Showing results by narrator "Sam Devereaux" in All Categories

After escorting a prisoner down from the front, Sergeant Frank Hardy of the 57th Regiment ("The Diehards") is ordered to return north to Woodall's Redoubt to bring a murder witness back to headquarters. A retired major and his wife, relatives of the new governor, have been shot to death on their farm near the redoubt.

Welcome to the Fiction on the Web audiobook series, featuring a collection of short stories with a different theme for each volume. Lovingly curated by the owner of Fiction on the Web, Charlie Fish. Come and share in the joy and power of short stories.

In August 1940, Berlin was hit by British bombers. Hitler immediately ordered a series of gigantic air defences be built - each one more expensive than the city’s entire Olympic facilities - but they’re ineffective and resources are wasted. The Führer also has an opportunity to force the British out of North Africa and gain control of the Middle East’s valuable oil. But he rejects his generals’ advice, just as he unnecessarily draws the United States into the war in Europe.

On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland. The country needed to be subjugated quickly before Britain and France could intervene. Germany’s Panzer divisions proved unstoppable. Backed by the Luftwaffe, they smashed through Poland’s defences, destroying roads, bridges, and radio stations. The Polish defended valiantly, but were eventually forced to surrender. By 6th of October, Poland was in German hands.

It is 03:14 on 22nd June 1941. Along a 1,800-kilometre front line that stretches from the Baltic Sea in the north, to Romania in the South, German soldiers are ready for battle. A minute later, all hell breaks loose. The Luftwaffe begins attacking targets behind the Red Army’s front line, and the artillery opens fire. Germany’s dreaded Panzer tanks follow - the spearhead of Operation "Barbarossa", Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union. With 3.7 million soldiers, it’s the largest invasion to date.

By 2025, China and India will be two of the world's four largest economies. By then, economic ties between them should also rank among the 10 most important bilateral ties worldwide. Their leaders are well aware of these emerging realities. In May 2013, just two months after taking charge, Premier Li Keqiang left for India on his first official trip outside China, a clear signal of China's foreign policy priorities.

The world runs on ARCs. Altered Reality Chips. Small implants behind the left ear that allow people to experience anything they could ever imagine. The network controls everything, from traffic, to food production, to law enforcement. Few realize that behind it all, living within every brain and able to control all aspects of society, there exists a being with an agenda all his own: the singularity called Adam, who believes he is God. Jimmy Mahoney's brain can't accept an ARC. Not since his football injury from the days when the league was still offline.

Whatever became of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti? She was the wife of Akhenaten and disappeared completely from all historical records. Her grave has never been found, although her eternal fame was assured by the discovery of a portrait bust in 1912 depicting who has been called “the most beautiful woman of the ancient world”. More puzzles involve the relationship between Moses and Aaron. In the Bible, they are said to be brothers, but is it possible different ties bound them?

With Europe overrun by Hitler’s thundering war machine, Churchill is the only head of state with the courage to stand up to the Führer. The British Prime Minister’s iron will makes him a role model in Great Britain and across the continent. Churchill and his V-sign become a symbol of resistance against Nazi Germany. In Germany in February 1942, armaments minister Albert Speer has the job of making sure that there’s a steady supply of prisoners of war to man the plants and factories -at the same time as the SS are on a killing spree.

The resurgence of the Irish brotherhood. An unidentified woman's body spilling out of a steamer trunk with freezer burn on her arms. The beginning of a new export industry for New Zealand that brought the country out of recession. An untimely earthquake. And a case with too many threads for Mr. Hardy.

When Mr. Hardy assists Constable Foster's mate "Ned" Kelly to pull a ship's boat off a sandbar, he is shocked to find a strangled body inside. But he is even more shocked when he learns that the last person seen with the dead man was Constable Foster. Meanwhile, Aroha, the ferocious young Māori woman who has moved in with Foster has decided that the Patrick Foster who has returned from Napier is not the man she agreed to marry.

The Afterlives of Doctor Gachet tells the story of Paul Ferdinand Gachet, the subject of one of Vincent van Gogh’s most famous portraits: one that shows what the artist called ‘the heartbroken expression of our times’. But what caused such heartbreak? This thrilling historical novel follows Doctor Gachet from asylums to art galleries, from the bloody siege of Paris to life with van Gogh in Auvers and from the bunkers of Nazi Germany to a reclusive billionaire in Tokyo, hoping to uncover the secrets behind that grief-stricken smile.

They call it Paradise - an inner-city danger zone, starved of resources, starved of hope; run-down housing, run-down lives. Then a miracle happens. A dying boy is healed by the touch of a charismatic young man. And that's only the beginning. Richard brings light into the darkest places.

A body plunging off a cliff, a new craze for pedestrianism or race-walking with gambling, a constable willing to make a gruelling 90 miles through the tree-covered ranges without a break, and a testing undercover assignment for Mr. Hardy.

On 27th January 1944, Stalin declares that Leningrad has been liberated. After a siege lasting two and a half years, German forces retreat with the Red Army in hot pursuit. Encouraged by the victory, Soviet general Govorov decides to liberate Estonia, but in the battle of Narva, the Germans upset his plans, and the front comes to a temporary halt. Hitler's forces are feeling the pressure on all sides, however.

The Germans and their Japanese allies have gone from victory to victory since the start of the war, but in the autumn of 1942, that begins to change. On the small Pacific island of Guadalcanal, US forces drive back the Japanese to capture a key airfield. Meanwhile, on the Eastern Front, Hitler’s blitzkrieg slams to a halt at Stalingrad, stopped by the Russian winter and a Red Army determined to defend every street. As the war enters its fourth year, the conflict becomes ever more brutal.

The battle is won, the enemy driven out, and everyone can breathe again. Many field generals thought this - but generals often make mistakes. Throughout World War II, specially trained soldiers made sure that the enemy never rested in peace. Command units struck anywhere and at any time: a German general was kidnapped in the middle of Crete, while commandos liberated Benito Mussolini from his prison on a mountain top. And British units blew up factories in a Norwegian town to deprive Germany of important raw materials.

German tanks rolled unimpeded across the Russian steppes at the start of Hitler’s campaign against the Soviet Union. But in 1943, the so-called Slavic "untermensch" (subhumans) gain the initiative and transform the country into a hell for Hitler’s invasion forces. Nearly 100,000 Germans are captured after the Battle of Stalingrad at the beginning of the year. Ahead lies cold, hunger and ill-treatment, and only five percent of prisoners will return to Germany after the war.

Luftwaffe pilots fear one weapon more than any other: British Spitfires. Powerful Rolls Royce engines and an ingenious design make the plane fast and manoeuvrable. In 1940, Spitfires and their fearless pilots resist Hitler’s attempts to bomb Britain to submission. The fighter’s success forces Germany’s leaders to develop even more powerful weapons. London is targeted by V-1 and V-2 bombs, forerunners of the Saturn V moon rocket. Meanwhile, on the Eastern Front the supergun Schwerer Gustav fires shells at targets 47 kilometres away.

In 1933 Adolf Hitler seizes power after seducing the German people with lavish promises of restoring order, prosperity and the Greater German Reich to its former glories. He then goes to on exploit other Western European powers’ fear of confrontation to rearm the country in direct defiance of the restrictive terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Before his neighbours can react, Hitler has transformed Germany’s armed forces into the most modern war machine of the day. And Hitler is not alone.