Great Classic Holiday Stories

Charles Dickens (1812-70) is one of the most recognized celebrities of English literature. His many books include Oliver Twist, Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol.

Francis Pharcellus Church (1839–1906) was an American publisher and editor. Church is most remembered for his 1897 editorial “Yes Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus.”

O. Henry (1862–1910), born William Sydney Porter in Greensboro, North Carolina, was a short-story writer whose tales romanticized the commonplace, in particular, the lives of ordinary people in New York City. His stories often had surprise endings, a device that became identified with his name. He began writing sketches around 1887, and his stories of adventure in the Southwest United States and in Central America were immediately popular with magazine readers.

Clement Clarke Moore (1779–1863) was an American professor of oriental and Greek literature, as well as divinity and biblical learning, at the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in New York City. He is the author of the yuletide poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” which became famous as “The Night before Christmas.”

Eleanor Hallowell Abbott (1872–1958) was a nationally recognized American author. She was a frequent contributor to the Ladies’ Home Journal.

Beatrix Potter is one of the world's best-loved children's authors of all time. From her first book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902) she went on to create a series of stories based around animal characters including Mrs Tiggy-winkle, Mr Jeremy Fisher and Tom Kitten. Her humorous, lively tales and beautiful illustrations have become a natural part of childhood.

A source of inspiration was the Lake District where she lived for the last thirty years of her life as a farmer and conservationist.

Washinton Irving (1783–1859) was an American essayist, novelist, and historian. The first American author to achieve international fame, his literary career served in many ways to consolidate the cultures of the United States and Europe.

Lucy Maud Montgomery was one of the most famous Canadian writers of the twentieth century. She is best known for her books for young adults, particularly Anne of Green Gables and its six sequels chronicling the adventures of Anne Shirley, a feisty but sentimental orphan who is adopted by elderly foster parents. In her lifetime, Lucy published 20 novels and some 500 short stories and poems. Her writing, rich in imagination and full of lessons in optimism, brought her international fame and remains popular today. Lucy was born on Prince Edward Island, Canada, in 1874. Soon after her mother died (when Lucy was just two), her father remarried and moved away. He left Lucy to be raised by her maternal grandparents in Cavendish. The isolation of this small town combined with the strict discipline of her grandparents led to an unhappy childhood. Lucy was an avid reader and writer at an early age. She published her first poem in a local paper at the age of fifteen. She studied literature at Dalhousie University in Halifax, then returned to Cavendish to take care of her grandmother, worked at a local post office, and became a schoolteacher. While caring for her grandmother, she wrote Anne of Green Gables. Several publishers rejected the book before it was finally accepted, and it became a bestseller. Eventually, it was made into a musical, a television movie, and a television series. Lucy later married a minister and moved to Ontario, where she died in 1942.

Others, as in, not you

Paul Boehmer appeared in the acclaimed Broadway production of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband and on television in Frasier, Judging Amy, Guiding Light, Star Trek, and All My Children. He loves narrating audiobooks, and he lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

Gregory Itzin is an American film and television actor. He is best known for his role as President Charles Logan in the series 24, a role for which he was twice nominated for a Primetime Emmy. He has had appearances in a number of television’s most popular shows during the span of his career, including, Matlock, ER, CSI, Friends, The West Wing, and three different Star Trek series. He’s also had roles in numerous films including, Adaptation, The Ides of March, and Lincoln. Most recently he’s had recurring roles in The Mentalist and Covert Affairs.

Dana Green is an audiobook narrator whose readings include Join the Club by Tina Rosenberg, Every Man in This Village Is a Liar by Megan Stack, and Betsy Ross and the Making of America by Marla R. Miller.

Simon Vance is the critically acclaimed narrator of approximately 400 audiobooks, winner of forty-one AudioFile Earphones Awards, and a six-time Audies recipient. He was the winner of the 2012 Audie Awards for Best Male Narrator, the 2011 Best Voice in Biography and History, and the 2010 Best Voice in fiction by AudioFile magazine. Audiofile magazine named him a Golden Voice, and Booklist magazine named him a Voice of Choice.

 

Recently, Vance narrated Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies (a 2013 Audie Awards winner), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (winner of two 2013 Audie awards), and Benjamin Hoff’s The Tao of Pooh by (winner of one 2013 Audie Awards and two nominations). Some of his best-selling and most critically acclaimed performances include Mark Logue and Peter Conradi’s The King's Speech, Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, all 21 titles of Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander series, Frank Herbert’s original Dune series and Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.