The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale by Joseph Conrad audiobook. Genre: thriller Set in the fog and ferment of late-Victorian London, The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale follows Adolf Verloc, a mild-mannered shopkeeper whose dingy storefront hides a more dangerous trade in secrets. Verloc drifts between two worlds: the shabby circles of self-styled revolutionaries who gather in back rooms to talk of upheaval, and the cold, bureaucratic machinery of a foreign embassy that expects results rather than exc...
Jun 19, 2023•10 hr 4 min
The Letters of Jane Austen by Jane Austen audiobook. Genre: biography This recording includes a selection of Jane Austen's letters, edited by Susan Coolidge and chosen from the collection of Austen's great-nephew, Edward, Lord Brabourne. The letters are mostly addressed to Austen's sister Cassandra, with whom she was very close. There are also some letters written to two of her nieces, Anna Austen Lefroy and Fanny Knight. They include some references to her published work, including Sense and Se...
Jun 17, 2023•7 hr 51 min
The Dead by James Joyce audiobook. Genre: drama On a snowy Epiphany night in Dublin, Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta arrive at the annual holiday dance hosted by Gabriel's aunts, the warm-hearted Morkan sisters, whose crowded house fills with music, laughter, and talk that cuts as sharply as the winter air outside. As Gabriel moves through the evening - giving a speech, navigating old friendships, and sparring with a young nationalist's barbed questions - small tensions surface beneath the pa...
Jun 17, 2023•1 hr 40 min
The Room in the Dragon Volant by J. Sheridan LeFanu audiobook. Genre: mystery In Napoleonic-era Paris, young English traveler Richard Beckett arrives full of money, confidence, and the thrill of being anonymous in a glittering foreign city. An evening visit to a church delivers an instant obsession: a veiled, aristocratic beauty, the Comtesse de St Alyre, whose sadness and mystery seem to beckon him closer. A chance introduction pulls Richard into her orbit, where whispers of family danger, secr...
Jun 16, 2023•4 hr 45 min
Carmilla by J. Sheridan LeFanu audiobook. Genre: horror In a lonely corner of Styria, a sheltered young woman named Laura lives with her widowed father in an old estate surrounded by forest and superstition. Their quiet routine is broken when a carriage accident delivers a mysterious, elegant stranger into their care: Carmilla, a girl of Laura's age who seems both fragile and strangely commanding. As the two grow inseparable, Laura is drawn into a relationship that feels like friendship, infatua...
Jun 16, 2023•3 hr 25 min
What Maisie Knew by Henry James audiobook. Genre: drama In late-19th-century England, young Maisie Farange becomes the unwilling prize in a bitter divorce, passed back and forth between two self-absorbed parents who treat custody as leverage and their child as a messenger, witness, and weapon. As Maisie grows, her world fills with shifting households, new marriages, and flirtations that blur the lines between guardianship and desire. With a keen, observant mind and a hunger for stability, she tr...
Jun 16, 2023•9 hr 4 min
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James audiobook. Genre: drama The Portrait of a Lady is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly and Macmillan's Magazine in 1880–81 and then as a book in 1881. It is one of James's most popular long novels, and is regarded by critics as one of his finest. The Portrait of a Lady is the story of a spirited young American woman, Isabel Archer, who 'affronts her destiny' and finds it overwhelming. She inherits a large amount of mone...
Jun 15, 2023•23 hr 20 min
A Guide to Men by Helen Rowland audiobook. Genre: comedy A series of occasionally witty one-liners, poems and considerations on the subject of Men, Women and their Conjunction. By turns tender, bland, sexist (in both directions!) and funny. From the text: A man is like a park squirrel; if you fling your favors or your charms at his head he will never come up and eat out of your hand. Even Satan could find a woman to call him 'Dearie,' if he would simply tell her that all he needed was 'a beautif...
Jun 15, 2023•1 hr 39 min
Aunt Crete's Emancipation by Grace Livingston Hill audiobook. Genre: family In Aunt Crete's Emancipation, Grace Livingston Hill introduces Miss Lucretia 'Crete' Ward, a gentle, capable maiden aunt who has spent years making herself indispensable in her sister Carrie's household. Crete cooks, cleans, mends, and manages quietly in the background, while Carrie and her spoiled daughter, Luella, take her sacrifices for granted and treat her more like unpaid help than family. The fragile peace of thei...
Jun 15, 2023•2 hr 47 min
The Island by George Gordon Byron audiobook. Genre: poetry In The Island, Lord George Gordon Byron turns a famous act of rebellion at sea into a lush, urgent tale of exile, desire, and survival. Loosely inspired by the aftermath of the mutiny on the HMS Bounty, the poem follows Torquil, a young sailor cast adrift from the rigid world of the British navy and thrust into the blazing freedom and peril of the Pacific. On an island that seems at first like paradise, Torquil encounters Neuha, a woman ...
