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In this, the 15th of the series, Dumas, the novelist-historian, brings his storytelling skills to a subject famous at the time but less so now: Joachim Murat, the brother-in-law of Napoleon Bonapart, who established him as King Joachim the First of Naples. Joachim is nothing if not an attractive, indeed romantic hero.

Ever since the time of Louis XIV, the story has been told of a man mysteriously snatched out of the world and buried for life not merely in a prison cell but also in an mask of iron: an imprisonment designed to ensure no one would ever know his name or even see his face. Dumas asks: Who was the man in the iron mask? Why was he imprisoned? Why were such strange precautions taken, and why was he treated with such respect and care, given everything he asked for--except his freedom and his name?

To paraphrase the note from the translator, the Celebrated Crimes of Alexandre Dumas père was not written for children. The novelist has spared no language - has minced no words - to describe violent scenes of violent times.In this, the ninth of the series, Dumas uses the lives of two women, Angelique-Louise de Guerchi and Josephine-Charlotte Boullenois, and the men who, to put it bluntly, control their lives.

The story of Nisida is worthy of an Italian opera in the great romantic tradition, and indeed Donizetti attempted it, but without success. It is the story of an attempt by a womanizing nobleman to seduce and ruin the daughter of a poor but admirable fisherman, an attempt that ends in his death at the hands of her brother, who is then sentenced to die and is executed, but not by the hands of the law. The story is told in lush and melodramatic style, tending in places to comedy.

In this, the sixth of the series, Dumas tells the story of Urbain Grandier, a Catholic priest, little known to the English-speaking world, but famous among French speakers; he was the target of a religous and political conspiracy that began among his personal and political enemies in the town of Loudon and ended at the highest levels of political and religious power in the kingdom of France, with the direct involvement of Cardinal Richelieu and possibly of the king himself.

To paraphrase the note from the translator, The Celebrated Crimes of Alexandre Dumas père was not written for children. The novelist has spared no language - has minced no words - to describe violent scenes of violent times. In this, the fifth of the series, Dumas tells the story of Karl-Ludwig Sand, a man little known to the English-speaking world, but famous among German speakers; he was the man who assassinated August von Kotzebue, a vigorous advocate of Russia's interests and the interests of the Austrian Empire. In the years immediately following the fall of Napoleon, many people in Germany, particularly young people, were eagerly anticipating the coming of liberal government. Much to their dismay, the autocratic governments existing before the war were not only re-established, but put great energy to ensuring that a liberal revolution would never happen. Karl-Ludwig Sand, a young German student, became convinced that Kotzebue was the key figure in this wave of repression. He made up his mind to kill the man, and kill him he did.

In this, the fourth of the series, Dumas tells the story of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots - a story both strikingly touching and almost morbidly violent. Never one to allow a mere fact to stand in the way of a good story, though very sympathetic to Mary, Dumas puts all the most sensational accusations made against her - mostly by her enemies - to circumspect yet full use, which certainly distorts history, but makes for a great tale.

In Avon's Harvest, Edwin Arlington Robinson devotes the majority of the audiobook to one long narrative poem of the same title, which tells the story of how a man's life was destroyed by the slow canker of an unreasoning hatred he formed as a young man, and of a sudden act of violence that flared out of it. Robinson's wields his sparse, simple, yet brilliantly polished verse like a scalpel, dissecting layer after layer of Avon's mind until the whole is laid bare as if on an operating table.

In this collection of dramatic narratives, Robinson explores his key interests: character and man's confrontation with the rocks and hard places of human existence. He gives us a fascinating piece of alternate history: a dialogue between Alexander Hamlton and Aaron Burr, testing who will betray and who will resist. He gives that bitter old man, John Brown, full scope to vent his deep-seated anger, and lets Rahel Varnhagen, in her old age, touch us with her memories of love.

The beautiful, elegant, heartbreakingly sad story of Lancelot, Guinevere and Arthur is Edwin Arlington Robinson's subject in his 1920 novella in verse, Lancelot. His focus throughout is on one side of the triangle, that of Lancelot and Guinevere. Robinson does not give us Malory's tales of jousts and tournaments; he sets his poem instead in the quiet moments of reflection, hope, anger, forgiveness, remorse and honesty that allow him to explore the meaning of this, one of literature's most enduring love stories, in the depths of the hearts and minds of his characters.

In 1921, Edwin Arlington Robinson was only 52 and many of the pieces in his Collected Poems were written long before that. Yet he shows gifted understanding of old age, the passage of time, the slow decline that everyone must suffer, and the final cease and release of death. Isaac, in Isaac and Archibald, puts it very well to the poet's twelve-year-old alter ego.

What Spoon River Anthology does for a Midwestern small town, Turns and Movies does for the world of vaudeville. Like Masters, like Aiken: passions, betrayals, secrets, sins, victories, defeats, and inevitable losing struggles against age and death are the stuff of this work. And that's only the first part of the book.

Conrad Aiken was fascinated throughout his early work with the image of a tempestuous, romantic young man who tears himself away from his wife, his first love, and from a pastoral, peaceful life in a rural setting, to pursue what he hopes will be a richer, fuller, more rewarding life in a great city. In this book, Aiken explores this theme in full, especially in the final long poem, "Dust in Starlight", which also forms Part III of his trilogy, Earth Triumphant.

Stephen Crane's poetry is torn by a sense of his own sin, outraged by the capricious behavior of a God he rejected, his poems brim with bitteness, yet carry with them a sane and sarcastic humor as well. Tremendously laconic and always moving directly to the point, he demands his listener's full attention, and rewards it.

Here are three stories that will make you chuckle and shiver at the same time. Spirits can be funny when they turn out to have issues and problems of their own, and the authors of these stories, John Kendrick Bangs and H. G. Wells, have a fine time putting smiles on our faces - and wiping them off again!

Pity Sir Simon de Canterville, the poor Ghost of Canterville Chase! He killed his wife and was then starved to death by her brothers, but ever since then he's been happily haunting the family's mansion, always inventing fresh characters and costumes and blood-curdling shrieks.

In these two tales drawn from the magical world of the jungles of India, Rudyard Kipling explores issues of good and evil, courage and honor, materialism and spirituality. In "The King's Ankus", the wolf-boy Mowgli confronts a treasure made long ago by humankind--treasure for which humankind will kill, and kill, and kill again. In "The Miracle of Purun Bhagat", a man who has known wealth, and power, and great responsibility casts all that aside for the humble life of a wandering beggar-priest--until circumstances bring him once more to take command and save life.

Stephen Crane's second book of poetry followed up the success of his first book, Black Riders. His search for love, his lonely, bitter struggle to make his peace with God, the war in his heart between cynicism and an unshakeable longing for truth and beauty in the world--these all continue in his second book. Sadly, this second book was also his last, for he died tragically young.

In this, the fourth volume of this series, we hear the poetry in which Byron began to make his mark on the world. Though his major breakthrough with Childe Harold is yet to come, his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers was a definite hit in its time, establishing Byron as a known poet and ensuring that his reputation as a literary bad-boy was off to a good start.