Classic Audiobook Collection

Not George Washington by P. G. Wodehouse audiobook. Genre: comedy Before Jeeves, before Blandings, P. G. Wodehouse turned his comic eye on the making of a writer. Co-written with Herbert Westbrook, Not George Washington follows James Orlebar Cloyster, a mild-mannered young man with big literary ambitions and a talent for presenting himself as far more upright than his actions suggest. Through a br...

The Early History of the Airplane by Orville and Wilbur Wright audiobook. Genre: history The Brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air flight, on 17th December 1903. They were not the first to build and fly aircraft, but they invented the controls that were necessary for a pilot to steer the aircraft, which made fixed wing powered flight p...

Quicksand by Nella Larsen audiobook. Genre: drama In 1920s America and Europe, Helga Crane moves through elegant parlors, classrooms, and crowded streets with a restless sense that she never quite belongs. The daughter of a Black father and a white mother, Helga is sharp-eyed, proud, and hungry for a life that feels truthful - yet every community she enters demands she trim herself to fit. When sh...

Passing by Nella Larsen audiobook. Genre: drama In 1920s New York, Irene Redfield has built a careful life: a respected place in Harlem society, a comfortable home, and a firm commitment to the world she has chosen. Everything shifts when a chance encounter brings back Clare Kendry, a dazzling childhood acquaintance who has been living on the other side of the color line. Clare's decision to pass...

The Dolliver Romance and Other Pieces by Nathaniel Hawthorne audiobook. Genre: romance This post-humous collection of stories, sketches and essays by celebrated quintessential New England author Nathaniel Hawthorne gives us glimpses of the many different facets of Hawthorne's personality. The titular tale The Dolliver Romance was an unfinished manuscript that was edited and prepared for publicatio...

The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne audiobook. Genre: romance The Blithedale Romance is the story of four principal characters who work with -- and sometimes against -- each other on Blithedale, a communal farm antecedent to those that sprang up later in the 1960s, and similar to one on which Hawthorne himself lived in 1841. These communes arose out of the pressures on society and the in...

Rappaccini's Daughter by Nathaniel Hawthorne audiobook. Genre: tragedy In a shadowed corner of old Padua, a young scholar named Giovanni Guasconti arrives to continue his studies and finds himself drawn to a mysterious garden unlike any he has ever seen. Tended by the brilliant and secretive Dr. Rappaccini, the walled enclosure blooms with vivid, almost unnatural beauty - and an undercurrent of da...

Our Old Home by Nathaniel Hawthorne audiobook. Genre: history In Our Old Home, Nathaniel Hawthorne turns a diplomat's posting into a quietly sharp-eyed journey through the landscapes, streets, and social rituals of mid-19th-century England. Writing as an American abroad, Hawthorne wanders from foggy port cities to country lanes and ancient manor grounds, lingering over everyday scenes that reveal...

In Colonial Days by Nathaniel Hawthorne audiobook. Genre: folklore In Colonial Days gathers four linked tales that turn Boston's Old Province House into a doorway to New England's haunted past. A modern-day visitor, drawn off bustling Washington Street into the inn that once housed royal governors, listens as the building's creaking halls and fading portraits seem to summon earlier occupants: Brit...

A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys by Nathaniel Hawthorne audiobook. Genre: folklore In A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys, Nathaniel Hawthorne invites young listeners into a lively, story-within-a-story gathering where a kindly college student, Eustace Bright, entertains a group of children at an old country house called Tanglewood. As the days pass, Eustace spins fresh, approachable retellings of fa...

The Journal of Lewis and Clark by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark audiobook. Genre: history The expedition of Messrs. Lewis and Clark, for exploring the river Missouri, and the best communication from that to the Pacific Ocean, has had all the success which could be expected. They have traced the Missouri nearly to its source; descended the Columbia to the Pacific Ocean, ascertained with accura...

Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands by Mary Seacole audiobook. Genre: biography In Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, Mary Seacole tells her own story with wit, candor, and an unshakable sense of purpose. Born in Jamaica to a free woman of color who kept a boarding house and practiced healing, Seacole grows up learning herbal remedies, nursing skills, and the art of...

Ophelia, The Rose of Elsinore by Mary Cowden Clarke audiobook. Genre: drama In Ophelia, The Rose of Elsinore, Mary Cowden Clarke reimagines the world of Hamlet by stepping back before Shakespeare's tragedy begins and placing the court of Denmark's most enigmatic young woman at the center of the story. Ophelia grows up amid the glittering ceremony and hidden tensions of Elsinore, where loyalty is d...

Pauline's Passion and Punishment by Louisa May Alcott audiobook. Genre: drama Before she wrote Little Women and Little Men, Louisa, writing under the pseudonym A.M. Barnard, had this `blood and thunder' thriller (as she called them) published in 1863 by a weekly pulp magazine. This was during the period when Louisa worked a nurse during the American Civil war. The rigid and unfair roles of men and...

Behind a Mask, or a Woman's Power by Louisa May Alcott audiobook. Genre: mystery In a respectable English country house, the well-to-do Coventry family believes they have hired a quiet, capable governess to guide their youngest daughter. But Jean Muir arrives with more than lesson plans. Plainly dressed and seemingly modest, she quickly learns the household's habits and weak points, studying the r...

The Story of a Candy Rabbit by Laura Lee Hope audiobook. Genre: fantasy In The Story of a Candy Rabbit, Laura Lee Hope spins a sweet, make-believe adventure that begins after closing time in a toy store, when the Candy Rabbit discovers he can sit up, look around, and talk with the other wonders on the Easter novelty counter. Surrounded by glittering eggs with tiny window scenes, a clockwork Fuzzy...

The Moving Picture Girls by Laura Lee Hope audiobook. Genre: adventure Ruth and Alice DeVere and their father Hosmer struggle to make ends meet in New York City - times are hard, even for a talented actor like Mr. DeVere. Just as he successfully auditions for a new play, an old voice affliction renders him terribly hoarse and he loses the role. Despite voice rest and medical treatment, Mr. DeVere'...

Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tze audiobook. Genre: philosophy The Tao Te Ching, attributed to the sage Lao-Tze, is a compact yet far-reaching guide to living in harmony with the Tao - the subtle, unnamed source and pattern behind nature, society, and the self. Told in short, poetic chapters, it invites listeners to trade force for flexibility, certainty for curiosity, and struggle for balance. Through imag...

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 uphe...

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...

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 friendshi...

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 h...

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....

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 l...

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, Isab...