Showing results by publisher "Brilliance Audio" in Classics

When mariner Robinson Crusoe sails from London to the African coast to Brazil, his unpredictable voyage takes a catastrophic course. The lone survivor of a shipwreck, he washes ashore on an Atlantic island. Resourceful and determined to contend with providence and nature, he finds his sovereignty empowering. Through the years he builds a civilization as a solitary man. Then he discovers a stranger’s footprint in the sand.

In the Gothic towers of the cathedral of Notre-Dame - which has been subjected to decades of degradation and neglect - lives its bell ringer, Quasimodo. Persecuted as wicked and pilloried for his broken appearance, he’s shown kindness only by the alluring Esmeralda, an outsider herself, who fills Quasimodo’s heart with a hope and devotion beyond reason. When she falls victim to the lies of the vengeful and lustful Archdeacon Claude Frollo, only Quasimodo can save her from the gallows. In sanctuary, looming high above Paris, their fates entwine.

Obsessed with the secret of creation, Swiss scientist Dr. Victor Frankenstein cobbles together a body he's determined to bring to life. And one fateful night, he does. When the creature opens his eyes, the doctor is repulsed: his vision of perfection is, in fact, a hideous monster. Dr. Frankenstein abandons his creation, but the monster won't be ignored, setting in motion a chain of violence and terror that shadows Victor to his death.

Mary Madison was a child of unspeakable horrors, a young woman society wanted to forget. Now a divine power has set Mary free to bring life-changing hope and love to battered and abused women living in the shadow of the nation's capital....An inspirational story of tragedy and redemption. Three women find the power of love through God.

The legend of King Arthur - founder of Camelot and wielder of Excalibur - was born of disputed historical fact, folktales, and romantic literary invention. Compiled by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the twelfth century and edited by Sir James Knowles in the nineteenth, these stories begin with Merlin’s prophecies of Arthur’s birth. We follow the king from the fellowship of the Round Table to the quest for the Holy Grail and into war with Sir Lancelot of the Lake. Knowles’s 1862 edition, dedicated to Alfred Tennyson, returned Arthur to cultural prominence....

Young midwesterner Amory Blaine is certain he is destined for greatness. On his quest, he enrolls in Princeton, finds an ephemeral first love, fulfills his duty in war, and becomes enraptured by debutante Rosalind Connage, who defines all that Amory has desired and everything he could lose. As conventions, romance, and money fail him, Amory's restless pursuit of enlightenment takes him down a dark path, but closer to understanding himself and his place in the world.

The orphaned Jane Eyre has emerged a fiercely independent young woman. As governess at Thornfield Hall, she's found her first real home - though it stands in the shadow of the estate's master, Mr. Rochester, and its haunted halls ring with maniacal laughter. For even the grandest houses have secrets. As much a story about defying convention as it is about coming-of-age, Jane Eyre remains one of the most beloved novels in the English language.

A sixteenth-century cryptogram spurs modern geologist Otto Liedenbrock to embark on the most remarkable human quest ever taken. With his nephew and guide, he leads the descent from a dormant Icelandic volcano into the unexplored realm beneath their feet. There, a vast subterranean ocean, prehistoric creatures, and natural phenomena are but a few of the wonders hidden from all but the boldest eyes.

"The silent one in the west has awakened." A tantalizing message reignites Kragan's centuries-old fury to find and exterminate the unwitting young adversary prophesied to destroy him. One step ahead of her pursuer, Lorness Carol, a warlord's daughter and magic wielder, has led her people to a new stronghold in a verdant valley. Here, she's been reunited with Blade, the assassin she has loved since childhood. But her spell book holds the secrets to powers she never imagined - powers that are not only expanding her abilities but challenging her sanity.

For more than two centuries, the land of Albion has been ruled by the supposedly benevolent Watchmaker, who imposes precision on every aspect of life. Young Owen Hardy from the village of Barrel Arbor dreams of seeing the big city and the breathtaking Clockwork Angels that dispense wisdom to the people, maybe even catching a glimpse of the Watchmaker himself. He watches the steamliners drift by, powered by alchemical energy, as they head toward Crown City....

