Classics

The British Embassy in Bonn is up in arms. Her Majesty's financially troubled government is seeking admission to Europe's Common Market....

In a sleepy village in the Shire, a young hobbit is entrusted with an immense task. He must make a perilous journey across Middle-earth to the Cracks of Doom, there to destroy the Ruling Ring of Power - the only thing that prevents the Dark Lord Sauron’s evil dominion....

The Greek myths are amongst the greatest stories ever told, passed down through millennia and inspiring writers and artists as varied as Shakespeare, Michelangelo, James Joyce....

The company of the Ring is torn asunder. Frodo and Sam continue their journey alone down the great River Anduin - alone, that is, save for the mysterious creeping figure that follows wherever they go....

Audible is proud to present Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection, read by Stephen Fry, a lifelong fan of Doyle's detective fiction....

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely travelling further than the pantry of his hobbit-hole in Bag End....

The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one function: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness....

Read by Stephen Fry himself, Heroes harnesses the magic of ancient legends in an entertaining and modern retelling in Fry's iconic and captivating narration.... 

Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the '30s....

At the heart of Joseph Heller's best-selling novel, first published in 1961, is a satirical indictment of military madness and stupidity, and the desire of the ordinary man to survive it....

Big Brother is watching you.... 1984 is the year in which it happens. The world is divided into three superstates....

Audible Studios presents this brand new performance by Stephen Fry of some of his favourite Jeeves stories from P.G. Wodehouse, with an exclusive introduction....

Frodo and the Companions of the Ring have been beset by danger during their quest to prevent the Ruling Ring from falling into the hands of the Dark Lord....

The second Dune installment explores new developments on the planet Arrakis, with its intricate social order and strange, threatening environment....

A witty, moving philosophical novel, Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums is a journey of self-discovery through the lens of Zen Buddhist thought. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Ann Douglas....

A plane crashes on a desert island and the only survivors, a group of schoolboys, assembles on the beach and waits to be rescued....

The armies of the Dark Lord Sauron are massing as his evil shadow spreads ever wider. Men, Dwarves, Elves and Ents unite forces to do battle against the Dark....

Audible Studios presents the second volume of the best-selling PG Wodehouse collection. In this volume, Stephen Fry lends his voice to the Blandings stories.... 

The world has fallen into war. Ciri, the child of prophecy, has vanished....

Celie has grown up poor in rural Georgia, despised by the society around her and abused by her own family. She strives to protect her sister, Nettie, from a similar fate, and while Nettie escapes to a new life as a missionary in Africa....

An inn is a place to rest, a place to share stories, a place to find adventure, or a starting ground for quests and legends. It is in this world, at least. To Erin Solstice, an inn seems like a medieval relic from the past. But here she is, running from Goblins and trying to survive....

Somerset Maugham is one of the best-loved short story writers of the last 100 years....

Part One, The Fellowship of the Ring, introduces us to Frodo Baggins. With his uncle Bilbo having mysteriously disappeared, Frodo finds himself in possession of a simple gold ring that has great and evil power....

Shocking and controversial when it was first published, The Grapes of Wrath is Steinbeck's Pultizer Prize-winning epic of the Joad family, forced to travel west from Dust Bowl-era Oklahoma in search of the promised land of California....

During a quiet spell in June, Maigret, is called to investigate the disappearance of a reputable businessman....

Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped is at once a rollicking adventure story and an earnest political allegory. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction and notes by Donald McFarlan and a foreword by Alasdair Gray. Orphaned and penniless, David Balfour sets out to find his last living relative, miserly and reclusive Uncle Ebenezer. But Ebenezer is far from welcoming, and David narrowly escapes being murdered before he is kidnapped and imprisoned on a ship bound for the Carolinas. 

This is a collection of plays written by Jo and Meg March, often discussed and performed in the March family attic by the beloved Little Women as the Pickwick Players. Our cast returns as Jo, Meg, Amy, and Beth to perform every role with dramatic flair from damsels in distress to evil villains, and no shortage of mistaken identities and sword fights.

