Great American Classics

Ten superbly narrated stories that help explain America by America's best writers.

To listen to this audiobook is to enter the perilous, thrilling world of Billy Bathgate, the brazen boy who is accepted into the inner circle of the notorious Dutch Schultz gang. Like an urban Tom Sawyer, Billy takes us along on his fateful adventures as he becomes good-luck charm, apprentice...

“The most convincing portrait I know of contemporary America . . . a great American novel.”— James Atlas, The Atlantic Monthly From acclaimed author Russell Banks, a masterful novel of hope lost and gained—a gripping, indelible story of fragile lives uprooted and transformed by injustice...

Written in 1923 and originally published in France, The Great American Novel examines the impossibility of writing such work in America. Williams not only writes the novel with poetic satire and pathos but allows us into his writing process, as he strives to define a young America at the end of a World War and the beginning of the “Roaring ‘20s”.

A collection of classic American short stories, including 'The Old Man's Bride' by Timothy Shay Arthur (read by Van Johnson), 'The Virginian' by Owen Wister (William Holden), 'The Turn of the Screw' by Henry James (Ronald Colman and Edna Best) and 'The Man That Corrupted Handleyburg' by Mark Twain (Frank Lovejoy).

In honor of Sinatra's 100th birthday, Pete Hamill's classic tribute returns with a new introduction by the author. In this unique homage to an American icon, journalist and award-winning author Pete Hamill evokes the essence of Sinatra--examining his art and his legend from the inside, as only a...

The Great Gatsby takes us to New York in the 1920s, where jazz can be heard everywhere, underground alcohol trade flourishes, and the mafia rules the city. It is a time of great crisis and equally great profits. A time when it was easiest to become somebody in a short period after previously being nobody. Such a person was Jay Gatsby, dreaming of great wealth and power. To fulfill these dreams, he gets involved in the gears of the criminal underworld and high finance.

On an unexpected road trip, three estranged siblings uncover a startling family secret and larger truths about being Asian American in a post-COVID world—from the author of the “dazzling and devastating” (Chris Whitaker, New York Times bestselling author) thriller Complicit. The Chu...

Two older men are set to oppose each other for sharing a similar interest in business. Once a pie is mashed into the head of one, and a bit of a 'raslin' match is concluded, the elderly men set about making up while planning the largest business in the nation. If their plan works it would change America, but would their wives approve? Will the men even be bold enough to share their idea with their brides?

Enriched Classics offer readers accessible editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and commentary. Each book includes educational tools alongside the text, enabling students and readers alike to gain a deeper and more developed understanding of the writer and their work...

A beautiful retelling of The Great Gatsby from the perspective of an often forgotten, yet indispensable, character—Myrtle Wilson, Tom Buchanan's mistress. Perfect for fans of Julia and The Chosen and the Beautiful. It is 1922. Myrtle Wilson lives a lonely, desolate existence above her...

Penguin Classics presents Henry James' Washington Square, adapted for audio and available as a digital download as part of the Penguin English Library series. Read by William Hope. "Why, you must take me or leave me ... You can't please your father and me both; you must choose between us" When...

A revelatory history of American division through the prism of two ships, whose widespread use to define that division has been lost to memory despite their enduring legacy In the bitterly polarized decades leading up to the American Civil War, it was commonplace to argue that America’s strife...

For readers of The Sum of Us and South to America, an essential new look at the roots of American inequality—and the seeds of its transformation Once the powerhouse of a fledgling country’s economy, the Mississippi Delta has been consigned to a narrative of destitution. It is often faulted...

INCLUDES AN EXCLUSIVE ARCHIVED RECORDING WITH PATRICK HEMINGWAY! An intimate and illuminating glimpse at Ernest Hemingway as a father, revealed through a selection of letters he and his son Patrick exchanged over the span of twenty years. In the public imagination, Ernest Hemingway looms larger...

An acclaimed historian narrates the stories of newly emancipated children who were re-enslaved by white masters through apprenticeships and their parents fights to free them While the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, white southerners established a system of apprenticeship after the Civil...

Twelve-year-old Aaron Broom is protecting his father’s car from repossession when he witnesses a jewelry store robbery gone wrong. To Aaron’s shock, his father, a struggling salesman in the wrong place at the wrong time, is fingered as the prime suspect in the murder. Aaron—precocious...

Abbot's Ghost Maurice Traherne is wrongly accused of fraud and gambling and must play a careful hand if he is to win his love, Octavia, from the grasp of other, less honorable men and retain the trust of those who had faith in him. Traherne is temporarily crippled saving the life of his...

A German advocate of the Kaiser discovers he is a facial/physical match for young Englishman Everard Dominey, who is near death after harrowing experiences in Africa. The remarkable doppelgänger resemblance leads Major-General Baron Leopold Von Ragastein to infiltrate the UK in perfect disguise. He wants to lead his country’s efforts as Europe is racing toward war. Part of the plan is to murder Dominey and have the Baron take his place in English society.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Women, a historical novel about three women’s lives on a California island On a tiny, desolate, windswept island off the coast of Southern California, two families, one in the 1880s and one in the 1930s, come to start new lives and pursue...