Classics

One of the most significant books ever written by a head of state, the Meditations are a collection of philosophical thoughts by the Emperor Marcus Aurelius....

Unabridged recordings of A Tale of Two Cities, Bleak House, Great Expectations, The Old Curiosity Shop, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, Our Mutual Friend, Little Dorrit, Dombey and Son and A Christmas Carol....

The sci-fi series continues! The second Dune volume journeys through the changes of planet Arrakis's social order and surreal environment.

The forerunner to The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion tells the earlier history of Middle-earth, recounting the events of the First and Second Ages, and introducing some of the key characters, such as Galadriel, Elrond, Elendil and the Dark Lord, Sauron....

On the 75th anniversary of its publication, this outstanding work of literature is more crucial and relevant today than ever before....

Nearly seventy years after its original publication, Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before.

In an attempt to appeal to the Medici family during the Italian Renaissance, Machiavelli outlines the way to acquire and retain political power, and how great men should behave in a princely government....

This is a riveting adventure story about a priest's quest to obtain holy Buddhist scriptures for the Tang emperor....

On the eve of his marriage to the beautiful Mercedes, having that very day been made captain of his ship, the young sailor Edmond Dantès is arrested on a charge of treason....

Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are unquestionably two of the greatest epic masterpieces in Western literature....

Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness....

Often called the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace is at once an epic of the Napoleonic wars, a philosophical study, and a celebration of the Russian spirit....

The Ultimate Classics Collection: Volume One is a continent-hopping, century-spanning collection of 15 essential classic novels by British, American, and Russian authors, read by a cast of incredible narrators including Stephen Fry, Jason Isaacs, Adjoa Andoh, David Rintoul, and many more.

The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of a lone human emissary to Winter, an alien world whose inhabitants can change their gender....

The most influential work of the entire Spanish literary canon and a founding work of modern Western literature, Don Quixote is also one of the greatest works ever written....

The struggle for personal integrity in a world that values conformity above creativity is powerfully illustrated through three characters....

Edgar Allan Poe was a writer, poet, editor and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre, and is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature....

The Decameron is one of the greatest literary works of the Middle Ages. Ten young people have fled the Black Death in Florence and, in an idyllic setting, tell a series of brilliant stories....

Harsh, realistic, yet with one of the most subtle and moving relationships in the Hemingway oeuvre, To Have and Have Not is literary high adventure at its finest....

This acclaimed new translation of Dostoyevsky's 'psychological record of a crime' gives his dark masterpiece of murder and pursuit a renewed vitality, expressing its jagged, staccato urgency and fevered atmosphere as never before....

Tremendous in scope and breathtaking in its suspense, Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand's magnum opus, an electrifying moral defense of capitalism and free enterprise....

Ulysses is regarded by many as the single most important novel of the 20th century....

One of the most beloved novels of our time, Watership Down is an epic journey, a stirring tale of adventure, courage, and survival....

Harry Dresden, Chicago's only practicing professional wizard, should be happy that business is pretty good for a change....

Through stories of real-life situations and biblical tenets, Shinn teaches that the empowering use of positive attitude and affirmations can create a path to wealth....

Ukrainian-born humorist, dramatist and novelist Nikolai Gogol is widely believed to have led the realist revolution in Russian literature. His surreal, absurdist satires liberated comedy from its sentimental traditions and influenced writers both within Russia and worldwide, among them Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka and Flannery O’Connor.

Old Rambling House by Frank Herbert is a gripping science fiction short story first published in the late 1950s. What begins as a simple house trade spirals into a mind-bending journey for Ted and Martha Graham, a couple looking to settle down.

Dracula hat erfahren, dass in Sussex, England, ein gewisser Dr. Ryan praktiziert, der sich auf die Erforschung des Blutes und der Bekämpfung von schädlichen Zellen spezialisiert hat. Dracula manipuliert einen Freund Ryans, um an dessen Forschungsergebnisse zu gelangen.

Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Dickens: The Ultimate Collection brings together the major works of fiction from three of the greatest writers of the 1800s. In this collection you'll hear Jonathan Keeble and David Rintoul expertly narrating the grand epics of The Brothers Karamazov and War & Peace, Stephen Fry narrating Great Expectations, Scrooge's ghostly journey narrated by Jason Isaacs, and other award-winning narrators bringing Tolstoy and Dickens' most beloved stories to life.

Great Expectations follows Pip's life from a plucky but poor and put-upon child in the Kent marshes, to a young man with "great expectations" in London and the choices he must make as a result of his winding journey. In A Tale of Two Cities Charles Darnay, a French aristocrat, flees to England to escape the violence of his noble family’s past, only to be drawn back into the chaos of his homeland.

Frank Wedekind is widely acknowledged as one of the pioneers of modern drama, whose works influenced later writers such as Brecht and Dürrenmatt. His best-known plays were Spring Awakening and Lulu, both of which transgressed the social norms of his time and still have the power to shock and provoke us today. They are included here, alongside his lesser-known tragicomedy The Marquis of Keith.

わが国初の正史！　神代から推古紀まで。古典文学の主要作品をセレクトし、現代語訳と原文とで構成した「日本の古典をよむ」（全20冊）シリーズの1冊です。「日本書紀」は奈良時代初期に撰進された書物で、神々の時代から持統天皇までの日本の歴史を三十巻にわたって描いています。本書上巻には巻第二十二の推古天皇までを収めました。また、文学紀行コラム「日本書紀の風景」も収録しています。

Charles Darnay, a French aristocrat, flees to England to escape the violence of his noble family’s past, only to be drawn back into the chaos of his homeland. Lucie Manette, the daughter of a former prisoner of the Bastille, becomes the emotional anchor for those around her, including the brilliant but disillusioned lawyer Sydney Carton.

La emoción, la belleza, el sentido trágico y al mismo tiempo grotesco de las grandes pasiones humanas hallan en La Celestina una de sus más intensas expresiones. El «loco amor» de Calisto y Melibea, enhebrado con los hilos de una «bruja», Celestina, culmina fatalmente con la muerte de ambos. Fernando de Rojas es capaz de contarnos esta historia con una habilidad insospechada, que ata al lector a un texto poderoso y magnífico y que obra el milagro de llenar de pasión la lectura misma.

"Le dernier jour d'un condamné" a été écrit par Victor Hugo en 1829. Indigné par la guillotine et le traitement de la société envers les condamnés, Victor Hugo décida de dénoncer cette aberration à travers son roman: conditions de vie déplorables des prisonniers, traitement inhumain des condamnés en décrivant les souffrances morales et physiques de ces derniers. Le roman est présenté comme un journal intime d'un condamné à mort. Il y écrit ses pensées.

Attraverso la discesa sul Mississippi fino a New Orleans, Bruce si immerge nel ritmo languido del Sud, nel canto e nella vitalità della cultura afroamericana, che contrasta con l'alienazione del Nord industrializzato. Il ritorno a Old Harbor, paese della sua infanzia, e il lavoro umile in fabbrica diventano lo sfondo per una riflessione profonda sulla memoria, sul desiderio, sull'identità.

This story concerns a firework, who is one of many to be let off at the wedding of a prince and princess. The rocket is extremely pompous and self-important, and denigrates all the other fireworks, eventually bursting into tears to demonstrate his "sensitivity." As this makes him wet, he fails to ignite and, the next day, is thrown away into a ditch.

El quadern gris ha suscitat reaccions unànimes d'ençà que va aparèixer, el 1966, com a volum primer de l'Obra Completa de Josep Pla a Destino. No ho posa en dubte cap crític ni cap lector: és un dels grans llibres de la literatura contemporània. Un clàssic intemporal de les lletres catalanes. L'obra mestra de Josep Pla.

Once upon a time, there was a kind and honest man named Hans. He lived alone in a tiny cottage. Hans was a little man who owned a beautiful garden, where he grew flowers of all kinds and colours which were sold in the market to make some money. He enjoyed the company of another man called Hugh, a miller who used to visit Hans very often during the summer time and with whom he shared thoughts about friendship and loyalty. Hans was so devoted to Hugh that he even gifted him whole bunches of flowers from his own garden.

