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A Nervous Breakdown
- Narrated by: Dave Courvoisier
- Length: 58 mins
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A Nervous Breakdown
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Publisher's summary
Three friends, Mayer (a medical student), Rybnikov (a student of the arts), and Vassilyev (a law student), decide to go out one night to get some girls. Mayer and Rybnikov had to spend some time convincing Vassilyev to come along, as he was far more fastidious and cautious than his friends. Vassilyev himself is envious of his friends, who live their lives in a much more carefree fashion. The three friends visit several different houses containing the girls, but Vassilyev finds himself more eager to talk to the girls and treat them to fancy drinks than to pay his money to get something more. He tries to understand the lives the fallen women are living, but he grows more and more disgusted with them. Upon returning home, he continues to think about such depressing lives and the next day his friends come to see him and discover that he is the midst of a nervous breakdown.
Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) was a Russian writer and playwright, considered by many to be one of the best writers of short stories in the history of literature. Chekhov was also a successful physician, but writing was his true passion. He was quoted as saying "Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress."
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- Narrated by: Russell Tovey
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 7,318
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 6,472
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 6,440
A disturbing tale of a young man's uncanny ability to remain both young and beautiful while descending into a life of heartless debauchery, The Picture of Dorian Gray was considered proof of both Wilde's genius and his perversion. Oscar Wilde's scandalous best seller of 1891 was one of the most damning pieces of evidence used against him in the trial that brought about his downfall.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A twisted tale of vanity and poisonous people
- By Shantastic on 10-02-19
By: Oscar Wilde
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Laughter in the Dark
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 145
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 128
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 126
Albinus, a respectable, middle-aged man and aspiring filmmaker, abandons his wife for a lover half his age: Margot, who wants to become a movie star. When Albinus introduces her to Rex, an American movie producer, disaster ensues. What emerges is an elegantly sardonic and irresistibly ironic novel of desire, deceit, and deception, a curious romance set in the film world of Berlin in the 1930s.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Death is often the point of life's joke
- By Darwin8u on 05-19-13
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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Anna Karenina
- By: Leo Tolstoy
- Narrated by: Lorna Raver
- Length: 39 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 166
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 138
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Story4 out of 5 stars 137
Vladimir Nabokov called Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina "one of the greatest love stories in world literature." Set in imperial Russia, Anna Karenina is a rich and complex meditation on passionate love and disastrous infidelity. Married to a powerful government minister, Anna Karenina is a beautiful woman who falls deeply in love with a wealthy army officer, the elegant Count Vronsky.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Not good dramatization but an ok reading
- By Bookoholics Anon on 05-07-11
By: Leo Tolstoy
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Anna Karenina
- By: Leo Tolstoy
- Narrated by: Nikolay Trifilov
- Length: 43 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 33
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 28
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Story5 out of 5 stars 27
Znamenityj roman vvodit nas v bogatyj, raznoobraznyj, udivitel'no uyutnyj i privlekatel'nyj mir russkoj dvoryanskoj zhizni Moskvy i Peterburga. Tolstoj vystupaet zdes' pevcom povsednevnoj zhizni, kotoruyu on poehtiziruet i v kotoroj vidit filosofskuyu glubinu, primiryayushchuyu stol' razitel'nye protivopolozhnosti, kak tragicheskaya nezakonnaya svyaz' Anny Kareninoj s Vronskim i schastlivaya semejnaya zhizn' Kiti s Cherbackoj i Levina.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fantastic narration!
- By Anastasia Lattanand on 03-10-16
By: Leo Tolstoy
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Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert, Lydia Davis - translator
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 366
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 298
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Story4 out of 5 stars 293
Emma Bovary is the original desperate housewife. Beautiful but bored, she is married to the provincial doctor Charles Bovary yet harbors dreams of an elegant and passionate life. Escaping into sentimental novels, she finds her fantasies dashed by the tedium of her days. Motherhood proves to be a burden; religion is only a brief distraction. In an effort to make her life everything she believes it should be, she spends lavishly on clothes and on her home and embarks on two disappointing affairs.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Ironic, humorous, and restrained
- By Esther on 05-13-13
By: Gustave Flaubert, and others
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Buddenbrooks
- The Decline of a Family
- By: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 26 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 664
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 599
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 597
First published in 1900, when Thomas Mann was 25, Buddenbrooks is a minutely imagined chronicle of four generations of a North German mercantile family - a work so true to life that it scandalized the author’s former neighbours in his native Lübeck.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Where Have You Been All My Life, Thomas Mann?
