Classics audiobooks

Sir Harry Hotspur

By: Anthony Trollope

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: 8 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

A man of conscience, duty, and tradition, an immature, impressionable girl of supreme virtue and perhaps the greatest cad in English Literature are the chief protagonists of this tale. Tragedy falls upon the House of Humblethwaite. Sir Harry Hotspur's son dies at 21 years of age. There is no other male heir save a second cousin, a scapegrace... Read more

The Card

By: Arnold Bennett

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: 8 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

Arnold Bennett's splendidly comic portrayal of Edward Henry Machin, known as Denry to his mother to save time, is set in Bursley, one of the author's Five Towns of Staffordshire. Starting in 1897, when Denry first saw the smoke of the potbanks, the tale chronicles his rise to fame and wealth including such events as improving his exam results to... Read more

The Hole in the Wall

By: Arthur Morrison

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: 7 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

Arthur Morrison grew up in the East End of London and was familiar with life on the dockside. He tells the story of ‘The Hole in the Wall’ through the eyes of young Stephen Kemp, taken to live with his grandfather after the death of his mother. Nat Kemp is determined to keep his grandson apart from the seamier side of the Docklands but Stephen... Read more

Miss Lonelyhearts

By: Nathanael West

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: 2 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

The columnist of the New York Post-Dispatch, Miss Lonelyhearts, is initially cynical about the letters he receives for help. They are a joke. Gradually however, the letters start to move him but he is powerless to do anything. Retreating from the pain into a fantasy world he starts to believe that he is a Christ figure, a universal saviour. But... Read more

Billy Budd

By: Herman Melville

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: 3 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

On one level Melville’s tale is an historical adventure story telling of life aboard ship shortly after the mutiny at Spithead in 1797. Billy is taken from a homeward bound merchantman to serve on the ‘Seventy Four’ HMS Indomitable. He falls foul of Claggart, the ‘Master at Arms’, and the final confrontation results in death. Billy becomes an... Read more

Dr Wortles School

By: Anthony Trollope

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: TBA

Abridged: No

Dr. Wortle's School is Trollope's most merciless attack on the false moralising and hypocrisy of the Victorian age. When Dr. Wortle, in good faith, hires a couple as teacher and matron at his school, scandal about their marriage is subsequently brought to light. Will the doctor submit to the social pressures brought to bear on him by the gossip,... Read more

Emily Fox-Seton - Abridged

By: Frances Hodgson Burnett

Narrated by: a full cast, Susan McCarthy, Laurelle Westaway,...

Length: 8 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: Yes

This two-part adult fairytale by the author of The Secret Garden combines a charming Cinderella tale with an ironic look at class structure and the Edwardian marriage market in turn-of-the-century London.Emily Fox-Seton is a simple but good-hearted woman struggling to make ends meet while maintaining the dignity of one distantly related to the... Read more

The Man of Property

By: John Galsworthy

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 13 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

John Galsworthy’s epic Forsyte Saga follows the fortunes of the venerable Forsyte family, a moneyed clan whose passions are ever at war with its values. Galsworthy won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1932 “for his distinguished art of narration, which takes its highest form in the Forsyte Saga.”The Man of Property, the first novel in the... Read more

To Let

By: John Galsworthy

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 9 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

To Let concludes John Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga, the first trilogy of his epic nine-volume Forsyte Chronicles, which follows the fortunes of the venerable Forsyte family, a moneyed clan whose values are ever at war with its passions.In To Let, Irene’s son, Jon, and Soames’ daughter, Fleur, now both nineteen years old, fall in love. But when Jon... Read more

The White Monkey

By: John Galsworthy

Narrated by: David Case

Length: 9 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

The White Monkey is the fourth of the nine novels in the Forsyte Chronicles and marks the opening of the second trilogy in the series, called A Modern Comedy. In this new chapter, Fleur and Michael Mont begin to question their marriage when their good friend, author Wilfred Desert, can no longer contain his passion for Fleur. Fleur finds herself... Read more

The Silver Spoon

By: John Galsworthy

Narrated by: David Case

Length: 9 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

The Silver Spoon is the fifth of the nine novels in the Forsyte Chronicles, John Galsworthy’s epic story of the moneyed Forsyte family during the decline of the Victorian age. It is part of the second trilogy, called A Modern Comedy, and continues his fascinating study of the British propertied class in a changing society.In this novel, Soames... Read more

Swan Song

By: John Galsworthy

Narrated by: David Case

Length: 10 hours 32 minutes

Abridged: No

Swan Song is the conclusion of the second trilogy in the Forsyte Chronicles, which is called A Modern Comedy. John Galsworthy's epic story of the moneyed Forsyte family is a fascinating study of the British propertied class during the decline of the Victorian age.The "man of property," Soames Forsyte, has mellowed with the passing of the years... Read more