Tommo has been aboard a whaling ship for six grueling months when he decides, with his friend Toby, to escape and hide on a wild island. They are not alone. The island is home to a tribe called the Typees known for being cannibals. But when Tommo breaks his leg, they can no longer avoid the valley the Typees call home. They venture down into the tribe’s territory, but instead of violence, the Typees greet them happily with food and shelter. Tommo and Toby quickly become accustomed to life in the tribe and even prefer aspects of island life to their so-called “civilized” society.

Experiencing a story read out loud is one of the oldest forms of entertainment there is. Fireside Reading is a way to slow down, reconnect with the timeless wisdom of great books and rediscover the simple pleasure of being read to. Join Gildart Jackson in front of a cozy fire as he reads A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens to you and your family.

Multi award-winning narrator/comedienne Alison Larkin’s reading of Peter Rabbit and other Stories by Beatrix Potter will delight listeners of all ages. This charming collection is followed by an interview with Peter Rabbit himself, and, exclusively for Audible, a reading of Potter's favorite nonsense poem, "The Owl and the Pussycat" by Edward Lear.

Multi award-winning writer/narrator Alison Larkin brings the teenage writings of Jane Austen together in this delightful collection. Listeners will enjoy identifying where Jane Austen’s later comic creations came from as they listen to young Jane Austen gleefully lampooning the popular literature and culture of her time.

Twenty-seven-year-old Anne Elliot is well past the bloom of her youth. Having been persuaded by her friends and family to break off her happy engagement with the young naval officer Wentworth, whose station lies beneath her own, Anne is seemingly destined for spinsterhood. However, when Wentworth later reappears in Anne’s life, tension and regret are rife and it is unclear whether the two can move past their shared history, or whether some decisions can never be undone.

The Crux is the story of group of women who move from New England to Colorado in order to run a boardinghouse for men. One of these women, the young Vivian Lane, falls in love with a man who has both gonorrhea and syphilis. It then falls to Vivian, when she learns of his illnesses, to decide whether she should marry and have children with this man. She is torn between her own heart and the “duty” of motherhood, as one doctor in the novel puts it, to have children with a healthy father.

While it lived, the tamarind tree stood at the crossroads of a small village in Southern India. For more than fifty years it was a benevolent observer, offering shade without discrimination. It bore witness to laughter and tears, to tragedy and simple pleasures, and to the history of the village itself as it transformed from the old ways of bullock-led carts to a bustling community of social, political, economic, and ecological change.

The first time that Colonel Rupert Winter saw Cary Mercer was under circumstances calculated to fix the incident firmly in his memory. In the year 1903, home from the Philippines on furlough, and preparing to return to a task big enough to attract him in spite of its exile and hardships, he had visited the son of a friend at Harvard.

Emma is a novel about youthful hubris and romantic misunderstandings, written by Jane Austen. It is set in the fictional country village of Highbury and the surrounding estates of Hartfield, Randalls and Donwell Abbey, and involves the relationships among people from a small number of families. As in her other novels, Austen explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian-Regency England. Emma is a comedy of manners.

Metamorphosis is a novella written by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. One of Kafka's best-known works, Metamorphosis tells the story of salesman Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a huge insect and subsequently struggles to adjust to this new condition. In popular culture and adaptations of the novella, the insect is commonly depicted as a cockroach.

Set after the conclusion of World War I, Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Faulkner’s first novel explores the war’s emotional impact on weary veterans as they travel by train across the United States to their Georgia hometown. The condition of one soldier—scarred, blind, and nearly mute—inspires fellow travelers to see him home safely to a family that believes him dead—and a fiancée who has moved on.

The story centers on Sybylla Melvyn, a headstrong girl growing up in rural Australia whose family is plunged into debt by their alcoholic father. Young Sybylla's story follows her romance with suitor Harold Beecham, her forced servitude to one of her father's creditors and her attempts to become a famous writer.

The coffin-maker Yakov is shocked by his wife's illness, with whom he lived for 52 years. An understanding suddenly came to him that the woman had never seen love or affection from him for the entire time of family life. But only accusations and abuse. The husband, who fell into extreme stinginess, forbade her to drink tea, and the unfortunate woman was forced to drink empty boiling water. Her whole life was spent in work and utmost need in the tiny hut where Yakov stored, ready for sale, coffins.