Showing results by narrator "William Dufris" in All Categories

Bela Lugosi's Frankenstein screen test puts Valentino in the picture for murder.... Everyone knows Frankenstein's monster was played by Boris Karloff. His portrayal is so famous that the play Arsenic and Old Lace was filled with Karloff/monster jokes - even when the part of the deformed villain was played by another actor. But before Karloff's memorable portrayal, another 1930s Hollywood icon, Bela Lugosi, tested for the part of the monster. The test footage was lost for decades, until Valentino, that never-say-die film archivist, gets a hot tip about the whereabouts of the incriminating (for really bad, heavily accented acting) footage.

Poetry can sometimes be elusive, the real meaning layered beneath another. In this volume American poets give voice to their nation, their hopes, and their aspirations. Whitman, Emerson, and Dickinson are joined by Poe, Holmes, Dunbar, and others to pleasure our ears and minds with a rambling stroll through their works. It doesn’t define America, but it captures her mood and the flavours of her soul in the early days of the American dream.

Perhaps the best-loved 19th-century American novel, Mark Twain's tale of boyhood adventure overflows with comedy, warmth, and slapstick energy. It brings to life an array of irresistible characters - the awesomely self-confident Tom, his best buddy Huck Finn, indulgent Aunt Polly, and the lovely, beguiling Becky - as well as such unforgettable incidents as whitewashing a fence, swearing an oath in blood, and getting lost in a dark and labyrinthine cave.

For 2,000 years, the starship Astron has search the galaxy for alien life - without success. Now, just as the ship is falling apart, the only direction left to explore is across the Dark, a 100-generation journey through empty space.The ship's captain - immortal, obessed - refuses to abandon the quest. He will cross the Dark, or destroy the ship trying. Only Sparrow, a young crewman uncertain of his own past, can stand against the captain, and against the lure and challenge of the dark beyond the stars....

No one tells tales of the frontier better than Louis L'Amour, who portrays the humanside of westward expansion - the good and the bad - before the days of law and order. Collected here are six stories penned by America's favorite Western author.

When men find gold in the frozen north of Canada, they need dogs – big, strong dogs to pull the sledges on the long journeys to and from the gold mines. Buck is stolen from his home in the south and sold as a sledge-dog. He has to learn a new way of life – how to work in harness, how to stay alive in the ice and the snow... and how to fight. Because when a dog falls down in a fight, he never gets up again.

In "McQueen of the Tumbling K", a man, left for dead, seeks revenge. A prospector finds gold - and hostile Apaches - in "Big Medicine". And in "Dutchman's Flat", a posse tracking a killer runs into far more trouble than they bargained for.

Despite unprecedented victories on the part of humanity, the war with the alien Chiata Horde drags on. The Chiata may be bewildered by the cunning tenacity of General Alexander Moore and the men and women who fight at his side, but they have no intention of beating a hasty retreat. In fact, intelligence suggests that the Chiata Invasion is at hand, and with numbers sure to overwhelm humankind.

A century and a half after the Martian Separatist Wars, Alexander Moore returns to the stars with the Sienna Madira, a US Navy supercarrier spacecraft outfitted with advanced FTL and endlessly strange, extremely effective quantum-based weapons and remote sensing technology. And, of course, he's brought marines, and lots of them. These are troops superbly trained for space battle and equipped with advanced powered armor and artificial intelligence backup.

Hear Patrick Bradley’s modern-day adaptation of Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” a tale of murder, guilt, and the sounds heard under the floorboards.

Fleeing the respectable society that wants to "sivilize" him, Huck Finn shoves off with Jim on a rhapsodic raft journey down the Mississippi River. The two bind themselves to one another, becoming intimate friends and agreeing "there warn't no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft".

Greg Rask, a dying tech billionaire, has invested millions chasing miracle cures. None of them are worth a damn, but he refuses to give up. Now, he’s gathering a team willing to go to the ends of the earth chasing life. Each of Rask's crew has beaten incredible odds to rise from the ashes of their old lives to where they are now. Together, their next task is to retrieve a painting that is believed to hide a map which, if genuine, marks it as a treasure of the Ahnenerbe, the occult wing of the SS, who had devoted dozens of expeditions in search of the three cintamani stones....

Ex-CIA Carr is the reluctant leader of an elite crew planning a robbery of such extraordinary proportions that it will leave them set for life. Diamonds, money laundering, and extortion go into a timed-to-the-minute scheme that unfurls across South America, Miami, and Grand Cayman Island. Carr's cohorts are seasoned pros, but they're wound drum-tight - months before, the man who brought them together was killed in what Carr suspects was a setup.

Mystery sensation Pelecanos pens the lead story and edits this groundbreaking collection of stories detailing the seedy underside of the nation's capital. This is not an anthology of ill-conceived and inauthentic political thrillers. Instead, in D.C. Noir, pimps, whores, gangsters, and con-men run rampant in zones of this city that most never hear about.

Twelve-year-old Ren doesn't know who his parents were. He doesn't know who left him at St. Anthony's orphanage, or how he lost his left hand when still an infant. He is resigned to life without a family to call his own and terrified of the future. But then a young man named Benjamin Nab appears, claiming to be Ren's long-lost brother, and his convincing tale of how Ren lost his hand and his parents is enough to persuade the monks at the orphanage to release the boy. But is Benjamin really who he says he is?

The city of Maras-Sund has stood for more than 20 years - two lands joined together by a magical bridge the Marasai used to conquer the Sundain. But the man known as Issel has magic of his own - an ability to manipulate water - which he will use to free his people. He finds an ally in Jendre, the daughter of a general in Maras's army and a woman with her own vendetta against the regime. Her sister is held captive along with others whose life essences power the magical bridge between her land and Sund.

In the city known as Maras-Sund, an uneasy peace threatens to unravel between two cultures. And a young man and woman will find their own destinies: one determined to hold on to power and supremacy, the other struggling for survival - and freedom.

Jack London's The Call of the Wild was written in 1903, but Buck's gripping adventure makes for a thrilling listen on audio more than 100 years after it was first published. This gripping story follows the adventures of the loyal dog Buck, who is stolen from his comfortable family home and forced into the harsh life of an Alaskan sled dog. Passed from master to master, Buck embarks on an extraordinary journey that ends with his becoming the legendary leader of a wolf pack.

Sharon MacDonald has a problem. It’s not being under house arrest. It’s not the Iranian guy who just fell from the twenty-fifth floor of her apartment building. It’s not even the police surveillance that’s preventing her from getting to her marijuana grow rooms. Sharon’s problem is a stranger named Ray: He’s too good looking, and his business proposal sounds too good to be true.Detective Gord Bergeron has problems, too.

He came from the American South, a gentleman by breeding, a dentist by training, a gambler by vocation. But as Dr. John H. Holliday, a man fleeing his tragic past, drifted across the West, living among some of the roughest men on the frontier, word spread quickly he never walked away from a fight, and he never drew too late.Now, from Dodge City to Denver and Cheyenne, from boomtown to sinkholes, "Doc" Holliday was driven by the demons of his past, a skilled gambler and a seasoned mankiller....