kidnaps David and plots to have him seized and sold into slavery on a ship to the Carolinas. A couple of days into the voyage, a shipwreck throws David together with David Break, a Scotsman returning from political exile in France, and the two of them journey together.

Dr. Johnson may have been correct in saying that “Rousseau was a very bad man,” but none can argue that his ideas are among the most influential in all of world history. It was Rousseau, the father of the romantic movement, who was responsible for introducing at least two modern day thoughts that pervade academia. The Confessions is Rousseau’s landmark autobiography. Both brilliant and flawed, it is nonetheless beautifully written and remains one of the most moving human documents in all of literature.

A Room with a View portrays the love of a British woman for an expatriate living in Italy, a country which to Forster represents the forces of true passion. Caught up in a world of social snobbery, Forster's heroine, Lucy Honeychurch, finds herself constrained by the claustrophobic influence of her British guardians, who encourage her to take up with a well-connected boor.