The Classics category has 3,859 audiobooks on Listento.it, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 36,161 ratings. The most-rated is The Fellowship of the Ring.
Of Mice and Men: A Reader's Guide to the John Steinbeck Novel
Summary
John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men is widely considered one of the greatest of American novels. This new guide gives you an in-depth analysis of this important work, unlocking its confusing aspects, making the book accessible and enjoyable, and helping you uncover all the details that make up the story. Included in this guide: a biography of author John Steinbeck, a look at the book's context, its literary elements, detailed chapter summaries, analysis, and an examination of critical questions. This is the definitive guide to Of Mice and Men, concise, and easy to read.
©2013 Robert Crayola (P)2014 Robert Crayola
The Black Monk
Summary
Doctors and kind relations will succeed in stupefying mankind, in making mediocrity pass for genius and in bringing civilisation to ruin. Kovrin is a gifted man, well educated. Following the advice of his doctor, he decides to leave his busy city lifestyle and travels to recover his health in a beautiful family country estate. There he meets this mystical and prophetic Black Monk, a character from an ancient legend, which he thinks is nothing more than a hallucination. The Black Monk ignites intellectual stimulation, greatly improves Kovrin's mental faculties for a while and engages him in discussions about eternal life, truth, philosophy and even fame. What the monk says to him flatters not his vanity but his whole soul, his whole being. Kovrin begins to experience moments of greatness with each Black Monk encounter. Then his doctors and kind relations succeed in curing his illness, and a terrible accident happens. Read in English, unabridged.
Public Domain (P)2018 Sovereign
Mark Twain Collection
Summary
Sound interesting? Listen to Mark Twain Collection and experience the compelling world of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Included are: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Tom Sawyer Abroad Tom Sawyer Detective
Public Domain (P)2020 Rollo Bixio
The Great Gatsby
Summary
Three professional narrators, Mike Vendetti, Kathy Verduin, and Stephen Jay Cohen, lend their voices to what is considered by many to be one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's greatest novels, The Great Gatsby. Travel back with them to the Jazz Age, where the wealthy and entitled collide with pretenders and common citizens. Where "careless people smash up things and creatures and then retreat back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it is that keeps them together, and let other people clean up the mess they made".
Public Domain (P)2021 Mike Vendetti
How It Is
Summary
How It Is, a landmark in 20th century literature, is one of the most challenging of Samuel Beckett's early novels. He published it first in French in 1961 and then in his own translation in 1964. He explained in a letter that it was the outpouring of a "'man' lying panting in the mud and dark murmuring his 'life' as he hears it obscurely uttered by a voice inside him.... The noise of his panting fills his ears and it is only when this abates that he can catch and murmur forth a fragment of what is being stated within...." It is written in short paragraphs without punctuation. Fragments of expression pour out, of memories, intentions, emotions. It is testing to read on the page, but in this extraordinary recording by Dermot Crowley, How It Is becomes more accessible and comprehensible than ever before. It is, from the start, mesmerizing, and as the character of the protagonist emerges through his words, moments of aggression, of tenderness, of loss and hopelessness become increasingly affecting. The novel is divided into three parts, as the opening paragraph indicates: 'How it was I quote before Pim with Pim after Pim how it is three parts I say it as I hear it [Paragraph] voice once without quaqua on all sides then in me when the panting stops tell me again finish telling me/invocation.'
