Greatest Collection of Audiobooks in Fiction, Historical - No Catch, Easy and Legally

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Love and Revolution

Subtitle: Moon over Carolina

Author: Beverly Enwall

Narrator: Beverly Enwall

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-10-13

Publisher: Asgaard Viking Editions

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

In South Carolina, particularly in Charles Town, in January 1775 preparations for war are well underway, Peggy Monaghan's two brothers drill with the militia, and Peggy's two best friends have much to discuss over tea, except when Peggy is expected to stay a few months each year on her father's indigo plantation. As war clouds gather, a number of the wealthy young South Carolinians sent abroad for their education have left off swashbuckling through society in London and Edinburgh and are coming home to join the Patriot cause. Among them is Ned Forsythe, the youngest brother of Peggy's close friend Anne, but, having been obliged to marry in England, he almost at once goes north to join the Continental Army and escape the wagging tongues of Charles Town. An impending attack by British warships in early summer of 1776 brings him back, and, inevitably he and Peggy fall in love in a world complicated by two more British attacks, the brutal British occupation, and the iron clad code of honor that held sway in the society of the 18th century.

©2010 Beverly Enwall Asgaard Viking Editions (P)2013 Beverly Enwall Asgaard Viking Editions

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits

Author: Emma Donoghue

Narrator: Jilly Bond, Caroline Lennon, Maggie Mash, Cathleen McCarron

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-06-13

Publisher: Whole Story Audiobooks

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

Resurrecting buried scandals, audacious hoaxes and private tragedies, Emma Donoghue has written a sequence of short stories about peculiar moments in the history of the British Isles.

Here artists mix with poisoners and countesses rub shoulders with cross-dressers, vicars and revolutionaries; the Second Coming is proclaimed in Scotland; and a miniature girl becomes a tiny skeleton in a London museum.

Critic Reviews:

"Has an extraordinary talent for turning exhaustive research into plausible characters and narratives; she presents a vibrant world seething with repressed feeling and class tensions." (Publisher's Weekly)

"Donoghues great strength apart from her storytelling gift is her emotional intelligence" (Irish Independent)

Members Reviews:

Excellent collection of short stories

This audiobook is a rare treat bring both wonderfully written and perfectly narrated. In fact, this may be the best narration I have come across on an audiobook. I usually avoid short stories as I prefer the grip of a novel, but this is a fantastic set of historically themed stories which I enjoyed so much I finished in two days straight, a record for me, it usually takes me around a month to finish an audiobook!

A Fantastic Collection!

What made the experience of listening to The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits the most enjoyable?

There are a wide range of stories in this collection and, while some are better than others, most are very good. The collection includes stories about Effie Gray and Dido Elizabeth Belle, two women whose lives I find especially interesting! (Other readers may recognize their stories from the recent films 'Effie' & 'Belle') The different narrators bring to life a variety of characters, with a variety of accents and backgrounds. This makes the audiobook version particularly great!

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits?

Donogue does a brilliant job of fleshing-out the characters that she encounters, through historical research. The moment where Mary Toft realizes that she is trapped and that her hoax is sure to be found out is unexpectedly moving. Donogue explores the way women's bodies are viewed and abused by society, bringing an uncomfortable conclusion to what would have otherwise been a silly little story. These themes are further explored in 'Cured' which recounts the first experimental attempts at female circumcision, and is very grim and unsettling!

Which character as performed by the narrators was your favourite?

The narration of 'My Last Rabbit' and 'Cured' are probably my favorites, as these are my favorite stories in the collection. However 'Revelations' also features a particularly good narrator with a strong Scottish accent.

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

There are many emotionally charged stories in this collection and I found that many of the stories featured particularly moving scenes. It was exciting and interesting, but most of the stories seemed to be desired to inspire shock or outrage.

The description of historical injustices such as those within 'Dido' or 'The Necessity of Burning' really make an impact.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Where the Willow Grows in Transylvania

Author: Rosa Alexander

Narrator: Ricky Pope

Format: Abridged

Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-05-13

Publisher: Tate Out Loud

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

"I do not want to hear another word about your crazy American Dream!" Words such as these from Rosa Alexander's father during his frequent drunken rants often drove young Rosa to seek solace beneath her weeping willow tree. One day, however, her aunt Klara visits from America, giving Rosa hope for a brighter future. Rosa held on to her dream for years, waiting for the chance to leave her beloved homeland and find a home across the ocean. The time never comes, however, and eventually Rosa marries and starts a family, believing that perhaps America is not part of her plan anymore.

