Showing 316 to 336 of 419 results:
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Format: MP3 CD
Author Leo Tolstoy
Narrator Bill Nighy
Duration 8h
Tolstoy's epic story of a Russian family torn apart and rejuvenated by love and war. The war in question is Napoleon's Russian campaign in the early 19th century, which provides the background to the personal and public lives of Tolstoy's characters.
View BookAuthor: Sir Walter Scott
Format: MP3 CD
Author Sir Walter Scott
Narrator Jonathan Oliver
Duration 2h 38m
Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe has been banished from the family home after falling for his father Cedric's ward, the Saxon princess Rowena. Cedric has plans for Rowena to marry another man, Athelstane, in order to unite the Saxon people and, he hopes, help to make them a force to be reckoned with - capable of taking on the Normans. As the novel begins, a...
View BookAuthor: Choderlos De Laclos
Format: MP3 CD
Author Choderlos De Laclos
Narrator Various
Duration 4h
Two aristocrats, formerly lovers, embark on a sophisticated game of seduction to bring some cruel amusement to their jaded lives. While the Marquise de Merteuil challenges the Vicomte de Valmont to seduce an innocent convent girl, the Vicomte is also occupied with the conquest of a virtuous married woman. But as their intrigues become more duplicit...
View BookAuthor: Nathaniel Hawthorne
Format: MP3 CD
Author Nathaniel Hawthorne
Narrator Katinka Wolf
Duration 2h 30m
Set in the harsh Puritan community of 17th-century Boston, when an adulterous entanglement results in an illegitimate birth for Hester Prynne, she and her daughter Pearl must suffer not only public disgrace but rejection from Pearl's father, who is trapped by the rules of society. Hester draws on her inner strength and certainty of spirit to emerge...
View BookAuthor: Frances Hodgson Burnett
Format: Stream / Download
Author Frances Hodgson Burnett
Narrator Indira Varma
Duration 8h 35m
Penguin presents the UNABRIDGED audiobook edition of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, read by Indira Varma. 'I've stolen a garden,' she said very fast. 'It isn't mine. It isn't anybody's. Nobody wants it, nobody cares for it, nobody ever goes into it. Perhaps everything is dead in it already; I don't know.' After losing her parents, yo...
View BookAuthor: Alexandre Dumas
Format: MP3 CD
Author Alexandre Dumas
Narrator Full Cast
Duration 2h
Across the foyer of a crowded theatre, a handsome young man, Armand Duval, catches sight of one of the most desirable courtesans of Paris, Marguerite Gautier. When they meet, a mutual obsession is ignited - one that tears both their worlds apart. Set amidst the glittering splendours of 19th century Paris, the story was inspired by Dumas' own love a...
View BookAuthor: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Format: MP3 CD
Author Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Narrator Michael Sheen
Duration 4h
Prince Lef Nikolayevitch Muishkin is one of the great characters in Russian literature. Is he a saint or just naive, an idealist or, as many in General Yepanchin's society feel, an 'idiot'? Certainly, his return to St. Petersburg after years in a Swiss clinic has a dramatic effect on the beautiful Aglaya, youngest of the Yepanchin daughters and on...
View BookAuthor: Daniel Defoe
Format: MP3 CD
Author Daniel Defoe
Narrator Heather Bell
Duration 3h 58m
Abandoned at birth by a mother who faces transportation to Virginia, the young Moll Flanders sets out to make her way in the world. Threatened with a life in service, our rebellious heroine sets her heart on a life of independence. As a woman her options are limited and so tough, resourceful, and indisputably feminine Moll embarks on a rollicking c...
View BookAuthor: Miguel de Cervantes
Format: MP3 CD
Author Miguel de Cervantes
Narrator Edward De Souza
Duration 3h 17m
The first European novel, and one of the greatest, is a marvellously comic study of delusion and its consequences: Don Quixote, the old gentleman of La Mancha, takes to the road in search of adventure and remains undaunted in the face of repeated disaster.
View BookAuthor: Jane Austen
Format: MP3 CD
Author Jane Austen
Narrator Joanna David
Duration 6h
Elizabeth Bennet is a spirited young woman with four sisters and a mother obsessed with getting them all married off. When she first meets Mr Darcy she thinks he's arrogant and conceited, and he is completely indifferent to her charms. Will she ever see past the prejudices of her first impressions?
