Twisted Classics

Orphaned at birth, Oliver Twist is born into the grimmest of 19th century English workhouses with a life of grinding poverty ahead of him. But the boy is a fighter and after being evicted from the workhouse for asking for 'more' and surviving a stint as an undertaker’s assistant, he walks many miles to London and finds a whole new life with a gang of young pickpockets led by the Artful Dodger and their guardian Fagin.

When young orphan, Oliver Twist, is sold into an apprenticeship with an undertaker, he leaves behind years of miserable servitude and mistreatment at an English workhouse. Hoping to move on to better things, he decides to escape his new, equally dreary surroundings and head to London. It is there that the novel unravels as Oliver meets a host of larger-than-life characters, including The Artful Dodger, a high-ranking member of a juvenile pickpocketing gang, and their elderly leader, Fagin.

To live happily harem after, you have to fight for your fairy tale. Five classic fairy tales take on a reverse harem* twist in the first installment of Happily Harem After. Experience Alice in Wonderland, The Four Clever Brothers, Beauty and the Beast, Peter Pan, and Cinderella in ways you never have before.

Oliver, a kind-hearted orphan, navigates the tough streets of London, meeting both danger and kindness as he searches for a better life.

Rhys Bowen on G.M. Malliet's DEATH OF A COZY WRITER: "The traditional British cozy is alive and well. Delicious. I was hooked from the first paragraph." A wedding on the picturesque cliffs of Devon should have been a joyful occasion, although it was a location said to have inspired Agatha Christie’s Evil Under the Sun. But when the groom is found dead just hours before the ceremony, the celebration turns into a baffling mystery the groom’s best man feels duty bound to solve. As he delves into the tangled past of the bride, the groom, and their circle of family and friends, he soon ...

After escaping from the dark and dismal workhouse where he was born, Oliver finds himself on the mean streets of Victorian-era London and is unwittingly recruited into a scabrous gang of scheming urchins. In this band of petty thieves, Oliver encounters the extraordinary and vibrant characters who have captured audiences' imaginations for more than 150 years.

Welcome to Pig Meadow, where home construction meets comedy in the most spectacularly disastrous way possible. Percy, Pete, and Pablo aren’t just three little pigs—they’re DIY dreamers with wildly different building styles, zero building permits, and one very curious wolf watching from the sidelines. From sagging straw walls to stick structures held together by duct tape, and a brick fortress complete with a pizza oven, these pigs are about to learn that a good house isn’t just about what you build… it’s about who’s inside when the wind starts to blow. Packed with laugh-out-...

It’s rumoured that Dickens wanted to return to his classic novel Oliver Twist, to bring him back into a later book as an older character, but he never managed this before he died. However, if Oliver had returned, what would he have been like? Would the scars of his childhood affect the man he would become? And what of ‘Dodger’, sent to a land halfway around the world, his friend, mentor and master dead because of Oliver? Dodge & Twist is that story. The tale of two boys, 12 years later, returning into each other’s lives - for both good and bad.

Read by Daniel Weyman (The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power) and featuring an author's note read by Peter James 'What a fool I've been not to have read Peter James until The Hawk Is Dead! A great story' – James Patterson, bestselling author of the Alex Cross series Roy Grace never dreamed...

The Ultimate Classics Collection: Volume Five is the fifth instalment of our wide-ranging classic collections. Volume Five features 14 essential works that reach across Europe, America, and Russia - from Twain to Dostoyevsky to Austen - to bring together some of the most influential authors of the 18th and 19th century. Read by a cast of incredible narrators, this is a chance to expand your listening by going deeper into some of your favourite authors' works and find your new favourite piece of classic literature.

The Charles Dickens Collection: 10 Novels & A Christmas Carol brings together all of the major novels written during Dickens' lifetime. Dickens wrote into life some of the most beloved and well-known characters in literature - introducing us to Pip, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Little Nell, Scrooge, Nicholas Nickleby, Miss Haversham, and many more who have lived long in the memory for generations of listeners.

They say a kiss will wake the sleeping princess. They say it will break the curse. They are wrong. For a hundred years, the kingdom of Eldoria has slept, encased in a continent-spanning forest of thorns. Knights, armies, and heroes have all tried to breach the impossible woods. All have failed, their corpses now part of the ever-growing landscape. Inside the silent castle, Princess Aurelia is not dreaming of true love. She is dreaming of hunger. Tormented by phantoms in her century of slumber, she has been twisted into the very thing the kingdom feared. The curse is not on her; the curse is...

A workhouse orphan, Oliver experiences the terror and brutality of the criminal underworld. His companions, a thief, a whore, a pickpocket, and a fence, are destined for gruesome ends, but Oliver emerges unscathed from the darkness of the underworld.

Oliver Twist, Dickens’ second novel, has enthralled generations of readers since its publication in 1838. Orphaned and desolate, Oliver’s journey to London and subsequent induction into its dingy underworld, is narrated with ceaseless energy by Jonathan Keeble. His depictions of Fagin and the terrifying Bill Sikes are particularly mesmerizing, and his reading is infused with a delicious knack for storytelling.

A steamy, slow-burn romcom inspired by Jane Austen’s Emma—but with more tequila, hotter guys, and worse decisions. Cassie Emerson is convinced she has a sixth sense for everyone's love life. As Gardnerville’s most opinionated bartender, she makes matchmaking her unofficial side hustle. Her latest scheme? Setting up the sweet new girl with resident nice guy, Eddy. Easy. Except nothing in Cassie’s love triangle-turned-trapezoid is going according to plan. Turns out, she’s the only matchmaker in town who can’t spot a crush if it hits her with a bar tab. Eddy’s awkward and pining....

Born to an unmarried woman who dies after giving birth, orphan Oliver Twist seems destined to slog through a dismal life in the workhouse. A rebellious cry for more gets Oliver banished, and ultimately lands him on the dismal streets of London. The young outcast finds refuge with Fagin and his band of thieves before fate intervenes and puts Oliver in the hands of a kindly benefactor. It is likely that Dickens's own early youth as a child labourer contributed to the story's development.

Dickens wrote into life some of the most beloved and well-known characters in the history of English literature, introducing us to Pip, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Little Nell, Scrooge, Nicholas Nickleby, Miss Haversham, and many more who have lived in the imagination of generations of readers and listeners. In this definitive and beautifully curated collection, you discover not only Dickens’s most loved classics, but also hear a short introduction to his life and body of work from Dr Pete Orford.

Rebecca: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience! * Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again . . . The novel begins in Monte Carlo, where our heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of...

Orphaned at birth to labor in a workhouse, Oliver Twist is barely ten when he flees for London. There he befriends young Jack Dawkins, who educates the innocent Oliver in the ways of survival. When Jack draws Oliver into a gang of juvenile pickpockets, tutored by the unscrupulous Fagin, Oliver’s corruptive influences grow. But for a boy taught only wrong, Oliver must hold on to what he knows is right.

A private detective, down on his luck. A bus crash in the middle of nowhere. A murderer, hiding in plain sight. When Sydney Cartel investigates a murder, he usually stands on the other side of the police tape. Trying to escape the limelight of his career, he boards a night bus in rural southern Britain. But when the bus loses control and falls into a valley, Sydney and the survivors scramble to find shelter at a local inn by the side of the road. In the dead of night, with a storm preventing anyone from getting in or out, the survivors of the crash prepare for a long stay at the Roadside ...