Classics audiobooks

Bigfoot

By: Edgar Wallace

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: TBA

Abridged: No

The brutal murder of a woman in a lonely beach cottage, huge footprints found nearby, a meandering tramp singing snatches of opera in the night! Superintendent Minter - "Sooper", rattles around the countryside on his noisy motorbike and tries to find a connection. Hampered by amateur detective Gordon Cardew, aided and admired by lawyer Jim... Read more

London Lavender

By: E. V. Lucas

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: 7 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

‘London Lavender’ is not a story; it is a party. It is a party at which Mr Lucas invites his readers to meet all sorts of interesting and unusual seeming guests, and lets them tell their queer and quaint and funny ideas about life, and gives little sketches of their history. And yet when one thinks them over, the guests at Mr Lucas’s party are... Read more

A Master of Craft

By: W. W. Jacobs

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: 7 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

A Master of Craft’ was written in 1900. It was said of W.W.Jacobs that he was one of the few writers who succeeded in being deliberately humorous. In this yarn, dedicated to his wife, he tells of marital mishap and misadventure among mariners in the East End of London. Will Poppy Tyrell find happiness? What are the dark secrets of Cap’n Flower?... Read more

Kipps

By: H.G. Wells

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: 14 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

This wonderful comedy about orphan and innocent Arthur Kipps was the means by which Wells satirized what he saw as a gross stupidity and blight upon English society; the pretensions of and obsession with class. Humble drapers’ assistant Arthur unexpectedly inherits his grandfathers fortune and is instantly propelled into a higher social strata... Read more

Pudd'nhead Wilson

By: Mark Twain

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: 5 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

Puddn’head Wilson is Mark Twain’s novel of satirical wit aimed at the injustices in the southern states of America in the mid 19th century. It tells the story of two children, one born free, the other a slave. When the slaves mother, Roxana, switches the infants in their cradles she is not the only one who lives to regret the action. The tale... Read more

The Vicar of Wakefield

By: Oliver Goldsmith

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: TBA

Abridged: No

The uplifting and heroic tale of a north country clergyman. The story is told by Dr. Charles Primrose, 'a priest, and husbandman and the father of a family'. He lives his life of quiet contentment until he loses his indepedent income. Moving to a humbler dwelling near the estate of Squire Thornhill starts a series of misfortunes which befall the... Read more

She

By: Henry Rider Haggard

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: 12 hours 17 minutes

Abridged: No

Ludwig Horace Holly, a Cambridge professor, travels to Africa with his adopted son Leo to investigate the death of Kallicrates, Leo’s ancestor, who was murdered by an unknown woman centuries before.They encounter the Amahagger, a fierce tribe of cannibals who live in the caves of Kôr, a huge burial ground of an ancient civilisation decimated... Read more

The Monkey's Paw

By: W. W. Jacobs

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: 5 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

A collection of short stories by W W Jacobs. Serpents, skinflints, skivers, suitors and sundry sailors take the foreground in these stories about the East End of London and the mythical village of Claybury at the turn of the century. Stories: The Third String, A Mixed Proposal, The Weaker Vessel, The Tiger's Skin, In The Family, The Unknown,... Read more

The Hole in the Wall

By: Arthur Morrison

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: 7 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

Arthur Morrison grew up in the East End of London and was familiar with life on the dockside. He tells the story of ‘The Hole in the Wall’ through the eyes of young Stephen Kemp, taken to live with his grandfather after the death of his mother. Nat Kemp is determined to keep his grandson apart from the seamier side of the Docklands but Stephen... Read more

The Card

By: Arnold Bennett

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: 8 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

Arnold Bennett's splendidly comic portrayal of Edward Henry Machin, known as Denry to his mother to save time, is set in Bursley, one of the author's Five Towns of Staffordshire. Starting in 1897, when Denry first saw the smoke of the potbanks, the tale chronicles his rise to fame and wealth including such events as improving his exam results to... Read more

Billy Budd

By: Herman Melville

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: 3 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

On one level Melville’s tale is an historical adventure story telling of life aboard ship shortly after the mutiny at Spithead in 1797. Billy is taken from a homeward bound merchantman to serve on the ‘Seventy Four’ HMS Indomitable. He falls foul of Claggart, the ‘Master at Arms’, and the final confrontation results in death. Billy becomes an... Read more

Miss Lonelyhearts

By: Nathanael West

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: 2 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

The columnist of the New York Post-Dispatch, Miss Lonelyhearts, is initially cynical about the letters he receives for help. They are a joke. Gradually however, the letters start to move him but he is powerless to do anything. Retreating from the pain into a fantasy world he starts to believe that he is a Christ figure, a universal saviour. But... Read more

