Showing results by narrator "Joseph Thompson" in All Categories

In the early hours of Saturday, December 17th, 2011, Zoe Nolan, a 19-year-old Manchester University student, walked out of a party taking place in the shared accommodation where she had been living for three months. She was never seen again.

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is the traditional name for the unfinished record of his own life written by Benjamin Franklin from 1771 to 1790; however, Franklin himself appears to have called the work his Memoirs. Although it had a tortuous publication history after Franklin's death, this work has become one of the most famous and influential examples of an autobiography ever written.

Washington Irving's classic, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", has been making spines tingle since 1820! Irving tapped into a timeless fear: the prospect of a late-night journey shrouded in fog turning suddenly fatal. Our imaginations conjure every conceivable danger, but in one of history's most famous encounters, one Ichabod Crane comes - dare we say it, face-to-face? - with the "specter known at all the country firesides", the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow.

Around the World in 80 Days is a classic adventure novel by the French writer Jules Verne, published in 1873. In the story, Phileas Fogg of London and his newly employed French valet Passepartout attempt to circumnavigate the world in 80 days on a wager set by his friends at the Reform Club. It is one of Verne's most acclaimed works.

Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus was written by the English author Mary Shelley. It recounts the tale of Victor Frankenstein, a scientist who creates a grotesque, living creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. The first edition was published anonymously in 1818 when Shelley was only 20 years old. Her name finally appeared in the second edition, published in France in 1823. She was supposedly influenced by knowledge of alchemist experiments carried out by Johann Dippel in the Frankenstein Castle in Germany.

Widely recognized as one of literature's most gripping ghost stories, this classic tale of moral degradation concerns the sinister transformation of two innocent children into flagrant liars and hypocrites. The story begins when a governess arrives at an English country estate to look after Miles, aged 10, and Flora, eight. At first, everything appears normal, but then events gradually begin to weave a spell of psychological terror.

It's happening everywhere we look: the industrial, the synthetic, and the mass-produced are making way for the artisanal, the organic, and the small-batch. We care about how things are made. We want to invest in our neighbor, not a distant executive. We choose to spend more for responsibly produced, locally sold, higher quality chocolate than for the Hershey bar we enjoyed a few years ago.