Classics audiobooks

Allan Quatermain

By: H. Rider Haggard

Narrated by: Fred Williams

Length: 11 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

Thrilled by rumors of a lost civilization, three Englishmen decide to travel to the heart of Africa with their Zulu guide, where they meet with continual peril: an attack by a cruel warrior tribe, the scorch of underground volcanic fires, and an encounter with a huge species of ferocious black crab. Exhausted and depleted of supplies, the men at... Read more

Villette

By: Charlotte Brontë

Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon

Length: 20 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

Arguably Charlotte Brontë's most deeply felt work, Villette draws on her own profound loneliness following the deaths of her three siblings.Left to fend for herself after a family tragedy, Lucy Snowe flees from her unhappy past in England to begin a new life as a teacher at a French boarding school in the cosmopolitan capital of Villette.... Read more

La Vagabonde

By: Colette

Narrated by: Johanna Ward

Length: 6 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

Largely autobiographical, La Vagabonde recalls the author’s own years as a dance-hall performer in turn-of-the-century Paris. Colette takes the listener backstage and into the demimonde of Renée Néré, an aging dancer, mime, and failed writer. In a sultry, passionate, and intelligent voice, Renée narrates the story of her romance with an admirer... Read more

Almayer’s Folly

By: Joseph Conrad

Narrated by: Ralph Cosham

Length: 5 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

A tale of personal tragedy as well as a broader meditation on the evils of colonialism, Almayer’s Folly is Joseph Conrad’s first novel. Set in the lush jungles of Borneo in the late 1800s, it charts the decline of a Dutch merchant after a twenty-five year struggle against overwhelming odds.Despite the bitterness of his disillusioned wife,... Read more

The Man with Two Left Feet and Other Stories

By: P. G. Wodehouse

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 6 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

This is a good example of early Wodehouse. It is here that Jeeves makes his first appearance with these unremarkable words: “Mrs. Gregson to see you, sir.” Years later, when Jeeves became a household name, Wodehouse said he blushed to think of the offhand way he had treated the man at their first encounter.In the story “Extricating Young... Read more

The Riddle of the Sands

By: Erskine Childers

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 10 hours 21 minutes

Abridged: No

While on a sailing trip in the Baltic Sea, two young adventurers-turned-spies uncover a secret German plot to invade England. Widely recognized as the first modern spy thriller, this lone masterpiece by World War I Royal Navy officer Erskine Childers was written in 1903 as a wake-up call to the British government to attend to its North Sea... Read more

The Touchstone

By: Edith Wharton

Narrated by: Grace Conlin

Length: 2 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

This spare, mesmerizing novel is Edith Wharton’s money-can’t-buy-happiness tale. Young Stephen Glennard is poor, but he has an unanticipated gambling chip: a collection of love letters from a scorned but now famous lover, the distinguished novelist Margaret Aubyn. To raise money for his forthcoming wedding to another woman, Stephen stoops to... Read more

Free Air

By: Sinclair Lewis

Narrated by: Barrett Whitener

Length: 7 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

Free Air takes one by automobile in search of America, heading toward a West brimming with possibilities for suddenly mobile Americans at the end of a world war. Clair Boltwood and her father drive their Gomez-Dep roadster from Minnesota to Seattle, braving all the perils of early motoring. But the greatest distance to be overcome is the social... Read more

Indiscretions of Archie

By: P. G. Wodehouse

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 7 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

“I think the Cosmopolis is a bally rotten hotel!”Having made a bitter enemy of Daniel Brewster, owner of New York’s Hotel Cosmopolis, Archie Moffam (fresh from England) checks out and heads south, where he woos and weds one Lucille Brewster … little thinking. Back at the Hotel Cosmopolis, Archie once again finds himself confronted by Mr.... Read more

The Voyage Out

By: Virginia Woolf

Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon

Length: 13 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

First published in 1915, The Voyage Out marked the literary debut of one of the great pioneers of the modern novel, Virginia Woolf.Woolf’s witty and lyrical debut follows a group of lively, eccentric British tourists embarking on a sea voyage from London to South America. For Rachel Vinrace, a shy, motherless young lady traveling under the wing... Read more

Under Western Eyes

By: Joseph Conrad

Narrated by: Ralph Cosham

Length: 11 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: No

Hailed as one of Joseph Conrad's finest literary achievements, Under Western Eyes tells the story of a young man unwittingly caught in the political turmoil of pre-revolutionary czarist Russia. It begins with a bomb that kills its intended target, a hated Russian minister of police, along with several innocent bystanders. A young student named... Read more

