House Classics

This magisterial collection of short works by Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner reminds listeners of his ability to compress his epic vision into narratives as hard and wounding as bullets. Among the 42 selections in this audiobook are such classics as "A Bear Hunt", "A Rose for Emily", "Two Soldiers", and "The Brooch".

The Jazz Age is in full swing, but Casiopea Tun is too busy cleaning the floors of her wealthy grandfather’s house to listen to any fast tunes. Nevertheless, she dreams of a life far from her dusty small town in southern Mexico. A life she can call her own. Yet this new life seems as distant as the stars, until the day she finds a curious wooden box in her grandfather’s room. She opens it - and accidentally frees the spirit of the Mayan god of death, who requests her help in recovering his throne from his treacherous brother.

Johnny Appleseed's real name was John Chapman, a native of Massachusetts who lived from 1774 to 1845. It is known that he wandered for 40 years through Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana sowing apple seeds, staying one step ahead of the pioneer movement in order to sell seedlings to those who traveled through. Chapman was known for his humanitarian values: his cheerfulness, generosity, and most of all, his respect for, and nearly mystical relationship with, nature.

What do the $350 million Ford Motor Company disaster known as the Edsel, the fast and incredible rise of Xerox, and the unbelievable scandals at General Electric and Texas Gulf Sulphur have in common? Each is an example of how an iconic company was defined by a particular moment of fame or notoriety; these notable and fascinating accounts are as relevant today to understanding the intricacies of corporate life as they were when the events happened.

La dama de las camelias es una de las novelas más populares de todos los tiempos. Adaptada al teatro y al cine innumerables veces, inspiró incluso una de las óperas más celebradas del XIX: La Traviata, de Giuseppe Verdi.

La ironía, la honda melancolía y la inconfundible mirada desencantada de Oscar Wilde impregnan cada una de estas páginas, erigiéndose como un monumento paródico y duramente crítico hacia la sociedad victoriana de finales del siglo XIX. Todo ello esbozado con un estilo único, patente desde las sátiras de «El crimen de lord Arthur Savile» y «El fantasma de Canterville» hasta los cuentos de hadas como «El Príncipe Feliz», «El ruiseñor y la rosa» y «El gigante egoísta».

Trantor had extended its rule over half the Galaxy, but the other half defied its authority, defending their corrupt fiefdoms with violence and repression. On the planet Florina, the natives labored as slaves for their arrogant masters on nearby Sark. But now both worlds were hurtling toward a cataclysmic doom, and only one man knew the truth - a slave unaware of the secret knowledge locked inside his own brain. Rik had once been a prominent scientist until a psychic probe erased all memories of his past. Now he was a humble laborer in the kyrt mills of Florina.

In this epic, mythical debut novel, a newly-wed couple escapes the busy confusion of their homeland for a distant and almost-uninhabited lakeshore. They plan to live there simply, to fish the lake, to trap the nearby woods, and build a house upon the dirt between where they can raise a family. But as their every pregnancy fails, the child-obsessed husband begins to rage at this new world: the song-spun objects somehow created by his wife’s beautiful singing voice, the giant and sentient bear that rules the beasts of the woods, the second moon weighing down the fabric of their starless sky, and the labyrinth of memory dug into the earth beneath their house.

In Edgar Allan Poe's eerie title story, an old man's diseased eye drives the narrator to murder. But while the murderer can rid himself of the eye, he can't silence the old man's heart.

In rural North Carolina, in 1951, despite parental reassurances, a typhoid shot hurt. It hurt even more when the children saw who would be administering the shot: Miss Winnie, a large, dictatorial nurse who had been "especially built by the nursing school so she would never blow away in a hard wind".

Most days, Sarya doesn't feel like the most terrifying creature in the galaxy. Most days, she's got other things on her mind. Like hiding her identity among the hundreds of alien species roaming the corridors of Watertower Station. Or making sure her adoptive mother doesn't casually eviscerate one of their neighbors. Again. And most days, she can almost accept that she'll never know the truth - that she'll never know why humanity was deemed too dangerous to exist.

After reading Christmas Carol, the notoriously reclusive Thomas Carlyle was 'seized with a perfect convulsion of hospitality' and threw not one but two Christmas dinner parties. The impact of the story may not always have been so dramatic but, along with Dickens' other Christmas writings, it has had a lasting and significant influence upon our ideas about the Christmas spirit and about the season as a time for celebration, charity and memory.

The epic grandeur of Dante's masterpiece has inspired readers and listeners for 700 years and has entered the human imagination. But the further we move from the late medieval world of Dante, the more a rich understanding and enjoyment of the poem depends on knowledgeable guidance.

Absalom, Absalom! tells the story of Thomas Sutpen, the enigmatic stranger who came to Jefferson township in the early 1830s. With a French architect and a band of wild Haitians, he wrung a fabulous plantation out of the muddy bottoms of the north Mississippi wilderness. Sutpen was a man, Faulker said, "who wanted sons and the sons destroyed him". His tragedy left its impress not only on his contemporaries but also on men who came after, men like Quentin Compson, haunted even into the 20th century by Sutpen's legacy.

Accused of political subversion as a young man, Dostoyevsky was sentenced to four years of hard labor at a Siberian prison camp — a horrifying experience from which he developed this astounding semi-autobiographical memoir of a man condemned to ten years of servitude for murdering his wife. A haunting and remarkable work filled with wonder and resignation, The House of the Dead ranks among the Russian novelist's greatest masterpieces. Of this powerful autobiographical novel, Tolstoy wrote, "I know no better book in all modern literature.

Obra maestra de Balzac, Las ilusiones perdidas cuenta la historia de un joven de provincias con ambiciones artísticas que sueña con triunfar en París. La odisea de Lucien Rubempré desde la inocencia de su Angulema natal hasta el fango del fracaso constituye uno de los periplos narrativos más audaces, embelesadores e imponentes de la narrativa del siglo XIX.

Little Eepersip doesn't want to live in a house with doors and windows and a roof, so she runs away to live in the wild - first in the Meadow, then by the Sea and finally in the Mountain. Her heartbroken parents follow her at first, bringing her back home to 'safety' and locking her up in the stifling square of the house. But she slips away once more, following her wild heart out of the door and far away....

En el año 1984 Londres es una ciudad lúgubre en la que la Policía del Pensamiento controla de forma asfixiante la vida de los ciudadanos. Winston Smith es un peón de este engranaje perverso y su cometido es reescribir la historia para adaptarla a lo que el Partido considera la versión oficial de los hechos. Hasta que decide replantearse la verdad del sistema que los gobierna y somete.

Newly re-mastered for digital formats, this is the definitive recording of Hans Christian Andersen's six best-loved stories. Narrator Diane Wolkstein, the artistic director of the Hans Christian Andersen Center in New York City, tells Andersen stories throughout the world. She is the author of 23 award-winning books of folklore and has been honored by the National Storytelling Network as a recipient of its coveted Circle of Excellence Award, a designation reserved for America's best living storytellers.

Every woman wants to be Elizabeth Bennet Darcy - beautiful, gracious, universally admired, strong, daring and outspoken - a thoroughly modern woman in crinolines. And every woman will fall madly in love with Mr. Darcy - tall, dark and handsome, a nobleman and a heartthrob whose virility is matched only by his utter devotion to his wife. Their passion is consuming and idyllic - essentially, they can’t keep their hands off each other - through a sweeping tale of adventure and misadventure, human folly and numerous mysteries of parentage.