©2009 The Estate of Samuel Beckett (P)2017 Ukemi Productions Ltd
The Aeneid
Summary
Also in the manner of Homer, the story proper begins in medias res (into the middle of things), with the Trojan fleet in the eastern Mediterranean, heading in the direction of Italy. The fleet, led by Aeneas, is on a voyage to find a second home. It has been foretold that in Italy he will give rise to a race both noble and courageous, a race which will become known to all nations. Juno is wrathful, because she had not been chosen in the judgment of Paris, and because her favorite city, Carthage, will be destroyed by Aeneas's descendants. Also, Ganymede, a Trojan prince, was chosen to be the cupbearer to her husband, Jupiter - replacing Juno's daughter, Hebe. Juno proceeds to Aeolus, King of the Winds, and asks that he release the winds to stir up a storm in exchange for a bribe (Deiopea, the loveliest of all her sea nymphs, as a wife). Aeolus agrees to carry out Juno's orders (line 77, "My task is / To fulfill your commands"); the storm then devastates the fleet. (Paul Cézanne, Aeneas Meeting Dido at Carthage, ca. 1875, Princeton University Art Museum) Neptune takes notice: Although he himself is no friend of the Trojans, he is infuriated by Juno's intrusion into his domain, and stills the winds and calms the waters, after making sure that the winds would not bother the Trojans again, lest they be punished more harshly than they were this time. The fleet takes shelter on the coast of Africa, where Aeneas rouses the spirits of his men, reassuring them that they have been through worse situations before. There, Aeneas's mother, Venus, in the form of a huntress very similar to the goddess Diana, encourages him and recounts to him the history of Carthage. Eventually, Aeneas ventures into the city, and in the temple of Juno he seeks and gains the favor of Dido, queen of the city. The city has only recently been founded by refugees from Tyre and will later become a great imperial rival and enemy to Rome.
©2009 Harold Griffin (P)2021 Harold Griffin
10 Masterpieces You Have to Read Before You Die 2
Summary
This Audiobook contains the following works The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald Start at Chapters 1, A Christmas Carol By Charles Dickens Start at Chapters 10, Anne of Green Gables By Lucy Maud Montgomery Start at Chapters 16, Emma By Jane Austen Start at Chapters 54, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer By Mark Twain Start at Chapters 108, The Raven By Edgar Allan Poe Start at Chapters 144, The Prophet By Khalil Gibran Start at Chapters 145, Think and grow rich By Napoleon Hill Start at Chapters 173, The Iliad By Homer Start at Chapters 191, The Science of Getting Rich By Wallace D. Wattles Start at Chapters 215. Also Available 10 Masterpieces You Have to Read Before You Die 1
©public domain (P)2020 Page2Page
The Canterbury Tales: The Franklin's Tale (Modern Verse Translation)
Summary
This is a story from the Canterbury Tales I: Modern Verse Translation collection. Chaucer's greatest work, written towards the end of the fourteenth century, paints a brilliant picture of medieval life, society and values. The stories range from the romantic, courtly idealism of "The Knight's Tale" to the joyous bawdy of the Miller's; all are told with a freshness and vigor in this modern verse translation that make them a delight to hear.
©1995 NAXOS AudioBooks Ltd. (P)1995 NAXOS AudioBooks Ltd.
Kidnapped
Summary
Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped tells the story of a young orphaned 17-year old boy named David living in Scotland during the 18th century. While trying to make his way in the world, David moves in to his uncle's estate, where he soon after finds clues that prove that his father, and thus himself, should have been the rightful heir to the estate, rather than his uncle. Aware of this discovery, David's uncle tricks him into boarding a ship, where he is then hit over the head and wakes up to find himself at the mercy of an ill-tempered crew which plans on selling him to into servitude somewhere in the Carolinas, far from his uncle. Once at sea, the crew encounters a mighty storm, which causes the ship to smash into a smaller boat. The crash kills everyone aboard the smaller vessel except for the Jacobite, Alan. Alan boards the ship and offers money to the captain in exchange to be taken to the mainland. Once on board, David overhears the crew plotting to kill Alan in order to take all of his money. Bonding together, David and Alan barricade themselves inside a room and end up killing several crew members. Left with no other choice, the captain gives in and agrees to deliver both Alan and David safely ashore, where David must then confront his uncle about the estate's ownership. The story depicts the development of a young boy into a fine young man through the misadventures he has, in the real world.
