Classics We Love

I, Claudius

From the Autobiography of Tiberius Claudius Born 10 B.C. Murdered and Deified A.D. 54

By: Robert Graves
Narrated by: Nelson Runger
Length: 16 hours 53 minutes

One of the best historical novels ever written. Lame, stammering Claudius, once a major embarrassment to the Imperial family and now Emperor of Rome, writes an eyewitness account of the reign of the first four Caesars: the noble Augustus and his cunning wife Livia; the reptilian Tiberius; the monstrous Caligula; and finally old Claudius himself... Read more

Far from the Madding Crowd (Movie Tie-in Edition)

By: Thomas Hardy
Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
Length: 15 hours 17 minutes

This story of a proud rural beauty and the three men who court her is the novel that first made Thomas Hardy famous.

Despite the violent ends of several of its major characters, Far from the Madding Crowd is the sunniest and least brooding of Hardy’s great novels. The strong-minded Bathsheba Everdene—and the devoted shepherd, obsessed farmer, and... Read more

Rebecca

By: Daphne du Maurier
Narrated by: Anna Massey
Length: 14 hours 48 minutes

“Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier is my go-to rainy day book. Despite the ambiguity gothic novels thrive on, the characters in Rebecca were fully fleshed out and the haunted manor is beautifully described. It's slow moving at first, but once the tension builds, you'll have a hard time putting it down. Read more

The Death of the Heart

By: Elizabeth Bowen
Narrated by: Pearl Hewitt
Length: 13 hours 8 minutes

The Death of the Heart is perhaps Elizabeth Bowen's best-known book. As she deftly and delicately exposes the cruelty that lurks behind the polished surfaces of conventional society, Bowen reveals herself as a masterful novelist who combines a sense of humor with a devastating gift for divining human motivations.



In this piercing story of... Read more

Les Misérables

By: Victor Hugo
Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
Length: 57 hours 50 minutes

Set in the Parisian underworld of the early nineteenth century, Les Misérables follows the adventures of Jean Valjean, once an honest peasant, who spent nineteen years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s starving family.A hardened and bitter criminal upon his release, Valjean is transformed when an act of compassion by a... Read more

My Ántonia

The Great Plains Trilogy: Book #3

By: Willa Cather
Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
Length: 7 hours 19 minutes

Widely recognized as Willa Cather’s finest book and one of the outstanding novels of American literature, My Ántonia tells of the life of early American pioneers in Nebraska.Through Jim Burden’s endearing, smitten voice, we revisit the remarkable vicissitudes of immigrant life in the Nebraska heartland with all its insistent bonds. Guiding the... Read more

The Age of Innocence

By: Edith Wharton
Narrated by: Barbara Caruso
Length: 11 hours 46 minutes

Newland Archer is a young lawyer, a member of New York's high society, and engaged to be married to May Welland. Countess Ellen Olenska is May's cousin, and wants a divorce from the Polish nobleman she married. Intelligent and beautiful, she comes back to New York where she tries to fit into the high society life she had before her marriage. Her... Read more

Middlemarch

By: George Eliot
Narrated by: Nadia May
Length: 31 hours 42 minutes

Dorothea Brooke is a thoughtful and idealistic young woman determined to make a difference with her life. Enamored of a man whom she believes is setting this example, she unwittingly traps herself into a loveless marriage.Her parallel is Tertius Lydgate, a visionary young doctor from the city, whose passionate ambition to spread the new science... Read more

Howards End

By: E.M. Forster
Narrated by: John Franklyn-Robbins
Length: 12 hours 48 minutes

Set in Edwardian England, Howards End is the portrait of a lost era, a deceptively golden time before the First World War that would change values and lifestyles forever. To illuminate these changing times, Forster throws together three vastly dissimilar classes of people: the Schlegels-Helen and Margaret-educated, compassionate and... Read more

Bleak House

By: Charles Dickens
Narrated by: Simon Vance
Length: 32 hours 57 minutes

Bleak House opens in a London shrouded by fog—a fog that swirls most densely about the Court of Chancery, where the obscure case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce lies lost in endless litigation, slowly devouring an inheritance in legal costs.Against this ominous background, Dickens’ rich tapestry of a novel weaves together the fortunes and desires of... Read more

Pride and Prejudice

By: Jane Austen
Narrated by: Carolyn Seymour
Length: 11 hours 28 minutes

“I loved this book so much! I it is perfect! I was pleasantly surprised by the humor for this time period. Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth’s relationship inspired me. One of my favorites for sure. Read more