Classic Audiobook Collection

Tales of Hearsay by Joseph Conrad audiobook. Genre: drama Tales of Hearsay is a compact, wide-ranging collection of four Joseph Conrad stories that circle a single fascination: how lives are shaped by what is reported, repeated, and half-believed. In 'The Warrior's Soul,' an aging Russian officer recounts a brutal episode from the Napoleonic wars, where a young cavalryman is forced to measure comp...

Against The Grain by Joris-Karl Huysmans audiobook. Genre: drama In Against the Grain, Joris-Karl Huysmans follows Jean des Esseintes, the last, sickly heir of an old French aristocratic line, as he abandons Parisian society and retreats to a secluded house outside the city. Determined to live entirely on his own terms, Des Esseintes sets out to construct a private universe ruled by taste: rare bo...

Samson Agonistes by John Milton audiobook. Genre: tragedy John Milton's Samson Agonistes reimagines the final days of the biblical strongman as an intense, inward tragedy of defeat, endurance, and faith. Once Israel's champion, Samson now sits blind and captive in Gaza, mocked by the Philistines and tormented by the memory of his own choices. As he wrestles with shame and the silence of God, visit...

Underground London by John Hollingshead audiobook. Genre: history Published in 1862, John Hollingshead's Underground London invites you beneath the clamorous streets of early-to-mid Victorian London, where the citys true lifelines run in darkness. With the brisk curiosity of a reporter and the wit of an essayist, Hollingshead becomes your guide through buried rivers, old channels and forgotten pas...

A Problem in Modern Ethics by John Addington Symonds audiobook. Genre: philosophy Privately printed in the late 19th century for a tiny circle of readers, John Addington Symonds' A Problem in Modern Ethics is a bold, carefully argued inquiry into what his era called 'sexual inversion' - same-sex desire and relationships - addressed to the people who shaped public opinion and policy: doctors, psych...

Little Miss Grasshopper by Johanna Spyri audiobook. Genre: family Rita Feland has earned her nickname, Little Miss Grasshopper, the moment she starts bouncing with excitement. From their comfortable home in Dresden, the Feland family sets out for a long-awaited summer holiday in Switzerland, climbing toward the high country of the Gemmi Pass where sharp peaks, deep valleys, and clear air promise f...

The Boise Survey by Jesse Brundage Sears audiobook. Genre: history Commissioned by the Boise Independent School District and carried out over an intensive two-week field study, The Boise Survey is Jesse Brundage Sears' clear-eyed investigation into how a growing Western city runs its public schools - and how it could run them better. Drawing on visits, records, and observations gathered by Sears a...

Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome audiobook. Genre: comedy In Three Men on the Bummel, Jerome K. Jerome reunites the good-natured trio first seen in Three Men in a Boat - the quick-witted narrator J., the unflappable George, and the magnificently chaotic Harris - as they flee the strain of modern city life for a holiday on the continent. Their grand plan is simple: a cycling tour through...

The People of the Abyss by Jack London audiobook. Genre: history In 1902, celebrated American writer Jack London crosses the Atlantic and disappears into the slums of Londons East End, determined to see what polite society refuses to notice. With little money, plain clothes, and a borrowed accent, he moves among the homeless and the working poor, sleeping in casual wards, queuing for a scrap of br...

The Diary of a Superfluous Man by Ivan Turgenev audiobook. Genre: drama Written as a final confession, The Diary of a Superfluous Man follows a minor Russian landowner, Chulkaturin, who begins a diary when he senses his life is nearing its close. Alone with his thoughts, he looks back on the moments that shaped him: a youth spent observing rather than acting, a sharp awareness of his own awkwardne...

The Old Maids Club by Israel Zangwill audiobook. Genre: comedy In late-Victorian London, seventeen-year-old Lillie Dulcimer is brilliant, beautiful, and far too self-aware for polite society's comfort. With a millionaire father determined to see her safely married, Lillie answers pressure with paradox: she founds the Old Maids' Club, a proudly exclusive refuge for young women who refuse to treat m...

The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac audiobook. Genre: drama In Restoration Paris, where wealth and reputation can be traded as easily as gossip, the worldly dandy Henri de Marsay lives for conquest and control. But a single glimpse of a young woman with striking, golden eyes jolts him out of his practiced indifference. Determined to learn her name and claim her attention, de Marsay f...