Public Domain (P)2016 A.R.N. Publications
The Female Quixote
Summary
Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Donna Banya, who has appeared on stage in Fairview at the Young Vic and in Macbeth and Romeo & Juliet with the RSC. This definitive recording includes an introduction by Amanda Gilroy. Beautiful and independent, Arabella has been brought up in rural seclusion by her widowed father. Devoted to reading French romances, the sheltered young woman imagines all sorts of misadventures that can befall a heroine such as herself. As she makes forays into fashionable society in Bath and London, many scrapes and mortifications ensue - all men seem like predators wishing to ravish her, she mistakes a cross-dressing prostitute for a distressed gentlewoman and she risks her life by throwing herself into the Thames to avoid a potential seducer. Can Arabella be cured of her romantic delusions? An immediate success when it first appeared in 1752, The Female Quixote is a wonderfully high-spirited parody of the style of Cervantes and a telling and comic depiction of 18th-century English society.
Public Domain (P)2020 Penguin Audio
Death on the Installment Plan
Summary
Death on the Installment Plan is a companion volume to Louis-Ferinand Celine's earlier novel Journey to the End of Night. Published in rapid succession in the middle 1930s, these two books shocked European literature and world consciousness. Nominally fiction but more rightly called "creative confessions," they told of the author's childhood in excoriating Paris slums, of service in the mud wastes of World War I and African jungles. Mixing unmitigated despair with Gargantuan comedy, they also created a new style, in which invective and obscenity were laced with phrases of unforgettable poetry. Celine's influence revolutionized the contemporary approach to fiction. Under a cloud for a period, his work is now acknowledged as the forerunner of today's "black humor."
©1952 Librairie Gallimard (P)2020 Tantor
Blood, Sex and Money
Summary
Glenda Jackson stars in this award-winning BBC Radio series, inspired by literature's greatest ever whistleblower, Émile Zola, and his epic saga of the Rougon-Macquart family. First published between 1870 and 1893, Émile Zola’s 20-book cycle chronicling four generations of the Rougon-Macquarts, was a shocking exposé of the decadence, degradation, and moral decay of 19th-century France. It included some of his greatest novels, among them his masterpiece, Germinal. These innovative, ambitious dramas, first broadcast on Radio 4 over 24 hours in 2015-16, is a radical reimagining of Zola’s classic series, introducing us to 104-year-old matriarch, Dide, imprisoned in an asylum in southern France. Trapped, but omniscient, she broods over her ‘family of wolves’. As a young woman, she gave birth to two dynasties that exemplified French society. One legitimate – rich, powerful, obsessive and corrupt. The other illegitimate – poor, vulnerable, weak and depraved. In these three seasons, themed around blood, sex and money, we come to know the members of her extended family intimately – the good, the bad and the misguided. As we follow their highs and lows, we are taken deep into the heart of France’s ‘Second Empire’, and drawn into the tragic, farcical reign of Napoleon III, as it marches forward towards a modern, industrialised society. This groundbreaking series won Best Drama at the BBC Radio and Music Awards 2016, and Best Adaptation at the BBC Audio Drama Awards 2017, and boasts a star cast including Robert Lindsay, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Holliday Grainger, Samuel West, Anna Maxwell Martin, Paul McGann, Georgina Campbell, Jack Lowden and Alison Steadman. Also included is a 30-minute bonus programme, The Life and Work of Émile Zola, in which Glenda Jackson travels to Paris to discover how Zola’s experience and the physical and cultural landscape in which he lived influenced his great novels. Written by Émile Zola Dramatised by Dan Rebellato, Oliver Emanuel, Martin Jameson and Lavinia Murray Produced and directed by Pauline Harris, Polly Thomas, Kirsty Williams, Nadia Molinari and Gary Brown Executive Producer: Melanie Harris Series Producer: Susan Roberts Sound designer: Eloise Whitmore
©2019 BBC Worldwide Ltd (P)2019 BBC Worldwide Ltd
The Body Artist
Summary
In this spare, seductive novel, Don DeLillo inhabits the muted world of Lauren Hartke, an artist whose work defies the limits of the body. Lauren is living on a lonely coast, in a rambling rented house, where she encounters a strange, ageless man, a man with uncanny knowledge of her life. Together they begin a journey into the wilderness of time - time, love, and human perception.