As life becomes increasingly harder, in 1985, Rosa and Alan finally make plans to escape the cruel eye of the Romanian government and find freedom in America. They are forced, however, to leave their children Julia, 8; and Peter, 4 behind. When Peter and Julia are not able to join them as hoped, Rosa struggles through enormous sorrow as she begins an almost four-year battle to reunite her family.

Where the Willow Grows in Transylvania, based on the emotional true story of Rosa Alexander's American Dream, relates how Rosa's dream eventually becomes a grown-up search for peace and a yearning for her family to be together. As Rosa begins to trust God, she not only hears His voice but also finds her own. Her story reminds readers that with faith, dreams can come true.

Members Reviews:

A Highly Recommended Story

When I received this book, I first read the back cover, then the first chapter and could not put it down. Each chapter kept me spellbound as I read Rosa Alexander's beautifully written and heartfelt true life story; from her childhood in Transylvania through the painful transitions of events in her life. I love this book and every second spent reading the chapters was deeply felt. I would sometimes pause to feel what the author experienced living under a communist regime and experiencing a parent's worst nightmare.

Rosa's story is so enlightening. It is a reminder that life is always changing and not to take your freedoms for granted. It is unconscionable how evil leaders have imposed their powers, destroying families and communities. But our ability to love and our desire for freedom always wins. I have learned so much from this book and highly recommend it to anyone who believes in love, freedom and believes that dreams do come true. I thank you Rosa Alexander for sharing your life and story.

A must read!

An awesome story of hope and perseverance! Rosa Alexanderâs story is well written and moves swiftly along. I sat with young Rosa under the willow tree crying for lost opportunities. I walked with Rosa as she boarded the plane that would separate her from her children and the land she loved. I cried with a frustrated Rosa as she fought to reunite her family. This is a very moving testimony of love for family, friends and country. A must read!

This book is so enlightening!

This book is so enlightening. It is a reminder that life is always changing and not to take your freedoms for granted. I have learned so much from this book and highly recommend it to anyone who believes in love, freedom and believes that dreams do come true.

This book inspired me to want to read it again and tell others about it. I love how Rosa never let go of her dreams.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Burnt Norton

Author: Caroline Sandon

Narrator: Phyllida Nash

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-01-13

Publisher: AudioGO Ltd

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

1731: When his youngest son is killed in a tragic accident, Sir William Keyt, master of Norton House, buries himself in his fortune. He builds a second vast mansion on his grounds, squandering money he does not have on luxury his family does not want.

Keyt has long been blind to the desires of others. His eldest son has fallen in love with their young maidservant, Molly Johnson, a ray of light in a household dimmed by tragedy. But Keyt wants Molly for himself and, driven mad with lust and jealousy, he will do anything to have her...

Members Reviews:

Not light and fluffy!

This is an author previously unknown to me. I bought this audiobook after consulting the AMAZON print reviews and because of the narrator Phyllida Nash (always a favourite!). Ms Nash's narration as always was excellent (re characterisation and pacing).

The story itself is not a Romance (a favourite of mine), it is perhaps best described as a historical family epic. It is a story of life and its losses and joys (not many of these), evils and deceits, and its limited redemptions.

The characters are wonderful and realistically flawed human beings.

This might sound gloomy but it is nevertheless a very moving and engaging story. I couldn't wait to get to the end to see how things would be resolved.

I would definitely read this author again but while in a thoughtful mood rather than when just seeking escapism.

From a descendent of the Keyt Family of Ebrington

I have thoroughly enjoyed listening to this story. I could hardly believe that a book had been written about members of my ancestry which in part I had already known. Although this is not my direct line, they are none the less in my family tree.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The Rebel Who Rose from the Dead

Author: Will Bevis

Narrator: Shandon Loring

Format: Unabridged

Length: 48 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-31-13

Publisher: Will Bevis

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

Those of you who have read my book:

The Greatest Civil War Lie Ever Told, or as it is now called, The Civil War Cover-Up: Volume One, know that I laid down alone one night near midnight, on the site of Pickett's Charge in Gettysburg, where so many brave Rebels died. That is true.

