Classic Audiobook Collection

Just William by Richmal Crompton audiobook. Genre: comedy In Just William, Richmal Crompton introduces William Brown, an eleven-year-old whirlwind of confidence, mischief, and unstoppable logic, who lives in a quiet English village between the wars. To the adults around him, William is a constant problem to be managed: his well-meaning but exasperated parents, his dignified sister Ethel, and a par...

The Enchanted Castle by Edith Nesbit audiobook. Genre: fantasy When three siblings - Jerry, Jimmy, and Kathy - escape their governess for a summer afternoon, they wander into the grounds of an old estate and discover a hidden passage into what seems to be a sleeping fairy tale: a neglected garden, a ruined castle, and the promise of real magic. Inside, they meet Mabel, a practical but lonely girl...

The Clue of the Twisted Candle by Edgar Wallace audiobook. Genre: mystery Edgar Wallace's The Clue of the Twisted Candle plunges celebrated mystery novelist John Lexman into a case far stranger than anything he has ever plotted on the page. Struggling with money worries, Lexman is pushed into the orbit of a glamorous, dangerous underworld figure, Remington Kara, and a relentless creditor whose thr...

Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs audiobook. Genre: adventure After a mutiny strands English aristocrats John and Alice Clayton on the West African coast, they vanish into a world ruled by dense jungle, hungry predators, and the fierce great apes who call it home. Their infant son survives against impossible odds, raised among the tribe as an outsider who must learn to fight, hunt, and be...

Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome by E. M. Berens audiobook. Genre: folklore E. M. Berens' Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome is a richly told guide to the stories that shaped the imagination of the classical world. Written as an accessible companion for curious readers, it gathers the great cycles of Greek and Roman mythology into a clear, engaging narrative: the rise of the...

Queen Lucia by E. F. Benson audiobook. Genre: comedy E. F. Benson was born at Wellington College in Berkshire, where his father, who later went on to become the Archbishop of Canterbury, was the first Headmaster. He wrote 105 books in all. Queen Lucia (first published in 1920) was the first of Benson’s ‘Mapp and Lucia’ novels of which there were six. This first book is a comedy of manners based in...

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel DeFoe audiobook. Genre: adventure Daniel Defoe’s The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner (1719) is considered by many the first English novel. Based on the real-life experiences of the castaway Alexander Selkirk, the book has had a perennial appeal among readers of all ages-–especially the young adult reading public–-who continue to...

The Sayings of Confucius by Confucius audiobook. Genre: philosophy The Sayings of Confucius gathers the brief, vivid teachings of Kong Fuzi - known in the West as Confucius - as remembered and recorded by his students and later followers. Set against an age of political fragmentation and social uncertainty, these compact dialogues, aphorisms, and observations offer a practical path for restoring o...

Kathleen by Christopher Morley audiobook. Genre: comedy Eight Oxford undergraduates who call themselves the Scorpions pride themselves on wit, argument, and a talent for turning ordinary life into literature. When a stray letter from a young woman named Kathleen to a mysterious 'Joe' falls into their hands, it becomes the perfect spark for their next club challenge: write a serial story using real...

Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson audiobook. Genre: philosophy Nature is a short essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson published anonymously in 1836. It is in this essay that the foundation of transcendentalism is put forth, a belief system that espouses a non-traditional appreciation of nature. Recent advances in zoology, botany, and geology confirmed Emerson's intuitions about the intricate relationships of...

Essays - First Series by Ralph Waldo Emerson audiobook. Genre: philosophy Ralph Waldo Emerson's Essays - First Series is a landmark collection of nine essays that distills the restless energy of American Transcendentalism into clear, provocative meditations on how to live. Speaking as both philosopher and practical moralist, Emerson challenges listeners to trust their own judgment, resist the pres...

Laws by Plato audiobook. Genre: philosophy Plato's Laws is his longest and most practical dialogue, a searching conversation about what it takes to build a just city when human beings are imperfect. On a hot walk across Crete toward the cave of Zeus, three older men - an unnamed Athenian Stranger, the Cretan lawgiver-to-be Cleinias, and the Spartan Megillus - set themselves an ambitious task: to d...

Alcibiades 1 by Plato audiobook. Genre: philosophy As Jowett relates in his brilliant introduction, 95% of Plato's writing is certain and his reputation rests soundly on this foundation. The Alcibiades 1 appears to be a short work by Plato with only two characters: Socrates and Alcibiades. This dialogue has little dramatic verisimilitude but centres on the question of what knowledge one needs for...

