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  Oval Portrait The - The...

  Edgar Allan Poe

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  Experience Edgar Allan Poe's mysterious tale of a life-like oval portrait hidden in an abandoned house through the power of a soundscape audiobook. 
  Root & Twig Sound's fourth production takes you into the mountains of the Italian Apennines with immersive sound design, riveting voiceover by Phil Dragash and haunting original music by Alexander Amadeo. 
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  A Root & Twig Sounds Production 
  Written by Edgar Allan Poe 
  Original text published in April of 1842 
  Produced as a Soundscape Audiobook in October of 2024 
  Read and Performed by Phil Dragash 
  Produced and Directed by Phil Dragash and A.Y. Barker 
  Original Music Composed by Alexander Amadeo 
  Cover Art by Phil Dragash 
  © Root & Twig Sounds, 2024 
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  The mission of Root & Twig Sounds is to be a beacon of classic stories spectacularly done for the modern ear, helping the world remember its great storytelling heritage. Find Root & Twig Soundscape audiobooks on our website at www.rootandtwigsound.com and wherever audiobooks are sold.

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  At Christmas Time - From their...

  Anton Chekhov

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  Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born on 29th January 1860 in Taganrog, on the south coast of Russia.  
  His family life was difficult; his father was strict and over-bearing but his mother was a passionate story-teller, a subject Chekhov warmed to. As he later said; ‘our talents we got from our father, but our soul from our mother’.  
  At school Chekhov was distinctly average. At 16 his father mis-managed his finances and was declared bankrupt. His family fled to Moscow. Chekhov remained and eked out a living by various means, including writing and selling short sketches to newspapers, to finish his schooling. That completed and with a scholarship to Moscow University obtained he rejoined his family. 
  He was able to help support them by selling satirical sketches and vignettes of Russian lifestyles and gradually obtained further commissions. In 1884, he qualified as a physician and, although it earned him little, he often treated the poor for free, he was fond of saying ‘Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress.’ 
  His own health was now an issue as he began to cough up blood, a symptom of tuberculosis.  Despite this his writing success enabled him to move the family into more comfortable accommodation.  
  Chekhov wrote over 500 short stories which included many, many classics including ‘The Kiss’ and ‘The Lady with a Dog’.  His collection ‘At Dusk’ won him the coveted Pushkin Prize when was only 26.  
  He was also a major playwright beginning with the huge success of ‘Ivanov’ in 1887.   
  In 1892 Chekhov bought a country estate north of Moscow. Here his medical skills and money helped the peasants tackle outbreaks of cholera and bouts of famine. He also built three schools, a fire station and a clinic.  It left him with less time for writing but the interactions with real people gained him detailed knowledge about the peasantry and their living conditions for his stories.  
  His most famous work, ‘The Seagull’ was received disastrously at its premiere in St Petersburg. It was later restaged in Moscow to highlight its psychological aspects and was a huge success. It led to ‘Uncle Vanya’, ‘The Three Sisters’ and ‘The Cherry Orchard’.  
  Chekhov suffered a major lung hemorrhage in 1897 while visiting Moscow. A formal diagnosis confirmed tuberculosis and the doctors ordered changes to his lifestyle.  
  Despite a dread of weddings the elusive literary bachelor quietly married the actress Olga Knipper, whom he had met at rehearsals for ‘The Seagull’, on 25th May 1901. 
  By May 1904 with his tuberculosis worsening and death imminent he set off for the German town of Badenweiler writing cheerful, witty letters to his family and assuring them his health was improving.  
  On 15th July 1904 Anton Chekhov died at Badenweiler.  He was 44.

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  Death Comes for the Archbishop

  Willa Cather

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  'The old man smiled. "I shall not die of a cold, my son. I shall die of having lived."'
  
  A quietly stunning meditation on endurance, cultural encounters and spiritual legacy in the American Southwest, Death Comes for the Archbishop remains one of Willa Carter's greatest works.
  
  First published in 1927, Carther's luminous novel follows the lives of two French Catholic missionaries – Father Jean Marie Latour and Father Joseph Vaillant – as they journey to New Mexico Territory to establish a diocese in the mid-nineteenth century. Through a series of episodic vignettes, Cather paints a vast and vibrant landscape of deserts and mesas while exploring themes of faith, identity and the shaping of spiritual and physical frontiers. The result is a life-affirming tale of harmony between people, cultures and the natural world. Now translated into twenty-four languages, Death Comes for the Archbishop remains one of Cather's most celebrated works.
  Willa Cather (1873 – 1947) was an American novelist and short story writer. She worked as a magazine editor and English teacher before turning her hand to writing, eventually resulting in a Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for her novel, One of Ours. Often writing from a romantic nationalist perspective, her work explores themes such exile and nostalgia.

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  Fireside Reading of The Call of...

  Jack London

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  Experiencing a story read out loud is one of the oldest forms of entertainment there is. Fireside Reading is a way to slow down, reconnect with the timeless wisdom of great books and rediscover the simple pleasure of being read to. Join Gildart Jackson in front of a cozy fire as he reads The Call of the Wild by Jack London to you and your family from beginning to end.

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  Crome Yellow

  Aldous Huxley

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  Crome Yellow, first novel by Aldous Huxley, published in 1921. The book is a social satire of the British literati in the period following World War I. The book revolves around the hapless love affair of Denis Stone, a sensitive poet, and Anne Wimbush. Anne’s uncle, Henry Wimbush, hosts a party at his country estate, Crome, that brings together a humorous coterie of characters. Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books—both novels and non-fiction works—as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems. Born into the prominent Huxley family, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with an undergraduate degree in English literature

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  The Hound of the Baskervilles

  Arthur Conan Doyle

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  A chilling mystery stalks the misty moors… 
  In The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle delivers one of the most iconic and atmospheric tales in the Sherlock Holmes canon. When Sir Charles Baskerville is found dead under suspicious circumstances near his estate on the Devonshire moors, whispers of a family curse resurface—one involving a terrifying spectral hound. Fearing for the safety of the new heir, Sir Henry Baskerville, Dr. James Mortimer seeks the help of master detective Sherlock Holmes. 
  Joined by the ever-loyal Dr. Watson, Holmes unravels a tangled web of deception, ancient legends, and sinister schemes. As the fog rolls over the moor, danger closes in, and the line between superstition and reality begins to blur. 
  Narrated with gripping intensity by Luke Oldham, this classic detective novel combines Gothic suspense, psychological drama, and the brilliance of Holmes’s deductive reasoning to keep listeners riveted until the final, unforgettable revelation.

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