Showing results by publisher "Audioliterature" in Romance

"Ben-Hur" is a historical novel by Lew Wallace, a story of a hero named Judah Ben-Hur, a Jewish nobleman who was falsely accused of an attempted assassination and enslaved by the Romans. Judah first encounters Jesus, who offers him a drink of water and encouragement, as Judah is being marched to a galley to be a slave. Their lives continue to intersect as the story unfolds. Judah survives his ordeal as a galley slave, after befriending and saving the commander of his ship, who later adopts him.

"The Shuttle" (1907) is a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Sir Nigel Anstruthers comes to New York to search an heiress, as he no longer has enough money to keep up his estate, Stornham Court. He marries the pretty and treasured Rosalie, the daughter of an American millionaire. But on their return to England, Nigel and his mother control and isolate Rosalie from her family. Many years later, Rosalie's sister Bettina, who has spent a decade wondering why Rosy has lost contact with the family, arrives at Stornham Court to investigate.

"Persuasion" is the last novel of Jane Austen's. As the Napoleonic Wars come to an end in 1814, Admirals and Captains of the Royal Navy are put ashore, their work done. Anne Elliot meets Captain Frederick Wentworth after seven years, by the chance of his sister and brother-in-law renting her father's estate, while she stays for a few months with her married sister, living nearby. They fell in love the first time they met, but she broke off the engagement.

"North and South" is a social novel by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell. She uses a protagonist from southern England to present and comment on the perspectives of both mill owners and mill workers in an industrializing city. "North and South" is set in the fictional industrial town of Milton in the North of England. Forced to leave her home in the tranquil rural south, Margaret Hale settles with her parents in Milton where she witnesses the brutal world wrought by the industrial revolution and employers and workers clashing in the first organized strikes.

"Sons and Lovers" is a famous novel by D. H. Lawrence. The refined daughter of a "good old burgher family", Gertrude Coppard meets a rough-hewn miner, Walter Morel, at a Christmas dance and falls into a whirlwind romance characterized by physical passion. But soon after her marriage to Walter, she realizes the difficulties of living off his meagre salary in a rented house. The couple fight and drift apart and Walter retreats to the pub after work each day.

"The Port of Missing Men" is a thriller by Meredith Nicholson. Excerpt from the book: "The knowledge that you're alive gives me no pleasure," growled the grim old Austrian premier. "Thank you!" laughed John Armitage, to whom he had spoken. "You have lost none of your old amiability; but for a renowned diplomat, you are remarkably frank. When I called on you in Paris, a year ago, I was able to render you - I believe you admitted it - a slight service."

An absolutely fascinating, trailblazing and early work of feminism and social realism! This novel reflects the important sexual and cultural issues of the late nineteenth century. Here, women are portrayed as "odd" and marginal in relation to an ideal. Set in a smoggy London, our heroines range from the idealistic, financially autonomous Mary Barfoot; to the Madden sisters who struggle to get by in low paying jobs.

"The Prisoner of Zenda" is an adventure novel in which the King of Ruritania is drugged on the eve of his coronation, and thus is unable to attend the ceremony. Political forces within the realm are such, that, in order for the king to retain the crown, his coronation must proceed. Fortuitously, an English gentleman on holiday in Ruritania, who resembles the monarch, is persuaded to act as his political decoy, in effort to save the unstable political situation of the interregnum... Of course, complications along the way, plots and counter-plots will follow.

A sweet romance by Romain Rolland in an un-sweet world... Pierre and Luce find each other in Paris in 1918, while WWI still rages. Will these two sensitive young people, Pierre, a pacifist, and Luce, an artist in training stay together and find happiness or will the weight of the world in flames destroy their future together? Romain Rolland (1866-1944) was a French novelist, playwright, art historian, essayist and mystic. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915.

"Around the World in Eighty Days" by Jules Verne is an adventure classic. The main character is Phileas Fogg, a rich British gentleman living in solitude. Despite his wealth, Fogg lives a modest life with habits carried out with mathematical precision. Very little can be said about his social life other than that he is a member of the Reform Club. Having dismissed his former valet, James Forster, for bringing him shaving water at 84 °F (29 °C) instead of 86 °F (30 °C), Fogg hires a Frenchman, Jean Passepartout as a replacement.

