Historical Fiction audiobooks

The Warden

By: Anthony Trollope

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 7 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

The Warden is the first of the six classic Chronicles of Barsetshire novels, Trollope's best-loved and most famous work.Anthony Trollope's classic novel centers on Mr. Harding, a clergyman of great personal integrity, whose charitable income far exceeds the purpose for which it was intended. On discovering this, young John Bold turns his... Read more

Peter Simple

By: Frederick Marryat

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 17 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

In this seminal story of naval life during the Napoleonic wars, Frederick Marryat's young hero embarks upon a life at sea and finds it to be a rough school indeed. Simple's trials and triumphs, alongside his faithful mentor, Terence O'Brien, mirror Marryat's personal experience, from the hand-to-hand combat of cutting-out missions to the... Read more

Phineas Finn

By: Anthony Trollope

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 22 hours 32 minutes

Abridged: No

Phineas Finn is an Irish MPA who is climbing the political ladder, largely through the assistance of his string of lovers. The questions he is forced to ask himself about honesty, independence, and parliamentary democracy are questions still asked today.Phineas Finn is the second of Anthony Trollope's six Palliser novels, which together comprise... Read more

The Sultan’s Seal

By: Jenny White

Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon

Length: 10 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

The naked body of a young Englishwoman washes up in Istanbul wearing a pendant inscribed with the seal of the deposed sultan. The death resembles the unsolved murder of another Englishwoman, a governess, ten years before. A magistrate in the new secular courts, Kamil Pasha, sets out to find the killer, but his dispassionate belief in science and... Read more

The Last of the Plainsmen

By: Zane Grey

Narrated by: Adams Morgan

Length: 7 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

“Hezd rope the devil and tie him down...if the lasso didn’t burn,” it was said of “Buffalo Jones,” one of the last of the famous plainsmen who trod the trails of the Old West. Killing was repulsive to him and the passion of his life was to capture wild beasts alive. When he saw that the extinction of the buffalo was inevitable, he labored for... Read more

Captain Blood

By: Rafael Sabatini

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 10 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

In 1685, Irish physician Peter Blood is happily settled in a small English town when the rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth interrupts the peace. After saving the life of a wounded nobleman who turns out to be a rebel, Blood is charged with treason and sentenced to ten years as an indentured slave in the Caribbean colonies.On the islands, Blood... Read more

Percival Keene

By: Frederick Marryat

Narrated by: William Sutherland

Length: 14 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

Captain Frederick Marryat of the Royal Navy knew well both the thunder of the broadside and the laughter of the gun room. In Percival Keene, he takes us on a thrilling and authentic ride through the naval world of the Napoleonic wars.This is the gripping tale of the mischievous young midshipman Percival Keene, whose adventures begin when he... Read more

Little Women

By: Louisa May Alcott

Narrated by: C. M. Hébert

Length: 18 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

This favorite book for children, based on the author’s own youthful experiences, describes the life of the March family in a small New England community in the 1800s.Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March are raised in genteel poverty by their loving mother while their father serves as chaplain during the American Civil War. Jo at fifteen is ungainly,... Read more

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

By: Maggie O’Farrell

Narrated by: Anne Flosnik

Length: 7 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

Iris Lockhart is busy tending to the everyday business of her vintage clothing shop and sidestepping her married boyfriend’s attempts at commitment when she receives a stunning phone call. Her great-aunt Esme, whom she never even knew existed, is being released from Cauldstone Hospital—where she has been locked away for over sixty years.Iris’... Read more

Heartfire

By: Orson Scott Card

Narrated by: a full cast

Length: 12 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

Peggy is a Torch, able to see the fire burning in each person’s heart. She can follow the paths of each person’s future, and know each person’s most intimate secrets. From the moment of Alvin Maker’s birth, when the Unmaker first strove to kill him, she has protected him. Now they are married, and Peggy is a part of Alvin’s heart as well as his... Read more

Ben-Hur

By: Lew Wallace

Narrated by: Lloyd James

Length: 23 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

One of the most popular American novels of all time, Ben-Hur vividly reimagines the oppressive Roman occupation of ancient Palestine and the rise of Christianity. The saga of Judah Ben-Hur’s spiritual journey from slavery to vengeance to redemption is both a vivid historical adventure and a powerful story of one man’s religious awakening.Born... Read more

The Scarlet Pimpernel

By: Emma Orczy

Narrated by: Geoffrey Howard

Length: 8 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

“Who is this man, this Scarlet Pimpernel?” Each day this question grew more pressing to the rulers of the French Revolution. Only this man and his band of followers threatened their total power. Only this maddeningly elusive figure defied the vast network of fanatics, informers, and secret agents that the Revolution spread out to catch its... Read more

