Classic Audiobook Collection

The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen audiobook. Genre: folklore On a bitter New Year's Eve in a snowy city, a poor little girl wanders the streets with a bundle of matches to sell. Barefoot, hungry, and afraid to go home without money, she drifts from doorway to doorway as crowds hurry past, too busy to notice her. To keep her hands from freezing, she dares to strike a match, and in it...

The Emperor’s New Clothes by Hans Christian Andersen audiobook. Genre: folklore This is a collection of a few of my personal favorite stories by Hans Christian Andersen that I most loved as a child and still enjoy as an adult. The Emperor's New Clothes was funny from my earliest years because even then I could see that it poked fun at adults and their silly pretensions; The Ugly Duckling I think,...

The Spirit of Sweetwater by Hamlin Garland audiobook. Genre: drama In the mountain West, Richard Clement arrives in the mining country with little money and a stubborn resolve to make his way. A few hard years later, he is no longer an anonymous prospector but the sole owner of a wildly profitable mine called The Witch, a fortune that brings power, suspicion, and a grinding loneliness he did not e...

The Green World by Hal Clement audiobook. Genre: scifi The planet was an enigma. Among the thousands of inhabitable planets that had been discovered and visited, Veridis alone seemed to defy the laws of planetary development and evolution. It was extremely young, barely 10 million years had passed since it was completely molten and yet now it was covered with life of all kinds; kinds that should h...

Attitude by Hal Clement audiobook. Genre: scifi They had been captured, but by whom? And why where they allowed to build anything they wanted to escape? The space cruiser was powerful and built to fight anything in the galaxy, but somehow, in the empty rift between galaxies, they had been rendered helpless and brought to this prison. Even stranger was that their captors had not harmed any of them...

The Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft audiobook. Genre: horror In Providence and beyond, a young man named Francis Wayland Thurston inherits a box of unsettling papers from his late uncle, a professor of languages who had been investigating a strange cult. What begins as a curious family mystery becomes a widening inquiry into scattered accounts: a gruesome police raid in the Louisiana bayous, th...

Herbert West - Re-Animator by H. P. Lovecraft audiobook. Genre: horror In Herbert West - Re-Animator, H. P. Lovecraft delivers a brisk, grisly tale of scientific ambition unmoored from morality. The story is told by an unnamed medical student who becomes the reluctant confidant and assistant of Herbert West, a brilliant, coldly driven researcher convinced that death is not a final boundary but a t...

Jacqueline of Golden River by H. M. Egbert audiobook. Genre: folklore Jacqueline seems to have contracted a touch of amnesia, as she is found in an apartment with a dead man, and with a weapon in her hand. But she remembers nothing of any incident, remembers not her name nor where she comes from, not even why she is where she was found. She only remembers her father, and that he is in danger. Acti...

Half-Past Bedtime by H. H. Bashford audiobook. Genre: comedy Ah, the wonderful adventures of Marian after she meets the strange Mr. Jugg. 'And who are you, Mr Jugg?' she inquired. 'I'm the King of the Bumpies,' he replied. When Marian was puzzled there came a little straight line, exactly in the middle, between her two eyebrows. 'What are bumpies?' she said. 'My hat!' he gasped. 'Haven't you ever...

The Passionate Friends by H. G. Wells audiobook. Genre: romance H. G. Wells is best known for his science fiction, but some of his greatest works were in other genres. The Passionate Friends is a love story. It also is a story about dreams, despair, jealousy, sex, the struggle against social convention, the future of civilization, and much much more. It is written by a father to his son, 'not inde...

The Discovery Of The Future by H. G. Wells audiobook. Genre: philosophy The Discovery of the Future is a 1902 philosophical lecture by H. G. Wells that argues for the knowability of the future. It was originally delivered to the Royal Institution on January 24, 1902. Wells begins by distinguishing between 'two divergent types of mind,' one that judges and attaches importance principally to what ha...

Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells audiobook. Genre: drama Set in Edwardian England, Ann Veronica follows a bright, restless young woman who has been raised to be obedient, sheltered, and grateful, yet feels a mounting hunger for education, independence, and a life shaped by her own convictions. Chafing under the strict authority of her father and the narrow expectations placed on women, Ann pushes beyon...

The Man Who Lost Himself by H. De Vere Stacpoole audiobook. Genre: comedy When Victor Jones, a hard-luck businessman from Philadelphia, arrives in London chasing a contract that could save his future, he instead finds himself broke, cornered by creditors, and wondering who he has become. One desperate drink at a hotel bar brings an unbelievable encounter: a charismatic English aristocrat, Rocheste...

