Classics audiobooks

Dubliners

By: James Joyce

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 7 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

James Joyce paints vivid portraits of the poorer classes of Dublin in a collection of stories whose larger purpose, he said, was to depict a "moral history of Ireland." From the first story, in which a young boy encounters death to the haunting final story involving the middle-aged Gabriel, the book gives an unflinchingly realistic portrayal of... Read more

A Room with a View

By: E. M. Forster

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 7 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

E. M. Forster’s celebrated social comedy explores romantic intrigue and prim propriety among a colorful cast of Edwardian characters. Lucy Honeychurch, a young English woman traveling in Italy with her stuffy chaperone aunt, finds herself constrained by the claustrophobic influence of her British guardians and attracted to the free-spirited... 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

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

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

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

The Oresteia - Abridged

By: Aeschylus

Narrated by: a full cast

Length: 3 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: Yes

The only complete trilogy to survive from ancient Greek theater is presented here in this sound recording of all three plays: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides.In the Oresteia, Aeschylus dramatizes the myth of the curse on the royal house of Argos. Action begins when King Agamemnon returns victorious from the Trojan War but is... Read more

Sweeney Todd and the String of Pearls - Abridged

By: Yuri Rasovsky

Narrated by: a full cast, Robertson Dean, Martin Jarvis, Moi...

Length: 2 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: Yes

The insidious Fleet Street barber slit his first throat in an 1846 "penny dreadful," one of those gaudy serialized novels that gleefully offered thrills and gore to sensation-hungry Victorians. TitledThe String of Pearls, it told of Sweeney Todd, whose shop stood next to St. Dunstan's Church, just a few blocks from the Royal Courts of Justice.... Read more

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari - Abridged

By: Yuri Rasovsky

Narrated by: a full cast

Length: 1 hour 9 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Inspired by the classic silent film of 1919, this original audio play won the Independent Publishers Award in 1998 for best direct-to-audio production. John de Lancie stars as a young poet who visits a fair one night with his friend and girlfriend. Entering Dr. Caligari’s tent, they meet the mysterious Cesare, a kind of zombie, who is neither... Read more

The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson - Abridged

By: Mark Twain

Narrated by: various narrators

Length: 5 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: Yes

David Wilson has earned the unfortunate nickname "Pudd'nhead" from his fellow townspeople, who fail to understand his combination of wisdom and eccentricity. However, he is eventually able to redeem himself by simultaneously solving a murder mystery and a case of transposed identities.Two children, a white boy and a mulatto, are born on the same... Read more

Sherlock Holmes Theatre - Abridged

By: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, William Gillette & Yuri...

Narrated by: Martin Jarvis, Kristoffer Tabori & a full cast

Length: 4 hours 37 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Blackstone is pleased to present the first ever audio recordings of the only two Holmes plays written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This specially commissioned production by the Hollywood Theater of the Ear is a unique, must-have audio for all Sherlockians.In Sherlock Holmes, Professor Moriarity, the Napoleon of crime, plots with would-be... Read more

Tales of Terror - Abridged

By: Edgar Allan Poe

Narrated by: David Thorn & Bruce Blau

Length: 6 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: Yes

American poet, critic, and short-story writer Edgar Allan Poe is universally recognized for his cultivation of the macabre in fiction. His stories are characterized by an original kind of supernatural horror, often using the awareness of death as a catalyzing force in its own right. His tales and poems brim with psychological depth and intense... Read more

The Vicar of Wakefield - Abridged

By: Oliver Goldsmith

Narrated by: David Thorn & a supporting cast

Length: 7 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: Yes

The story opens in the country parsonage of Dr. Primrose, a kindly man who has a good heart, a good family, and a good income. Suddenly, his idyllic life is cruelly devastated by a series of misfortunes, and he ends up in prison. Yet, despite all this calamity and injustice, the vicar never loses sight of Christian morality, a conviction which... Read more

Their Eyes Were Watching God - Abridged

By: Zora Neale Hurston

Narrated by: Ruby Dee

Length: TBA

Abridged: Yes

“A deeply soulful novel that comprehends love and cruelty, and separates the big people from the small of heart, without ever losing sympathy for those unfortunates who don’t know how to live properly.” —Zadie SmithOne of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love... Read more

Brauseboys - Wir sind nur Kurzgeschichtenvorleser - Abridged

By: Brauseboys

Narrated by: Brauseboys

Length: 2 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Die Live-CD "Wir sind nur Kurzgeschichtenvorleser" versammelt die besten Texte und Lieder aus über drei Jahren Brauseboys. Eine wilde Fahrt mit 120 pbm (pointen pro minute) und immer auf der linken Spur mit hemmungslosen Einsatz der Lichthupe. "Unter den Berliner Lesebühnen brauchen sie sich nicht zu verstecken. Die Brauseboys sind... Read more

