Travel Classics

The Ultimate Classics Collection: Volume Three is the third instalment of our wide-ranging classic collections. Volume Three features 10 essential works that reach further back into early Greek and Italian stories from Dante, Machiavelli, and Homer, as-well as comparatively modern works from Daniel Defoe, Henry David Thoreau, and others. Read by a cast of incredible narrators including David Rintoul; Daniel Weyman; Rachel Atkins; and more, this is a chance to expand your listening by going back to some of the earliest pieces of classic literature.

When Madeleine Maxwell is recruited by the St Mary's Institute of Historical Research, she discovers the historians there don't just study the past - they revisit it. But one wrong move and History will fight back - to the death. And she soon discovers it's not just History she's fighting....

Spanning an extraordinary range of subjects and locations, these ten gripping essays show why Jon Krakauer is considered a standard-bearer of modern journalism.

This audiobook, read by Audie award-winning narrators, includes unabridged recordings of all Mark Twains's greatest works: 12 novels; over 120 of his beloved short stories; Chapters From My Autobiography; 5 pieces of short non-fiction; and 6 pieces of his groundbreaking, wide-ranging travel writing.

Max is back! New husband, new job, and a training regime that cannot fail - to go wrong! Take one interim chief training officer, add five recruits, mix with Joan of Arc, a baby mammoth, a duplicitous father of history, a bombed rat, Stone Age hunters, a couple of passing policemen who should have better things to do, and Dick the Turd. Stir well, bring to the boil – and wait for the bang! Join Max in the sixth instalment in the off-the-wall Chronicles of St Mary’s series."

Meg Murry can't help but be worried when her six-year-old brother, Charles Wallace, announces there are dragons in the vegetable garden. He's so bright, and so different from other kids, he's getting bullied at school, and he is also strangely, seriously ill. But Charles Wallace is right about the dragons - actually a friendly entity who has come to help Charles Wallace fight his sickness, and to take Meg and her friend Calvin O'Keefe on a terrifying, wonderful journey into galactic space - where they must battle the force of evil to save Charles Wallace, and themselves.

One of the most entertaining travelogues ever written, Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra is a heady mix of fact, myth, and depictions of secret chambers, desperate battles, imprisoned princesses, palace ghosts, and fragrant gardens, described in a wistful and dreamlike eloquence.

After disappearing amidst a spray of bullets, antiques dealer Sarah Lester leaves behind no body, only questions. Sarah’s friends are left dealing with the aftermath of her disappearance, including an investigation into the provenance of her antiques, which threatens to crush The Old Curiosity Shop. As Sarah struggles to reunite with her father, she continues the search for her mother, unaware the violent colonial past has followed her home, putting herself, and those she loves in danger.

Dispatched to Victorian London to seek out Jack the Ripper, things go badly wrong when he finds the St Mary's historians first. Stalked through the fog-shrouded streets of Whitechapel, Max is soon running for her life. Again. And that's just the start. Max finds herself in a race against time when an old enemy is intent on destroying St Mary's. An enemy willing, if necessary, to destroy History itself.

In honor of Madeleine L'Engle's 100th birthday, fans are invited to enjoy this archival audiobook, originally recorded in 1993 and newly restored! Listen to the voice of the author as Madeleine L'Engle reads her Newbery Medal-winning novel A Wrinkle in Time.

In this companion volume to A Wrinkle in Time (Newbery Award winner) and A Wind in the Door fifteen-year-old Charles Wallace and the unicorn Gaudior undertake a perilous journey through time in a desperate attempt to stop the destruction of the world by the mad dictator Madog Branzillo. They are not alone in their quest. Charles Wallace's sister, Meg - grown and expecting her first child, but still able to enter her brother's thoughts and emotions by "kything" - goes with him in spirit.

Written for Virginia Woolf's friend, the charismatic writer Vita Sackville-West, Orlando is a playful mock 'biography' of a chameleonic historical figure, immortal and ageless, who changes sex and identity on a whim. First masculine, then feminine, Orlando begins life as a young 16th-century nobleman, then gallops through three centuries to end up as a woman writer in Virginia Woolf's own time. A wry commentary on gender roles and modes of history, Orlando is also, in Woolf's own words, a light-hearted 'writer's holiday' which delights in ambiguity and capriciousness.

In Gulliver's Travels, the narrator represents himself as a reliable reporter of the fantastic adventures he has just experienced. But how far can we rely on a narrator who has been impersonated by someone else? The work purports to be a travel book, and describes the shipwrecked Gulliver's encounters with the inhabitants of four extraordinary places: Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and the country of the Houyhnhnms.

Joshua Slocum was believed to be the first man to sail single-handed around the world. After a distinguished career, where he worked his way up from cabin boy to captain, Joshua Slocum wrecked his ship off the coast of Brazil. Turning this catastrophe to his advantage, he built a sailing canoe from the wreckage and sailed back to New York. Moreover, he wrote Voyage of the Liberdad, a chronicle of his trip, and earned some literary success.

One day, six towers appear on Earth. Each one stands hundreds of stories tall, and are invulnerable to all attacks. At the base of each tower is a portal, welcoming in all who dare enter it. All sorts of magical monsters can be found inside the towers. Even treasure, magic, and superhuman strength can be acquired. The problem is that the towers aren't a friendly place. Even worse, the towers sometimes release waves of monsters to attack Earth. In the year 2083, there are only a hundred survivors. In one last attempt, they challenge the final floor without regard for their lives.

A flash of lightning, quivering ground, and, instead of her grandparents' farm, Polly sees mist and jagged mountains - and coming toward her, a group of young men carrying spears. Why has a time gate opened and dropped Polly into a world that existed 3,000 years ago? Will she be able to get back to the present before the time gate closes - and leaves her to face a group of people who believe in human sacrifice?

Having assumed the identity of a young D’Artagnan, Greg Rich is beginning to get the hang of things in 1615 Paris. But he hasn’t figured out how to get home yet. Or how to defeat the dangerous Michel Dinicoeur, who has made it his mission to destroy Greg, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. When Dinicoeur escapes the Bastille and flees to Spain, the Musketeers charge after him, only to be ambushed. Someone is anticipating their every move. Could there be a traitor in their midst?

"In mid-July of 1879, John Muir sailed for the first time through the sheer-walled fjords of Alaska's Inside Passage. 'Never before this,' he wrote, 'had I been embosomed in scenery so hopelessly beyond description.' During the previous 15 years, Muir had vanished into the north woods of Canada, walked a thousand miles from Kentucky to the Gulf of Mexico, and nested himself in the granite heart of California's Sierra Nevada mountains. Wild nature burned with volcanic intensity in the core of John Muir's soul."

Gulliver's Travels describes the four voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon. In Lilliput he discovers a world in miniature; towering over the people and their city, he is able to view their society from the viewpoint of a god. However, in Brobdingnag, a land of giants, tiny Gulliver himself comes under observation, exhibited as a curiosity at markets and fairs. In Laputa, a flying island, he encounters a society of speculators and projectors who have lost all grip on everyday reality; while they plan and calculate, their country lies in ruins.

Created as an experiment by the time-traveling goddess Pallas Athene, the Just City is a planned community populated by over 10,000 children and a few hundred adult teachers from all eras of history, along with some handy robots from the far human future - all set down together on a Mediterranean island in the distant past.