Great Literature

Undoubtedly the best-known detective in literature, Sherlock Holmes was the creation of British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930), who endowed his super sleuth with an extraordinary facility for solving crimes. Drawing on his remarkable powers of observation and deduction, coupled with an encyclopedic knowledge of crimes and criminals, Holmes seeks out his prey in the London underworld, where no evildoer is safe from his keen wits and tenacious pursuit.

It is 1929. The world is about to change. Finn Evans is a successful Boston banker harboring a secret that threatens to unravel his carefully constructed idyllic life. Isabelle Lazar, a young Ukrainian farmer, endures unspeakable hardships in her homeland as she fights to save her family from the Soviet Union's iron grip. Barely escaping the Terror-Famine, she washes up alone on America's distant shores. Fate throws Finn and Isabelle together just as the stock market crash causes a devastating collapse of his world.

In the greatest novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald, listeners can be transported back to that world to experience both the highs and lows of the time. These novels incorporated Fitzgerald’s own life experiences to give listeners a firsthand view of what life truly was like for his generation.

In a Post-Apocalyptic world of Magic and Machinery, Jack Knight is an orphan who finds himself caught between a life-altering decision. Join the military and fight the demon hordes or sell his soul to the Corpos. Both options having minimal appeal to a shut-in like Jack. Thanks to the high cost of living, and his sister’s medical expenses, Jack has never given much thought to what he’d want to do with life, always living paycheck to paycheck, scrounging just enough to keep the lights on and his sister safe. However, an Angel presents him with a third option.

At the heart of this third volume of his Western saga remains the beautiful and determined Tasmin Berrybender, now married to the "Sin Killer" and mother to their young son, Monty. Although Tasmin intends Montyto be an English gentleman like his grandfather, he lives the childhood of a savage.

Julia Cummings has long been acquainted with loss - her mother, her brother, her sister, her friend, all gone too soon. But the loss that pushed her grief to the limit as a young girl was that of her best friend, Lucas Jonquil, who abandoned her without looking back. Now, eight years later, Lucas has returned to Lampton Park, and Julia has steeled herself - she will never forgive the man who broke her heart.

Drawing on myth, folklore and history, the stories of the Mabinogion passed from generations of story tellers before they were written down in the 13th century in the form we know. Set in dual realms of the forests and valleys of Wales and the shadowy otherworld, the tales are permeated by a dreamlike atmosphere. In 'Math Son of Mathonwy', two brothers plot to carry off the virginal Goewin, while in 'Manawydan Son of Llŷr', a chieftain roams throughout Britain after a spell is cast over his land.

When attorney Marcus Glenwood resigns from his prestigious corporate law firm to retreat to the small town of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and rebuild his life after a devastating personal tragedy, he has no idea that the biggest, most emotionally trying case of his entire career is about to fall into his backyard. It is a fragile and spiritually wounded Glenwood who first meets his distraught clients, Alma and Austin Hall. Their daughter, Gloria, has disappeared in China while investigating the slavelike labor practices of a factory owned by the international giant New Horizons....

Would you - could you? - uphold the law at the cost of those you love? Falcio val Mond, First Cantor of the Greatcoats, is on the brink of fulfilling his dead King's dream: Aline is about to take the throne and restore the rule of law once and for all. But for the Greatcoats, nothing is ever that simple.

Regarded as one of the most important works in American literature and among the greatest American novels of the twentieth century, The Great Gatsby is the quintessential portrait of Jazz Age America, depicting not only the wild parties, romance, love, and the intense and often unfulfilled desire for wealth and status, but also the immorality, loneliness, disappointment and corruption of The Roaring Twenties.

From the Gilded Age until 1914, more than 100 American heiresses invaded Britannia and swapped dollars for titles - just like Cora Crawley, Countess of Grantham, the first of the Downton Abbey characters Julian Fellowes was inspired to create after reading To Marry An English Lord. Filled with vivid personalities, gossipy anecdotes, grand houses, and a wealth of period details-plus quotes and the finer points of Victorian and Edwardian etiquette - To Marry An English Lord is social history at its liveliest and most accessible.

When an eight-year-old girl and her six-year-old brother take turns describing each other, it's no surprise that "The Pain" and "The Great One" are the nicknames that emerge. As this duo debates whom Mom and Dad love most, their competition becomes increasingly humorous - because when it comes to family affection, there's no such thing as win or lose.

The year is 1925. A labyrinth of roads and rails spirals out from the bones of a nearly forgotten settlement. Londinium. Once the far-flung edge of the vast Roman Empire, it is now the seat of a greater one. Few have given more for the Empire than Colonel Hadrian Russell. Robbed of his four sons by the Great War, he now holds court as the acting president of the Britannia, a prestigious soldiers-only club in London. But when the Colonel is shot and thrown out the club’s front window, it seems the shadows of the Great War may extend further than previously thought.

It's 1831, and Lady Gwendolyn Crichton has been appointed royal sorceress following the tragic events known as the Swing. Now alone at the head of the Royal College of Sorcerers, Gwen must overcome prejudice against her gender and age if she is to exercise her authority and fulfill her responsibilities. Soon, an unexpected responsibility is made manifest when Sir Travis Mortimer, a senior magician recently returned from India, is found murdered in a locked room.

As much about the life of the city as it is about a life lived, sometimes, in the city, John Banville's "quasi-memoir" is as layered, emotionally rich, witty, and unexpected as any of his novels. Born and bred in a small town a train ride away from Dublin, Banville saw the city as a place of enchantment when he was a child, a birthday treat, the place where his beloved, eccentric aunt lived.

Widely considered to be Charles Dickens' greatest and best-loved work, Great Expectations was first published as a serial between December 1860 - August 1861 and has been in print ever since. The story of a young boy from humble origins who dares to dream of becoming a gentleman, it is one of Dickens' most enduring and widely adapted novels. In this new unabridged production, star comedian and polymath Eddie Izzard infuses the story of Pip with his trademark wit and flair.

While trying to protect and recruit more players and civilians from another settlement, Mason has fallen into a mortal dungeon—The Great Devourer's Lair. It wasn't meant to be found so soon. It was designed for a later stage in the game when players would have more power. But what secrets might the dungeon hold? If Mason and his new player friend Carl can survive it, just how powerful could it make them? There's only one way to find out....

After surviving a brilliantly plotted murder attempt, the richest man in San Francisco is looking to hire the best protection money can buy. Enter Matt Jensen, who, for the princely sum of $5000, agrees to escort millionaire John Gillespie and his very fetching daughter on a railway journey from Frisco to Chicago. There’s just one catch: The world’s deadliest killers are coming along for the ride....

As Pip unravels the truth behind his own "great expectations" in his quest to become a gentleman, the mysteries of the past and the convolutions of fate through a series of thrilling adventures serve to steer him toward maturity and his most important discovery of all - the truth about himself.

Chicago, 1923: Ten-year-old Dani Flanagan returns home to find police swarming the house, her parents dead. Michael Malone, the young patrolman assigned to the case, discovers there’s more to the situation—and to Dani Flanagan herself—than the authorities care to explore. Malone is told to shut his mouth, and Dani is sent away to live with her spinster aunts in Cleveland.