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The Heptameron
- Narrated by: Cate Barratt, Linda Barrans, John Burlinson, Susan Iannucci, Jeff Moon, Kendra Murray, Graham Scott, Mark Crowle-Groves, Denis Daly, Grace Keller Scotch, Sara Morsey
- Length: 17 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Anthologies & Short Stories
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The Book of Margery Kempe
- By: Margery Kempe
- Narrated by: Lucy Scott
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Book of Margery Kempe is the extraordinary account of a medieval wife, mother, and mystic from Norfolk. Having married in c. 1393, given birth to 14 children, and pursued unsuccessful ventures in brewing and milling, Kempe made a vow of chastity and embarked on a life of prayer, penance, and pilgrimage.
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Emma [Naxos Edition]
- By: Jane Austen
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 16 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of Jane Austen's most popular novels. Arrogant, self-willed, and egotistical, Emma is her most unusual heroine.
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A long journey to an expected ending
- By B. Morrison on 28-01-2019
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Macbeth
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: James Marsters, Joanne Whalley, Josh Cooke, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 59 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Infamously known as the cursed Scottish play, Macbeth is perhaps Shakespeare’s darkest tragedy. When General Macbeth is foretold by three witches that he will one day be King of Scotland, Lady Macbeth convinces him to get rid of anyone who could stand in his way – including committing regicide. As Macbeth ascends to the throne through bloody murder, he becomes a tyrant consumed by fear and paranoia.
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Good performance marred by accents.
- By BRYAN L. on 30-05-2015
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Ulysses
- Penguin Classics
- By: James Joyce
- Narrated by: Patrick Gibson
- Length: 32 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Following the events of one single day in Dublin, the 16th June 1904, and what happens to the characters Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom and his wife, Molly, Ulysses is a monument to the human condition. It has survived censorship, controversy and legal action and even been deemed blasphemous but remains an undisputed modernist classic: ceaselessly inventive, garrulous, funny, sorrowful, vulgar, lyrical and ultimately redemptive. It confirms Joyce's belief that literature 'is the eternal affirmation of the spirit of man'.
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Perfect Voice for this Epic Work of Literature
- By Simon Rashleigh on 13-12-2020
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Metamorphoses
- Penguin Classics
- By: Ovid, David Raeburn - translator
- Narrated by: Martin Jarvis, John Sackville, Maya Saroya, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ovid's sensuous and witty poetry brings together a dazzling array of mythological tales, ingeniously linked by the idea of transformation - often as a result of love or lust - where men and women find themselves magically changed into new and sometimes extraordinary beings. Beginning with the creation of the world and ending with the deification of Augustus, Ovid interweaves many of the best-known myths and legends of Ancient Greece and Rome, including Daedalus and Icarus, Pyramus and Thisbe, Pygmalion, Perseus and Andromeda, and the fall of Troy.
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The Monk
- By: Matthew Lewis
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton, Georgina Sutton
- Length: 14 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Father Ambrosio, the most pious and venerated monk in all of Madrid, is held as a paragon of virtue. But after 30 years of study and prayer, evil thoughts begin to permeate his mind. As two plots cleverly converge, torture, murder, incest, rape, poison, and magic prevail, sustained by an elegance in the writing of the 19-year-old Matthew Lewis.
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wonderful presentation, but 1.25x recommended
- By stuart prime on 02-07-2022
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The Book of Margery Kempe
- By: Margery Kempe
- Narrated by: Lucy Scott
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Book of Margery Kempe is the extraordinary account of a medieval wife, mother, and mystic from Norfolk. Having married in c. 1393, given birth to 14 children, and pursued unsuccessful ventures in brewing and milling, Kempe made a vow of chastity and embarked on a life of prayer, penance, and pilgrimage.
-
Emma [Naxos Edition]
- By: Jane Austen
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 16 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of Jane Austen's most popular novels. Arrogant, self-willed, and egotistical, Emma is her most unusual heroine.
-
-
A long journey to an expected ending
- By B. Morrison on 28-01-2019
-
Macbeth
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: James Marsters, Joanne Whalley, Josh Cooke, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 59 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Infamously known as the cursed Scottish play, Macbeth is perhaps Shakespeare’s darkest tragedy. When General Macbeth is foretold by three witches that he will one day be King of Scotland, Lady Macbeth convinces him to get rid of anyone who could stand in his way – including committing regicide. As Macbeth ascends to the throne through bloody murder, he becomes a tyrant consumed by fear and paranoia.
-
-
Good performance marred by accents.
- By BRYAN L. on 30-05-2015
-
Ulysses
- Penguin Classics
- By: James Joyce
- Narrated by: Patrick Gibson
- Length: 32 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Following the events of one single day in Dublin, the 16th June 1904, and what happens to the characters Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom and his wife, Molly, Ulysses is a monument to the human condition. It has survived censorship, controversy and legal action and even been deemed blasphemous but remains an undisputed modernist classic: ceaselessly inventive, garrulous, funny, sorrowful, vulgar, lyrical and ultimately redemptive. It confirms Joyce's belief that literature 'is the eternal affirmation of the spirit of man'.
