Naxos AudioBooks complete classics

"Hard Times is perhaps the archetypal Dickens novel, full as it is with family difficulties, estrangement, rotten values and unhappiness. It was published in 1854 and it is the story of the family of Thomas Gradgrind, and occurs in the imaginary Coketown, an industrial city inspired by Preston. Gradgrind is a man obsessed with misguided 'Utilitarian' values that make him trust facts, statistics and practicality more than emotion and is based upon...

"Instead of choosing to wed a wealthy landowner and settle for a comfortable life, Dorothea Brooke decides to marry Edward Casaubon -- a dull scholar who is her senior by a few decades. Dorothea hopes the union will afford her with the opportunity to share in her husband's intellectual pursuits, but even her best efforts can't save the disastrous marriage. Meanwhile, idealistic doctor Tertius Lydgate has progressive ideas about the medical field,...

""Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." It's one of the most famous opening lines in literature, that of Virginia Woolf's beloved masterpiece of time, memory, and the city. In the wake of World War I and the 1918 flu pandemic, Clarissa Dalloway, elegant and vivacious, is preparing for a party and remembering those she once loved. In another part of London, Septimus Smith is suffering from shell- shock and on the brink of madness....

Eight years ago, Anne Elliot followed the advice of Lady Russell, her only true friend, and broke off her engagement to the dashing young naval officer Frederick Wentworth. When Anne and the now wealthy Captain Wentworth cross paths years later, it is clear that he has neither forgotten--nor forgiven--their past. Can true love survive heartbreak? Who should we listen to in matters of the heart? Filled with Jane Austen's trademark wit, Persuasion...

Tells the story of Paul Morel, a young artist growing into manhood in a British working-class community near the Nottingham coalfields. His mother Gertrude, unhappily married to Paul's hard-drinking father, devotes all her energies to her son. They develop a powerful and passionate relationship, but eventually tensions arise when Paul falls in love with a girl and seeks to escape his family ties. Torn between his desire for independence and his abiding...

Preposterously vain and yet endearing, Brigadier Gerard makes for a tremendously fun companion as he relives the adventures of his military career fighting in the Napoleonic campaigns. Crediting himself with unparalleled military prowess and irresistible powers of seduction, Gerard goes as far as to suggest that his absence from the Battle of Waterloo was the reason for Napoleon's defeat!

"The essential literary collection of H. P. Lovecraft's ten finest short stories, from the celebrated editor of the two-volume New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft. Devoured by the Lovecraftian community and general readers alike, Leslie S. Klinger's best-selling New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft, Volumes I and II were hailed as classics of the genre. Now, Klinger returns with the ideal annotated primer not only for Lovecraft devotees eager for a more portable...

When a man comes across a beautiful young woman climbing out of a window in a bid to escape, he finds the ideal opportunity to realize his own escape in this sparkling Regency romance with a decidedly Shakespearean twist.

When the redoubtable Sir Horace Stanton-Lacy is ordered to South America on business, he leaves his only daughter Sophy with his sister in Berkeley Square. Newly arrived from her tour of the Continent, Sophy discovers that her aunt's family is in desperate need of her talent for setting everything right: her uncle is of no use at all, the ruthlessly handsome cousin Charles has tyrannical tendencies that are being aggravated by his grim bluestocking...