Dutch Classic Literature

From the Nobel Prize winner, a coming-of-age story that illuminates the harshness and beauty of an Africa on the brink of colonization Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award, Paradise was characterized by the Nobel Prize committee as Abdulrazak Gurnah’s “breakthrough”...

To listen to this audiobook is to enter the perilous, thrilling world of Billy Bathgate, the brazen boy who is accepted into the inner circle of the notorious Dutch Schultz gang. Like an urban Tom Sawyer, Billy takes us along on his fateful adventures as he becomes good-luck charm, apprentice...

A gripping novel about two trailblazing women on opposite sides of the law—a prosecutor and a madam—who team up to bring down notorious mob boss Lucky Luciano in 1930s New York, from the New York Times bestselling authors of the million-copy bestseller The Personal Librarian. Eunice Carter...

The bestselling novel that became an Oscar-winning film starring Elizabeth Taylor about New York's speakeasy generation A masterpiece of American fiction and a bestseller upon its publication in 1935, BUtterfield 8 lays bare with brash honesty the unspoken and often shocking truths that lurked...

“[A] striking debut. . . funny, heartbreaking, and real.”––SAM LANSKY, author of Broken People Prep meets The Secret History in this searing debut novel about a tragic scandal at an American prep school, told in the form of a literary investigation through a distinctly...

In her best-loved novel, The Stone Angel, Margaret Laurence introduces Hagar Shipley, one of the most memorable characters in Canadian fiction. Stubborn, querulous, self-reliant – and, at ninety, with her life nearly behind her – Hagar Shipley makes a bold last step towards freedom and...

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD AND THE PRIX DU MEILLEUR LIVRE ÉTRANGER The Centaur is a modern retelling of the legend of Chiron, the noblest and wisest of the centaurs, who, painfully wounded yet unable to die, gave up his immortality on behalf of Prometheus. In the retelling, Olympus...

Hailed as “one of the finest Canadian novels ever written” by The Globe and Mail, W.O. Mitchell’s Who Has Seen the Wind is a beloved mainstay of Canadian literature. This new, abridged audio edition is read by the author himself. Mitchell’s novel follows Brian O’Connal, a young boy...

Set in Malaya, Almayer's Folly is Joseph Conrad's first novel. In it, he charts the decline of a Dutch merchant after a 25 year struggle against overwhelming odds. Though married to a bitter and hateful Malayan wife, Almayer refuses to accept the financial ruin which he has precipitated. Instead, he dreams of fantastic wealth and a return to the civilization of his youth, accompanied by his loving daughter, Nina.

The twistiest murder mystery you are ever likely to read? A story about a family that does the unthinkable? Both? Or something else altogether? You think it will never happen to you. The doorbell. The policeman. The words that turn your world inside out: I'm afraid there’s been an incident...

This children's classic provides a tender and touching tour of 19th-century Holland. Meet the poor but valiant Brinker family, learn from a young boy's skating excursion full of Dutch history and lore, and experience the exciting race for the silver skates.

Meet the Mortons: In this family, murder is currency—and business is booming. The Mortons are a modern day, old-money dynasty with impeccable taste, from their exquisitely crafted cocktails to their expertly tailored vintage garments. They are also stone-cold killers. For the Mortons, homicide...

In a rare opportunity to hear from a legend of Canadian literature in his own voice, this newly-abridged audio edition of How I Spent My Summer Holidays is read by the W.O. Mitchell himself. During the hot Saskatchewan summer of 1924, twelve-year-old Hugh digs up a cave to discover an escaped...

A beautiful debut set around the creation of the world-famous Monterey Bay Aquarium--and the last days of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row In 1940, fifteen year-old Margot Fiske arrives on the shores of Monterey Bay with her eccentric entrepreneur father. Margot has been her father's apprentice...

Two teenagers fresh out of stir set their sights on what looks like easy money in Dolores Hitchens’s Fools’ Gold (1958)—and get a painful education in how quickly and drastically a simple plan can spin out of control. The basis for Jean-Luc Godard’s film Band of Outsiders, Fools’...

This “charming . . . short account of ordinary goings-on in a French café” explores love, work, loneliness, and aging as it follows the daily life of a middle-aged Parisian bartender (Lemony Snicket) Pierre is a veteran bartender in a café in the outskirts of Paris. He observes his...

Under the Greenwood Tree, Hardy's second novel, was published in 1872 and became the first of his great series of Wessex novels. The book, subtitled A Rural Painting of the Dutch School, tells the endearing tale of a group of church musicians who accompany the hymns at the local Mellstock parish choir and we follow the fortunes of one of its member, Dick Dewy, who falls in love with the new school mistress, Fancy Day.

National Book Award finalist Cristina García delivers a powerful and gorgeous novel about the intertwining lives of the denizens of a luxurious hotel in an unnamed Central American capital in the midst of political turmoil The lives of six men and women converge over the course of one week...

Taut and spellbinding, Immersions by Kyle McCarthy follows the aftermath of a celebrated dancer’s abrupt decision to quit her company and join an enclosed convent in France, and her younger sister’s obsessive conviction that her sister’s ex-husband is responsible. “Immersions moves with...

As Michael maneuvers through his working-class neighborhood delivering groceries, he enters the homes and lives of his customers. He’s confronted by the school yard and street corner violence of local thugs. With the 1967 Arab-Israeli War fresh in public memory, he passes for Greek or Italian...