Classics audiobooks

Mr. Palomar

By: Italo Calvino

Narrated by: Luis Moreno

Length: 3 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

Mr. Palomar, whose name purposely evokes that of the famous telescope, is a seeker after knowledge, a visionary in a world sublime and ridiculous. Whether contemplating a cheese, a woman’s breasts, or a gorilla’s behavior, he brings us a vision of a world familiar by consensus, fragmented by the burden of individual perception. Read more

A Christmas Carol

By: Charles Dickens

Narrated by: Peter Noble

Length: 3 hours 32 minutes

Abridged: No

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was one of England's greatest writers, and A Christmas Carol shows us why. This holiday classic succinctly yet beautifully depicts the powerful transformation of a lonely and bitter old man into one who - in the true spirit of Christmas - embraces a renewed sense of joy in life and all it has to offer. Dickens wrote... Read more

Camilla, A Picture of Youth

By: Frances Burney

Narrated by: Lucy Scott

Length: 37 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

Among Jane Austen’s favourite novels, and a key work in the rise of Romanticism, Camilla follows the story of three young sisters, from childhood to young adulthood, and their pursuit of matrimony. Kind but naïve Camilla, the eponymous heroine, is in love with Edgar Mandlebert, a handsome and noble young man, but must suffer a series of frequent... Read more

From Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon

By: Jules Verne

Narrated by: Bill Homewood

Length: 14 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

Bored with inactivity following the end of the Civil War, members of the American Gun Club look for a project that will fulfil their passion for firearms. After much frustration, club President Barbicane proposes an exciting new endeavour – one that will cement their names in history: they will build the largest projectile ever known to man and... Read more

La Rabouilleuse, or The Black Sheep (Also, known as The Two Brothers)

By: Honoré de Balzac

Narrated by: Bill Homewood

Length: 12 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

Brothers Philippe and Joseph Bridau are completely unlike each other: Philippe, a once courageous soldier and Napoleon’s former aide-de-camp, is their mother’s favourite, while Joseph, a poor and aspiring artist, is the less favoured of the two. When their mother, Agathe, is reduced to poverty and Philippe amounts gambling debts following... Read more

The Virginian, A Horseman of the Plains

By: Owen Wister

Narrated by: Robert G. Slade

Length: 14 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

In this romantic and raw adventure set in the untamed wilderness of Wyoming of 1886, an anonymous college graduate ventures out West where he encounters gun fights, lynching, cattle rustlers, high-stake poker games, Indian attacks, and a brave, honest and imposing cowboy known simply as the Virginian. Presented as the archetypal, ideal hero of... Read more

The Duke's Children

By: Anthony Trollope

Narrated by: David Shaw-Parker

Length: 33 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

Bereft of his beloved wife Glencora and his role as Prime Minister, Plantagenet Palliser enters the realm of family politics as he struggles to guide and connect with his three wayward children. Lord Silverbridge, the Duke’s first born and natural inheritor, expelled from Oxford, a gambler at the racetrack and an elected Conservative, further... Read more

The Tragic Muse

By: Henry James

Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong

Length: 20 hours

Abridged: No

Pressured into a political career by his traditional, establishmentarian family, Nick Dormer longs to be a painter. Eventually, encouraged by the carefree aesthete Gabriel Nash, reminiscent of Oscar Wilde, he resigns from Parliament and follows his artistic dream. His journey is counterpointed with that of budding young actress Miriam Rooth, the... Read more

Ivanhoe

By: Walter Scott

Narrated by: David Rintoul

Length: 19 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

Written in 1819 but set in 12th-century England, Ivanhoe is a tale of love struggling to survive against a violent backdrop of politics and war. Wilfred of Ivanhoe was thrown out of his father’s home when he fell in love with his father Cedric’s ward, Lady Rowena. Ivanhoe later returns from fighting in the Crusades and is wounded in a jousting... Read more

Hunger

By: Knut Hamsun

Narrated by: Gunnar Cauthery

Length: TBA

Abridged: No

Verging on death, a starving, destitute writer navigates the cold and indifferent city of Kristiania in search of his next meal. Frenzied and fevered, he chews on stale bread, devours scraps of wood and bites his own finger, sleeping under the stars in old, pungent blankets, until one day he is able to sell an article and buy some food – only... Read more

The House of the Seven Gables

By: Nathaniel Hawthorne

Narrated by: Adam Sims

Length: 10 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: No

‘To inherit a great fortune. To inherit a great misfortune.’ These words, from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s notebook, neatly encapsulate the theme of The House of the Seven Gables – that of a family whose fortunes are poisoned by its past misdeeds. The sins of the Pyncheon father are visited upon his children over a period of several generations, until... Read more

Sybil

By: Benjamin Disraeli

Narrated by: Tim Bentinck

Length: 18 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

In Sybil, or The Two Nations, social activist, political reformer and twice Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli tells the love story of a young working-class woman and a newly elected nobleman. While on a visit to the manufacturing towns of the north, aristocrat Charles Egremont encounters beautiful Sybil Gerard, singing in the grounds of Marney... Read more