©2001 Don DeLillo, All Rights Reserved (P)2001 Simon & Schuster Inc., All Rights Reserved
Buddenbrooks
Summary
Heinrich Breloers Verfilmung der "Buddenbrooks" wird das Kinoereignis der besonderen Art: Er zeigt das Drama um Glanz und Untergang der reichen Lübecker Kaufmannsfamilie in intimen, anteilnehmenden und vielschichtigen Szenen. Regisseur Heinrich Breloer selbst verfasste unter Mitarbeit von Rainer Zimmer das Erzählmanuskript und setzte den Film in eine einzigartig verdichtete und nachhaltig beeindruckende Hörspielfassung um.
©2008 Bavaria Film / Pirol Film Production / Colonia Media / Der Hörverlag (P)2008 Der Hörverlag
Audible Theatre Collection: Chekhov
Summary
Despite his early death from tuberculosis at the age of 44, Chekhov was a prolific writer and produced more than 250 short stories in addition to several novellas and a novel. The Russian was also a practicing doctor. A celebrated playwright, Anton Chekhov is often recognised as an influential figure of early modernism of the theatre in addition to being held in high esteem by the likes of George Bernard Shaw and Virginia Woolf, although much praise was not as forthcoming until after his death in 1904. This collection features three plays. Dark comedy The Seagull, is the first of what are considered his 'major plays'. Three Sisters tells the story of a trio of sisters lonely after their father dies and The Cherry Orchard has a dual comedy and tragedy narrative. The Seagull Written in 1895 and a master class in the art and power of subtext, The Seagull follows the romantic and artistic conflicts between its four main characters, all dissatisfied with life. Some desire love. Some desire success. Some desire artistic genius. No one seems able to attain happiness. Tragic and often darkly comic, The Seagull is a timeless classic and an early exercise in addressing the pitfalls of depression and lack of satisfaction in life and purpose. Full cast: Samantha Bond, Catrin Stewart, Freddie Fox, Anthony Howell, Katherine Kingsley, John Rowe, Rachel Atkins, Hugh Ross, Nick Boulton, Stephen Critchlow. Three Sisters After the death of their father, his three daughters find it very hard to live in a drab Russian provincial town. The presence of a company of army officers is the only thing that makes their existence bearable, though inevitable drama, competition and failure lead to confusion and pain, as life doesn't turn out quite to plan for the sisters. Full cast: Samatha Bond, Freddie Fox, Katherine Kingsley, Alison Pettitt, Catrin Stewart, Clare Corbett, Nick Boulton, Stephen Critchlow, Anthony Howell, Richard Reed, Hugh Ross, John Rowe. The Cherry Orchard In Chekhov's last play, a widowed landowner returns home more or less insolvent after five years abroad. Everything appears just as she remembers it, but hers is a diminishing world. The vast and beautiful cherry orchard is soon to be sold off against her mounting debts. The insistent warnings of a peasant's son turned wealthy businessman go unheeded, and more than the family estate is sacrificed. Full cast: Samatha Bond, Freddie Fox, Hugh Ross, Georgie Grier, Clare Corbett, Richard Reed, Stephen Critchlow, Katherine Kingsley, Nick Boulton, Anthony Howell, Alison Pettitt, John Rowe. This is an Audible Original Podcast. Free for members. You can download all 3 episodes to your Library now.
Public Domain (P)2016 Audible, Ltd.