-
-
Perfect Voice for this Epic Work of Literature
- By Simon Rashleigh on 13-12-2020
-
Metamorphoses
- Penguin Classics
- By: Ovid, David Raeburn - translator
- Narrated by: Martin Jarvis, John Sackville, Maya Saroya, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ovid's sensuous and witty poetry brings together a dazzling array of mythological tales, ingeniously linked by the idea of transformation - often as a result of love or lust - where men and women find themselves magically changed into new and sometimes extraordinary beings. Beginning with the creation of the world and ending with the deification of Augustus, Ovid interweaves many of the best-known myths and legends of Ancient Greece and Rome, including Daedalus and Icarus, Pyramus and Thisbe, Pygmalion, Perseus and Andromeda, and the fall of Troy.
-
The Monk
- By: Matthew Lewis
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton, Georgina Sutton
- Length: 14 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Father Ambrosio, the most pious and venerated monk in all of Madrid, is held as a paragon of virtue. But after 30 years of study and prayer, evil thoughts begin to permeate his mind. As two plots cleverly converge, torture, murder, incest, rape, poison, and magic prevail, sustained by an elegance in the writing of the 19-year-old Matthew Lewis.
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wonderful presentation, but 1.25x recommended
- By stuart prime on 02-07-2022
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Dangerous Liaisons
- By: Pierre-Ambroise-François Choderlos de Laclos
- Narrated by: Gabriel Woolf
- Length: 15 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The story, composed entirely of letters written by the various characters to each other, tells of the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, two rivals who use sex as a weapon to humiliate and degrade others, uncaring of those who face social ruin or whose hearts are broken. It depicts a decadent and corrupt aristocracy exposing the perversions of the so-called Ancien Regime. The relevance of this grew due to the ensuing the French Revolution.
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Inferno: From The Divine Comedy
- By: Dante Alighieri, Benedict Flynn - translator
- Narrated by: Heathcote Williams
- Length: 4 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
"Abandon all hope you who enter here." ( "Lasciate ogne speranza voi ch’intrate.") Dante’s Hell is one of the most remarkable visions in Western literature. An allegory for his and future ages, it is, at the same time, an account of terrifying realism. Passing under a lintel emblazoned with these frightening words, the poet is led down into the depths by Virgil and shown those doomed to suffer eternal torment for vices exhibited and sins committed on earth.
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Sorry reviewers I just put my review in Purgatory
- By Jan on 17-06-2017
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The Captive Mind
- By: Czeslaw Milosz, Jane Zielonko - translator, Claire Bloom - director
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The best-known prose work by the winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature examines the moral and intellectual conflicts faced by men and women living under totalitarianism of the left or right. Written in the early 1950s, when Eastern Europe was in the grip of Stalinism and many Western intellectuals placed their hopes in the new order of the East, this classic work reveals in fascinating detail the often beguiling allure of totalitarian rule to people of all political beliefs and its frightening effects on the minds of those who embrace it.
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Hard Work
- By Choppy on 09-05-2020
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Notes from Underground (Vintage Classics)
- By: Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Narrated by: Peter Batchelor
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Dostoevsky’s most revolutionary novel Notes from Underground marks the dividing line between 19th- and 20th-century fiction and between the visions of self each century embodied. One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence.
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Lapvona
- By: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Narrated by: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the land of Lapvona, the lord of the land Villiam is cheating the local villagers of their food, their water, their livelihoods. Grotesque and ridiculous, he marries the pregnant and tongueless ex-nun Agata, whom he believes will make him God, and his son will be the second Christ.
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Grotesque, ugly and nauseating
- By Anonymous User on 19-07-2022
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The Golden Ass
- By: Apuleius, E. J. Kenney - translator
- Narrated by: David Timson
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In this ancient picaresque adventure, Lucius, an insatiably curious young man, finds himself transformed into a donkey after his fascination with black magic and witchcraft goes awry. While trapped in his new body, he becomes the property of thieves, farmers, cooks, soldiers and priests, and observes the hypocrisy and ineptitude of Imperial Roman society.
Publisher's Summary
Queen Marguerite de Navarre (April 11, 1491-December 21, 1549) was one of the most powerful women of her age, having helped to negotiate the Treaty of Cambrai, known as the Ladies' Peace. She was the wife of both Charles IV, duke of Alençon, and Henry II of Navarre, and the grandmother of King Henry IV of France.
Her masterpiece, The Heptameron, is a collection of some 72 stories told by five gentlemen and five ladies who find themselves stranded in an abbey. Proposed as an edifying way of passing the time while a bridge is being repaired, the tale-telling - as well as the conversations that follow each story - quickly becomes a battle of wits between the sexes, with tales concerning illicit lovers, romantic conquests, lecherous monks, manly honor (and their opposite), and women's virtue (and their opposite). The stories include intimate details of adultery, flattery, betrayal, rape, and war, and their candor may startle even 21st-century listeners.
This is a full-cast production, narrated by Cate Barratt and featuring the voices of Linda Barrans, John Burlinson, Mark Crowle-Groves, Denis Daly, Susan Iannucci, Grace Keller Scotch, Jeff Moon, Sara Morsey, Kendra Murray, and Graham Scott.
Audio edited by John Burlinson.
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