Jun 15, 2023•1 hr 22 min
The Odd Women by George Gissing audiobook. Genre: drama In late-Victorian London, a demographic imbalance leaves many middle-class women with few prospects for marriage and even fewer for financial security. The Madden sisters - practical Alice, gentle Virginia, and the youngest, Monica - are among the 'odd women,' trying to survive on meager incomes while society measures their worth by husbands and homes. Across the city, two determined reformers, Mary Barfoot and her brilliant, uncompromising...
Jun 14, 2023•14 hr 21 min
Mozart - The Man and the Artist as Revealed in His Own Words by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart audiobook. Genre: biography Mozart - The Man and the Artist as Revealed in His Own Words invites listeners to meet Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart not as a marble bust or a mythic genius, but as a living, breathing, fiercely opinionated man speaking directly from the page. Drawn from his letters and personal writings, this portrait follows Mozart through the everyday pressures behind the extraordinary music: demandin...
Jun 14, 2023•4 hr 5 min
Notes on Nursing by Florence Nightingale audiobook. Genre: history First published in 1859, Florence Nightingale's Notes on Nursing is a foundational guide to the everyday work of caring for the sick - written not as a medical textbook, but as a practical manual for anyone responsible for a patient's comfort and recovery. With crisp, unsentimental clarity, Nightingale argues that nursing is an art of observing: noticing small changes in a person's condition, habits, mood, and environment, and re...
Jun 14, 2023•3 hr 56 min
The Semi-Detached House by Emily Eden audiobook. Genre: comedy In a quiet bend of the Thames, the villa called Pleasance promises peace and privacy - except for one flaw: it is semi-detached. When delicate, high-born Blanche and her level-headed sister Aileen settle in while Blanche's husband, Arthur, is sent abroad, they find themselves unavoidably joined to the Hopkinsons, a bluff, warmhearted middle-class family whose manners alarm Blanche nearly as much as they rescue her. As rain-soaked mis...
Jun 14, 2023•5 hr 38 min
The Semi-Attached Couple by Emily Eden audiobook. Genre: romance In a country house full of sharp tongues and stricter rules, newly married Helen and her husband Arthur find that love is only the beginning of their education. Helen arrives with warmth and good sense, eager to build a home with the man she adores, but she soon discovers that Arthur's ties to his formidable mother and a demanding circle of relatives are not easily loosened. As visits, dinners, and house-party politics pile up, Hel...
Jun 13, 2023•8 hr 4 min
Fighting France, from Dunkerque to Belfort by Edith Wharton audiobook. Genre: history In Fighting France, from Dunkerque to Belfort, acclaimed American novelist Edith Wharton turns eyewitness and correspondent, traveling through a nation at war to record what she sees and hears in the early years of World War I. Moving from the battered ports and trenches near Dunkerque to the contested eastern frontier around Belfort, Wharton enters hospitals, relief stations, military zones, and resilient town...
Jun 13, 2023•3 hr 27 min
Wings and the Child by E. Nesbit audiobook. Genre: fantasy 'When this book first came to my mind it came as a history and theory of the building of Magic Cities on tables, with bricks and toys and little things such as a child may find and use. But as I kept the thought by me it grew and changed, as thoughts will do, until at last it took shape as an attempt to contribute something, however small and unworthy, to the science of building a magic city in the soul of a child, a city built of all th...
Jun 13, 2023•4 hr 2 min
Royal Children of English History by E. Nesbit audiobook. Genre: history In Royal Children of English History, beloved storyteller E. Nesbit turns the page of the past to meet England's kings and queens first as boys and girls. Rather than marching through dates and battles, Nesbit offers vivid, approachable portraits of young princes and princesses growing up inside castles and courts, where lessons in Latin and etiquette sit beside tournaments, long journeys, illness, and sudden danger. Each c...
Jun 13, 2023•1 hr 16 min
Our Little English Cousin by Blanche McManus audiobook. Genre: history In Our Little English Cousin, Blanche McManus invites young listeners into the turn-of-the-century world of Edith Howard, a bright English girl growing up beside the River Thames. Guided by family, friends, and a watchful governess, Edith turns ordinary days into a rolling series of small expeditions that open a window onto English life: garden teas, boat rides, and countryside drives, followed by visits to places whose names...
Jun 12, 2023•1 hr 42 min
My Trip Abroad by Charlie Chaplin audiobook. Genre: biography 'A steak and kidney pie, influenza and a cablegram. There is the triple alliance that is responsible for the whole thing.' So begins Charlie Chaplin's My Trip Abroad, a travel memoir charting the actor-director's semi-spontaneous visit to Europe. Fresh off the success of 1921's The Kid, Chaplin decides to 'play hookey' after his seven year stay in Hollywood. He return to his native Europe as an international superstar, beloved by fans...