View BookAuthor: Charlotte Bronte
Format: MP3 CD
Author Charlotte Bronte
Narrator Anna Bentinck
Duration 26h 35m
The Shirley of the title is a woman of independent means; her friend Caroline is not. Both struggle with what a woman's role is and can be. Their male counterparts - Louis, the powerless tutor, and Robert, his cloth-manufacturing brother - also stand at odds to society's expectations. The novel is set in a period of social and political ferment, fe...
View BookAuthor: Nikolai Gogol
Format: MP3 CD
Author Nikolai Gogol
Narrator Gordon Griffin
Duration 5h 1m
Gogol's comic masterpiece presents a satirical portrait of provincial life in 19th century Russia. The middle-class Chichikov arrives in a small town and proceeds to artificially inflate the value of his estate by convincing provincial landowners to sell him the deeds to their dead serfs, the 'dead souls' of the title.
View BookAuthor: Giovanni Boccaccio
Format: MP3 CD
Author Giovanni Boccaccio
Narrator Various
Duration 4h 41m
Sixteen tales from one of the great works of the Middle Ages. Ten young people have fled the terrible effects of the Black Death in Florence and, in an idyllic setting, they escape from their troubles for a while by entertaining each other with a series of brilliant stories, by turns humorous, bawdy, tragic and provocative.
View BookAuthor: Horace Walpole
Format: MP3 CD
Author Horace Walpole
Narrator Neville Jason
Duration 2h 33m
Regarded as the first Gothic novel, 'The Castle of Otranto' tells the story of the Prince of Otranto, mysteriously killed on his wedding day by a huge helmet. This triggers a chain of events involving jealous passion, intrigue, murder and supernatural phenomena unfolding in a heady atmosphere of thunderclaps, moonlight and dark castle walls.
View BookAuthor: Herman Melville
Format: MP3 CD
Author Herman Melville
Narrator William Roberts
Duration 3h 34m
A sea classic from the author of 'Moby Dick'. Billy Budd, a sailor on a merchantman, is 'pressed' into service on HMS Indomitable during the Napoleonic Wars. Although popular amongst the crew, he is victimised by a brutal master-at-arms and tragedy becomes inevitable.
View BookAuthor: Charlotte Bronte
Format: Stream / Download
Author Charlotte Bronte
Narrator Carole Boyd
Duration 2h 23m
Jane, an orphan, has her fair share of hardship before becoming a governess in the house of Mr Rochester and falling for her employer. But what are the strange noises coming from the attic, and may they thwart her romantic intentions? Jane Eyre, an orphan, has to suffer appalling conditions when she is sent away to a correctional school, then lands...
View BookAuthor: H.G. Wells
Format: Stream / Download
Author H.G. Wells
Narrator Simon Vance
Duration 5h 56m
The first modern tale of alien invasion, H. G. Wells's story of tentacled Martians attacking the Earth remains one of the most influential of all science fiction works. First published by H. G. Wells in 1898, The War of the Worlds is the granddaddy of all alien invasion stories. The novel begins ominously, as the lone voice of a narrator intones, "...
View BookAuthor: Elizabeth Gaskell
Format: MP3 CD
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.
View BookAuthor: John Milton
Format: MP3 CD
Author John Milton
Narrator Anton Lesser
Duration 2h 16m
The sequel to 'Paradise Lost'. Satan, discovering that a new figure threatens his dominion on earth, sets out once more to exert his power of temptation. He encounters Jesus in the desert and presents a host of challenges, but Jesus sees through the various wiles set before him and Satan, vanquished, returns to the depths of hell.
View BookAuthor: Anna Sewell
Format: Stream / Download
Author Anna Sewell
Narrator Ben Fogle
Duration 2h 24m
Black Beauty is a touching tale which takes a listener inside the head of a horse. A title featured in the BBC's 'Big Read Top 100', Black Beauty is a touching and enduring classic that appeals to adults and children alike. A young foal is told by his mother to always do his best, and so he does, despite the difficult situations he often finds hims...
View BookAuthor: Frances Hodgson Burnett
Format: MP3 CD
Author Frances Hodgson Burnett
Narrator Teresa Gallagher
Duration 2h 16m
Long ago, a young English nobleman married a beautiful American girl, causing a rift between the man and his father. Because of this rift, eight years later, in New York we come across the offspring of this union, young Cedric Errol. Ceddie is a beautiful boy both inside and out. Although he is but seven years old, he is very wise for his years. Sh...
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