Time Crime by H. Beam Piper audiobook. Genre: scifi On a quiet plantation in the Esaron Sector, guard-captain Kiro Soran notices something that should be impossible: a shipment of slaves whose language, customs, and origins do not match the world where they are being sold. His discovery pulls back the curtain on the Paratime Secret, and the Paratime Police move in fast, led by hard-edged professio...

Temple Trouble by H. Beam Piper audiobook. Genre: scifi On a parallel Earth stuck in a Bronze-to-early-medieval age, the Transtemporal Mining Corporation is quietly extracting valuable ores from behind the safest disguise imaginable: religion. Their outpost is the Temple of Yat-Zar, complete with priests, rituals, and a fearsome six-armed idol - all designed to keep local eyes away from the true m...

Space Viking by H. Beam Piper audiobook. Genre: scifi The war is over, and the worlds of the Phoenix Cluster are paying the price. Lucas Trask returns home to the planet Tanith to find his people broken by occupation and his wife dead. Refusing to accept a future of quiet ruin, he rallies Tanith's survivors into a hard-edged brotherhood of raiders - the so-called Space Vikings - and launches a cam...

Oomphel in the Sky by H. Beam Piper audiobook. Genre: scifi On the colonial world of Kwannon, Terran administrators and a fragile local government try to keep order with paperwork, committees, and tired slogans. Out beyond the capital, however, the native People measure power in spells, spirits, and the authority of the shoonoon. To them, Terran machines are not technology at all but oomphel, a my...

Naudsonce by H. Beam Piper audiobook. Genre: scifi Naudsonce? What does THAT mean? Well, to find out you will need to listen to this story where Piper's unique mind explores what we mean by 'communication' and how it happens. The joint Space Navy-Colonial Office expedition was looking for new planets suitable for colonization; they had been out, now, for four years, which was close to maximum for...

Ministry of Disturbance by H. Beam Piper audiobook. Genre: scifi Science Fiction at it humorous best written in the golden age of all the greats and published in Astounding Science Fiction December 1958. Piper can't be matched for sardonic comment on human nature. The Empire is stagnant; thousands of planets spread around Earth but nothing new is allowed to happen and disturb the static situation....

Lone Star Planet by H. Beam Piper audiobook. Genre: scifi Ambassador Stephen Silk expects routine interstellar diplomacy until he is assigned to New Texas, a rough-and-ready colony world settled largely by Texans who are fiercely allergic to outside authority. The Solar League wants New Texas in line, but Silk arrives to find his predecessor, Ambassador Silas Cumshaw, has been murdered - and the l...

Last Enemy by H. Beam Piper audiobook. Genre: scifi In Last Enemy, H. Beam Piper drops the listener into a polished, tradition-bound society where reincarnation is more than faith - it is the foundation of law, status, and power. Dallona of Hadron, a gifted psychic researcher, is on the verge of a breakthrough that could turn that foundation into something measurable, provable, and therefore dange...

Four Day Planet by H. Beam Piper audiobook. Genre: scifi On Fenris, a world where a single 'day' lasts 2,000 hours and a whole year is only four such days, human life survives by hiding from blistering heat and murderous cold in a few hard-bitten settlements. The planet has one prize worth exporting: tallow-wax, a rare, high-value substance taken from enormous sea creatures by daring monster hunte...

Fables for the Frivolous by Guy Wetmore Carryl audiobook. Genre: poetry In Fables for the Frivolous, Guy Wetmore Carryl turns the familiar shape of the classic fable inside out, delivering a brisk collection of witty verse tales that end not with solemn instruction, but with sly punchlines and upside-down morals. Each short poem introduces a small cast of recognizable characters - vain social clim...

The British Barbarians by Grant Allen audiobook. Genre: comedy After Civil Servant Philip Christy crosses paths with the mysterious Bertram Ingledew in the respectable suburb of Brackenhurst, Philip and his sister Frida, married to the wealthy Scot Robert Monteith, become friends with the stranger. Bertram has some unconventional concepts about society, and as the story unfolds, his beliefs and ac...

The Story of the Pony Express by Glenn D. Bradley audiobook. Genre: history The Story of the Pony Express offers an in depth account behind the need for a mail route to connect the eastern U.S. with the rapidly populating west coast following the gold rush of California, the springing up of lumber camps, and all incidental needs arising from the settling of the western frontier. Here we learn of t...