Dr Wortles School

By: Anthony Trollope

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: TBA

Abridged: No

Dr. Wortle's School is Trollope's most merciless attack on the false moralising and hypocrisy of the Victorian age. When Dr. Wortle, in good faith, hires a couple as teacher and matron at his school, scandal about their marriage is subsequently brought to light. Will the doctor submit to the social pressures brought to bear on him by the gossip,... Read more

A Child of the Jago

By: Arthur Morrison

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: 6 hours 32 minutes

Abridged: No

A Child of the.Jago' is both thriller and condemnation of social conditions in the East End slums at the turn of the century. Boy hero Dicky Perrott is at heart full of humane instinct but his environment ensures his down fall. "It was my fate to encounter a place in Shoreditch where children were born and reared in circumstances which gave them... Read more

Sketches by Boz: Volume 3

By: Charles Dickens

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: 7 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

Queen Victoria... and Prince Albert were married in 1840. Dickens uses this event as an ingenious ploy to salute and promote domestic felicity, advising young ladies upon several examples of the different types of male available as partners. There follows a section describing various married couples from whom the young ladies could possibly... Read more

Kidnapped

By: Robert Louis Stevenson

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: 8 hours 4 minutes

Abridged: No

I will begin the story of my adventures with a certain morning early in the month of June, the year of grace 1751, when I took the key for the last time out of the door of my father's house". So begins one of the greatest tales in literature, an account of David Balfour's trials and tribulations as he falls foul of his miserly uncle who has him... Read more

An African Millionaire

By: Grant Allen

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: 8 hours 31 minutes

Abridged: No

Set against the international background of the late Victorian rich and privileged, The African Millionaire is a far-fetched and farcical romp in which gullible Sir Charles Vandrift MP is slowly but steadily parted from his vast wealth by a series of confidence tricks and deceptions. Many and varied are the disguises of the perpetrator, a man... Read more

Martin Eden

By: Jack London

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: 16 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

The phrase ‘this book will change your life’ has become one of the clichés of the publishing world but ‘Martin Eden’ is certainly a novel that merits that observation.Set in turn of the century San Francisco, Jack London’s semi-autobiographical narrative tells of working class sailor Eden’s struggle to elevate himself to a level of society... Read more

The Two Destinies

By: Wilkie Collins

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: 10 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

Most of Wilkie Collins' later work was disparaged by the critics for espousing causes. Swinburne commented, 'What brought good Wilkies genius nigh perdition? Some demon whispered - "Wilkie! Have a mission!".' Despite this, the 'novelist of sensation' continued to appeal to the public with the construction of ingenious and meticulous plots. He... Read more

Eugenie Grandet

By: Honore de Balzac

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: 8 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

Eugénie Grandet is Balzac's first great novel and one of the series Comédie Humaine. At the beginning of the story the heroine lives an unfulfilled life in rural France, her nature crushed by a domineering and miserly father.Gallant cousin Charles arrives and acts as a catalyst on Eugénie’s personality and emotions. Will her love survive the... Read more

The Lost World

By: Arthur Conan Doyle

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: 9 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

Edward Malone, an enthusiastic and ambitious columnist for the Daily Gazette, is urged by the woman he loves to undertake a heroic deed so that he may earn her love in return. In a few weeks, he is bound for the shores of South America in the company of the irascible academic Summerlee and debonair adventurer Lord John Roxton on an expedition to... Read more

The Nebuly Coat

By: J. Meade Falkner

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: 13 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

A chilling tale of suspense with a puzzling mystery at the heart of the story. Architect Edward Westray is sent by his firm to restore Cullerne Minster. The young man believes that more work is needed to secure the bell tower, but his warnings go unheeded. A fellow lodger, the church organist Sharnall, is investigating the belief of the late... Read more

The Red and the Black Volume 1

By: Stendhal

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: 10 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

Julian Sorel is a handsome, naïve but not wholly innocent young man, born of peasant stock. He is, however, very ambitious and determined to succeed in life and make a career for himself. If this involves lying, guile and hypocrisy- so be it. Not so long ago two professions would have been open to him- the Army or the Church- but in the wake... Read more

The Red and the Black Volume 2

By: Stendhal

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Length: 12 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

The author dedicates his story to ‘The Happy Few’. This presumably means those who lead lives free of hypocrisy and deceit. They are few indeed in the second part of this authoritative novel of early 19th Century France. Julien Sorel leaves the country town of Verrieres and flees to Paris with the sound of guns in pursuit. He is to take up a... Read more