Showing results by publisher "The Copyright Group" in All Categories

Billy Budd, Sailor is a classic confrontation between good and evil, and the story of an innocent young man unable to defend himself against a wrongful accusation.

Journal of Love continues the story of Anais Nin's eventful bohemian life which began with Henry and June. Her pioneering insightful writing is considered the finest in the genre of female erotica. Maryam D'Abo, famous as a Bond leading lady, captures the honesty and sensuality of Nin's beautiful book.

Rudyard Kipling. With our almost religious zeal to categorise and pigeon hole everything it should come as little surprise that one of the poems we learnt at school should so regularly be voted the best ever poem. Whether ‘If..’ deserves that credit or not is irrelevant to this empire wandering artist who was not only a fine story teller but a great poet of the Empires, its people and views.

CHARLES DICKENS enjoyed entertaining his friends with readings of ghost stories, especially at Christmas time. In his classic tale The Signalman, the then high technology world of steam railway comes to contact with what looks like a good old fashioned haunting. A night at a desolate country inn dramatically changes Tom Smart's fortunes in The Bagman's Story. Together with Christmas Ghosts and Mr Testator’s Visitation, these tales are fine examples of Dickens’s spine-chilling talents.

Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Barrett was born on 6 March 1806, in Coxhoe Hall, County Durham, the eldest of 12 children. The family's wealth was derived from sugar plantations manned by slaves in Jamaica, enabling them to also purchase a 500-acre estate in Herefordshire. This wealth allowed her to publish poems from an early age. However, by age 20, the family’s fortunes were in decline, though they were never below comfortable, after losing a lawsuit over their plantations.

Born in 1857 in Poland, Joseph Conrad became a British citizen just before he turned 30. In the intervening years he lost both parents, becoming an orphan at 11, being thereafter raised by an uncle, who let the boy go to Marseille, where he began to work on merchant ships. At age 36 his life turned from one of ships to one of literary pursuit. Conrad brought to English literature both a fresh layer of style and a deeper examination of the human psyche in a wealth of works. In this audiobook we dwell among his numerous short stories.

Many nations have produced outstanding poets who they would gladly have represent their Culture. But can any Nation say they have an equivalent of Robert Burns...The Ploughman Poet, The Bard Of Scotland? This one poet is indelibly linked and intertwined with the culture and people of Scotland. His life, loves, politics, verse and songs speak as them and for them. Politically he was an inspiration to both liberalism and socialism as well as a Scottish parliament.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft is among the greatest American writers of fantasy and the supernatural. Born in 1890, a native of Providence, Rhode Island, his health was uncertain from childhood and he led a sheltered early life. His semi-invalidism enabled him to read omnivorously, and as a shy imaginative child he began to invent what would in his adult life become a whole macabre fantastic world of his own, peopled by creatures out of his own weird imagination.

David Storey's This Sporting Life, set in the industrial north, brilliantly conveys 21-year-old steelworker Arthur Machin's love of his rugby league, his success on the field, and his feelings towards his widowed landlady, as well as his bouts of doubt and anxiety.

The Perfumed Garden is perhaps the most comprehensive treatise on the art of love making and sexual pleasure. Written over 400 years ago in Arabia by Shayakh Umar ibn Muhammed al-Nefzawi it is unquestionably one of the greatest books ever written on the subject of eroticism. It delicately and joyously catalogues innumerable and imaginative acts of coitus. .

Perhaps best known for her classic novel The Age of Innocence, Wharton loved the short story form because its brevity allowed her to concentrate on telling the story. In these three powerful stories, Edith Wharton transports the listener to the turn of the century, where she depicts (without turning to sensationalism) the shocking topics of the time. Often, she opens just after an incident, allowing the listener to be immersed straight into the story.

The Forsyte Saga initially centres on Soames Forsyte - a successful solicitor living in London with his beautiful wife Irene. A pillar of the late Victorian upper middle class, materially wealthy, his appears to be a golden existence endowed with all the necessary possessions for a 'Man of Property' but beneath this very proper exterior lies a core of unhappiness and brutal relationships. When The Forsyte Saga was shown on television in 1967 it was hugely successful.

It is strange to consider that, although The Hound Of The Baskervilles is Conan Doyle’s most popular novel, his hero is absent for much of the time. Notice how he sets up an atmosphere of supernatural horror right from the start through Dr Mortimer’s reading of the ancient curse, and how he then presents as assortment of bizarre clues – in particular, the riddle of the missing boots – which Holmes will have to unravel.

William Shakespeare is of course England's greatest play right and revered the World over. The Merchant of Venice is a masterly tale and is on a par with many of his other works. In his creation of Venice Shakespeare revels in his characters and story. Perhaps best well known for the creation of the character Shylock in a world of money lending the play has survived admirably down the years. This play is performed by a quite magnificent cast and in the lead role of Shylock we have Michael Redgrave.

Jackie Mason is quite rightly a comedic legend. Mel Brooks is often quoted as saying 'Nobody makes me laugh harder'. Mason is funny. Period. In this recording he takes aim and hits everyone from Bill Clinton to John Major to TV to Shakespeare. Most famous for poking fun at his own culture and other Jews he nonetheless has a wonderful way of getting his point across with warmth, barbs and of course wit.

The story of Villette is told in flashback by Lucy Snowe, who tells of the trials of her young self first in England, and then in Belgium. Charlotte Bronte does not paint a romantic picture of an unsupported woman's life - her heroine has to endure straitened circumstances, insecurity and humiliation. However, despite everything that happens to her, Lucy is a warm and courageous character who makes the most of the opportunities that occur.

Most famous for his tales of crime and deduction, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle also had a passion for suspense, the supernatural and the macabre as demonstrated in this collection of gothic short stories. This set contains the stories: The Horror of the Heights, The Lord of Chateau Noir, The Nightmare Room, The Ring of Thoth & The Brazilian Cat. So get ready for Doyle’s vivid spine tingling imagination to unnerve and thrill you in equal measure!

My Lives and Loves Volume 2 covers Frank Harris's friendship and encounters with the Prince of Wales, Oscar Wilde, Guy De Maupassant, Lord Randolph Churchill, William Parnell and others. He sets the Evening News on its feet and comes to know the minds of Shakespeare and Goethe and the bodies of Elaine and Laura. He comes to realize the virtue of chastity and that it must be practiced - at least from time to time.

This is the best known work of this Austrian writer and poet who based this tale of love, humiliation and obsession largely on his own life and gave the English language the word masochism. A compelling well written story it has inspired and influenced many psychologists, artists, writers and musicians from Thomas Mann to the Velvet Underground and even Freud, since its first publication in 1870.

A local hero, Dr Wayne Phillips, dies because the equipment that could save him is being used to help Bob Merrick, a spoiled rich man who has wrecked his speed boat. Dr Phillips gave selflessly and in secret to many people and causes, which Merrick now takes up too. However his efforts end in failure and also alienate Dr Phillips' widow, Helen, with whom he is besotted.