- By Virginia Waldron on 03-30-17
By: Thomas Mann
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Letter from an Unknown Woman
- By: Stefan Zweig
- Narrated by: Heather Wood, K. Anderson Yancy
- Length: 1 hr and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 84
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 76
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 75
Immediately following the death of her young son, distraught and heartbroken, a woman sends a heart-wrenching letter to the only man she has ever loved, chronicling their love affair, opening with, "To you, who have never known me."
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3 out of 5 stars
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Tough 2 Hear With Background Music & Sound Effects
- By DK on 09-19-15
By: Stefan Zweig
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Of Human Bondage
- By: W. Somerset Maugham
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 28 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 410
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 369
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 365
Of Human Bondage is one of the greatest novels of modern times, and it is certainly Maugham's greatest achievement. It was published in 1914, when Maugham was at the height of his creative powers. The story concerns Philip Carey, afflicted at birth with a club foot, and his passionate search for truth in a cruel world. We follow his growth to manhood, his educational progress, his first loves, and the wrenching tragedies and disappointments that life has in store for him. In some of the finest prose of the 20th century, Maugham has presented us with the timeless story of one man's search for the meaning of life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Greatly Unsettling
- By Michael on 10-04-14
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Beware of Pity
- By: Stefan Zweig
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 14 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 230
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 204
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 201
In the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a young cavalry officer is invited to a dance at the home of a rich landowner. There - with a small act of attempted charity - he commits a simple faux pas. But from this seemingly insignificant blunder comes a tale of catastrophe arising from kindness and of honour poisoned by self-regard. Beware of Pity has all the intensity and the formidable sense of torment and of character of the very best of Zweig's work. Definitive translation by the award-winning Anthea Bell.
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5 out of 5 stars
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One of my favorite authors
- By Adeliese Baumann on 03-21-18
By: Stefan Zweig
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The Confessions of Max Tivoli
- By: Andrew Sean Greer
- Narrated by: Brian Keeler
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 255
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 67
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Story4 out of 5 stars 66
Max Tivoli is uniquely cursed. His mind ages normally, but he is born with the withered body of a 70-year-old man, and his body ages in reverse. Despite this torment, Max manages three times to cross paths with Alice, the woman who captures his heart. Because he appears to be a different person each time they meet, Max has three chances for true love.
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5 out of 5 stars
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odd premise, but it works!
- By Sean Dunnahoo on 03-03-04
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The Leopard
- A Novel
- By: Giuseppe di Lampedusa, Archibald Colquhuon - translator
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 88
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 73
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Story4 out of 5 stars 72
Set in the 1860s, The Leopard tells the spellbinding story of a decadent, dying Sicilian aristocracy threatened by the approaching forces of democracy and revolution. The dramatic sweep and richness of observation, the seamless intertwining of public and private worlds, and the grasp of human frailty imbue The Leopard with its particular melancholy beauty and power, and place it among the greatest historical novels of our time.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Timeless
- By Robert Massarella on 12-05-23
By: Giuseppe di Lampedusa, and others
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The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 31 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 93
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 66
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Story4 out of 5 stars 66
From Vladimir Nabokov, the writer who shocked and delighted the world with his novels Lolita, Pale Fire, and Ada, or Ardor, comes a magnificent collection of stories. Written between the 1920s and the 1950s, these 68 tales — 14 of which have been translated into English for the first time - display all the shades of Nabokov’s imagination.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A Kaleidoscope of Nabokov Bábochkas
- By Darwin8u on 01-11-15
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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South Riding
- By: Winifred Holtby
- Narrated by: Carole Boyd
- Length: 19 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 65
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 52
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 52
In this rich and memorable evocation of the fictional South Riding of Yorkshire are the lives, loves and sorrows of the central characters. There is Sarah Burton, fiery young headmistress; Robert Carne of Maythorpe Hall, a councillor tormented by his own disastrous marriage; Jo Astell, a socialist fighting poverty and his own illness; and Mrs Beddows, the first woman Alderman of the district (like Winifred's own mother).
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4 out of 5 stars
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Worth Revisiting
- By Ilana on 11-04-12
By: Winifred Holtby
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Anna of the Five Towns
- By: Arnold Bennett
- Narrated by: Peter Joyce
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 16
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 15
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 15
Set in stifled, industrial Staffordshire in the late 19th century, against a strong evangelical background, Anna of the Five Towns tells of the courting of hard businessman Ephraim Tellright's daughter by prosperous and accomplished Henry Mynors. As her father's fortune grows, so does Anna understanding. She realises her legacy and responsibility for the possible ruination of her father's tenants, Titus Price and his son, Willie, who also loves her.
By: Arnold Bennett