Great Classics

Awful, rich people - and the folks who want to be just like them. Drawing freely from the real people and actual events of its setting in 1920s Long Island (with literary license, of course), The Great Gatsby looks at the acquisition of the American Dream of wealth, power, and prestige, and what the costs are to those who realize that dream. And if that sounds a bit too highbrow for you, there are speakeasies, a broken nose, wild parties, and a bit of rough and tumble as well.

Nick Carraway is expecting a normal life. He has a steady, if boring, job and a modest home. He even has some family nearby. But there's one thing he didn't plan for - his neighbor, the mysterious Jay Gatsby. Gatsby hosts lavish parties, while rumors about his sordid past fill the air. After attending an infamous Gatsby bash, Nick is pulled into love triangles, destructive wealth, secrets, and far too much champagne. Join Nick on a journey through art deco decay.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is more than one of America's most-read, taught, and debated novels. Gatsby represents a paradigm shift in the novel form, a deep dive into the intimacies of the dark and selfish aspects of human nature. The novel is an over-the-top display of the Jazz Age as seen through the eyes of a staid and - by his own account - honest Midwestern man, Nick Carraway.

Three professional narrators, Mike Vendetti, Kathy Verduin, and Stephen Jay Cohen, lend their voices to what is considered by many to be one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's greatest novels, The Great Gatsby. Travel back with them to the Jazz Age, where the wealthy and entitled collide with pretenders and common citizens.

Often described as the great American novel, The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece of the Jazz Age - has become one of the most beloved and revered books of the 20th century. Narrated by the enigmatic Nick Carraway, the story takes place in the well-to-do section of Long Island, New York, where socialites and millionaires cavort about on their yachts and hydroplanes, oblivious to the day-to-day drudgery of the working-class drones they motor past each day.

Jay Gatsby is a millionaire who throws extravagant parties that attract famous celebrities, but no one really knows him - no one except for his neighbor, Nick Carraway. Often touted as a Great American Novel, The Great Gatsby is Nick's account of one summer spent with his wealthy friend and Nick's front-row seat to Gatsby's wealth, his dreams, and his impossible quest for love with the enigmatic Daisy Buchanan.

Considered one of the greatest American novels ever written, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald follows a cast of characters living in the fictional towns of West Egg and East Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. The story of the book primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion and obsession to reunite with his ex-lover, the beautiful former debutante Daisy Buchanan. Midwesterner Nick Carraway is lured into the lavish world of his neighbor, Gatsby.

The Great Gatsby, the 1925 novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, follows a cast of characters on Long Island in the summer of 1922. It is considered a classic of the Jazz Age or Roaring Twenties. The story is told by Nick Carraway, a Yale University graduate from the Midwest who has moved to New York to pursue a stock-market career. Recounting the events of a summer he spent on Long Island, his narrative emerges as a series of flashbacks.

Four years after the Great War, America is enjoying an economic boom. Enigmatic veteran Jay Gatsby, who's risen from being nobody from nowhere to self-made millionaire, is along for the ride. Upwardly mobile, he reaches for status among the "old money" on Long Island - and for all that it promises across the bay, namely Daisy, the lost love of his youth, who has been married for five years to Gatsby's contemptible rival, Tom Buchanan. With all his wealth and charmed aspirations to restore the past, Gatsby is certain he can win her back.

This great American novel describes the lavish lifestyle, along with the cruelty and ugliness, of Long Island society during the Jazz Age. Told through the eyes of Nick Carraway, the book follows events surrounding Jay Gatsby, who, despite his enormous wealth, longs desperately for those things that money can't buy.

Seventeen of Twain's best-loved and funniest shorter works, including "The Jumping Frog of Calavarous County", "The Story of Old Ram", "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses", "Tom Quartz", and "The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut". Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri. He grew up in the Mississippi River town of Hannibal. Sam was to be a printer, a river boat pilot, an officer in the Confederacy, a silver prospector and a journalist. He once wrote, "To simply amuse would have satisfied my dearest ambition".

A double adventure written at the end of the 19th century, somewhat in the theme of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Center of the Earth, telling of a submarine trip in the year 1947 to reach the North Pole and a project to examine the center of the Earth by boring a deep shaft. What they find at the core of the planet surprises the enterprising explorers.

An intriguing collection of short stories by some of the greatest women fiction writers of the last century. The Lifted Veil – George Eliot Miss Brill – Katherine Mansfield The Fly – Katherine Mansfield The Jew’s Beech Tree – Annette von Droste-Hülshoff The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman Mansize in Marble – Edith Nesbit

In this, perhaps Dickens' most profound and personal novel, we are invited to share in the sentimental education of Pip, the poor boy from the village forge who risks losing himself in snobbery and selfishness when he mysteriously inherits a fortune. The story moves from the bleak Kentish marshes of Pip's childhood to a thrilling climax that mingles tragedy and triumph.

When we hear the name Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, most people think of Sherlock Holmes, his most famous creation. However, detective stories were not Doyle's favorite. His lifelong passion was the supernatural and because of this he wrote a number of fascinationg supernatural stories. This section includes 7 of the best.

Here is the first novel of the famous Balkan Trilogy, previously successfully adapted for BBC television, starring Emma Thompson and Kenneth Brannagh. The book is perfectly suited to audio. Charting the experiences of a young couple caught up in the politics of war when living abroad, it is a compelling story of love, loss and reconciliation.

When orphan Pip meets the escaped convict Magwitch in an overgrown churchyard on the Kent marshes, little does he know that the incident will change his life forever. Some years later, now apprenticed to his blacksmith brother-in-law, Pip falls in love with the beautiful Estella. Her half-crazed and bitter guardian Miss Havisham, however, exerts a malign influence over the girl and forces a wedge between the two.

In one of the most beloved works of 20th-century literature, audiences step into the decadent but tumultuous life of Nick Carraway, a young man looking to make his way in the bustling New York City business world. He soon meets Gatsby, his mysterious neighbor known for throwing extravagant galas in his gilded home. Jay Gatsby is a man of extravagant taste and has great wealth but only wants what he can’t have - Daisy Buchanan, a flighty debutante married to an unfaithful husband.

Perhaps the greatest American novel written, The Great Gatsby is set in New York, in 1922, in a rich, spoiled world with crime and bootlegging in the background.

Some consider The Great Gatsby the greatest American novel ever written about love, dreams, business, bootlegging, Wall Street, the Midwest, and the East, as well as Yale, prep schools, the rich, and more. F. Scott Fitzgerald followed up with Tender Is the Night, also considered equally compelling.