Flowering Wilderness

By: John Galsworthy

Narrated by: David Case

Length: 7 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

John Galsworthy devoted virtually his entire professional career to creating the fictional but entirely representative family of propertied Victorians, the Forsytes. He made their lives and times, loves and losses, and fortunes and deaths so real that readers accused him of including real individuals whom they knew as the characters in his... Read more

One More River

By: John Galsworthy

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 8 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

In John Galsworthy’s last written novel, the conclusion of the final trilogy in his epic Forsyte Chronicles, Dinny Charwell is recovering steadily from her disastrous late love affair while now it is her sister, Clare, who is in trouble.After just eighteen months of marriage, Clare has fled from her highly esteemed but sadistic husband, Gerald,... Read more

Treasure Island

By: Robert Louis Stevenson

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 6 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

Perhaps Stevenson’s best-known work, this adventure novel set in the eighteenth century is inspired by the actual exploits of pirate Captain Kidd and the search for his buried treasure. For pure imaginative delight, Treasure Island is unsurpassed. From the moment young Jim Hawkins meets the blind pirate Pew at the Admiral Benbow inn, to the... Read more

Kidnapped

By: Robert Louis Stevenson

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 7 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

In this spirited and romantic saga of high adventure, a young heir named David Balfour meets his miserly uncle Ebenezer, who has illegally taken control of the Balfour estate. Ebenezer kidnaps David and plots to have him seized and sold into slavery on a ship to the Carolinas.A couple of days into the voyage, a shipwreck throws David together... Read more

A Christmas Carol

By: Charles Dickens

Narrated by: B.J. Harrison

Length: 3 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

Ebeneezer Scrooge runs a tight shop with a tight fist and a sharp tongue. On Christmas Eve, he is visited by the ghost of his old partner, Jacob Marley. Marley relates that in order for Scrooge’s soul to be reclaimed, he must be haunted by three spirits. The first of the three appear, and Scrooge’s reclamation begins. Read more

The Classic Tales Podcast

By: Various

Narrated by: B.J. Harrison

Length: 23 hours 31 minutes

Abridged: No

The first award-winning season of The Classic Tales Podcast, topping the iTunes charts as the #3 overall podcast. Here B.J. Harrison reintroduces the world to the greatest short fiction ever written, from Poe, Dickens, Hardy, Stevenson, Fitzgerald and many, many others.Titles include: "The Cask of Amontillado", by Edgar Allan Poe; "The Speckled... Read more

Oliver Twist

By: Charles Dickens

Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon

Length: 16 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

One of Dickens’ most popular novels, Oliver Twist tells the story of a young workhouse orphan who escapes into the mean backstreets of Victorian London. There, he is thrust into a den of thieves where some of Dickens’ most depraved villains preside: the incorrigible Artful Dodger, the barbarous bully Bill Sikes, and the terrible Fagin, whose... Read more

The Painted Veil

By: W. Somerset Maugham

Narrated by: Kate Reading

Length: 7 hours 21 minutes

Abridged: No

Set in England and Hong Kong in the 1920s, this beautifully written character study is an affirmation of the human capacity to grow, change, and forgive.The Painted Veil is the story of the beautiful but shallow young Kitty Fane, who marries for money rather than love. When her husband, a quiet doctor, discovers her adulterous affair, he forces... Read more

The Good Earth

By: Pearl S. Buck

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Length: 10 hours 37 minutes

Abridged: No

This Pulitzer Prize–winning classic tells the poignant tale of a Chinese farmer and his family in old agrarian China. The humble Wang Lung glories in the soil he works, nurturing the land as it nurtures him and his family. Nearby, the nobles of the House of Hwang consider themselves above the land and its workers, but they will soon meet their... Read more

Joan of Arc

By: Mark Twain

Narrated by: Michael Anthony

Length: 15 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

Few people know that Mark Twain wrote a major work on Joan of Arc. Still fewer know that he considered it not only his most important but also his best work. Twain spent twelve years in research and many months in France doing archival work and then made several attempts until he felt he finally had the story he wanted to tell. He reached his... Read more

Something Fresh

By: P. G. Wodehouse

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 7 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

Welcome to Blandings Castle, a place that is never itself without an imposter.Wodehouse himself once noted that "Blandings has impostors like other houses have mice." On this particular occasion there are two, both intent on a dangerous enterprise. Lord Emsworth's secretary, the Efficient Baxter, is on the alert and determined to discover what... Read more

The Wind in the Willows

By: Kenneth Grahame

Narrated by: Mary Woods

Length: 5 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

The Wind in the Willows is a book for those “who keep the spirit of youth alive in them; of life, sunshine, running water, woodlands, dusty roads, winter firesides.” So wrote Kenneth Grahame of his timeless tale of Rat, Mole, Badger, and Toad, in their lyrical world of gurgling rivers and whispering reeds, a world which is both beautiful and... Read more