George Bowling, an insurance salesman, hits middle age and feels impelled to ''come up for air'' from his life of quiet desperation. With seventeen pounds he has won at a race, he steals a vacation from his wife and his family and pay...

A mission to rid the seas of a monstrous creature becomes a terrifying nightmare when Professor Arronax, Conseil and Ned Land are thrown overboard. The huge marine animal which has haunted the water is no living beast, but a spectacul...

Madame Bovary is perhaps the first 'modern' novel.  It has always been the most popular of Flaubert's books, and the character of Emma Bovary, a beautiful young woman longing to escape from her dull husband and the constrictions of ...

Set during the Depression in the depleted farmloads surrounding Augustus, Georgia, Tobacco Road was first published in 1932. It is the story of the Lesters, a family of destitute white sharecroppers debased by poverty to an elemental ...

One of D. H. Lawrence's most popular novels, this fascinating and disturbing sequel to The Rainbow depicts the emotional life of the Brangwen sisters.

TIME REGAINED, the final volume of Proust's great work, covers the years of World War I and its aftermath. Marcel returns to Paris, sees many of the people he once knew (now grown old and grotesque), and finds that the thrice-married ...

In early 1901, fifteen years after Little Lord Fauntleroy, and ten years before the Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson wrote the Making of a Marchioness. She followed this short novel in the spring of the same year with the sequel, The M...

Memorable retelling of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, written for younger readers by Ireland's great poet and illustrator, recalls the perilous journey of Odysseus and his encounters with the horrid Cyclops, treacherous Sirens, and evil C...

Bored with farm life, and anxious for some excitement, Henry Fleming sets off to join the Union troops fighting the Civil War. An inexperienced fighter, he is anxious to get into battle to prove his patriotism and courage. He swaggers...

Widely regarded as the first English novel, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is one of the most popular and influential adventure stories of all time. This classic tale of shipwreck and survival on an uninhabited island was an instant s...

The Gambler paints a stark picture of the attractions---and addictions---of gambling. Using skillful characterization, Fyodor Dostoevsky faithfully depicts life among the gambling set in old Germany.

From the Artic to Egypt to Australia, Doyle tells thrilling tales of crime, suspense, mysterious secrets, and humor. Included are: The Captain of The Polestar (a captain in search of his wife's ghost); J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement (...

James Joyce's semi-autobiographical first novel follows Stephen Dedalus, a sensitive and creative youth who rebels against his family, his education, and his country by committing himself to the artist's life.

The bizarre story of a young man who awakens to find himself transformed into a large beetle is masterfully presented in this recording of Kafka's fascinating, sometimes disturbing and ultimately tragic study of human nature.

The Moon and Sixpence, one of Maugham's best-known and loved novels, is a fictionalized biography of the artist Paul Gauguin. The stand-in character for Gauguin is Charles Strickland who deserts his wife and children to become a pain...

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym,' the only full-length novel that Edgar Allan Poe wrote, is the story of a boy, Pym, who stows away aboard a whaling ship. Along with Augustus, the captain's son, Arthur Gordon Pym avoids discover ab...

Ivanhoe brings to life twelfth-century England. This masterful story of courtly love and chivalry includes several unforgettable scenes: the rescue of Ivanhoe by Robin Hood, Richard the Lion-Hearted's aid at evil King John's tournamen...

A groundbreaking study of society, nature, and human needs, Edith Wharton's starkly simple Summer---a portrayal of a young woman's sexual and social awakening---is admittedly one of the author's favorites.

The heroine of this powerful novel is the spirited young American Isabel Archer. Blessed by nature and fortune, she journeys to Europe to seek her future, but what she finds may prove to be her undoing. She is courted by three men: ...

According to legend, Sweeney Todd had his barber shop at number 186 Fleet Street, next door to St. Dunstan's Church, just a few blocks away from the Royal Courts of Justice. On this site, they say, he robbed and murdered more than 150...

When it was first erected, the House of Seven Gables typified the mechanical Colonel Pyncheon; but it developed through the years until, by Hepzibah's time, it has become humanized and almost organic. The history of the house is thus ...

Banned in America for almost thirty years because of its explicit sexual content, this companion volume to Miller's Tropic of Cancer chronicles his life in 1920s New York City. Famous for its frank portrayal of life in Brooklyn's eth...

First published in 1935, when Americans were still largely oblivious to the rise of Hitler in Europe, this prescient novel tells a cautionary tale of the fragility of democracy and offers an alarming, eerily timeless look at how fasci...

In the first of Willa Cather's renowned prairie novels, Alexandra Bergson takes over the family farm after her father's death and falls under the spell of the rich, forbidding Nebraska prairie.

Barnaby Rudge, set against the background of the anti-catholic riots of the 1780s, follows the plight of young Barnaby and his widowed mother. Martin Chuzzlewit is a darkly comic masterpiece in which a disinherited Martin sets sail fo...

Three of Charles Dickens's much-loved Christmas novellas---The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, and The Haunted Man---are brought to life in this classic audiobook collection.

Les Miserables is primarily a great humanitarian work that encourages compassion and hope in the face of adversity and injustice. It is also a historical novel of great scope, and provides a detailed vision of nineteenth-century Frenc...

While Europe drifts toward Nazism, four students share an apartment in Paris. Thackara brilliantly forges the stories of these four men whose lives mirror the larger picture, while the listener follows Hitler's rise from a dozen diffe...

The works collected here span the early and late periods of Henry James' career. Widely considered the finest of his early novels, The Portrait of a Lady exemplifies a familiar theme in James' writing: the meeting of Europe and Americ...

Bold, passionate, and erotic, this classic tale of love and discovery pits the paralyzed and callous Clifford Chatterley against his indecisive wife and her persuasive lover.