It is also true that I shouldn't have done that. For in doing so, not only did I defile Holy Ground where so many brave men gave their all... but I asked for trouble as well.

This is the story of what happened after I did that.. Will Bevis, Gadsden, AL - July 11, 2011

Members Reviews:

A Rebel's Tale

After a rambling introduction, the author gets to the point of his story. While visiting Gettysburg battlefield he lays on the ground on the field where Pickett's charge happened and becomes "possessed" in a sense with the ghost of a rebel soldier who had died on that very spot.

While an interesting idea for a story, it really goes nowhere. (Just FYI, I really liked the author's storyThe Killing of Train-Man Brown.)

I could not determine if this Kindle ebook was poorly formatted on purpose, mimicking a poetic style or poorly formatted by lack of care. Either way it was annoying.

Quirky short story

You are supposed to read it as if the ghost of a Rebel soldier from the US Civil War has entered the writers body. Right gotcha, and the writer believes, as do the people around him that this ghost is with him since he laid down upon the place the Rebel was killed. So what the writer does whilst inhabited by said ghost, does his wife know that also? If not, she will when she reads this. Quirky little short story, written in a strange pace like fashion, which was I think to make the reader more aware of the thought process going on.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Snow and Roses

Author: Lettice Cooper

Narrator: Mandy Williams

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-18-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

Flora is a young Oxford lecturer, whose love affair with a married man has ended in tragedy. She faces a bleak, empty world. Following an ill-fated flight to a villa in Tuscany, and the collapse of her warm friendship with Lalage, an Oxford colleague, Flora is close to breakdown.

She is rescued by her understanding family and by her return to Oxford, where she finds release from her own emotional problems in those of her most brilliant student, Nan, who seems about to sacrifice her career on the altar of revolutionary politics.

Lettice Cooper explores and illuminates the varied contrasts of generations, classes, and beliefs, and is equally absorbing in the smaller world of university rivalries and gossip, or the hot-house jealousies and intrigues in an Italian villa. Above all, this book illuminates the personality of a young woman at a crisis in her life.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: CodeName Snake: The Evil We Kill

Author: M. M. Rumberg

Narrator: Ellery Truesdell

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-16-13

Publisher: Morton Rumberg

Ratings: 2.5 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

CodeName: Snake - The Evil We Kill is the dramatic story of a Jewish assassin operating in Berlin during World War Two. A riveting tale of suspense, revenge and triumph during one of the world's most tumultuous periods. CodeName: Snake is a spy story that highlights the devastating treatment of Jewish citizens in Berlin, Germany, during WWII, turning a boy into a revenge-seeking serial killer.

As the Nazis rise to power, Stefan's family tries to escape but is captured and forced into a concentration camp where they are killed. Stefan escapes, and with the assistance of the underground, makes his way to England and joins the Special Air Service - the SAS - the most elite commando force in the world. With Partisan help, Stefan returns to Berlin and impersonates a Gestapo officer. Under a Berlin festooned with Nazi Swastika banners, Stefan infiltrates and destroys Gestapo headquarters. As the Nazi Holocaust spreads its evil, Stefan goes on a rampage killing Nazi officers.

On the run from the Gestapo officer who sent his family to their doom, Stefan, his secret code name revealed, meets him in a final confrontation.

Members Reviews:

codename -snake

great story from the jewish side of the war.shows man does not always have to be a victim. secret weapon was unrealistic,

but author claims 'poetic license" on it.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The Conduct of Saints

Author: Christopher Davis

Narrator: David Colacci

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-15-13

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

The Conduct of Saintsportrays a battleground on which power, God, sex, and the devil collide in the impoverished city of Rome during May and June of 1945.

The German occupation of the Eternal City has ended, the war in Europe is over, the atomic bomb has yet to fall on Japan, and Rome is under the jurisdiction of the victors: the American, British, and French Allied Control Commission.

An American Vatican prelate and lawyer, Brendan Doherty, is involved in two crusades. Abhorring capital punishment, he means to avert the execution of the Nazi collaborator Pietro Koch. In addition, as devils advocate, Doherty intends to prove the hypocrisy of Alessandro Serenelli, the man who 40 years before murdered Maria Goretti. Converted by a vision, Serenelli has spent his life, in prison and out, promoting the beatification of his victim.