Vivacious young Hester Christie tries to run her home like clockwork, as would befit the wife of British Army officer, Tim Christie. However hard Mrs Tim strives for seamless living amidst the other army wives, she is always moving flat-out to remember groceries, rule lively children, side-step village gossip and placate her husband with bacon, eggs, toast and marmalade.

A nightingale overhears a student complaining that the professor's daughter will not dance with him, as he is unable to give her a red rose; a lizard, a butterfly and a daisy laugh at the student for doing so. The nightingale visits all the rose-trees in the garden, and one of the roses tells her there is a way to produce a red rose, but only if the nightingale is prepared to sing the sweetest song for the rose all night with her heart pressing into a thorn, sacrificing her life.

In a town full of suffering poor people, a swallow who was left behind after his flock flew off to Egypt for the winter meets the statue of the late "Happy Prince", who has never experienced true sorrow, for he lived in a palace where sorrow was not allowed to enter. Viewing various scenes of people suffering in poverty from his tall monument, the Happy Prince asks the swallow to take the ruby from his hilt, the sapphires from his eyes, and the gold leaf covering his body to give to the poor.

In Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman imagines a hidden utopia untouched by men for over two thousand years—an all-female society flourishing in peace, cooperation, and innovation. When three curious male explorers—Vandyck Jennings, Terry Nicholson, and Jeff Margrave—stumble upon this mysterious land, their expectations are upended by a civilization that thrives without war, dominance, or patriarchy.

“The Sire de Maletroit’s Door” by Robert Louis Stevenson is a gripping Gothic tale set in 17th-century France, weaving suspense, fate, and honor into a tightly written narrative. When a chance twist of circumstances traps a young man in a mysterious chateau, he finds himself at the mercy of its enigmatic master. Stevenson crafts a rich, atmospheric story filled with tension, old-world intrigue, and sharp psychological insight. This short story showcases Stevenson’s mastery of mood and character, making it a must-listen for fans of historical fiction and classic suspense.

This edition of Shelley's second novel, transcribed and introduced by Deanna Koretsky, explores the work both as a complex portrayal of taboo desires and as an intergenerational story of reckoning with the horrors of racism and patriarchy. Mathilda is often understood as biographical, but this edition also highlights the issues of justice, gender, and rights.

Frankreich am Vorabend der Revolution – die Affäre um das teure Halsband, das die Königin abgelehnt und sich scheinbar unter Hand beschafft hat, sorgt für erste Erschütterungen des Thrones. Keiner der Beteiligten geht unbeschadet daraus hervor – oder doch? Trotz einiger historischer Freiheiten ein pralles Geschichtsgemälde einer brennenden Epoche. Hinweis: Der Text kann Worte und Wendungen enthalten, deren Klischees nicht mehr heutigen Wertvorstellungen entsprechen. Das Buch ist jedoch ein Produkt seiner Zeit und soll hier in möglichst originalgetreuer Gestalt präsentiert werden.

In The Story of Sigurd, master storyteller Andrew Lang retells one of the most powerful and haunting legends of Norse mythology. From the blood-soaked battlefields of fallen kings to the treasure hoards guarded by monstrous dragons, Sigurd’s journey is one of valor, betrayal, enchanted love, and tragic fate. Guided by the wisdom of birds and wielding the reforged blade of his father, Sigurd slays the fearsome dragon Fafnir and becomes a legendary Dragonslayer.

Welcome to The Problem Club, where logic takes a holiday and wit is the law of the land. In this delightful collection of early 20th-century comic tales by Barry Pain, twelve eccentric gentlemen gather regularly in an upscale London club to tackle bizarre, imaginative challenges—each one a “problem” designed to confound, amuse, and showcase their cleverness.

Embark on a haunting journey into the depths of the human soul with Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad’s timeless literary masterpiece.

Don Quixote has become so entranced by reading romances of chivalry that he determines to become a knight errant and pursue bold adventures, accompanied by his squire, the cunning Sancho Panza. As they roam the world together, the aging Quixote's fancy leads them wildly astray.