Neue Liebe, neues Leben - Abridged

By: Hans-Peter Bögel

Narrated by: Hans-Peter Bögel

Length: 55 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Zu allen Zeiten hat der Frühling die Komponisten in besonderer Weise inspiriert. Die freudigsten, lebensfrohen, liebevollsten Melodien sind im Frühling entstanden. Kompositionen wie Schumanns Frühlingssinfonie, Mendelssohn Bartholdys Frühlingslied oder Beethovens Frühlingssonate strömen eben die positive Kraft aus, die ein Neuanfang, die... Read more

The Picture of Dorian Gray

By: Oscar Wilde

Narrated by: Michael Page

Length: 7 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

Featured title on PBS's The Great American Read in 2018When The Picture of Dorian Gray was first published in 1891, it evoked a tremendous amount of hostile criticism, in most part due to its immoral content. Oscar Wilde was identified with the “art for art’s sake” movement of the nineteenth century which did not subordinate art to ethical... Read more

Huckleberry Finn

By: Mark Twain

Narrated by: Ken Duken

Length: 5 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

Huckleberry Finn knüpft dort an, wo Tom Sawyer aufhört: Huck, nach dem Abenteuer mit Tom zu Geld gekommen, wohnt bei der Witwe Douglas, die versucht ihn zu "zivilisieren". Von dort wird er von seinem Vater entführt, dem er durch die Vortäuschung seiner eigenen Ermordung entkommt. Ab diesem Zeitpunkt beginnen seine Abenteuer auf dem Mississippi,... Read more

Huckleberry Finn - Abridged

By: Mark Twain

Narrated by: Ken Duken

Length: 5 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Huckleberry Finn knüpft dort an, wo Tom Sawyer aufhört: Huck, nach dem Abenteuer mit Tom zu Geld gekommen, wohnt bei der Witwe Douglas, die versucht ihn zu "zivilisieren". Von dort wird er von seinem Vater entführt, dem er durch die Vortäuschung seiner eigenen Ermordung entkommt. Ab diesem Zeitpunkt beginnen seine Abenteuer auf dem Mississippi,... Read more

Lolita

By: Vladimir Nabokov

Narrated by: Jeremy Irons

Length: 11 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

The most famous and controversial novel from one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century tells the story of Humbert Humbert’s obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze.

“The conjunction of a sense of humor with a sense of horror [results in] satire of a very special kind.”—The New Yorker

One of The Atlantic’s... Read more

Deutsche Lyrik - Abridged

By: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Rainer Maria Rilke,...

Narrated by: Achim Höppner & Anja Buczkowsky

Length: 1 hour 45 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Beginnend mit Walter von der Vogelweide bis hin zu Kurt Tucholsky wurden 50 Gedichte von 30 AutorInnen vertont. Es geht um Liebe, Tod und Leben, Sommer, Winter, Tag und Nacht, Tiefsinn wie Unsinn. In diesem Download u.a. enthalten: Erlkönig / Goethe Mondnacht / Eichendorff Nis Randers / Ernst Frau Rösel / Keller Herbstbild /... Read more

Tolstoy: The Death of Ivan Ilyich & Master and Man

By: Leo Tolstoy

Length: 4 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

In these two famous short novels, Leo Tolstoy takes readers to the brink of despair. At the end of life worldly ambition offers no consolation for the spiritually empty soul. But Tolstoy is the master of themes of redemption. He turns his morbid topic into hope, leading toward spiritual awakening. Tolstoy offers his readers a lifetime of... Read more

Tolstoy: Father Sergius & Other Short Stories

By: Leo Tolstoy

Length: 4 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

Tolstoy is perhaps best recognized as the author of the classic novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina. While he was able to sustain complex and moving plots though large novels, his ability as a great writer also is demonstrated in his many short stories. Tolstoy brings to these brief tales the same psychological depth and spiritual insight... Read more

Drei kurze Texte (mit tödlichem Ausgang) - Abridged

By: Peter Palizsch

Narrated by: Anne Moll, Germain Wagner & Ulrich Gebauer

Length: 1 hour 6 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Peter Palitzsch hat drei kurze Texte über Krieg, Gewalt und Emigration mit jeweils tödlichem Ausgang geschrieben, es ist sein erstes Drama überhaupt. In ihm geht es um das Beheimatetsein auf einer Erde, die zu oft ihre Kinder ausgespuckt hat, die nun umherirren, gerade auf der Suche nach dieser Heimat. Die drei Texte umreißen verschiedene... Read more