Doherty - memory tormented, hard drinking, both angry and compassionate, a moral street fighter for what he is sure is right - feels guilty for having done too little to save the citys Jews from Auschwitz. He engages in his causes and quarrels with Romes pre-dolce vita, postwar society - people both fictional and historical, like Alessandro Serenelli, Maria Goretti, Pietro Koch, Pope Pius XII, and film director Luchino Visconti - until he comes to a reckoning with himself and with the serene, unshakable saint-maker Serenelli.

Critic Reviews:

"The Conduct of Saintscaptures the time and the place; it is a profoundly atmospheric novel. More important, it presents an unforgettable cast of characters. Once again Davis' work commands our attention." (Huffington Post)

"Historical fiction, set in Rome in 1945 during the fraught post-war period. With many characters based on real figures, including Pope Pius XII, this book has elements of a thriller.... A strong example of an uncommon type of historical fiction, appealing to readers who like to see guilt punished or forgiven." (Kirkus Reviews)

Members Reviews:

Shallow treatment of characters

This could have been a great novel. Instead, it does little to develop characters at any depth. I appreciated the description of Rome at the time of the take over by the allies.

Can murderer be redeemed?

Redemption is hard to achieve and sometimes even harder to understand, as Christopher Davis makes clear in this novel of post-world-war-II Italy and Vatican promise. Can a murderer be redeemed by seeing a vision of his victim forgiving him? Is there hope for a man whoâs caused the deaths of too many to remember their faces? Can faith redeem, and can it be rushed into existence before a court condemns? And finally, will a drunken priest redeem himself by saving a prisonerâs life, or by condemning another manâs soulâdo lives or souls weight heavier on the scales of salvation?

Italy struggles under Allied occupation at the end of World War II. At least a few of those who collaborated with Hitler now face justice, while others struggle to force their own will through the labyrinth of political, religious and sexual corruption left behind. The Catholic church needs a new saint for a new age, and perhaps an old sinner will be the one to conduct her on her way.

Each in his own different prison, each challenged to find escape, and each lavish in invention, the characters of this novel conduct their own strange dance around each otherâs sins. Sexual, political, military and personal corruption vie for control.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: A Shelter in a Time of Storm

Author: M. M. Merritt

Narrator: Whitney Edwards

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-15-13

Publisher: Tate Out Loud

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

One century. One family. Three wars.

A Shelter in the Time of Storm is an engaging family saga chronicling the chaotic events of the 20th century and an Arkansas family's part in that era. Through their involvement in war and politics, the Townley-Merritt family experiences tragedy and triumph and emerges as state and national leaders. Some volunteer for military service, some serve in activated National Guard units, some are accidentally in harm's way in the nation's conflicts. None of them wait to be drafted.

They find themselves in "faraway places with strange-sounding names". But however far away they stray, they always return to A Shelter in a Time of Storm the family home in Arkansas. There they renew their strength to return to the battles, both foreign and domestic, to honor their oath to defend their nation.

The book chronicles how an ordinary American family survives the Great Depression of the 1930s and the great challenges of World War II, only to send the sons of those veterans into the Korean and Vietnam wars. Author M. M. Merritt adroitly mixes love and war in a manner that teaches American history and American character, as well as underscores how important families are to America's integrity as a leading world power.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: A Spell for Old Bones

Author: Eric Linklater

Narrator: John Lee

Format: Unabridged

Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-13-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

"When the giants fell, old bones revived" - there is the rubric for Eric Linklater's new story. There may be no historical foundation for his tale of a fantastic war, in the First century A.D., between the giant Furbister and the abominable Od McGammon, his neighbour in the south-west of Scotland; but their quarrel - which provides a background to the engaging love-story of the willful poet Albyn and the delightful Princess Liss - has a real enough interest and no small significance in our equally strange world of today. Would love cure all our troubles?

Love indeed has a power that is almost infinite. But man (especially if he is a willful poet) has the habit of dissatisfaction, an eye that looks critically at love itself. And here, in this tale of some very modern primitives, love makes the running but fails to win the race. A new departure for Linklater? Well, he often makes new departures, and here, though he is serious at bottom, his seriousness is nicely garnished with wit, and sometimes at the mercy of humour. The fascination of the story carries its outlandishness as lightly as a feather.

Eric Linklater (1899-1974) wrote scores of novels for adults and children. He was also a journalist in India, commander of a wartime fortress in the Orkney Islands, and rector of Aberdeen University.