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Written over three decades as a series of instalments for magazines and newspapers, The Devil’s Dictionary is a charmingly eccentric satirical dictionary that tackles all aspects of life with caustic humour and cutting observation.

A farmer, while crossing a field, mysteriously disappears into thin air before the eyes of several witnesses, resulting in a legal proceeding to determine whether he's dead.

For the first time, the complete works of M. R. James are available to download in one collection. This unabridged collection of all M.R. James' ghost stories includes tales from Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, More Ghost Stories, A Thin Ghost and Others, and A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories. It is expertly read by award-winning narrator Jonathan Keeble.

"Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him." This line was written by Ambrose Bierce in his short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Death by execution has historically been ritualized, perhaps to absolve those accomplishing the execution from guilt or blame.

During the Civil War, a Southern civilian is about to be hanged for attempting to sabotage a railway bridge. When the execution is about to take place from the bridge, the rope breaks and he begins his escape toward home.... or does he?

Prepare yourself for the shocking, the strange, and the terrifying in Ambrose Bierce’s 1893 story collection Can Such Things Be? One of the greatest masters of horror brings you 25 tales of the supernatural and the unexplained. Whether in stories of ghosts sending desperate warnings to their human counterparts, psychics attempting to bridge unknown dimensions, howling werewolves, or a robot who takes on a life of his own, Bierce plumbs the depths of fear and fascination.

In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians is a collection of 26 short stories detailing the lives of soldiers and civilians during the American Civil War.

Early in May 1861, 21-year-old Sam R. Watkins of Columbia, Tennessee, joined the First Tennessee Regiment. He fought in all of its major battles, from Shiloh to Nashville. Twenty years later, with a "house full of young 'rebels' clustering around my knees and bumping about my elbows," he wrote the remarkable account of "Co. Aytch," its common foot soldiers, its commanders, its Yankee enemies, its victories and defeats, and its ultimate surrender on April 26, 1865.

Ambrose Bierce's collection of short stories of the supernatural and macabre Can Such Things Be? was first published in 1893 and republished in a revised edition in 1910. This selection contains two of his most famous tales: "The Moonlit Road" and "The Death of Halpin Frayser" together with 10 others.

A change in the colour of the light usually called me in the morning. By a certain hour, the long, vertical chinks in our western gable, where the boards had shrunk and separated, flashed suddenly into my eyes as stripes of dazzling blue, at once so dark and splendid that I used to marvel how the qualities could be combined. At an earlier hour, the heavens in that quarter were still quietly coloured, but the shoulder of the mountain which shuts in the canyon already glowed with sunlight in a wonderful compound of gold and rose and green; and this too would kindle, although more mildly and with rainbow tints, the fissures of our crazy gable.

A horrible tempest hurls an abandoned ship against the shoal rocks with the force of a hurricane. Once the tremendous storm passes, a family appears from within the crushed vessel. Now a father, a mother, and their four sons must carve out a new life for themselves on an unchartered tropical island. Come and join the Swiss Family Robinson, as they learn how to survive while battling the savage forces of nature and discover the wonders of their own paradise.

From the author of Last Horizons, Peter Hathaway Capstick now presents Death in a Lonely Land, a second volume of his hunting, fishing, and shooting adventures on five continents—stories collected from such magazines as Outdoor Life, NRA’s American Hunter, Guns & Ammo, and Petersen’s Hunting. The stockbroker-turned-outdoorsman recalls his days as an African pro hunter in “The Killer Baboons of Vlackfontein.” “Four Fangs in a Treetop” records a foray into British Honduras for the jaguar, “a gold-dappled teardrop of motion.”

Hector Munro, writing under the pseudonym of Saki, is justly renowned for his urbane and witty short stories. His eccentric characters, humorous dialogue and engaging domestic situations all reveal a penetrating and sometimes disturbing insight into human nature. As a quixotic tour guide, Saki leads the reader from garden party to pig sty to political convention with the ease of one who is intimately familiar with the cares and foibles of the human condition, showing us this vista of life through the well tempered lens of his gentle, British irony. In this definitive collection of stories we can browse and sightsee at our leisure, cross borders of fresh insight, admire and enjoy each whimsical tale as we journey through the imaginative landscape of a truly artful writer.

In this, the most memorable of her works, Gertrude Stein paints striking portraits of three women. "The Good Anna" is the story of a sober housekeeper of German stock. "The Gentle Lena" is concerned with a passive German girl who endures her woeful life until she dies in childbirth. "Melanetha" tells of a young, intelligent, half-white girl's sexual searching and tragic love affair.

All of Edgar Allan Poe’s great short stories in one 16-hour collection.

The forerunner to The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion tells the earlier history of Middle-earth, recounting the events of the First and Second Ages, and introducing some of the key characters, such as Galadriel, Elrond, Elendil and the Dark Lord, Sauron. The tales of The Silmarillion are set...

Heralded as an instant classic of fantasy literature, Maguire has written a wonderfully imaginative retelling of The Wizard of Oz told from the Wicked Witch's point of view. More than just a fairy tale for adults, Wicked is a meditation on the nature of good and evil.

First published in 1843, it tells the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a mean and unpleasant man who dislikes people generally and Christmas especially. One Christmas Eve he is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come and given a glimpse of the many homes and lives which Scrooge has touched in his wretched life to date. After their visits, Scrooge is transformed into a kinder, gentler man.

