Classics audiobooks

The Sea Wolf

By: Jack London

Narrated by: Brian Emerson

Length: 9 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

He is a man capable of abandoning two sailors in an open boat, yet he is an avid and thoughtful reader of the moral philosophers. He is Wolf Larsen: captain of the seal-hunting Ghost, the unforgettable protagonist of one of the world's great sea novels. Tormented by his own convictions, Larsen is an enigma both fascinating and repellent to his... Read more

Cousin Bette

By: Honoré de Balzac

Narrated by: Johanna Ward

Length: 16 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

Bette, a poor relation of the beautiful Adeline, nurses a terrible grudge against her cousin's family, on whom she depends. That family is slowly being ruined by the uncontrollable sexual appetites of Adeline's husband, Baron Hulot—and it is this weakness that will give the cunning Cousin Bette an opportunity to exact her vengeance.A profound... 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

The Arabian Nights

By: Kate Douglas Wiggin & Nora A. Smith

Narrated by: Johanna Ward

Length: 11 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

This collection of some of the best-known and best-loved tales from The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, or The Thousand and One Nights, includes the stories of Sinbad and his voyages, Ali Baba and the cave of the forty thieves, Aladdin and his wonderful lamp, and seven more fantastic tales.In this treasure house of the imagination, you will find... 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

From the Earth to the Moon

By: Jules Verne

Narrated by: Bernard Mayes

Length: 5 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

Written more than a century before man landed on the moon, this classic adventure tale has proved to be one of Jules Verne’s most prophetic. It is also a forerunner of today’s science fiction.At the close of the Civil War, the members of the elite Baltimore Gun Club find themselves unemployed and bored. Finally, their president, Impey Barbicane,... 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

The Professor

By: Charlotte Brontë

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 9 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

William Crimsworth is a young Englishman just out of school and ready to begin a career. With his sense of self-pride and strong moral views, however, he finds the options available to him are far from pleasant. Unwilling to follow the dictates of the moneyed members of his family, he resolves to earn his living as a factory worker. Caught up in... Read more

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

By: Mark Twain

Narrated by: Stuart Langton

Length: 10 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

In this mischievous yarn by Mark Twain, a Yankee mechanic named Hank Morgan is knocked unconscious in a fight and awakens to find himself at Camelot in AD 528. Brought before the knights of the Round Table, he is condemned to death but saves himself by using his nineteenth-century scientific knowledge to pose as a powerful magician. After... Read more

Felix Holt, the Radical

By: George Eliot

Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon

Length: 17 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

“If a woman really believes herself to be a lower kind of being, she should place herself in subjection….If not, let her show her power of choosing something better.” This is the challenge thrown down to George Eliot’s heroine, Esther Lyon, who dreams of marrying into a life of refinement. But as she struggles to make her choice between two men,... Read more

The Children’s Homer

By: Padraic Colum

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 4 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

Padraic Colum's classic retelling combines the immortal stories from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey into one glorious saga of heroism and magical adventure. Come voyage to ancient Greece with Achilles who, guided by the gods, seeks vengeance on the Trojans. And follow Odysseus on his perilous journey on the sea—through the land of the Cyclopes, past... Read more

Under the Greenwood Tree

By: Thomas Hardy

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 5 hours 19 minutes

Abridged: No

One of the most popular of Hardy’s novels, this charming pastoral idyll is a lightly humorous depiction of life in an early Victorian rural community. Drawn from Hardy’s childhood memories, it represents, he said, “a true picture at first hand of the personages, ways, and customs which were common in the villages.”The story delicately balances... Read more

Our Mutual Friend

By: Charles Dickens

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 31 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

This sinister masterpiece was Dickens’ last completed novel and perhaps his ultimate vision of a dark, macabre London and the corrupting power of money. Opening with a father and daughter scavenging for corpses on the Thames, this chilling tale unfolds around drownings, disguises and doubles, violence, murder, and triumphant love.Young John... Read more

