Here are the delightful stories which Kipling first told his own children before setting them down on paper. How the Camel got his Hump, How the Leopard got his spots, How the Elephant got his Trunk, the Butterfly that Stamped and many Others. They remain popular, entertaining every generation, partly because of the story and partly because of the...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Railway Children by E. Nesbit, read by Jenny Agutter. When Father is taken away unexpectedly, Roberta, Peter, Phyllis and their mother have to leave their comfortable life in London to go and live in a small cottage in the country. The children seek solace in the nearby railway station, and make friends...

When Edgar plans to acquire his family's ancient estate from the corrupt lord keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland, he is met with the complexities of the legal and political situations following the 1707 Act of Union. To complicate matters further, Edgar is falling in love with his enemy's beautiful daughter Lucy.First published in 1819, this endu...

Set in England during Richard I's reign, Sir Walter Scott's fanciful, vivid reinterpretation of medieval life is a successful blend of fact, myth, and romance. Wilfred of Ivanhoe earns his father's disapproval by falling in love with Rowena, his father's ward. Then he serves with Richard I during the Crusades, while the King's brother attempts to t...

When the naive David Balfour sets out on his quest for a long-lost relative, a terrifying chain of events is set in motion. He is plunged into a world of infamy and violence from which there seems no escape, until, that is, he meets the enigmatic and valiant Highlander, Alan Breck...Kidnapped is a captivating novel set around Scottish events of the...

Those who only know Charles Dickens from his novels will be fascinated to discover the private and personal Dickens in this selection of his letters. His sister-in-law Georgina Hogarth thought they expressed his individuality; his friend Forster thought them literature. They give us a portrait of a complex man with so many different facets to his p...

Tom Hiddleston (The Night Manager) stars as Jonathan Harker with David Suchet (Poirot) as Dracula in Liz Lochhead and John Foley's powerful BBC radio adaptation of the classic novel by Bram Stoker. When solicitor Jonathan Harker sets off for Transylvania to sell the mysterious Count Dracula a Gothic mansion, his bride-to-be Mina begs him to stay...

Stevenson's tragic masterpiece unfolds against a hauntingly beautiful Scottish landscape, where the 1745 Jacobite rising is dividing the country against itself. Amidst this outer conflict, one family finds itself devastatingly divided from within, as two brothers discover their opposing loyalties. Their rivalry soon spreads from war to love, as bot...

Rob Roy is a captivating novel of chivalry and romance set in the Scottish highlands of the 18th century. After rejecting the life his father has laid out for him, Frank Osbaldistone is sent to the North of England to live with his Uncle, where he is to repent his sins. However, when his father's wealth and reputation are threatened, he is drawn to...

Tevye the Milkman, a uniquely charming Jewish novel from Tsarist rural Russia, provided the principal character for Fiddler on the Roof. Here we have the full story, with all its Jewish humour, wisdom and despair. The central character, Tevye the Milkman, goes around the community in the Russian countryside delivering milk and cheese, but also disp...

The first modern tale of alien invasion, H. G. Wells's story of tentacled Martians attacking the Earth remains one of the most influential of all science fiction works. First published by H. G. Wells in 1898, The War of the Worlds is the granddaddy of all alien invasion stories. The novel begins ominously, as the lone voice of a narrator intones, "...

Lady Audley is universally adored: beautiful, kind and charming, she enamors all whom she meets. It is not until the strange disappearance of widower George Talboys that her behavior takes an odd turn. George's friend Robert Audley, Lady Audley's nephew-in-law, is on the case; upper-class layabout-turned-detective, he is determined to get to the bo...

Prince Lyov Nikolayevitch Myshkin is one of the great characters in Russian literature. Is he a saint or just na‹ve? Is he an idealist or, as many in General Epanchin's society feel, an 'idiot'? Certainly, his return to St. Petersburg after years in a Swiss clinic has a dramatic effect on the beautiful Aglaia, youngest of the Epanchin daught...

Set in the days of the British Raj, Kipling's finest novel is the exciting and touching tale of an Irish orphan-boy who has lived free in the streets of Lahore before setting out, with a Tibetan Lama, on a spiritual quest. Kim later enrols in the Indian Service and simultaneously embarks on an espionage mission of supreme importance. A thrilling cl...

Antigone, daughter of Jocasta and Oedipus, faces great challenges when she must arrange a formal burial for her brother, Polynices. This rendition of Antigone by Sophocles is of the highest caliber audio. It's completely unabridged. Enjoy the classic story of Antigone narrated to perfection.

One of the greatest works of fiction ever written, Crime and Punishment is at once an intense psychological study, a terrifying murder mystery, and a fascinating detective thriller instilled with philosophical, religious, and social commentary. Dostoevsky studies the psychological impact upon a desperate and impoverished student when he murders a d...

Set in New York in the 1920s, The Glimpses of the Moon details the romantic misadventures of Nick Lansing and Susy Branch, two high-society hangers-on with the right connections but a lack of funds. To maintain their status, they decide to marry and spend a year or so sponging off their wealthy friends, honeymooning in their mansions and villas. Bo...

This spare, mesmerizing novel is Edith Wharton's money-can't-buy-happiness tale. Young Stephen Glennard is poor, but he has an unanticipated gambling chip: a collection of love letters from a scorned but now famous lover, the distinguished novelist Margaret Aubyn. To raise money for his forthcoming wedding to another woman, Stephen stoops to sellin...

Often called the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace is at once a historical war epic, a philosophical study, and a celebration of the Russian spirit. Noted for its mastery of realistic detail and psychological analysis, it follows the metamorphosis of five aristocratic families against the backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Individual stories...

The body of polynices, Antigone's brother, has been ordered to remain unburied by Creon, the new king Thebes. Antigone's faithfulness to her dead brother and his proper burial, and her defiance of the dictator Creon, seals her fate. Originally produced in Paris during the Nazi occupation, Anouilh's "Antigone" was seen by the French as theater of th...

Lord Byron's satirical take on the legend of Don Juan is a moving and witty poem that sees the young hero in a reversal of roles. Juan sheds his image as a womanizer and instead becomes the victim of circumstance as he is relentlessly pursued by every woman he meets. Comprising seventeen cantos of rhyming iambic pentameter, the poem is a crisp and...