Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Classics

This sequel to King Solomon's Mines is filled with the spirit of adventure. Thrilled by rumors of a lost civilization, three Englishmen decide to travel to the heart of Africa with their Zulu guide where they meet with continual peril: an attack by a cruel warrior tribe, the scorch of underground volcanic fires, and an encounter with a huge species of ferocious black crab. Exhausted and depleted of supplies, the men at last arrive at a mysterious city in the highlands of the interior.

In the summer of 1921, a disenchanted journalist escapes the rat race for a drive in the country. But Mr. Barnstaple’s trip exceeds his expectations when he and other motorists are swept 3,000 years into the future. The inadvertent time travelers arrive in a world that corresponds exactly to Barnstaple’s ideals: a utopian state, free of crime, poverty, war, disease, and bigotry. Unfettered by the constraints of government and organized religion, the citizens lead rich, meaningful lives, passed in pursuit of their creative fancies.

This is the story of Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin, a government clerk who believes that a fellow clerk has taken over his identity and is determined to bring about his ruin. Considered the most Gogolesque of Dostoevsky's works, the novella brilliantly depicts Golyadkin's descent into madness in a way that is hauntingly poetic. The Double illustrates Dostoevsky's uncanny ability at capturing the complexity of human emotion, especially the darker side of the human psyche.

O. Henry wove several stories together into this highly episodic narrative, taking his title and inspiration from Lewis Carroll's ballad of the walrus and the carpenter in Through the Looking-Glass. The stories are set in the fictional country of Anchuria in Central America, a banana republic where larceny is rampant and revolution lurking in every impoverished back alley. O. Henry offers a cutting satire of contemporary politics and prejudices.

John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone. This collection includes "Love of Life", "A Day's Lodging", "The White Man's Way", "The Story of Keesh", "The Unexpected", "Brown Wolf", "The Sun-Dog Trail", and "Negore, the Coward".

Paula Power, the daughter of a wealthy railway magnate, inherits De Stancy Castle, an ancient castle in need of modernization. She commissions a young architect from London, George Somerset, to undertake the work. Somerset falls in love with Paula. But Paula, the Laodicean of the title, meaning a person who is lukewarm or halfhearted, is torn between George's admiration and that of Captain De Stancy, whose old-world romanticism contrasts with Somerset's forward-looking outlook.

One of the most distinctive periods in English poetry was the age of Romanticism, a movement which rebelled against the neoclassical forms and celebrated the imagination as a spiritual force

Homer's Iliad can justly be called the world's greatest war epic. The terrible and long-drawn-out siege of Troy remains one of the classic campaigns, the heroism and treachery of its combatants unmatched in song and story. Driven by fierce passions and loyalties, men and gods battle to a devastating conclusion.

Marlow, the story's narrator, tells his friends of an experience in the British Congo where he once ran a river steamer for a trading company. He tells of the ivory traders' cruel exploitation of the natives there. Chief among these is a greedy and treacherous European named Kurtz, who has used savagery to obtain semi-divine power over the natives. While Marlow tries to get Kurtz back down the river, Kurtz tries to justify his actions, asserting that he has seen into the very heart of things.

Written at various times and under various influences, the four stories contained in Within the Tides are linked by Conrad's treatment of loyalty and betrayal. They range in setting from the Far East via 18th-century Spain to England. The tone shifts from the tragic inevitability of "The Planter of Malata" and the pathos of "Because of the Dollars" to the gothic "The Inn of the Two Witches" and the grim humor of "The Partner." Experimental in form, they represent yet another branch of Conrad's search for moral truth.

In this lyrical and poignant story of a wounded man and the three concerned women who seek to heal him, Rebecca West explores the complexity of the mind and its subtle strategies for coping with life's painful realities. Only when Chris has the courage to face one pivotal moment of truth in his married life will he be able to awaken from his boyish fantasy and become, indeed, "every inch a soldier".