The Tarzan Collection
Summary
Join in on one of the world’s most beloved jungle adventures in The Tarzan Collection. This collection includes the first three books of Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan novels: Tarzan of the Apes, The Return of Tarzan, and The Beasts of Tarzan. All three novels follow stages of Tarzan’s life, from his childhood among the apes to his adulthood adjusting to a new life and adventures among civilized society. Tarzan of the Apes - The story of Tarzan begins with a baby to orphaned and left in a jungle who is adopted by apes. The apes raise him as one of their own, and he learns to swing through the trees on vines and talk to the other inhabitants of the jungle, but Tarzan always knows that he is different. When he is an adult, his already-strange world is flipped upside down by the arrival of other humans in his jungle. This beloved classic follow’s Tarzan’s life and adventures as he comes grows up in the wild and comes to terms with his humanity among the apes. The Return of Tarzan - After the events of the first book, Tarzan is living among humans, but facing difficulties fitting in and finding his purpose among them, especially after giving up on marrying Jane Porter for a time. He decides to return to the jungle, where he hears rumors about a lost city of gold hiding among the trees and sets off with newfound friends to pursue the treasure. The second volume of Tarzan’s adventures take him all around the jungle through perilous situations as he contends with his humanity, his desire to be with his love, and his place among the jungle society. The Beasts of Tarzan - The third novel picks up a year after the end of The Return of Tarzan, and finds Tarzan and Jane together with a son, beginning to build a life together in Africa. But of course, Tarzan doesn’t stay out of danger for long, and soon his previous enemies are back to haunt him and kidnap his son. As the villains carry out their evil plan, Tarzan has to rely on his jungle upbringing and team up with the beasts of the jungle to rescue his beloved family.
Public Domain (P)2021 InAudio
The Great Gatsby
Summary
Some consider The Great Gatsby the greatest American novel ever written about love, dreams, business, bootlegging, Wall Street, the Midwest, and the East, as well as Yale, prep schools, the rich, and more. F. Scott Fitzgerald followed up with Tender Is the Night, also considered equally compelling.
Public Domain (P)2020 Deaver Brown
Charlotte Perkins Gilman Classics Collection: The Yellow Wallpaper, Herland, and The Crux: (Annotated) with a Historical Introduction and a Study of Themes
Summary
Unique to this title are: A historical introduction A study of the themes present in The Yellow Wallpaper, Herland, and The Crux You may of course skip all of it and go straight to the main title if you do not want any spoilers and come back later to the beginning. Charlotte Perkins was born in 1860 in Connecticut. When she was a child, her father abandoned his wife and children, and she spent the rest of her childhood in poverty. Since her mother was not able to support the family, her aunts played a big part in her upbringing. Her schooling was erratic, and she attended seven different schools in just four years, finishing when she was 15. To prevent her children from getting hurt as she had been, her mother forbade them to make strong friendships or read fiction. Despite that, Gilman spent a lot of time in the local library studying ancient civilizations on her own. In her best-known work, The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman writes about different kinds of oppression that women were exposed to at the time. Women were patronized and treated as mentally weak and fragile. They were believed to be prone to many “nervous conditions” and particularly hysteria. Herland is a utopian novel from 1915, written by feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman in which exists an isolated society composed entirely of women, who reproduce via parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction). The result is an ideal social order: free of war, conflict, and domination. The Crux tells the story of a group of New England women who move west to start a boardinghouse for men in Colorado. It is an important early feminist work that brings forward complicated issues of gender, citizenship, eugenics, and frontier nationalism. Enjoy this timeless classic collection!
©2020 Chronos Publishing (P)2020 Chronos Publishing
Classic Game Encounters (Unabridged Selections)
Summary
Various stories featuring big cats: many Indian hunting stories from the time of the Raj. These adventure stories are suitable for anyone of any age who enjoys the excitement and thrill of the chase.
Public Domain (P)1994, 2004 CSA Telltapes Ltd.
Babbitt (Dramatized)
Summary
This epic of the booming 20's captures the relentless culture of American business. A classic novel about conformity in small town America - celebrated for its comic tone, statire, and vivid dialogue. L.A. Theatre Works, then a fledgling radio theatre company, completed Babbitt in 1989. This production was so well received that L.A. Theatre Works has since become the world's premiere radio theatre company. Ed Asner as Babbitt leads this all star cast, which includes Ted Danson, Marsha Mason, Helen Hunt, John Lithgow, Stacy Keach, Richard Dreyfuss, Amy Irving, Ally Sheedy and many more. Babbitt was previously unreleased on CD and digital formats.
©2002 Sinclair Lewis (P)2008 L.A. Theatre Works