Farewell by Honore de Balzac audiobook. Genre: tragedy In Farewell, Honore de Balzac delivers a stark, intimate tale of love tested by history and the limits of the human mind. Years after the Napoleonic wars, the aristocratic Philippe de Sucy stumbles upon a mystery in the French countryside: a young woman living in near-silence, her thoughts fractured, her past seemingly erased. She is Stephanie...

Tales of a Wayside Inn by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow audiobook. Genre: poetry Set in the warm glow of a New England hearth, Tales of a Wayside Inn gathers a circle of travelers at the old Sudbury inn where stories are as essential as food and fire. As snow settles outside, a diverse company - including the thoughtful Student, a wandering Sicilian, a sober Theologian, a quick-witted Poet, and other...

The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow audiobook. Genre: poetry In this landmark narrative poem of 19th-century America, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow retells a cycle of tales inspired by Indigenous traditions of the Great Lakes region, shaping them into the life story of Hiawatha, a young man called to bring order and meaning to his people. Guided by powerful spiritual forces and the cou...

Making a Rock Garden by Henry Sherman Adams audiobook. Genre: self help Making a Rock Garden by Henry Sherman Adams (published as H. S. Adams) is a practical, early 20th century guide for home gardeners who want the drama of stone, slope, and alpine flowers without creating a stiff, artificial pile of rocks. Adams argues that a true rock garden should look as if nature made it, and he shows how to...

The Arizona Callahan by Henry James OBrien Bedford-Jones audiobook. Genre: adventure In a gale off the Beaver Islands in Lake Michigan, Nelly Callahan watches a battered canoe fight for shore - and the bloodied stranger inside vanish around the point. When he walks into her fathers fishing camp soon after, grinning through his bruises, he brings more than a shipwreck story. He calls himself Hardro...

Fairhaven; a Story of Pilgrim Land by Henry Grattan Donnelly audiobook. Genre: drama In Fairhaven: a Story of Pilgrim Land, Henry Grattan Donnelly (writing under the byline Justis Henry G. D.) turns back to coastal New England in the first, uncertain generation after the Mayflower. In a settlement where every harvest is a gamble and every quarrel can become a crisis, a young newcomer to the colony...

Pleasure Cycling by Henry Clyde audiobook. Genre: self help First published in 1895, Pleasure Cycling is Henry Clyde's warm, practical invitation into the new, exhilarating world of the safety bicycle - written for beginners who are just learning what it means to travel under their own power. Looking back on his own early missteps, Clyde speaks directly to the would-be 'wheelman' with clear, confi...

A Study of British Genius by Havelock Ellis audiobook. Genre: science In A Study of British Genius, pioneering psychologist and social commentator Havelock Ellis turns a cool, inquisitive eye on one of the most slippery questions of all: why do certain people, in certain places and periods, rise to extraordinary achievement? Drawing on biographical records and historical data rather than inspirati...

The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories by H. G. Wells audiobook. Genre: scifi H. G. Wells gathers a bracing selection of early science fiction and darkly imaginative tales in The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories. Moving from lonely mountains and strange hidden valleys to bustling cities where the future presses uncomfortably close, these stories introduce ordinary men and women confron...

Phoebe Deane by Grace Livingston Hill audiobook. Genre: romance Orphaned young and gifted with a quiet love of books, beauty, and refinement, Phoebe Deane has grown up in a hard New York farmhouse where she is treated less like family and more like hired help. Her gentle half-brother, Albert, means well but is easily led, leaving Phoebe at the mercy of his sharp-tongued, jealous wife, Emmeline, an...

Miranda by Grace Livingston Hill audiobook. Genre: romance Miranda Griscom has never been the sort of young woman a quiet town knows what to do with. Plainspoken, freckle-faced, and fiercely capable, she has earned a place in the Spafford household through sheer grit and unwavering loyalty. So when one of the wealthiest men around begins pressing for her hand, the neighbors can only gossip and won...

Marcia Schuyler by Grace Livingston Hill audiobook. Genre: romance Set in early 19th century upstate New York, Marcia Schuyler begins on the brink of a society wedding that is meant to secure the Schuyler family's standing. When Marcia's beautiful, willful sister Kate vanishes the night before the ceremony, leaving behind scandal and a shattered groom, the family's desperate solution falls to the...

The Finding of Jasper Holt by Grace Livingston Hill audiobook. Genre: romance When Jean Grayson boards a westbound train to visit her sister, she expects a quiet journey and a warm family welcome. Instead, a strange encounter leaves her carrying a wallet tied to a man she has never met, and a midnight disaster throws her into a terrifying fight for survival. The one person who pulls her from dange...