Young Oxford tutor Theodore Gumbril has become thoroughly dismayed by the formality of college life and the staid British institutions of learning. An impetuous need for celebration, even rebellion, possesses him. He and his bohemian companions embark on wild and daring "bacchanalian" adventures that steer them resolutely away from stifling conventions of behavior. Antic Hay, first published in 1923, is one of Aldous Huxley's earlier novels, and like them is primarily a 'novel of ideas' involving conversations which disclose viewpoints rather than establish characters; its polemical theme unfolds against the backdrop of London's post-war nihilistic Bohemia. This is Huxley at his biting, brilliant best -- a novel, loud with derisive laughter, which satirically scoffs at all conventional morality and at stuffy people everywhere -- a novel that's always charged with excitement.

Twenty years ago, a barmaid in a harbor town fell for a young sailor who turned pirate to make his fortune. But what truly became of Black Edward Tew remains a mystery, one that has just fallen into the lap of freelance sword jockey Eddie LaCrosse. For years, Eddie has kept his office above Angelina’s tavern, so when Angelina herself asks him to find out what happened to the dashing pirate who stole her heart years ago, he can hardly say no—even though the trail is two decades old. Some say Black Edward and his ship, The Bloody Angel, went to bottom of the sea, taking with it a king’s ransom in treasure.

Mary and Eddie are meant for each other - but love is no guarantee, not in these suburbs. Like all children, they exist in an eternal present; time is imminent, and the adults of the street live in their assorted houses like numbers on a clock. Meanwhile, ominous rumors circulate, and the increasing agitation of the neighbors points to a future in which all will be lost. Soon a sorcerer's car will speed down Mary's street, and as past and future fold into each other, the resonant parenthesis of her girlhood will close forever. Beyond is adulthood.

In all the time the Tufa have existed, only two have ever been exiled: Bo-Kate Wisby and her lover, Jefferson Powell. They were cast out, stripped of their ability to make music, and cursed to never be able to find their way back to Needsville. Their crime? A love that crossed the boundary of the two Tufa tribes, resulting in the deaths of several people. Somehow, Bo-Kate has found her way back and she intends to take over both tribes. The only one who can stop Bo-Kate is Jefferson.

In this powerful, poetic, and moving parable, the Wandering Jew of medieval Christian legend journeys to Delphi to consult the famed oracle of the pagans. He is turned away but not before learning that one of the most adept of the old priestesses, or sibyls, lives in disgrace in the mountains above the Temple. In her crude goat-hut he seeks the meaning of his disastrous brush with the son of God.

Set in the world of Larry Niven’s popular The Magic Goes Away, The Burning City transports listeners to an enchanted and ancient city bearing a provocative resemblance to our own modern society. There, Yangin-Atep, the volatile and voracious god of fire, alternately protects and destroys the city’s denizens. In Tep’s Town, nothing can burn indoors, and no fire can start - except when the Burning comes upon the city. At that time the people, possessed by Yangin-Atep, set their own town ablaze in a riotous orgy of destruction that often comes without warning

This novel centers on the figure of Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, a member of the dying class of the landed gentry, who spends most of his time lying in bed gazing at life in an apathetic daze, encouraged by his equally lazy servant Zakhar and routinely swindled by his acquaintances. But this torpid existence comes to an end when, spurred on by his crumbling finances, the love of a woman, and the reproaches of his friend, the hardworking Schtoltz, Oblomov finds that he must engage with the real world and face up to his commitments.

In 1756, New York State was still a British colony, and the French and the Indians were constant threats to young Edward and his family. When his father was called away to watch for a raid from the north, only Edward was left to protect Mama and little Trudy. His father had shown him how to use the huge matchlock gun, an old Spanish gun that was twice as long as he was, but would Edward be able to handle it if trouble actually came?

The epitome of the romantic literary hero, Lord Byron was as well known in his time for the revolutionary panache with which he lived as for his extremely popular verse. “As a myth,” wrote Bertrand Russell, “his importance, especially on the continent, was enormous.” His many tempestuous relationships were the subject of scandal which only added to his celebrity. His name has even entered into our language to describe a man of deep passion and defiance.