Classics audiobooks

The Adventures of Augie March

By: Saul Bellow

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 22 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

This grand-scale heroic comedy tells the story of the exuberant young Augie, a poor Chicago boy growing up during the Depression.While his neighborhood friends all settle down into their various chosen professions, Augie, as particular as an aristocrat, demands a special destiny. He latches on to a wild succession of occupations, proudly... Read more

The Heart of It

By: Elizabeth McNamer

Narrated by: Elizabeth McNamer

Length: 53 minutes

Abridged: No

The Illiad & The Odyssey are two epic poems by Greek author Homer, works that have been entertaining— and perhaps exasperating— readers for centuries. In a series of lectures, literary scholar Elizabeth McNamer provides engaging insights into these two iconic works. McNamer first discusses how The Iliad portrays love,... Read more

Dracula

By: Bram Stoker

Narrated by: Robert Whitfield

Length: 14 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

An unabridged edition of the horror classic read by Golden Globe winner Edward Woodward.Count Dracula travels from his castle in the Carpathian mountains to England on a ship in which the entire crew is lost. Upon his arrival, the count entrances Lucy Westenra and Mina Harker, both women doomed to become vampires— unless Jonathan... Read more

Dracula - Abridged

By: Bram Stoker

Narrated by: Edward Woodward

Length: 2 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: Yes

A masterpieces of horror literature, Dracula brilliantly evokes a nightmare world of vampires and vampire hunters and illuminates the dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire. Count Dracula travels from his castle in the Carpathian Mountains to England on a ship in which the entire crew is lost. Upon his arrival, the count entrances Lucy... Read more

The Last of the Mohicans - Abridged

By: James Cooper

Narrated by: Lou Diamond Phillips

Length: 2 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: Yes

It is 1757, the third year of the French and Indian War. Deep in the forests of New York State, the brave woodsman Hawkeye and his loyal Mohican friends become involved in the bloody French and Indian War. Hawkeye, a colonial scout, Chingachgook, the Mohican chief, and Uncas, his son, risk their lives to guide two English sisters through hostile... Read more

Ghost Stories of Charles Dickens

By: Charles Dickens

Narrated by: Paul Scofield

Length: 2 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

“The Ghost Chamber” is the story of a wife's destruction and the love of a young man for an imprisoned girl. “Mr. Testator's Visitation” portrays an eerie character who visits an impoverished, unhappy lawyer. “A Child's Dream of a Star” is the sad story of a little girl who becomes an angel and waits for her brother to join her. “The Signal-Man”... Read more

Atlas Shrugged

By: Ayn Rand

Narrated by: Christopher Hurt

Length: 52 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

Atlas Shrugged is the “second most influential book for Americans today” after the Bible, according to a joint survey of five thousand people conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club in 1991.In a scrap heap within an abandoned factory, the greatest invention in history lies dormant and unused. By what fatal error of... Read more

A Christmas Carol

By: Charles Dickens

Narrated by: Paul Scofield

Length: 3 hours

Abridged: No

On Christmas Eve, miser Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley, who warns Scrooge that three more ghosts will visit him before the night is over—the ghost of Christmases Past, the ghost of Christmas present, and the ghost of Christmas yet to come.One of the greatest Christmas stories ever written... Read more

Great Expectations - Abridged

By: Charles Dickens

Narrated by: Paul Scofield

Length: 3 hours 1 minute

Abridged: Yes

Pip— the orphaned hero of Great Expectations— is one of Charles Dickens's best-loved characters. Young Philip Pirrip— nicknamed Pip— is apprenticed to his blacksmith brother-in-law, but an anonymous benefactor changes the boy' s future. After he is lifted to what seems a higher station... Read more

Nicholas Nickleby - Abridged

By: Charles Dickens

Narrated by: Paul Scofield

Length: 3 hours

Abridged: Yes

The welfare of children— a theme of many novels by Charles Dickens— is central to Nicholas Nickleby, the story of a fatherless young man, his mother, and his sister who find themselves at the mercy of a greedy and unscrupulous relative. Nicholas Nickleby is both a vivid indictment of the exploitive, brutal boarding... Read more

The Count of Monte Cristo

By: Alexandre Dumas

Narrated by: Richard Matthews

Length: 43 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read

A popular bestseller since its publication in 1844, The Count of Monte Cristo is one of the great page-turning thrillers of all time. Set against the tumultuous years of the post-Napoleonic era, Alexandre Dumas’s grand historical romance recounts the swashbuckling... Read more

Vanity Fair

By: William Makepeace Thackeray

Narrated by: Jill Masters

Length: 32 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

"I do not say there is no character as well drawn in Shakespeare [as D'Artagnan]. I do say there is none that I love so wholly."
--Robert Louis Stevenson

"The lasting and universal popularity of The Three Musketeers shows that Dumas, by artlessly expressing his own nature in the persons of his heroes, was responding to that craving for action,... Read more

Empire of the Sun - Abridged

By: J. G. Ballard

Narrated by: Jeremy Irons

Length: 3 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: Yes

The classic, award-winning novel, made famous by Steven Spielberg’s film, tells of a young boy’s struggle to survive World War II in China.