The Time Machine

By: H. G. Wells

Narrated by: Bernard Mayes

Length: 3 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

The Time Traveler first steps out of his magnificent time-transport machine in the year 802,700—more than 800,000 years beyond his own era. The brave explorer finds himself on a slowly dying Earth populated by a race of slender pacifists called the Eloi and decides to study this lush land of flower people before returning to his own age. These... Read more

His Last Bow

By: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 6 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

A body on the London Underground; the strange disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax; a parcel containing some coarse salt and two freshly severed human ears. This collection of eight world-famous cases from Doctor Watson’s portfolio illustrates the singular mental faculties of Sherlock Holmes. In the course of his investigations, Holmes himself... Read more

The Gin Palace

By: Émile Zola

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 6 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

The Gin Palace is the seventh novel in Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle, which follows two branches of a French family through several generations. It is also the work that made his reputation, introducing one of the most sympathetic heroines in nineteenth-century literature.Abandoned by her lover and left to bring up their two children alone,... Read more

Cleopatra

By: H. Rider Haggard

Narrated by: William Sutherland

Length: 11 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

Cleopatra lies asleep. One white, rounded arm makes a pillar for her head. The web of her dark hair falls over her like lace. Her limbs are draped in a robe so thin that the gleam of her flesh shines through it. Her rich lips are parted in a smile.Harmachis looks down on her, and the sight of Cleopatra's beauty strikes the young Egyptian with... Read more

Little Dorrit

By: Charles Dickens

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 31 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

Little Amy Dorrit was born in debtor’s prison, where her father, an aristocrat by birth, has been an inmate for the past twenty years.Though her father is too proud to acknowledge their reduced status, Amy secretly works as a seamstress to support her family. In this way she meets and befriends Arthur, her employer’s son, who wants to help.When... Read more

Scenes of Clerical Life

By: George Eliot

Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon

Length: 14 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

George Eliot's brilliant fiction debut contains three stories from the lives of clergymen, with the aim of disclosing the value hidden in the commonplace."The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton" portrays a character who is hard to like and generally despised—until his suffering shocks others into fellowship and sympathy.In "Mr. Gilfil's... Read more

Mr. Standfast

By: John Buchan

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 11 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

In this third novel following the espionage exploits of war hero Richard Hannay, the successful brigadier general is recalled from active service on the Western Front for another round in the spy game. His mission: infiltrating an antiwar league to bring down a network of German spies. Reluctantly posing as a pacifist, Hannay takes up his old... Read more

Vanity Fair

By: William Makepeace Thackeray

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 29 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

“Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?”Generally considered to be Thackeray’s masterpiece, Vanity Fair is a resplendent social satire that exposes the greed and corruption raging in England during the turmoil of the Napoleonic wars. Subtitled A Novel without a Hero, it traces the changing... Read more

The Poison Belt

By: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Narrated by: Fred Williams

Length: 5 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

Professor Challenger summons his three best friends to come to his country house, each one to bring a cylinder of pure oxygen. When they arrive, the reason for this strange request becomes terrifyingly clear. Professor Challenger has become convinced that the earth is entering a poison belt of ether and that life upon this planet is doomed.In a... Read more

The Wings of the Dove

By: Henry James

Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon

Length: 18 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

Henry James' classic morality tale tells of a triangle of friends and lovers doomed to treachery by overreaching desire.In early-twentieth-century London, Kate Croy is secretly engaged to Merton Denscher, a journalist possessed of all the qualities of an ideal husband except for money. By chance, Kate befriends American heiress Milly Theale, who... Read more

Catriona

By: Robert Louis Stevenson

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 9 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

In this sequel to the highland adventure Kidnapped, young David Balfour must defend himself and his friend, Alan Breck Stewart, against false murder charges, becoming further entangled in a political conspiracy between feuding Scottish clans. His new adventure will include shipwreck, murder, intrigue, and a Scottish lass named Catriona, with... Read more