The Adventures of Sally by P. G. Wodehouse audiobook. Genre: comedy Sally Nicholas is young, broke, and irrepressibly cheerful, earning her keep in New York as a taxi dancer and living in a theatrical boarding house where everyone has big dreams and thin wallets. Then, on her twenty-first birthday, she inherits a tidy fortune and suddenly has the one thing her friends have always lacked: choices....

My Man Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse audiobook. Genre: comedy In My Man Jeeves, P. G. Wodehouse introduces the immaculate valet Jeeves and his well-meaning, easily flustered employer, Bertie Wooster, in a sparkling set of comic adventures among England's idle rich. Bertie drifts from country houses to London clubs with no plan beyond avoiding responsibility, until a string of social disasters threaten...

Bill the Conqueror by P. G. Wodehouse audiobook. Genre: comedy Hailed as one of the funniest writers of the 20th century, P. G. Wodehouse cheerfully radiates humor that is both sophisticated and popular. In Bill the Conqueror, Wodehouse creates an array of entertaining characters who gallop around England and America in quest of love and money. Our far-from-perfect hero Bill is a dissipated Americ...

A Gentleman of Leisure by P. G. Wodehouse audiobook. Genre: comedy When charming but chronically underfunded Jimmy Pitt lands in New York, he brings with him a problem no amount of good manners can solve: he is the newly minted heir to an English earldom, and the responsibilities (and expectations) that come with it. Unfortunately, Jimmy is also a practiced 'gentleman of leisure' - quick with a sm...

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde audiobook. Genre: horror In glittering fin-de-siecle London, young Dorian Gray sits for a portrait by the devoted artist Basil Hallward. When Basil introduces him to the witty, world-weary Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian is dazzled by Lord Henry's seductive philosophy: that youth and beauty are life's highest prizes, and that restraint is merely a social mask. A...

The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde audiobook. Genre: comedy When the practical American Otis family buys England's ancient Canterville Chase, they are warned that the house comes with a resident spirit: Sir Simon de Canterville, a centuries-old ghost with a reputation for terror. The Otises, however, are not the sort to be frightened by clanking chains and midnight apparitions. Hiram B. Otis app...

Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde audiobook. Genre: comedy In Victorian England, respectability is a performance, and Jack Worthing has perfected it - at least on paper. In the country, he is the reliable guardian of young Cecily Cardew; in the city, he escapes into a fabricated life under the name 'Ernest,' where pleasure comes without consequences. His friend Algernon Moncrieff, equally...

The Adventures of Ulysses by Charles Lamb audiobook. Genre: folklore In The Adventures of Ulysses, Charles Lamb reshapes the ancient Greek epic of Odysseus into a swift, vivid tale of wandering, wit, and hard-won homecoming. After the fall of Troy, the warrior-king Ulysses sets sail for Ithaca, longing to return to his faithful wife, Penelope, and his young son, Telemachus. But the sea is ruled by...

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens audiobook. Genre: drama Born into poverty and raised under the cold machinery of England's workhouse system, young orphan Oliver Twist begins life with little more than his name and a stubborn sense of decency. When a desperate plea for more food marks him as a troublemaker, Oliver is thrust from one harsh institution to another, until he escapes to London in search...

The Autobiography of Charles Darwin by Charles Darwin audiobook. Genre: biography The Autobiography of Charles Darwin is the autobiography of the British naturalist Charles Darwin which was published in 1887, five years after his death. Darwin wrote the book, which he entitled Recollections of the Development of my Mind and Character, for his family. He states that he started writing it on about M...

George Washington by Calista McCabe Courtenay audiobook. Genre: biography Written for younger readers as part of the Makers of American History series, Calista McCabe Courtenay's George Washington traces the rise of a quiet Virginia boy into the public figure who would help shape a new nation. The story begins with Washington's early life and training in discipline and responsibility, then follows...

Penrod and Sam by Booth Tarkington audiobook. Genre: comedy Set in a small Midwestern town in the early 1900s, Penrod and Sam follows two inseparable boys - imaginative Penrod Schofield and his loyal partner-in-mischief, Sam Williams - as they turn ordinary days into elaborate adventures. Penrod longs to be seen as daring, honorable, and grown-up, but his grand plans collide with school rules, nei...