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

The title work in this collection of ten short stories and poems is widely regarded as the most famous of Edgar Allan Poe’s writings. This unsettling tale in verse tells of a man’s slow descent into madness as he mourns the loss of his lover. The mysterious visit of a talking raven that utters only one word sparks the man’s steady decline.

One of the world's most famous intellectual ghost stories, The Turn of the Screw is a haunting tale of suspected supernatural possession. A governess at a country house claims that Miles and Flora, two orphaned children in her care, are being controlled by spirits for some evil purpose. No one else can see the ghosts, and the children themselves are silent. Are they being dominated by spectral forces, or are they hiding something? Is the governess simply paranoid, or is something else going on?

Silas Marner is a gentle linen weaver who is framed for a heinous theft by his best friend. Exiled from the sphere of human trust and love, he becomes a recluse, caring only for the gold he receives for his work. But when an abandoned child mysteriously appears at his cottage one New Year's Eve, Silas discovers an unselfish love that will ultimately lead to his redemption.

Grace, as her friends call her, has a Ford Motor Company tattoo running down her leg and grease worked deep into her hands. She works at Sanchez Motorworks customizing hot rods. Finding the line in a classic car is her calling. Now Grace has to find the line in her own life. Grace loves John, and John loves her, and that would be wonderful, except that John, like Grace, has unfinished business: He's haunted by the childhood death of his younger brother. He's never stopped feeling responsible.

All Loves Excelling is John Bunyan's sermon on Ephesians 3:18-19: "That ye...may be able to comprehend with all saints, what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge." It was first titled The Saints' Knowledge of Christ's Love, is worthy of being ranked alongside Sibbes, and deals with a much neglected subject area.

Perhaps more than any other book The Thirty-Nine Steps has set the pattern for the story of the chase for a wanted man. And, of the many writers who have attempted this kind of thing since Buchan, only a very few, like Graham Greene, have managed to sustain the tension in the same way. The story's extended chase scene inspired Alfred Hitchcock's movie of the same name.

William Wordsworth (1770 -1850) is one of the most popular and enduring of the English poets. His poetry is beloved for its deep feeling, its use of ordinary speech, and its celebration of nature and of the beauty and poetry in the commonplace. Together with his friend, the poet and political activist Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Wordsworth helped launch the romantic age in English literature. These poems demonstrate the astonishing range and beauty of Wordsworth’s work and his sustained, coherent vision.

This is A Madman's Diary, and Other Stories by Lu Xun, a renowned writer of modern Chinese literature. Lu Xun was a novelist, editor, translator, literary critic, essayist, and poet who wrote both in Vernacular Chinese and Classical Chinese. He became the titular head of the League of Left-Wing Writers in Shanghai in the 1930s.

This fictional classic describes the factual persecution endured by the early Christians living in the catacombs beneath Rome through the character of Marellus, a captain in the Praetorian Guard and despised Christian. Penned by an anonymous 19th-century author, Martyr of the Catacombs has challenged and encouraged the faithful for over a hundred years.

Kirk, an impecunious artist of perfect physique, and Ruth, a spoilt heiress, were blissfully happy through their early days of marriage and the birth of their first son. But when Kirk returns from a trip to Columbia to find Ruth under the thumb of her Aunt Laura, an advocate of eugenics, parenting philosophies divide them. It takes a series of comic mishaps, featuring a galaxy of vintage Wodehouse characters, to retrieve the family’s happiness from the overbearing aunt.

In this searching tragicomedy of manners, personalities, and world views, E.M. Forster explores the "idea of England" he would later develop in Howards End. Bookish, sensitive, and given to wild enthusiasms, Rickie Elliot is virtually made for a life at Cambridge, where he can subsist on a regimen of biscuits and philosophical debate.

“Sam was brushing her hair when the girl in the mirror put down the hairbrush, smiled, and said, "We don't love you anymore." So began the Twitter Audio project, with a dazzling first line penned by New York Times best-selling author Neil Gaiman. What followed was an epic tale of imaginary lands, magical objects, haunting melodies, plucky sidekicks, menacing villains, and much more

“In this brief sketch of our great Southern hero, I have endeavored to portray, amid the blaze of his matchless military genius, the unchanging rectitude of his conduct, the stern will-power by which he conquered all difficulties, his firm belief in an overruling Providence, and his entire submission to the Divine Will. These traits of character were the cornerstones upon which he reared the edifice of his greatness, and upon which the young people of our day will do well to build."

Through 23 connected short stories, the author looks into the lives of the inhabitants of a small town in the American heartland. In a simple and intense style, these psychological portraits of the sensitive and imaginative of Winesburg's population are seen through the eyes of a young reporter-narrator, George Willard. Their stories are about loneliness and alienation, passion and virginity, wealth and poverty, thrift and profligacy, carelessness and abandon.

Widely considered one of Isaac Bashevis Singer's most notable works of short fiction, "Gimpel the Fool" was originally written in Yiddish. It was later translated into English by Saul Bellow and appeared inthe 1953 edition of Partisan Review. The story, a parable, tells of a foolish, unlucky baker named Gimpel, who isconstantly tricked and heckled by other villagers. His follies ultimately reveal a moral lesson.

Mortal Coils is a collection of five pieces written by Aldous Huxley in the 1920s. The first one, "The Giaconda Smile", is a short murder story. "Permutations Among the Nightingales" is a play concerning amorous problems experienced by the patrons of a certain establishment. "The Tillotson Banquet" tells of an old artist who was thought to be dead. "Green Tunnels" is about the boredom of a young girl on holiday with her family. "Nuns at Luncheon" is a story told by a nun falling in love.

Marguerite Gautier, the greatest beauty in Paris, was known to all as “the Lady of the Camellias” because she was never seen without her favorite flowers. She was luxuriously kept by the richest men in France, who thronged to her boudoir to lay their fortunes at her feet. She lived violently, spending herself and her money in reckless abandon. She had many lovers, but she never really loved - until she met Armand Duval.

A lesson on the power of vanity, "The Necklace" tells the story of Madame Mathilde Loisel and her husband. Mathilde always imagined herself as a socialite with beautiful gowns and wonderful jewels. Her husband, however, is a lowly clerk and the two have little money. Desperate to attend an important party, she borrows a friend's diamond necklace to match the dress her husband bought for her. But when Mathilde loses the expensive jewels, she nearly destroys her life in an effort to pay back the debt.

In Stephen Mitchell's The Iliad, the epic story resounds again across 2,700 years, as if the lifeblood of its heroes Achilles and Patroclus, Hector, and Priam flows in every word. And we are there with them, amid the horror and ecstasy of war, carried along by a poetry that lifts even the most devastating human events into the realm of the beautiful. Mitchell's The Iliad is the first translation based on the work of the preeminent Homeric scholar Martin L. West.

Based on some of Zane Grey's own real-life adventures exploring the rugged West with professional guides, including the Grand Canyon area, he here tells the story of hunters with their hounds that go to the rim of the Grand Canyon in hopes of capturing mountain lions alive. This is one of Zane Grey's stories that is especially appealing to young listeners.