AuthorElizabeth Gaskell
NarratorPatience Tomlinson
Duration27h 32m
CategoriesAdult Fiction, Classics
PublisherNaxos
VersionUnabridged
When her father remarries, the honest, innocent Molly Gibson suddenly finds herself with a new stepsister, Cynthia, who is beautiful, worldly and impetuous. This would be more than enough to deal with, but the new wife is the deeply snobbish (and darkly secretive) Hyacinth. Thwarted love, scheming ambition and small-town gossip underlie the warmth, irony and brilliant social observation which link the relationships and the inevitable conflicts as profound change comes to rural England. The most mature and rewarding of her novels, Wives and Daughters places Elizabeth Gaskell in the first rank of English authors.
Author: Emile Zola
Author Emile Zola
Narrator Traci Svensgaard
Duration 6h 41m
In a dingy apartment on the Passage du Pont-Neuf in Paris, Th‚rŠse Raquin is trapped in a loveless marriage to her sickly cousin, Camille. The numbing tedium of her life is suddenly shattered when she embarks on a turbulent affair with her husband's earthy friend, Laurent. But their passion for each other soon compels the lovers to commit a crime t...
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Author: Charles Dickens
Author Charles Dickens
Narrator Simon Vance
Duration 31h 21m
The most gorgeously theatrical of all Dickens's novels, Nicholas Nickleby follows the delightful adventures of a hearty young hero in nineteenth-century England. Nicholas, a gentleman's son fallen upon hard times, must set out to make his way in the world. His journey is accompanied by some of the most swaggering scoundrels and unforgettable eccent...
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Author: Kenneth Grahame
Author Kenneth Grahame
Narrator Alan Bennett
Duration 1h 17m
When the Water Rat invites the unassuming Mole to spend his first day ever in a boat on the river, and wise Badger comes along for the ride as well, so begins a marvellous season of adventure for the three friends. Mr Toad (he of Toad Hall) completes a happy foursome, but his tendency to get into hot water leads him into some rather hair-raising sc...
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Author: Elizabeth Gaskell
Author Elizabeth Gaskell
Narrator Juliet Stevenson
Duration 18h 30m
This is one of the earliest novels of British industrial alienation, tellingly linked to the plight of 19th-century women. It tells of the relationship between Margaret Hale, a girl from the old rural south, and John Thornton, a mill owner from the new industrial north.
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Author: Elizabeth Gaskell
Author Elizabeth Gaskell
Narrator Jenny Agutter
Duration 2h 20m
Margaret Hale moves from the country into the inner-city and starts to learn what life is like for the workers. Elizabeth Gaskell highlights the difference between the middle and working classes in this tale set in the time of the Industrial Revolution. A largely autobiographical story, she also highlights the good that each group can do for each...
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Author: Elizabeth Gaskell
Author Elizabeth Gaskell
Narrator Clare Wille
Duration 7h 2m
In the village of Cranford, decorum is maintained at all times. Despite their poverty, the ladies are never vulgar about money (or their lack of it), and always follow the rules of propriety. But this discretion and gentility does not keep away tragedy; and when the worst happens, the Amazons of Cranford show the true strength of their honest affec...
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Author: Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Author Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Narrator Richard E. Grant
Duration 2h 12m
He is the Little Prince, the mysterious, innocent and beautiful boy who appears to a pilot stranded in the desert and makes an extraordinary request. He has captured the hearts of millions of readers around the world since his story first appeared in 1943, written down by an aristocratic French aviator who soon after disappeared during a flight acr...
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Author: Emile Zola
Author Emile Zola
Narrator Leighton Pugh
Duration 19h 55m
Germinal is one of the most striking novels in the French tradition. Widely regarded as Zola's masterpiece, the novel describes the working conditions of French coalminers in the 1860s in harsh and realistic terms it is visceral, graphic and unrelenting. Its strong socialist principles and vivid accounts of the miners' strikes meant that the novel...
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Best of Women's Short Stories 2
Author: Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, Kate Chopin, Winifred Holtby, L. M. Montgomery, Mary Shelley, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf
Author Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, Kate Chopin, Winifred Holtby, L. M. Montgomery, Mary Shelley, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf
Narrator Harriet Walter
Duration 5h 2m
Jane Austen makes two appearances on this brilliant collection that also includes such revered writers as Mary Shelly and Virginia Woolf. With stories ranging from tear-jerkers to passionate tales of love and jealousy, this collection has something for everyone, young or old, male or female.
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Author: Jonathan Swift
Author Jonathan Swift
Narrator Jasper Britton
Duration 35h 15m
Lemuel Gulliver, a slightly staid ship's doctor, relates the tales of his astonishing travels. He encounters the tiny, warring Lilliputians; the giant, sceptical Brobdingnagians; the ludicrously intellectual Laputans; and the idealistic - if rather stolid - Houyhnhnms and their bestial servants, the Yahoos. An immediate best-seller when it was firs...
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