Showing results by narrator "George Newbern" in All Categories

A spoiled princess grudgingly befriends a frog after a chance meeting at a pond. Forced against her will to spend time with the creature, he is ultimately revealed to be a handsome prince under a spell when she hurls him against the wall. In many other versions of the story, the curse is broken by a kiss or a night spent on the princess' pillow.

Snow-White, fair-haired, quiet, and shy, and Rose-Red, dark-haired, outspoken, and lively, are two little girls living with their mother in a small cottage by the woods. They give shelter on a winter night to a kindly bear, who treats them gently and returns every night. In the summer, the girls encounter a wicked dwarf whose beard is stuck in a tree. Freeing the dwarf, the girls are met with loud ungrateful recriminations for cutting his beard.

A poor shoemaker prepares his last piece of leather to work on before turning in for bed. In the morning, he is amazed to find the shoes already made. Selling these to a grateful customer, his financial obligations are met, and he is able to buy enough leather for two more pairs. When these are completed overnight in a similar fashion, he stays awake to solve the mystery. Learning that a team of naked elves are responsible for the fine shoes, the shoemaker and his wife create tiny clothes for the elves to thank them.

In The Golden Bird, a king who has been robbed of a golden apple commands his gardener's sons to watch the tree. Seeing that the thief is a golden bird, the youngest son tries to shoot it but only knocks a feather off. Fascinated by the feather, the king decides he wants the whole bird. The gardener's son and his two brothers must make fateful choices in what turns into a fearsome quest to capture the bird.

In Briar Rose, better known as Sleeping Beauty, seven good fairies are invited to be godmothers to an infant princess. An old, overlooked fairy feels slighted and puts a deadly curse on the princess. A kind fairy modulates the curse from death to 100 years of deep sleep which can be broken by the kiss of a handsome prince.

A mother goat leaves her kids home alone, warning them not to open the door. A big bad wolf shows up and tries to talk his way in, but the kids hold fast. When the wolf finally gets past the door through trickery, he eats all but one of the kids. The mother goat returns to find the wolf sleeping under a tree. With the help of the one child who wasn't eaten, she rescues the remaining six with the help of a pair of scissors and some large rocks.

A miller's careless boast that his clever daughter can spin gold from straw is forced by the king to deliver on this claim. A little man arrives to help the miller's distraught daughter in exchange for her firstborn child. Later, when the daughter, now the queen, gives birth to her first child, the little man comes to collect. He agrees to release the queen from her promise if she can learn his name.

Dummling, the youngest and simplest of three brothers, is sent into the forest to chop wood. He shares his food and drink with a little gray man who directs him to a tree which, when chopped down, is found to contain a golden goose. Dummling sets off on a journey with the goose under his arm, eventually arriving in a kingdom wherein the king will offer his daughter's hand in marriage to any man who can make her laugh.

In this folk tale embodying a myth-element of unjust oppression and triumphant reward, a young girl is forced by her cruel stepmother and stepsisters to a life of servitude. Sleeping next to the fireplace, she earns the nickname Ashputtel, or Cinderella.

The last thing Rudy expected was to wake up one Saturday morning, a widower at 54 years old. Now, 10 months after the untimely death of his beloved wife, he’s still not sure how to move on from the tragedy - but his new job is helping. After being downsized, Rudy turned to his first love: the piano. Some people might be embarrassed to work as the piano player at Nordstrom, but for Rudy, there’s joy in it. And it doesn’t hurt that Sasha, the Hungarian watch clerk who is finally divorcing her no-good husband, finds time to join him at the bench every now and then.

Growing up in the shadow of Nancy's fame, John Dickerson rarely saw his mother. This frank memoir - part remembrance, part discovery - describes a freewheeling childhood in which Nancy Dickerson was rarely around unless John was in trouble or she was throwing a party for the president and John was instructed to check the coats. By the time John was old enough to know what the news was, his mother was no longer in the national spotlight and he didn't see why she should be. He thought she was a liar and a phony. When he was 14, his parents divorced, and he moved in with his father.

On November 23, 1968, near the end of a turbulent and memorable year, there was a football game that would also prove turbulent and memorable: the season-ending clash between Harvard and Yale. Both teams entered undefeated and, technically at least, came out undefeated. The final score was 29-29. To some of the players on the field, it was a triumph; to others a tragedy. George Howe Colt’s The Game is the story of that iconic American year, as seen through the young men who lived it and were changed by it.

Walter Eekhaut, a veteran of the Belgian police force who has a problem with authority, is dispatched to Amsterdam to aid the Dutch security service in investigating the activities of a well-connected Russian oligarch, with ties to Putin. Some of the Russian's business is legitimate, but some may well not be. In Amsterdam, Eekhaut is seconded to Chief Superintendent Alexandra Dewaal and her team, and begins to learn about the city's shady underside.

Nearly being indicted convinced Benn Bluestone to quit drug lawyering. Now he just wants to sleep well and turn an honest buck. A case as trustee for an unstable young woman seems like just the ticket…but this ride began in World War II, continued through the Golden Triangle heroin trade, navigated a serpentine trail of spies and international corruption, and ended up on a remote South China Sea atoll, where nuclear war between the United States and China threatens to destroy the world. Now Benn has no choice but to draw on the maneuvers of the past he escaped.

Halcyon is the answer for all Americans who want to escape, but paradise isn't what it seems. A beautiful island in the middle of Lake Ontario - a self-sustaining community made up of people who want to live without fear, crime, or greed. Halcyon is run by Valerie Kemp, aka Mother Moon, benevolent and altruistic on the outside, but hiding an unimaginable darkness inside. She has dedicated her life to the pursuit of Glam Moon, a place of eternal beauty and healing. And she believes the pathway there can only be found at the end of pleasure.

Troy Falconer returns home, after years of working as a solitary car thief, to help his younger brother, Harlan, search for his wife, who has run away with the little money he had. When they steal a station wagon for the journey, the brothers accidentally kidnap Martha Zacharias, a Mennonite girl asleep in the back of the car. Martha turns out to be a stubborn survivor who refuses to be sent home.

What did President Ronald Reagan think of Rocky IV? How did the Matthew Broderick film WarGames inform America's missile defense system? What Michael J. Fox movie made such an impression on President Reagan that he felt compelled to mention it in a speech to the Joint Session of Congress? Over the course of eight years, Mark Weinberg travelled to Camp David each weekend with Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

Rosa Guerrero beat the odds as she rose to the top of the corporate world. An attractive woman of a certain age, the longtime chief of human resources at Ellery Consumer Research is still a formidable presence, even if her most vital days are behind her. A leader who wields power with grace and discretion, she has earned the devotion and loyalty of her staff. No one admires Rosa more than her doting lieutenant Leo Smalls, a benefits vice president whose whole world is Ellery.

When the world's most notorious cartel bosses get arrested, they call Benn Bluestone. A drug lawyer sharp enough to exploit loopholes in the system, Bluestone loves the money, the women, the action that come with his career...but working between the lines of justice and crime has taken its toll, and he desperately wants out. He's convinced himself that only an insanely rich client can guarantee him a lavish retirement.

As war began in Europe in 1939, a naturalized German American was recruited by the Nazis to set up a radio transmitter and collect messages from spies active in the city to send back to Nazi spymasters in Hamburg. This German American, William G. Sebold, approached the FBI and became the first double agent in the Bureau's history, the center of a 16-month investigation that led to the arrest of a colorful cast of 33 enemy agents.