Showing results by publisher "HarperAudio" in Classics

A Distant Episode contains the best of Paul Bowles's short stories, as selected by the author. An American cult figure, Bowles has fascinated such disparate talents as Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Truman Capote, William S. Burroughs, Gore Vidal, and Jay McInerney.

A performance of the tragi-comedy by the Royal Shakespeare Company. When a young woman is offered the choice of saving a man's life at the price of her own chastity, what should she do? The political and moral corruption of Vienna has driven Duke Vincentio into hiding while his deputy governor, Angelo, is left to revive the old discipline of civic authority. Angelo's first act is to imprison Claudio, a young nobleman who has gotten his betrothed, Juliet, with child.

Recounted as a dream, this is a fable about Mahaparbat, the Living Mountain; the indigenous valley dwellers who live and prosper in its shelter; the assault on the mountain for commercial benefit by the Anthropoi, humans whose sole aim is to reap the bounty of nature; and the disaster that unfolds as a result.

In this intense and brilliant book, Bowles focuses on Morocco, condensing experience, emotion, and the whole history of a people into a series of short, insightful vignettes. He distills for us the very essence of Moroccan culture. With extraordinary immediacy, he takes the listener on a journey through the Moroccan centuries, pausing at points along the way to create resonant images of the country, it's landscapes, and the beliefs and characteristics of its inhabitants.

A bold novel that reimagines two of the most legendary characters in American literature - Captain Ahab and Ishmael of Moby-Dick. At the end of a long journey, Captain Ahab returns to the mainland to confront the true author of the novel Moby-Dick, his former shipmate, Ishmael. For Ahab was not pulled into the ocean’s depths by a harpoon line, and the greatly exaggerated rumors of his untimely death have caused him grievous harm - after hearing about Ahab’s demise, his wife and child left Nantucket for New York, and now Ahab is on a desperate quest to find them.

This recently rediscovered and critically acclaimed 1937 novel tells the story of Janie Crawford, a long-legged, articulate, and fiercely independent African-American woman of the 1930s. Janie's quest for identity includes three marriages and a return to her roots. Despite her struggles, Janie never defines herself by regret, fear, or unrealistic dreams, and refuses to be anything but her own person.

Arriving at Princeton for her freshman year, Thea Slavin finds herself alone, a stranger in a strange land. Away from her family and her Eastern European homeland for the first time, she struggles to adapt to unfamiliar American ways and the challenges of college life - including a young man whose brooding good looks and murky past intrigue her. Drawn to the elusive Rhys and his equally handsome and mysterious brother Jake, she ventures into a sensual mythic underworld as irresistible as it is dangerous.

Kiss me, Kate, we will be married o'Sunday

After her father's funeral, Zoe moved to the big city with her mother to start over. But change always brings trials, and life in the city is not so easy. Money is tight, and Zoe's only escape, as has always been the case, is in her dreams - a world apart from her troubled real life where she can spend time with her closest companion: her lost brother, Valentine.

It’s hard to live happily ever after when you discover your demanding and controlling mother-in-law is literally a witch, determined to steal the magical powers you didn’t even know you had. Jane narrowly avoided Lynne Doran’s clutches when she escaped on her wedding day, and has been hiding out in New York City. But she can’t hide forever. When Jane learns of the one thing Lynne wants most, she sets out to provide it, hoping her good turn will persuade her mother-in-law to stop hunting her.

The Capulets and the Montagues have some deep and essential differences. Blood differences. Of course, the Capulets can escape their vampire fate, and the Montagues can try not to kill their undead enemies. But at the end of the day, their blood feud is unstoppable. So it's really quite a problem when Juliet, a vampire-to-be, and Romeo, the human who should be hunting her, fall desperately in love. What they don't realize is how deadly their love will turn out to be - or what it will mean for their afterlives....

Wrongfully imprisoned in a Mexican jail, Jess Galvan, an outlaw-with-a-conscience, accepts a devil's bargain: transport a sinister package across the border in twenty-four hours for the jail's mythical - and terrifying - bogeyman El Cucuy. If Jess can make it across alive and give the iron box to cult leader Aaron Seth, he will be free and able to regain custody of his estranged daughter.

The complete play in five acts.

Romeo and Juliet was Shakespeare's first great tragedy, a richly lyrical love story that has long been one of the author's most popular plays for performer and audience alike. Romeo and Juliet is a simple but dramatic cautionary tale about the blindness that both love and hate can engender. As performed by Claire Bloom and Albert Finney, this lively production captures the youthful exuberance and poetic passion that characterize all of Shakespeare's early work.

The complete play in five acts.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of Shakespeare's best early works: an airy, romantic romp in the woods among bumbling rustics, temporarily star-crossed lovers, and the charming fairies who bewitch them all. Drawing on a popular English folk legend and annual, Shakespeare weaves a chaotic and comical tale of misunderstanding, mischief, and magic in which, like the dream-state it mimics, no harm is permanent and all is pleasantly resolved by the play's end.

I am a man more sinned against than sinning.

One of Shakespeare's final works, Cymbeline uses virtuoso theatrical and poetic means to dramatize a story of a marriage endangered by mistrust and painfully rebuilt, in a context of international conflict. This edition emphasizes the play's theatrical impact and pays close attention to its complex, evocative language.

In Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare created one of the greatest verbal sparring matches in all of literature, echoes of which can be heard in the sophisticated dialogue of such late masters as George Bernard Shaw and Noel Coward. Throughout the play, would-be lovers Beatrice and Benedick circle each other warily, until their scathing witticisms and sly innuendoes reach a feverish intensity that befits the passionate longing they both vainly seek to deny.

In Julius Caesar, there are no heroes, only heroic words spoken by men of ambition, arrogance, and jealousy. Yet Julius Caesar is also one of Shakespeare's most popular and polished works, a seamless blend of highly-stylized oratory and penetrating soliloquies that lays bare the innermost workings of the human mind.