Zenos Conscience

By: Italo Svevo

Narrated by: Sean Barrett

Length: 17 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

Known for inspiring James Joyce’s Leopold Bloom from Ulysses, Zeno Cosini is the bumbling yet charming alter ego of Italo Svevo, who here lays bare a hilarious litany of neuroticisms about his health, friendships, family and women. Having submitted himself to Freudian psychoanalysis, the narrator keeps a diary with the aim of conquering his... Read more

A Happy Death

By: Albert Camus

Narrated by: Jefferson Mays

Length: 4 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

In his first novel, A Happy Death, written when he was in his early twenties and retrieved from his private papers following his death in I960, Albert Camus laid the foundation for The Stranger, focusing in both works on an Algerian clerk who kills a man in cold blood. But he also revealed himself to an extent that he never would in his later... Read more

Life for Sale

By: Yukio Mishima

Narrated by: Kotaro Watanabe

Length: 7 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

“A propulsive, madcap story” (The New York Times) about a salaryman who decides to put his life up for sale in the classifieds section of a Tokyo newspaper after a botched suicide attempt. • "An outstanding writer not only of Japan, but of the world." —The Atlantic

After salaryman Hanio Yamada puts his life up for sale, interested parties quickly... Read more

Tomorrow Will Be Better

By: Betty Smith

Narrated by: Nicola Barber

Length: 8 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

""A rediscovered treasure."" — Maureen Corrigan, Washington PostFrom Betty Smith, author of the beloved classic A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, comes a poignant story of love, marriage, poverty, and hope set in 1920s Brooklyn.Tomorrow Will Be Better tells the story of Margy Shannon, a shy but joyfully optimistic young woman just out of school who... Read more

The Story of Edgar Allan Poe

By: Sherwin Cody & Edgar Allan Poe

Narrated by: Mark Redfield

Length: 1 hour 2 minutes

Abridged: No

A wonderful biography of American writer Edgar Allan Poe for beginners. This biography of Poe is for people new to the life and work of the American master Poet and Short Storywriter, who perfected the horror story, and created the first examples of science fiction and detective fiction in western literature.

CREDITS: Written by Sherwin Cody.... Read more

Joy in the Morning

By: Betty Smith

Narrated by: Maggi-Meg Reed

Length: 10 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

From Betty Smith, author of the beloved American classic A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, comes an unsentimental yet radiant and uplifting tale of young love and marriage.

In 1927, in Brooklyn, New York, Carl Brown and Annie McGairy meet and fall in love. Though only eighteen, Annie travels alone halfway across the country to the Midwestern university... Read more

A Sportsman's Notebook

By: Ivan Turgenev

Narrated by: Steven Marvel

Length: 15 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: No

Twenty-five beautifully written stories, penned in exile, evocatively depicting life on a manor in feudal Russia and examining the conflicts between serfs and landlords

A Sportsman’s Notebook, Ivan Turgenev’s first literary masterpiece, is a sweeping portrayal of the magnificent nineteenth–century Russian countryside and the harsh lives of those... Read more

Great American Authors Read from Their Works, Vol. 1

By: James Baldwin, William Styron, James Jones & Ph...

Narrated by: James Baldwin, William Styron, James Jones & Ph...

Length: 1 hour 16 minutes

Abridged: No

These five recordings of twentieth-century American authors interpreting their own works were highly praised when first released in the 1960s. Today the cultural and historical value of these recordings makes them an essential part of our literary heritage.This volume contains readings by James Baldwin from Giovanni’s Room and Another Country,... Read more

Great American Authors Read from Their Works, Vol. 2

By: Nelson Algren, Bernard Malamud, John Updike & J...

Narrated by: Nelson Algren, Bernard Malamud, John Updike & J...

Length: 1 hour 14 minutes

Abridged: No

These four recordings of twentieth-century American authors interpreting their own works were highly praised when first released in the 1960s. Today the cultural and historical value of these recordings makes them an essential part of our literary heritage.Nelson Algren reads from his most famous novel, The Man with the Golden Arm, about the... Read more

James Baldwin Reading from Another Country

By: James Baldwin

Narrated by: James Baldwin

Length: 15 minutes

Abridged: No

New York's Greenwich Village in the 1950s, the gathering place of artists, writers, and musicians, is the setting of Another Country, Baldwin's third novel. The characters, all involved in complex interracial relationships, cluster around Rufus, a jazz musician whose suicide affects them profoundly. For Baldwin, Rufus represents "the black... Read more

James Baldwin Reading from Giovanni’s Room

By: James Baldwin

Narrated by: James Baldwin

Length: 15 minutes

Abridged: No

Giovanni's Room, Baldwin's second novel, deals frankly with homosexuality in a manner daring for its time. It depicts a white American struggling to accept his homoerotic desires. David, the protagonist, like Baldwin himself, feels alienated from his native country and moves to Paris in search of a freer life. In the passage Baldwin reads on... Read more

William Styron Reading from Lie Down in Darkness

By: William Styron

Narrated by: William Styron

Length: 15 minutes

Abridged: No

Lie Down in Darkness traces the tragic fate of a Southern family with acute sensitivity, in a style that mirrors the inner lives of its four major characters. The parents are estranged, with each favoring one of their two daughters. The father dotes on Peyton, the family beauty, while the mother is devoted to Maudie, the disabled child. The... Read more