British Classics

Jane Austen's most famous novel, Pride and Prejudice, is brought to sparkling life in this new unabridged recording by AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator Alison Larkin. A witty and always original voice, Alison Larkin is the perfect vessel to bring Jane Austen's classically satirical second novel to a new audience. This fresh and hugely entertaining listen from 'the English American' joined with Austen's deft satire, results in pure, boundless fun.

The Arrangements is a short story originally published for The New York Times Book Review, which commissioned Adichie to “write anything about this election you like.” The story focuses on Melania Trump and is a homage to Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway...

*INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER* *NOW A LIMITED SERIES ON MASTERPIECE PBS* Meet Van Der Valk, Amsterdam’s best detective, in Nicolas Freeling’s classic novel A woman, Elsa, is brutally murdered in her Amsterdam apartment. Her ex-lover, Martin, is seen outside the building around the time of the...

At the Central Criminal Court, an eager crowd awaits the trial of Victoria Lamartine, an active participant in the Resistance during the war. She is now employed at the Family Hotel in Soho, where Major Eric Thoseby has been found murdered. Thoseby is believed to have fathered Lamartine's child, and the prosecution insist that his death is revenge for his abandonment of Lamartine and her arrest by the Gestapo. A last-minute change in Lamartine's defence counsel grants solicitor Nap Rumbold just eight days to prove her innocence.

Discover more about the invention, development and future of the automobile in 10 captivating essays for those with a need for speed! Cars have shaped our world, giving us the freedom to travel and changing the pace of life as we know it. But how were cars created? How does fuel get us from A to...

Bal Gangadhar Tilak was considered to be the biggest threat to the British hegemony.He was prosecuted thrice for sedition.Was termed ‘the father of Indian unrest.’He was convicted for his fiery writings in his nationalist daily Kesari.Tilak, the first definitive biography of the man who...

With his longtime girlfriend, Ellie, detective Peter Pascoe is off to Thornton Lacey for an exciting weekend reunion with a few of his college friends. However, upon arrival, he finds no cause for celebration. Instead, there's been a triple homicide, and one of his friends-the chief suspect-is missing.

A Man Could Stand Up—is the third of four installments in Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End tetralogy, which follows Christopher Tietjens, a wealthy British landowner and the last British Tory; his unfaithful wife, Sylvia; and his mistress, Valentine Wannop. Opening on Armistice Day (November 11, 1918), A Man Could Stand Up—serves as the climax of the series. Highlighting the tension between traditional values and a rapidly changing social order, the novel details Christopher and Valentine's trials as the post-war world takes shape around them.

If Alison Girling, former principal of England's Holm Coultram College, died in an avalanche in Austria, why has her skeleton been unearthed on campus? While no love is lost between conservative detective Andrew Dalziel and the entirety of Liberal Arts, his attention to the grim discovery must be paid. But when he and Peter Pascoe scour the ivory tower for answers, they discover that the shady faculty and creepy student body have more to bury than just one corpse. Try two-and counting.

Dickens's classic morality tale of a starving orphan caught between opposing forces of good and evil is a powerful indictment of Victorian England's Poor Laws. Filled with dark humor and an unforgettable cast of characters Oliver Twist, Fagin, Nancy, Bill Sykes, and the Artful Dodger, to name a...

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and The Night Before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore are as different as England and America themselves, and yet almost two centuries later these two iconic tales remain an important part of Christmas tradition all over the world. Now they are brought together in this very special holiday recording.

Emma, by Jane Austen, is a novel about youthful hubris and the perils of misconstrued romance. The story takes place in the fictional village of Highbury and the surrounding estates of Hartfield, Randalls, and Donwell Abbey and involves the relationships among individuals in those locations consisting of "3 or 4 families in a country village". The novel was first published in December 1815 while the author was alive, with its title page listing a publication date of 1816.

“[A] meticulously researched debut novel…In a word? Juicy.” —O, The Oprah Magazine The scandalous historical love affair between Lydia Robinson and Branwell Brontë, brother to novelists Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, gives voice to the woman who allegedly brought down one of literature’s...

Six went in…only one came out. The Standedge Tunnel, the longest canal tunnel in England, has become one of the rural village of Marsden’s main tourist attractions. Now it’s also a crime scene. Six students went into the tunnel on a private boat. Two and a half hours later, the boat...

Algernon Blackwood, a journalist and broadcast narrator, was one of the most prolific writers of ghost stories in the history of the genre. The title story, "The Touch of Pan", explores the lingering presence of myth in everyday life. In "The Glamour of the Snow", Blackwood winds a tale about a man's infatuation with a supernatural winter beauty. In "The Attic", the ghost of an usurer haunts the old Chateaux and, on the anniversary of a young boy's death, the boy's cat brings the family together. "The Willows" follows two campers who are on a canoe trip down the Danube.

The epic story of the Congo-Océan railroad and the human costs and contradictions of modern empire. The Congo-Océan railroad stretches across the Republic of Congo from Brazzaville to the Atlantic port of Pointe-Noir. It was completed in 1934, when Equatorial Africa was a French colony, and it...

"This intellectual biography of Tagore, perhaps the first of its kind, portrays him as a man who was deeply skeptical, self-critical, tormented by conflicts in his inner life , aware of the historical significance of his times and continually interacted with adversaries and friends across the...

Originally released as vinyl records, these expertly abridged and remastered stories are now available to download for the first time. What was it like to love, live, and rebel in Britain during the 19th and 20th centuries? These beloved British novels offer three dramatically different but universally recognisable experiences. Read by three luminaries of the stage and screen: Dame Judi Dench, Sir Ian McKellen, and Sir John Gielgud.

After his father’s untimely death, Nicholas Nickleby is charged with supporting his mother and sister as he finds his way in the world. Broke, Nickleby goes to his maleficent uncle Ralph for help. The ruthless and resentful businessman appeases his nephew with a thankless position at a grim orphans’ home. Nickleby is swiftly conspired against, and the young man is forced to leave his family and London behind. Accompanied by colorful eccentrics and a rogues’ gallery of villains, Nickleby is tested at every turn on his journey home and to self-discovery.

Napoleon has England on edge. For the cunning and conniving Becky Sharp, it’s an opportunity to take advantage of the chaos and improve her lowly station. Her friend Amelia Sedley, a blue-blood pawn, affords Becky entrée into the moneyed class. As the guileless Amelia pines for a rakish soldier, the ruthless Becky climbs upward, setting the stage for a domestic battlefield of greed, ambition, deception, and dizzying reversals of love and fortune.