Great Literature

Classic stories collected by America's Storyteller, Joe Wheeler. This audio collection contains nine separate short stories: "Nearest His Heart", by Josephine DeFord Terrill; "A Promise and a Ski Run" (author unknown); "The Song of Songs", by Mabel McKee; "The Unmousing of Jean", by Edna Geister; "An Hour of Victory", by Earl Reed Silvers; "Shop Around A While", by Mae Foster Jay; "The Boy Who Couldn't Be Saved" (author unknown); "Between Strokes", and more.

Kitchens of the Great Midwest is about a young woman with a once-in-a-generation palate who becomes the iconic chef behind the country's most coveted dinner reservation. When Lars Thorvald's wife, Cynthia, falls in love with wine - and a dashing sommelier - he's left to raise their baby, Eva, on his own. He's determined to pass on his love of food to his daughter - starting with puréed pork shoulder. As Eva grows, she finds her solace and salvation in the flavors of her native Minnesota.

Charlotte Gordon's new work is a fresh look at the lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley, who together comprise one of the most illustrious and inspiring mother-daughter pairs in history.

Beobrand is besieged in the action-packed instalment in the Bernicia Chronicles set in AD 647 Anglo-Saxon Britain. War hangs heavy in the hot summer air as Penda of Mercia and his allies march into the north. Caught unawares, the Bernician forces are besieged within the great fortress of Bebbanburg. It falls to Beobrand to mount the defence of the stronghold, but even while the battle rages, old and powerful enemies have mobilised against him, seeking vengeance for past events.

This audiobook includes 10 Great Russian Short Stories: The Mantle by Nikolai Gogol, Mumu by Ivan Turgenev, First love by Ivan Turgenev, An Avenger by Anton Chekhov, Darkness by Anton Chekhov, The Death of Ivan Illyich by Leo Tolstoy, Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Little Angel by Leonid Andreyev, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, A Troublesome Visitor by Anton Chekhov.

Philip is a good boy, a really good boy, who accidentally gets sent to hell to become the devil's heir. The devil, Lucifer, is dying and desperately in need of a successor, but there's been a mistake, and Philip is the wrong boy. Lucifer has no other choice than to begin the difficult task of training Philip in the ways of evil. Philip is terrible at being bad, but when he falls in love with the she-devil Satina and experiences the powerful forces of love and jealousy, the task becomes much easier.

The ultimate battle which will decide the fate of Heaven and Earth has finally come. Everett and Courtney Carroll have fared better than most through the past seven years of the Great Tribulation, but the eve of Armageddon refuses to let them live out the last hours of this present age without conflict, trouble, and persistent peril.

Spring, 1918. The Great War is at a crucial stage, the Germans are making one last push into France, and the Allies are struggling to hold them back. Battle lines are shifting, and men, and their machines, are being sent up and down the front to shore up defenses. Major Heathcliff Lennox, and his batman Greggs, are told to report to their new HQ. They set off on a sunlit day to fly the distance, but the enemy is never far away, and disaster strikes. They're sent crashing to the ground behind enemy lines, where life, death, and love await.

James Baldwin gives an electrifying reading about a young gay American in Paris recalling a dramatic and transforming incident from his boyhood, as he struggles to accept his sexual identity.

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.

Promoted to the elite Praetorian Guard in the thick of battle, a young legionary is thrust into a seedy world of imperial politics and corruption. Tasked with uncovering a plot against the newly crowned Emperor Commodus, his mission takes him from the cold Danubian border all the way to the heart of Rome, the villa of the Emperor’s scheming sister, and the great Colosseum. What seems a straightforward, if terrifying, assignment soon descends into Machiavellian treachery and peril as everything in which young Rufinus trusts and believes is called into question....

Raised in squalor in the marsh country of Kent, the orphan Pip is taken under the wing of the eccentric and reclusive Miss Havisham - only to blindly give his heart to the dowager’s beautiful but ice-cold adopted daughter, Estella. Even as a mysterious benefactor helps to shape Pip’s life into one of fortune, success, and self-discovery, the unspeakable secrets of his unrequited love continue to haunt him - and promise to change his life once again.

This mesmerizing, poetic novel won the 2003 National Book Award for fiction and has earned universal acclaim. Set against the beautiful but tragic landscape of post-World War II Asia, The Great Fire tells a sweeping tale of the search for new beginnings in a world ravaged by tragedy.

The 200th anniversary of the birth of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 - 1892), one of the most popular of poets, is celebrated in 2009. Works such as The Charge of the Light Brigade, Crossing the Bar and Tears, Idle Tears have made him an internationally famous figure, and the second most quoted writer of all time (after Shakespeare).

One hunt has ended, but the pursuit for love and justice continues. The kingdom of Lochlanach has traded the great beast that once terrorized the realm of Eurona for something far more dangerous: the ire of powerful Lashed woman Rosaria Rocato. Rosaria demands that Eurona overturn the laws prohibiting magic, or an innocent will be killed each day.

British amateur bakers must turn out the perfect scone in this week’s filming of The Great British Baking Contest. But fledgling witch Poppy is losing her concentration as she gets closer to discovering more of her own history at Broomewode Hall, a postcard-pretty manor house in Somerset, England. However, someone is warning her to leave as she’s in danger. Can she keep her cool while solving mysteries, working on her witch skills, and still turn out a decent scone?

It’s 1927, and the most devastating flood in American history has swelled the Mississippi River to a width of eighty miles. In an attempt to save a family trapped by the rising water, four men in a tiny rowboat battle the treacherous flow: three are convicts, on loan from the local prison and pressed into service; the fourth, the leader of the team, is driven by his own hidden motives. But to their surprise upon arrival at Ballymore, an ancestral home protected by a high, circular levee, not everyone in the family feels the need to be saved.

After a tough year, Lucy, Freddy, and Herb Peach are ready for vacation. Lucy wants to read all of the books on the summer reading list. Freddy wants to work on his art projects. Herb wants to swim every day. Then their dad makes a big announcement: One of the inventions their mom came up with before she passed away has sold, and now they're millionaires!

Millions of words of scholarship have been expended on the world's most famous author and his work. And yet a critical part of the puzzle, Shakespeare's library, is a mystery. For four centuries people have searched for it: in mansions, palaces, and libraries; in riverbeds, sheep pens, and partridge coops; and in the corridors of the mind. Yet no trace of the Bard's manuscripts, books, or letters has ever been found.

Two Bestselling Agatha Christie Novels in One Great Audiobook. Hercule Poirot solves his first case in the Agatha Christie novel that started it all, now in a fully restored edition that features a “missing chapter” along with commentary from Christie expert John Curran. In Agatha Christie’s classic, Five Little Pigs, beloved detective Hercule Poirot races to solve a case from out of the past.