Jim is separated from his parents in a world at war. To survive, he must find a strength greater than all the events that surround him.

Shanghai, 1941—a city aflame from the fateful torch of Pearl Harbor. In... Read more

Les Miserables - Abridged

By: Victor Hugo

Narrated by: Christopher Cazenove

Length: 2 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Jean Valjean is one of society's victims. A poor but honest peasant, he is caught stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's starving family and is sent to prison. By the time of his eventual release, he has become a hardened criminal, but his friendship with the saintly Monseigneur Bienvenu gives him another chance at life. This new,... Read more

“Babette’s Feast” and “Sorrow-Acre”

By: Isak Dinesen

Narrated by: Colleen Dewhurst

Length: 2 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

“Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: give me leave to do my utmost.” This line from “Babette’s Feast” lends itself to both of the stories in this audio collection, which tell of unbreakable human spirit and total commitment to life choices. “Babette’s Feast,” now an award-winning film, takes a humorous... Read more

The Phantom of the Opera - Abridged

By: Gaston Leroux

Narrated by: Christopher Cazenove

Length: 2 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: Yes

A baffling series of incidents at the majestic Paris Opera sparks frightening rumors about a mysterious opera ghost. Performers are ill-at-ease when they sit alone in their dressing rooms, alleging to have seen the enigma in evening clothes moving about in the shadows. Then a young and beautiful prima donna is visited by a masked "Angel of... Read more

The Scarlet Letter - Abridged

By: Nathaniel Hawthorne

Narrated by: Michael Learned

Length: 2 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Written in the winter of 1849, The Scarlet Letter unfolds the story of Hester Prynne, a young woman branded as an adulteress in the harsh Puritan world of seventeenth-century New England. As Hester calls on her inner strength to transcend her shame, the scarlet letter ceases to be a stigma and finally becomes Hester's symbol of self-affirmation.... Read more

Alice Through The Looking-Glass - Abridged

By: Lewis Carroll

Narrated by: AudioscapePlayers

Length: 1 hour 33 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Alice goes out of this world and into another, replete with scatty queens, batty knights, and a kooky egg to boot! Just the kind of fantasy to relax to. Forget the so-called 'hidden meanings' and all that sort of thing, and let yourself float along with Alice, (with a bit of running thrown in), as she tries to keep her head, reach the end of... Read more

Alice in Wonderland - Abridged

By: Lewis Carroll

Narrated by: AudioscapePlayers

Length: 1 hour 29 minutes

Abridged: Yes

ALICE IN WONDERLAND This is a dotty, somewhat satirical, and rather musical version of Lewis Carroll's work, performed by Canadian and British actresses and actors in Calgary, Alberta. See if you can spot your own character in this production. Are you the Queen of Hearts, the White Rabbit, or perhaps The Walrus? You could even be all... Read more

Wuthering Heights - Abridged

By: Emily Brontë

Narrated by: AudioscapePlayers

Length: 2 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Heathcliff is a strange dark-skinned boy whom Cathy's father brings back to Wuthering Heights from a trip to Liverpool. He is adopted into the Earnshaw family. Cathy and Heathcliff develop an inseparable - even an ideal companionship. She admires his self-sufficiency and endurance; but her brother, Hindley, victimises him. When she marries... Read more

The Return of the Native

By: Thomas Hardy

Narrated by: Jill Masters

Length: TBA

Abridged: No

This fine novel sets in opposition two of Thomas Hardy’s most unforgettable creations: his heroine, the sensuous, free-spirited Eustacia Vye, and the solemn, majestic stretch of upland in Dorsetshire he called Egdon Heath. The famous opening reveals the haunting power of that dark, forbidding moor where proud Eustacia fervently awaits a... Read more

Manon Lescaut

By: A. Francois Prevost D'Exiles

Narrated by: Walter Covell

Length: 5 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

A devastating depiction of obsessive love and a haunting portrait of a captivating but dangerous woman.

When the young Chevalier des Grieux first sets eyes on the exquisitely beautiful and charming Manon Lescaut they fall passionately in love. But his happiness turns to bitter despair when he discovers that Manon is mercenary and immoral, and... Read more

Nicholas Nickleby

By: Charles Dickens

Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon

Length: TBA

Abridged: No

Charles Dickens had an understanding of mid-Victorian society second to none, and genius and energy massive enough to make the absurdities and terrors of that society come alive on the page. Nicholas Nickleby, with its episodes of chicanery in finance and education, and the dramatic intensity with which it tells the story of its openhearted... Read more

Lord Jim

By: Joseph Conrad

Narrated by: Wolfram Kandinsky

Length: TBA

Abridged: No

Jim, a young, idealistic dreamer of heroic deeds, is chief mate on board the Patna. When it starts to sink and the officers decide to jump ship, Jim joins them somewhat involuntarily. He faces a board of inquiry that strips him of his papers for violating the code of conduct - but no court can equal the punishment Jim inflicts on himself for his... Read more