"Hilda Lessways" (1911) by Arnold Bennett is the second book of the Clayhanger trilogy, which paralleled Edwin Clayhanger's story from the point of view of his eventual wife, Hilda. It tells the story from her coming of age, her working experiences as a shorthand clerk and keeper of a lodging house in London and Brighton, her relationship with George Cannon that ends in her disastrous bigamous marriage and pregnancy, and finally her reconciliation with Edwin Clayhanger. In part a re-telling of the plot of Clayhanger, the book includes some scenes from the earlier book from Hilda’s perspective.

"Great Expectations" is a novel fully narrated in the first person about the personal growth and development of an orphan, nicknamed Pip. The novel is set in Kent and London in the early to mid-19th century and contains some of Dickens' most memorable scenes, including the opening in a graveyard, where the escaped convict, Abel Magwitch, accosts young Pip. "Great Expectations" is full of extreme imagery - poverty; prison ships and chains, and fights till death - and has a colorful cast of characters who have entered popular culture.

In 1916, on an isolated country estate just outside London, Captain Chris Baldry, a shell-shocked captain suffering from amnesia, comes home to the three women who have shaped his life. Will these three strong and devoted women help him regain his memory and his sense of purpose and send him back to the front; or will he descend further into the catacombs of oblivion?

"The Man in Lower Ten" is a mystery by Mary Roberts Rinehart. Excerpt from the book: McKnight is gradually taking over the criminal end of the business. I never liked it, and since the strange case of the man in lower ten, I have been a bit squeamish. Given a case like that, where you can build up a network of clues that absolutely incriminate three entirely different people, only one of whom can be guilty, and your faith in circumstantial evidence dies of overcrowding.

"Pride and Prejudice" is a classic of English literature, written by Jane Austen, first published in 1813. Set in England in the early 19th century, "Pride and Prejudice" tells the story of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet's five unmarried daughters after the rich and eligible Mr. Bingley and his status-conscious friend, Mr. Darcy, have moved into their neighborhood. While Bingley takes an immediate liking to the eldest Bennet daughter, Jane, Darcy is disdainful of local society.

"The First Violin" (1877) is Jessie Fothergill's third novel. It was written in Düsseldorf and tells the story of an English girl who rejects the attentions of the rich farmer for the strange attractions of a German. The story was refused by two publishers because it dealt with an affair by a married woman. Excerpt: The door was opened. Jane held it open and said nothing (a trifling habit of hers, which used to cause me much annoyance), and a tall woman walked slowly into the room.

Abel, a young man of wealth, fails at a revolution and flees Caracas into the uncharted forests of Guyana. Surviving fever, failing at journal-keeping and gold hunting, he settles in an Indian village to waste away his life: playing guitar for old Cla-Cla, hunting badly with Kua-kó, telling stories to the children. After some exploring, Abel discovers an enchanting forest where he hears a strange bird-like singing. His Indian friends avoid the forest because of its evil spirit-protector, "the Daughter of the Didi".

This suspenseful and adventurous story by Stewart Edward White is set in North Canada. It centers around the "long journey", which is an euphemism for an implied order to kill a person who has become a liability to the company; in practice, this meant sending out the offender alone and with almost no provisions on a long trek in the wilderness, to face almost certain death. But the Hudson Bay Trading Company did not count on young and handsome offender Ned Trent to be so resourceful and resilient!

"The Roll-Call" (1918) by Arnold Bennett is a novel written after the Clayhanger trilogy. It describes the young life of Clayhanger's stepson, George. George Edwin Cannon - he soon drops the surname Clayhanger, given to him upon his mother's marriage - is an architect, and represents what his stepfather Edwin Clayhanger wished to become.

"The Well-Beloved" (1897) is A Sketch of a Temperament by Thomas Hardy. The novel tells the story of a sculptor's search for the ideal woman, through three generations of a Portland family. From the Preface: "The peninsula, whereon most of the following scenes are laid, has been for centuries immemorial the home of a curious and well-nigh distinct people, cherishing strange beliefs and singular customs, now for the most part obsolescent. Fancies, like certain soft-wooded plants which cannot bear the silent inland frosts, but thrive by the sea in the roughest of weather, seem to grow up naturally here."