Eifelheim

By: Michael Flynn

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Length: 17 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: No

In 1349, one small town in Germany disappeared and was never resettled. Tom, a contemporary historian, and his theoretical physicist girlfriend, Sharon, become interested. By all logic, the town should have survived, but it didn’t. Why? What was special about Eifelheim that it utterly disappeared more than six hundred years ago?In 1348, as the... Read more

The Small House at Allington

By: Anthony Trollope

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 22 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

TheSmall House at Allingtonintroduces Trollope's most beloved heroine, the charming Lily Dale, to the Barsetshire scene. Lily is the niece of Squire Dale, an embittered old bachelor living in the main house on his property at Allington. He has loaned an adjacent small house rent-free to his widowed sister-in-law and her daughters, Lily and Bell.... Read more

To the Last Man

By: Zane Grey

Narrated by: Jim Gough

Length: 10 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

To the Last Man is Zane Grey's archetypal tale of a bitter feud between two unforgiving factions: the ranchers led by Jean Isbel and, on the other side, Lee Jorth and his band of cattle rustlers. In the grip of a relentless code of loyalty to their own people, they fight the war of the Tonto Basin, desperately, doggedly, to the last man, neither... Read more

Under Drake’s Flag

By: G. A. Henty

Narrated by: Fred Williams

Length: 12 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

In the days when England and Spain struggled for the supremacy of the sea, a young lad sails with Sir Francis Drake, the daring sixteenth-century privateer, in this action-packed story based on true historical events. Drake’s superb navigational skill enabled him to outrun or outmaneuver his incessant pursuers. He escaped so often and so... 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

Craven Street - Abridged

By: Yuri Rasovsky

Narrated by: Elizabeth Montgomery, George Grizzard, Sir Nige...

Length: 4 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Originally broadcast nationwide in 1993, this meticulously researched five-part historical drama is being published by Blackstone to commemorate Benjamin Franklin’s 300th birthdayThis production reveals the multifaceted, complex Franklin’s little-known adventures in London before the Revolution. For fifteen years, he lived on Craven Street off... Read more

The Masque of the Black Tulip

By: Lauren Willig

Narrated by: Kate Reading

Length: 14 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

...But now she has a million questions about the Pink Carnation's deadly French nemesis, the Black Tulip. And she's pretty sure that her handsome onagain, off-again crush, Colin Selwick, has the answers somewhere in his archives. But what she discovers in an old codebook is something juicier than she ever imagined. Read more

The Hellion Bride

By: Catherine Coulter

Narrated by: Anne Flosnik

Length: 12 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

Fall in love again—with the second novel in the Bride saga.Sophia has successfully controlled every man in her orbit until she meets Ryder Sherbrooke, a man she senses is different from the others—a man she sees as one of hell’s own sons. Read more

The Historian: Part One of Two

By: Elizabeth Kostova

Narrated by: Justine Eyre & Paul Michael

Length: 26 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

“To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history. . . .”

Late one night, exploring her father’s library, a young woman finds an ancient book and a cache of yellowing letters. The letters are all addressed to “My dear and unfortunate successor,” and they plunge her into a world she never dreamed of–a labyrinth where the secrets of her father’s... Read more

Summer Crossing

By: Truman Capote

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

Length: 3 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

“Witness the coming together of Truman Capote’s voice, the electric-into-neon blaze that is surely one of the premier styles of postwar American literature.”—The Washington Post Book World

“A great breezy read . . . with Capote’s trademark wit, but also with genuine youthful awe at the exhilaration of late-forties New York.”—New York

A lost... Read more

The Constant Princess - Abridged

By: Philippa Gregory

Narrated by: Kate Burton

Length: 5 hours 21 minutes

Abridged: Yes

From #1 New York Times bestselling author and “queen of royal fiction” (USA TODAY) Philippa Gregory comes the remarkable story of Katherine of Aragon, Princess of Spain, daughter of two great monarchs, and eventual Queen of England when she marries the infamous King Henry VIII.

Daughter of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain, Katherine has... Read more

Krondor: Tear of the Gods - Abridged

By: Raymond E. Feist

Narrated by: Sam Tsoutsouvas

Length: 6 hours

Abridged: Yes

Return now to a kingdom in constant peril: a scarred land, both magical and wonderous. New York Times bestselling author Raymond E. Feist continues his extraordinary Riftwar Legacy with a sweeping tale of conflict and intrigue. The vile sorcerer Sidi sets the murderous pirate Bear upon the high seas in pursuit of the kingdom's most holy object,... Read more