A Signature Performance: Tim Curry rescues Charles Dickens from the jaws of Disney with his one-of-a-kind performance of the treasured classic. Our listeners loved this version so much that it inspired our whole line of Signature Classics.

Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum, a small slimy creature. I don’t know where he came from, nor who or what he was. He was Gollum—as dark as darkness, except for two big round pale eyes in his thin face. He had a little boat, and he rowed about quite quietly on the lake; for lake it was, wide and deep and deadly cold.

Here is the novel that will be forever considered a triumph of the imagination. Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, who would become the mysterious man known as Maud'dib. He would avenge the traitorous plot against his noble family and would bring to fruition humankind's most ancient and unattainable dream.

Grab your sisters and cinch those corsets! This is a retelling of Jane Austen’s beloved Pride and Prejudice like no other, performed by a remarkable new cast with an original score by Grammy-nominated composer, Morgan Kibby. Elizabeth Bennet has no intention of settling for any man, or frankly any life, that isn’t lived entirely on her terms. She will marry for love, dance when she wants to dance, and—if at all possible—find a quiet spot to read without being interrupted.

AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER OVER 120 MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE PUBLISHED IN 89 LANGUAGES “Teaches us about dreams, destiny, and the reason we are all here.”—Oprah Daily, “Best Self-Help Books of a Generation” A spellbinding audio presentation of the extraordinary...

Renowned as much for her wit and satirical social commentary as for her stories of love and romance, Jane Austen remains unfailingly relevant and one of Britain’s best loved authors. In this Audible Original collection, an all-star list of narrators (Billie Piper, Claire Foy, Emma Thompson, Florence Pugh and Gugu Mbatha-Raw) capture Austen’s pin-sharp humour and tone in these dramatisations of her six beloved novels accompanied by a full cast.

The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume in the trilogy, tells of the fateful power of the One Ring. It begins a magnificent tale of adventure that will plunge the members of the Fellowship of the Ring into a perilous quest and set the stage for the ultimate clash between the powers of good and evil.

It’s 1984, and life has changed beyond recognition. Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, is a place where Big Brother is always watching, and nobody can hide. Except, perhaps, for Winston Smith. Whilst working at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, he secretly dreams of freedom. And in a world where love and sex are forbidden, where it’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe, he meets Julia and O’Brien and vows to rebel.

This #1 New York Times bestseller is a "bold and subversive retelling of the goddess's story" that brilliantly reimagines the life of Circe, formidable sorceress of The Odyssey (Alexandra Alter, TheNew York Times). In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is...

This audiobook collection contains the following works of Agatha Christie: The Mysterious Affair at Styles, The Secret Adversary, The Murder on the Links, The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim, The Adventure of the "Western Star", The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor, The Million Dollar Bond Robbery, The Adventure of the Cheap Flat, The Mystery of the Hunter's Lodge, The Kidnapped Prime Minister, The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb, The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman, The Case of the Missing Will, The Chocolate Box, The Veiled Lady, The Lost Mine, The Affair at the Victory Ball.

Grammy Award Nominee for Best Spoken Word Album! Tiny Tim, Bob Cratchit, and Ebenezer Scrooge come to marvelous life in Patrick Stewart's critically acclaimed solo interpretation of A Christmas Carol. The star of X-Men and The Royal Shakespeare Company, Stewart has performed his one-man stage...

Look for The Land of Sweet Forever, a posthumous collection of newly discovered short stories and previously published essays and magazine pieces by Harper Lee, coming October 21, 2025. Voted America's Best-Loved Novel in PBS's The Great American Read Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning...

Linus Baker is a by-the-book case worker in the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. He's tasked with determining whether six dangerous magical children are likely to bring about the end of the world. Arthur Parnassus is the master of the orphanage. He would do anything to keep the children safe, even if it means the world will burn. And his secrets will come to light.

The company of the Ring is torn asunder. Frodo and Sam continue their journey alone down the great River Anduin - alone, that is, save for the mysterious creeping figure that follows wherever they go. This continues the classic tale begun in The Fellowship of the Ring, which reaches its awesome climax in The Return of the King.

The 40th anniversary edition of the Pulitzer Prize–winning classic of the American West, with a new foreword by Yellowstone cocreator Taylor Sheridan. An epic of the frontier, Lonesome Dove is the grandest novel ever written about the last defiant wilderness. Journey to the dusty little town...

Winston Smith works in the Ministry of Truth—or Minitrue as it is called in Newspeak—where he alters newspapers and reports to follow the arbitrary dictates of Big Brother’s propaganda. Beneath his outward conformity, however, Winston dreams of sharing his treasonable thoughts and breaking through the loneliness in which he lives. Thus he takes his first dangerous steps, writing a diary of his doubts and then falling in love with a woman of the Party, the beautiful and brave Julia.

George Orwell's classic satire of the Russian Revolution is an intimate part of our contemporary culture, quoted so often that we tend to forget who wrote the original words! This must-read is also a must-listen!

Pride and Prejudice has delighted generations of readers with its unforgettable cast of characters, carefully choreographed plot, and a hugely entertaining view of the world and its absurdities. With the arrival of eligible young men in their neighbourhood, the lives of Mr and Mrs Bennet and their five daughters are turned inside out and upside down.