When the narrator of Swann's Way dips a petite madeleine into hot tea, the act transports him to his childhood in the French town of Combray. Out of his Pandora's box of reflections comes a memory of an old family friend, Swann - a man who was long ago undone by romantic desire and cruel reality. In this reverie lie the insights the author seeks about his own life and ageless truths about the ephemeral nature of emotions, places, and, ultimately, love.

There’s only one way for Professor George Edward Challenger to prove that dinosaurs still roam the earth. He invites skeptical journalist Edward Malone to accompany him and a group of adventurers to see the creatures with his own eyes. But when they arrive at the fantastic volcanic plateau in the Amazon where time stands still, their expedition quickly becomes one of survival. With its cliff-hanging escapes, rousing humor, and nailbiting suspense, The Lost World is a pioneering work of fantasy-adventure that paved the way for every thrill ride to follow.

Inspired by the mythic house of Thebes, Sophocles’s defining Greek tragedies follow the fates that befall three doomed generations.

After ten years of meditative solitude, the prophet Zarathustra descends from his mountain cave to preach the power of the Superman - a human divinity emancipated from the construct of God. The Superman is free to create his or her own moralities, values, notions of good and evil, and purpose in life. Although people of the town are confounded, Zarathustra resolves to persuade the herd by illuminating the heights to which they can ascend by ignoring promises of otherworldly fulfillment.

The 1925 New York edition of Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time trails readers through the years before, during, and after World War I. The collection’s first two stories, “Indian Camp” and “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife,” introduce Hemingway’s semiautobiographical character Nick Adams as a child. In total, seven stories portray the young man’s coming of age. All fourteen, including interspersed vignettes, embody the themes that Hemingway would return to throughout his career: alienation, grief, loss, and separation, as well as the regenerative powers of nature.

In the interlocking Tales of the Dying Earth Vance explores the world at the end of time when sun is guttering. Light itself is different and Vance’s landscapes —described in language that is lyrical, seductive, and partly self-invented —are wild and surreal, full of opportunity and danger. On the Dying Earth, the rules of physics as we know them have been amended and replaced by magic. The laws of evolution have spun out creatures that are humanoid, hybrid, and often terrifying.

Edgar Allan Poe elevated the gothic story, developed the unreliable narrator, recast psychological terror, and reveled in both the horror and the supernal beauty of death. From Poe's rich, unrivaled imagination comes a collection of his most masterful works, including "The Black Cat", "The Fall of the House of Usher", and, of course, "The Tell-Tale Heart". Each story explores morbid themes of grief, greed, fear, and guilt, and together they embody Poe's grotesque obsessions...even the dread of being buried alive.

The vengeful King Schahriar agrees to stave off the execution of Queen Scheherazade until she finishes a particularly compelling story. Her plan? Bleed one tale into another. Through fanciful histories, romances, tragedies, comedies, poems, riddles, and songs, Scheherazade prolongs her life by holding the king’s rapt attention. With origins in Persian and Eastern Indian folklore, the stories of The Arabian Nights have been reworked, reshaped, revised, collected, and supplemented throughout the centuries by various authors and scholars.

In the wealthy and vain hedonist Dorian Gray, London painter Basil Hallward has found his muse. Only when the portrait of Dorian begins to age, while the man himself remains untouched by time, do they realize they may have made a deal with the devil. Oscar Wilde’s only novel takes a witty, philosophical, and harrowing look at our obsession with youth and the price we pay for it.

In this classic American adventure, Jack London explores the laws of civilization and wilderness - and the pull of instinct - through the eyes of Buck, a half Saint Bernard, half Scottish shepherd. London drew on his own experiences as a prospector in the Canadian wilderness, as well as the philosophies of Charles Darwin and Friedrich Nietzsche, for this enduring tale of survival.