Showing results by publisher "Audio Connoisseur" in Genre Fiction

Paradise Lost, along with its companion piece, Paradise Regained, remain the most successful attempts at Greco-Roman style epic poetry in the English language. Remarkably enough, they were written near the end of John Milton's amazing life, a bold testimonial to his mental powers in old age. And, since he had gone completely blind in 1652, 15 years prior to Paradise Lost, he dictated it and all his other works to his daughter.

The Aeneid represents one of the greatest cultural and artistic achievements of Western Civilization. Within the brooding and melancholy atmosphere of Virgil's pious masterpiece lies the mythic story of Aeneas and his flight from burning Troy, taking with him across the Mediterranean the survivors of the Greek onslaught. Aeneas, after many travails and adventures, including a love affair with Dido Queen of Carthage and a visit to the underworld to see his father, ends up in Italy.

Listening to The Satires by Juvenal is to come face to face with the corruption, the debauchery, the waste, the sloth, and the mean-spirited greed of ancient Rome...or is it more like modern times? Indeed, these masterpieces of biting social commentary could easily have been written today about any number of metropolitan areas we are all familiar with.

Only four years after publishing his fable Animal Farm, a biting satire of Joseph Stalin’s horrific regime of terror, George Orwell turned his attention to the future. But his next book was to be no satire, no fable. What emerged from Orwell’s pen in 1949 was the most grimly dystopian novel ever written: 1984.

Essentially, the story is about Russia before and after the October Revolution of 1917. There are many characters who float into and out of the story, the main one being Yuri Zhivago. As the tale unwinds, we encounter the decadence of pre-war Czarist Russia, the harrowing experience of WWI, and the sudden exhilaration of revolution. But exhilaration gives way to the horror of civil war and Bolshevik terror.  

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, (1860-1904), was born in Russia at Taganrog on the Sea of Azov. His name has become synonymous with a certain literary style much admired and widely copied since his death. Typically, a Chekhov story is a "mood", a state of mind, usually with regard to relations between one person and another. Under the influence of the constant, infinitesimal, and unforeseen pinpricks of life, there occurs a gradual transformation of that state of mind.

Arthur Conan Doyle never wasted time in getting his stories moving. His plots are always direct and refreshingly lucid, and the narrative has a velocity that sweeps you along right to the end. This was no doubt a large part of his immense worldwide success. Not surprisingly, each time he tried to end the series, his fans would howl in protest. But, as he says in the preface to his last collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, all good things must come to an end.

The moral cesspool that Rome had become in the first century AD is the subject of The Satyricon by Petronius. The work itself was originally quite a long one, perhaps as long as a thousand pages. The extant portion, however, is only a small fraction of the original. The work contains a mixture of prose and verse, serious and comic elements, and erotic and decadent passages. It possesses a sophisticated humor and a very ironic tone. It is the creation of a Roman gentleman whose insights were keen.  

Pitcairn's Island is the third and final novel in The Bounty Trilogy, a series of novels that describe the voyage, mutiny, and subsequent adventures of the officers and crew of HMS Bounty during its voyage from Spithead on the English Channel to Tahiti in the South Pacific. On April 28, 1789, disaffected crewmen led by Lieutenant Fletcher Christian seized control of the Bounty somewhere about 30 miles south of the tropical island of Tofua. After putting the ship's captain and loyal members of his crew adrift, Fletcher Christian led the crew to an uncharted island.

This magnificent novel is about the murder of a miserly, aged pawnbroker and her younger sister by a radical, destitute St. Petersburg student named Raskolnikov, and the emotional, mental, and physical effects that follow. It is a remarkable masterpiece about a man's turbulent inner life and his relationship to others and to society at large. Dostoevsky explored the human condition on many levels in this great piece, and among the main themes the novel explores is the rather strange theory that criminals have a spiritual need to be punished - that indeed they demand it.

This is the story of Margaret Hale, a young English woman who accompanies her family's move from rural southern England to the industrial north. It proves to be a difficult change, with all the attendant social conflicts and cultural misunderstandings consequent to such situations. It is a study in contrasts. Mrs. Gaskell created one of the Victorian era's greatest heroines in Margaret Hale, a young lady of passionate intensity.

“Men Against the Sea” is the second novel in “The Bounty Trilogy”, a series of novels that describe the voyage, mutiny, and subsequent adventures of the officers and crew of HMS Bounty during its voyage from Spithead on the English Channel to Tahiti in the South Pacific.

A terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella; the sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor - these form a series of events that change the orphaned Pip's life forever, and he eagerly abandons his humble origins to begin a new life as a gentleman. Dickens' novel depicts Pip's development through adversity as he discovers the true nature of his 'great expectations'.

Inspired by the chaos of the French Revolution, Rafael Sabatini wrote one of the finest historical novels of the early 20th century. Scaramouche is the story of André-Louis Moreau, a lawyer brought up as an orphan in a noble household. Moreau, as a young man in his 20s, has been threading his way through a pleasant life until a close friend is brutally killed in a duel of swords by a member of the aristocracy. Because of Moreau’s vow to seek revenge, his life begins an arc toward becoming a revolutionary.

Considered his masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter is Hawthorne's story of Hester Prynne and her daughter, Pearl, conceived through an adulterous affair with a Puritan pastor in 17th century Boston. From start to finish, the book explores the themes of law, guilt, and sin. Since its appearance in 1850, this magnificent book has been a perennial favorite among young and old, though it was extremely controversial when it was first published.

Dickens never employed greater skill or more consummate craftsmanship on any other of his works than he did on A Tale of Two Cities, his magnificent historical novel set during the turbulent era marking the end of Louis XVI's reign. His passionate portrayal of the lives of two groups, one English, one French, caught up in the net of revolutionary intrigue and cruelty, has never been equalled. The novel depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy.

Spartacus is one of the most unusual historical novels of the 20th century and certainly one of the most realistic. In a whirlwind of savagery, despair, and desperation, the listener is suddenly and violently plunged into the great Roman slave revolt of 73 BC. The author, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, does not waste time by slowly setting up his characters, nor in leisurely describing domestic scenes. From the first word, you are literally hurled into the frenetic life of an escaped Greek slave by the name of Kleon.

No nation has ever achieved the literary diversity of America. From nativist humor to immigrant triumph, Americans have recorded their visions and hopes better than anyone

Trying to squeeze an entire history of Chinese civilization into a brief, one volume account is a formidable task, but one that has succeeded brilliantly here. Hilda Hookham has provided us with a concise story that, while not getting too entangled with personalities and cultural issues, manages to navigate the swirling passage of events that comprise over 3,000 years of Chinese political history.

From the Life of a Good-for-Nothing is like stepping into a delightful 18th-century painting accompanied by the music of Mozart. Every day is warm and sunny, with puffy white clouds, twittering birds, gorgeous flowers, and charming gardens. Sorrow and despair are never to be seen, while amusing characters pass in and out of the chapters. It is a charming world of beauty and adventure, which Eichendorff has created for us. First published in 1826, this is one of the most famous and perennially popular novels to come out of Germany. It is a romantic novella whose main themes are love and voyage.