Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Classics

In her daring first novel, the youngest Brontë sister drew upon her own experiences to tell the unvarnished truth about life as a governess. Like Agnes Grey, Anne Bronte was a young middle-class Victorian lady whose family fortunes had faltered. Like so many other unmarried women of the 19th century, Bronte accepted the only "respectable" employment available - and entered a world of hardship, humiliation, and loneliness.

The Lost Generation from Professor Michael Shelden evokes one of the most creative periods in American literature. Paris of the 1920s served as a base for such authors as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein. In these lectures, Professor Shelden details and provides fresh insight into the unending allure of the Lost Generation - and of the literary output that exerts a continuing influence nearly a century later.

Matthew Bramble, a gout-ridden misanthrope, travels Britain with his nephew, niece, spinster sister, and man-servant, the trusty Humphry Clinker. In poor health, Bramble sees the world as one of degeneracy and raucous overcrowding, and will not hesitate to let his companions know his feelings on the matter. Peopled with pimps, drunkards, decadents, and con-men, Humphrey Clinker displays Smollett's ferociously pessimistic view of mankind, and his belief that the luxury of 18th-century English existence was the enemy of sense and sobriety.

An authentic, gothic reimagining of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, told from the villain' s perspective, that takes listeners deep into the seedy side of Victorian London and explores the nature of personality and of the subconscious. Mr. Hyde is trapped in Dr. Jekyll' s surgical cabinet, counting the days until he will face capture and be forced to make the ultimate choice about survival. Over the course of four days, he thinks back on what brought him to this moment, and he finally has the chance to tell the story of his brief but marvelous life.

This classic novel has been thrice adapted for the screen by the BBC. Mary Smith relates the story of her time with middle-aged spinster sisters Miss Matty and Miss Deborah. Witty, poignant, and often ironic, Cranford is the tale of what these two women will do to remain respectable, proper, and kind with only moderate means.

When young Jamie Chase is kidnapped by his father and made the victim of a radical cult, his desperate mother, whose resources have run out, is aided by a fun-loving and hard-driving elf to get him back

Catherine Wynne's introduction reappraises the stories by looking at Conan Doyle's medical background and its influence on the creation of the famous detective.

When dragons rise from the earth, firefighters are humanity's last line of defense, in this wild near-future fantasy. Firefighter Cole Brannigan is on the verge of retirement after 30 years on the job, and a decade fighting dragons. But during his final fire call, he discovers he's immune to dragon smoke. It's such a rare power that he's immediately conscripted into the elite dragon-fighting force known as the Smoke Eaters. Retirement cancelled, Brannigan is re-assigned as a lowly rookie.

During the 1990s in the Pacific Northwest, a hobo vampire gang on drugs causes horrific chaos everywhere they go—from trashing supermarket breakrooms to crashing senior center pancake breakfasts. Amidst the danger one girl, who benefits (and suffers) from drug-induced ESP, searches desperately for her foster sister.

When her father leaves the church in a crisis of conscience, Margaret Hale is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the north of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of local mill workers and develops a passionate sense of social justice. This is intensified by her tempestuous relationship with the mill owner and self-made man John Thornton.

Rasselas and his companions escape the pleasures of the "happy valley" in order to make their "choice of life". By witnessing the misfortunes and miseries of others they come to understand the nature of happiness and value it more highly. Their travels and enquiries raise important practical and philosophical questions concerning many aspects of the human condition, including the business of a poet, the stability of reason, the immortality of the soul, and how to find contentment.

At the turn of the century, the short story form gained enormous popularity. Against the frozen Alaskan landscape of "To Build a Fire", a miner struggles to survive the splintering whiteness of sub-zero temperatures. "Isle of Voices" captures the Hawaii of old, where magic transports a young man to an island of powerful spirits. "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" pits a mongoose against a cobra in the steamy beauty of an Indian garden. Recorded Books’ award-winning narrators turn these stories into absorbing productions.

As war between Alden and Oridia intensifies, King Erik must defend his kingdom from treachery and enemies on all sides - but the greatest danger lurks closer to home. When the war began, Lady Alix Black played a minor role, scouting at the edge of the king's retinue in relative anonymity. Though she's once again facing an attacking Oridian force determined to destroy all she holds dear, she is now bodyguard to the king and wife to the prince. Still, she is unprepared for what the revival of the war will mean.

Of all those in the King of Alden’s retinue, the bloodbinders are the most prized. The magic they wield can forge invaluable weapons, ones that make soldiers like Lady Alix Black unerringly lethal. However, the bloodbinders’ powers can do so much more - and so much worse… A cunning and impetuous scout, Alix only wishes to serve quietly on the edges of the action. But when the king is betrayed by his own brother and left to die at the hands of attacking Oridian forces, she winds up single-handedly saving her sovereign.

Anthony Hope's swashbuckling classic tale of adventure and romance: Ruritania, a beautiful kingdom in the mountains between Germany and Austria, is in the midst of a power struggle. On one side is the alcoholic lay-about crown prince, Rudolf - popular with the upper class and army - and on the other is his half-brother, Michael, who has the love of the common people. The struggle reaches a new fervor at Rudolf's coronation, when Michael kidnaps his brother and takes him to the Castle of Zenda. Now the only thing in the way of Black Michael's plan is a confused distant cousin in England.

Stephen Mitchell's marvelously clear and vivid rendering recreates the robust masculine music of the original. It both hews closely to the Old English and captures its wild energy and vitality, not just as a deep "work of literature" but also as a rousing entertainment that can still stir our feelings and rivet our attention today, after more than a thousand years. This new translation - spare, sinuous, vigorous in its narration, and translucent in its poetry - makes a masterpiece accessible to everyone.

In a forgotten corner of western Kentucky lies a haunted forest referred to locally as "The Deadening", where vampire cults roam wild and time is immaterial. Our protagonist and his accomplice - the one and only Carver Canute - set out down the Old Spur Line in search of the legendary Kudzu House, where an old couple is purported to have been swallowed whole by a hungry vine.

Gork isn't like the other dragons at WarWings Military Academy. He has a gigantic heart, two-inch horns, and an occasional problem with fainting. His nickname is Weak Sauce, and his Will to Power ranking is Snacklicious - the lowest in his class. But he is determined not to let any of this hold him back as he embarks on the most important mission of his life: Tonight, on the eve of his high school graduation, he must ask a female dragon to be his queen. If she says yes, they'll go off to conquer a foreign planet together. If she says no, Gork becomes a slave.

Oroonoko, the grandson of an African king, is madly in love with Imoinda, the daughter of the king's general. When the king - who is also in love with Imoinda - catches wind of their affair, he sells Imoinda as a slave. This betrayal sets off a chain of events that carries unforeseen consequences for everybody involved. Aphra Behn's Oroonoko has been hailed as one of the first great English novels and remains a classic of historical fiction.

The Turn of the Screw is a fireside tale of evil and mystery. Filled with extraordinary drama, Henry James' story has been widely popular ever since its publication in 1898. It also inspired a film, a play, and an opera. A governess has been hired to care for two orphaned young children in their uncle's English country home. But soon after she meets the boy and his sister, the governess begins to see fearful apparitions.