Ethan Frome

By: Edith Wharton

Narrated by: C. M. Hébert

Length: 3 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

Often regarded as Edith Wharton's finest achievement,Ethan Fromecontrasts sharply with her usual ironic contemplation of fashionable New York society. Set in the bleak winter landscape of New England farmlands, this keenly-etched portrait of the simple inhabitants of a nineteenth-century village is a masterpiece of literary realism.Ethan is a... Read more

Royal Highness

By: Thomas Mann

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 11 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

For his Royal Highness Klaus Heinrich, prince of a small German duchy, life means servitude to traditional ducal functions—until he meets the independent-spirited and liberal-minded American Miss Spoelmann. During the course of his unorthodox and quixotically tender wooing, Heinrich is forced to reach into unknown depths of his personality and... Read more

Cabbages and Kings

By: O. Henry

Narrated by: Sean Pratt

Length: 7 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

O. Henry wove several stories together into this highly episodic narrative, taking his title and inspiration from Lewis Carroll’s poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter” in Alice in Wonderland.The stories are set in the fictional country of Anchuria in Central America, a banana republic where larceny is rampant and revolution is lurking in every... Read more

The Return of the Soldier

By: Rebecca West

Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon

Length: 2 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

When Captain Chris Baldry, a World War I soldier, is sent home with a severe case of shellshock amnesia, he is a stranger to his wife, Kitty, and his adoring cousin, Jenny. Recoiling from the horrors of war and disillusioned with years of superficial married life, his mind has regressed fifteen years, where his heart may take refuge once again... Read more

A Confederacy of Dunces

By: John Kennedy Toole

Narrated by: Barrett Whitener

Length: 13 hours 32 minutes

Abridged: No

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize“A masterwork . . . the novel astonishes with its inventiveness . . . it is nothing less than a grand comic fugue.”—The New York Times Book ReviewA green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears... Read more

Short Stories by Saki

By: Hector Hugh Munro

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson & Wanda McCaddon

Length: 11 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

Hector Monro, writing under the pseudonym of Saki, is justly renowned for his urbane and witty short stories. His eccentric characters, humorous dialogue, and engaging domestic situations all reveal a penetrating and sometimes disturbing insight into human nature. As a quixotic tour guide, Saki leads the reader from garden party to pig sty to... Read more

The Song of Roland

By: unknown

Narrated by: a full cast

Length: 2 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

This classic epic revolves around the battle between the Franks and the Moors in 778.Though he has grown up in poverty in a cave in Italy, Roland is in fact descended from great heroes of old. Since his youth, his mother has taught him that someday he will be a brave hero like his father, Milon, and serve with the great army of his uncle,... Read more

Don Quixote de la Mancha

By: Miguel de Cervantes

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 36 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

With a wealth of fancy and an irrepressible high spirit, this beloved adventure story pokes fun at the exaggerated social and literary conventions of Cervantes’ day. Driven mad by reading too many chivalric romances, Don Quixote decks himself out in rusty armor and a cardboard helmet, determined to become a knight-errant and roam the world... Read more

Jude the Obscure

By: Thomas Hardy

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 14 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

His last and most controversial novel, Jude the Obscure provoked such widespread and bitter attacks that Hardy claimed it caused him to stop writing novels. The primary causes of the uproar involved Hardy’s frank treatment of sexual themes and his unconventional portrayal of the pillars of Victorian society: the British university system,... Read more

War and Peace

By: Leo Tolstoy

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 61 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

Often called the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace is at once a historical war epic, a philosophical study, and a celebration of the Russian spirit.Noted for its mastery of realistic detail and psychological analysis, War and Peace follows the metamorphosis of five aristocratic families against the backdrop of the Napoleonic wars.... Read more

The Elusive Pimpernel

By: Baroness Emma Orczy

Narrated by: Johanna Ward

Length: 9 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

It's the early days of the French Republic, and Robespierre's revolutionaries find their wicked schemes repeatedly thwarted by the cunning and heroic Pimpernel—in reality, Sir Percival Blakeney. Now, Monsieur Chauvelin devises a dastardly plot to annihilate both Sir Percy and his beautiful wife Marguerite once and for all. Lured to France, where... Read more

The Trumpet-Major

By: Thomas Hardy

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 10 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

Set against the larger-than-life backdrop of the Napoleonic wars, Hardy’s only historical novel tells of the loves and sorrows of ordinary people caught in extraordinary times.When an anticipated invasion brings several regiments to her small rural community, young country maid Anne Garland is courted by three men in uniform: the loyal... Read more

The Adventures of Sally

By: P. G. Wodehouse

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 7 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

Pretty, impecunious Sally Nicholas never dreamed a fortune could prove a disadvantage, until she becomes an heiress and watches in bewilderment as her orderly existence goes haywire. Coping first with her brother’s wild theatrical ambitions, then with the defection of her fiancé and his immediate replacement by a much more appropriate but... Read more