Jun 12, 2023•7 hr 30 min
The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley audiobook. Genre: fantasy When young chimney sweep Tom tumbles into the river after a frightening night of work, he slips into a world that is stranger and brighter than anything he has known. Transformed into a water-baby, Tom begins an odyssey through streams, estuaries, and the wide sea, meeting talking creatures, mysterious helpers, and dangers that test his courage and his conscience. Guided by the elusive, fairy-like Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby and the st...
Jun 12, 2023•7 hr 19 min
Life in a Thousand Worlds by William Shuler Harris audiobook. Genre: scifi In this early 20th century voyage of speculative imagination, Rev. W. S. Harris invites listeners to leave Earth behind and travel by a mysterious journey of the soul from world to world across the solar system and into the stars. Moving from the Moon's crowded cities and their uncanny way of surviving, to Mars and its brutal lessons in monopoly and oppression, to the giant vistas of Jupiter and the strange beauty of Satu...
Jun 12, 2023•5 hr 58 min
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare audiobook. Genre: comedy William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice was probably written between 1596 and 1598, and was printed with the comedies in the First Folio of 1623. Bassanio, an impoverished gentleman, uses the credit of his friend, the merchant Antonio, to borrow money from a wealthy Jew, Shylock. Antonio pledges to pay Shylock a pound of flesh if he defaults on the loan, which Bassanio will use to woo a rich heiress, Portia. A subplot co...
Jun 10, 2023•2 hr 28 min
The Bab Ballads by William S. Gilbert audiobook. Genre: poetry The Bab Ballads are a collection of light verse by W. S. Gilbert, illustrated with his own comic drawings. Gilbert wrote the Ballads before he became famous for his comic opera librettos with Arthur Sullivan. In writing the Bab Ballads, Gilbert developed his unique 'topsy-turvy' style, where the humour was derived by setting up a ridiculous premise and working out its logical consequences, however absurd. The Ballads also reveal Gilb...
Jun 10, 2023•3 hr 6 min
Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave by Aphra Behn audiobook. Genre: tragedy Aphra Behn was the first woman writer in England to make a living by her pen, and her novel Oroonoko was the first work published in English to express sympathy for African slaves. Perhaps based partly on Behn's own experiences living in Surinam, the novel tells the tragic story of a noble slave, Oroonoko, and his love Imoinda. The work was an instant success and was adapted for the stage in 1695 (and more recently by the Royal...
Jun 09, 2023•2 hr 46 min
Lewis and Clark by William R. Lighton audiobook. Genre: biography William R. Lighton's Lewis and Clark is a brisk, story-driven biography of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark that follows the planning and launch of the Corps of Discovery and the long push from the Missouri River toward the Pacific. Beginning with the two officers' backgrounds and President Thomas Jefferson's ambitious mission after the Louisiana Purchase, Lighton traces how a small, disciplined party is assembled, supplied, and...
Jun 09, 2023•3 hr 20 min
On Secret Service by William Nelson Taft audiobook. Genre: mystery In On Secret Service, William Nelson Taft offers a brisk, story-driven tour through the hidden side of early American federal law enforcement, told as a series of detective-mystery episodes inspired by real government cases. Framed by conversations in Washington, D.C. and the private den of veteran operative Bill Quinn, each chapter begins with an odd keepsake - a relic from the field - and unfolds into a new investigation, from ...
Jun 09, 2023•12 hr 38 min
The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton audiobook. Genre: drama Edith Wharton's The Custom of the Country follows Undine Spragg, a dazzling young woman from the American Midwest who arrives in New York determined to claim a place among the city's old-money elite. Armed with beauty, ambition, and an instinct for what society values, Undine treats life as a series of negotiations: marriage, friendships, and even motherhood become stepping-stones toward greater status and security. Her first tar...
Jun 08, 2023•14 hr 29 min
Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson audiobook. Genre: poetry Alfred Tennyson's Idylls of the King is an epic sequence of narrative poems that reimagines the legend of King Arthur as both a grand national myth and an intimate moral drama. From Arthur's rise and the founding of Camelot to the widening cracks within the Round Table, the poems follow a court striving to turn lofty ideals into lived reality. At the center stands Arthur - a ruler determined to build a realm of justice and fellowship...
Jun 08, 2023•9 hr 33 min
Tangled Trails by William MacLeod Raine audiobook. Genre: adventure The aptly titled 'Tangled Trails, A Western Detective Story' takes the listener through a web of curious incidents revolving around the murder of a prominent man in Denver. Kirby Lane was quite obviously the guilty party in the murder of his uncle. Lane, among others, had had a falling out with his uncle, the victim James Cunningham. But there were some who believed his nephew to be innocent of the hideous crime. Lane feared the...
Jun 08, 2023•8 hr 57 min
