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Books published by publisher MP3 Audiobook Classics

  • The Yellow Wallpaper - MP3 CD in CD jacket

    Charlotte Gilman, ashleighjane

    MP3 CD (MP3 Audiobook Classics, Sept. 3, 2018)
    The narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper is a woman quite typical of her time and class in the late 1800’s. She shows symptoms of a “temporary nervous depression”, (what Freud might have called hysteria), and her husband,a physician, has prescribed a “rest cure”. They rent an old colonial mansion for the summer and move into the upstairs nursery, which is has been decorated with patterned yellow wallpaper that is strangely torn. The room’s numerous windows, which are barred, furnish the requisite fresh air. She is forbidden from working, and so spends many hours staring at the wallpaper, which becomes increasingly intriguing and begins to mutate. The story is told as a series of journal entries that chronicle her gradual descent into madness.Gilman wrote the story after a severe bout of postpartum psychosis. First published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine, it is regarded as a seminal work of American feminist literature.
  • A Room with a View - MP3 CD Audiobook

    E. M. Forster

    MP3 CD Library Binding (MP3 Audiobook Classics, Jan. 1, 2016)
    A Room with a View portrays the issues that the adventurous young Lucy Honeychurch faces as she journeys to Florence and Rome with her stuffy older cousin Charlotte as chaperone. An upper middle class Englishwoman, her strong independent streak leads her into situations that challenge the strict codes of conduct and social expectations in the culture of Edwardian England. It is a novel of binary opposites. Set in both Italy and England, we see the contrast between the warm, colorful, sensual Italy with the chilly, dark English culture. Conservative characters are static, stuck in rooms, while dynamic characters are modern, progressive, open to the winds of change. It is a romantic and optimistic work: as Lucy moves away from her protected life she eventually charts her own course with the partner she loves. A Room with a View was adapted for the theatre in 1975 and made into an award-winning film by the team of Merchant-Ivory in 1985. The Modern Library ranks A Room with a View 79th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
  • The Sign of the Four - MP3 CD Audiobook in CD jacket

    Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, David Clarke

    MP3 CD (MP3 Audiobook Classics, Aug. 16, 2015)
    The Sign of the Four is the second of four full-length novels featuring the brilliant Sherlock Holmes. Published in 1890 and sometimes titled The Sign of Four, the story begins with the mysterious disappearance of British Army Captain Arthur Morstan and proceeds to unravel a complex plot that centers on a stolen treasure, a secret pact among four convicts, and corrupt prison guards, with much of the action set in India beginning at the time of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The story humanizes and deepens the character of Holmes, partly by introducing us to his use of cocaine. It also introduces Morstan’s daughter, Mary, who eventually becomes Watson’s bride. The book was originally serialized in Lippincott’s magazine before publication in book form and has been adapted for the cinema thirteen times.
  • Twelve Years a Slave - MP3 CD Audiobook in CD jacket

    Solomon Northup, Rob Board

    MP3 CD (MP3 Audiobook Classics, Jan. 1, 2015)
    Twelve Years a Slave is a memoir by Solomon Northup, a black man who was born free in New York. The story tells of being kidnapped, sold as a slave, and shipped to serve various masters on plantations in Louisiana for 12 years. Northup narrative describes the culture of the slave markets in Washington DC and New Orleans and his experience as a slave on the cotton and sugar plantations in Louisiana. With the help of a sympathetic ally he was eventually able to contact friends and family in New York, who managed to secure his release. Northup had the slave trader in Washington arrested and tried, but he was acquitted because District of Columbia law prohibited a black man from testifying against white people. Later, in New York State, Northup’s northern kidnappers were charged, but the case was tied up in court and finally dropped by the State of New York when DC was found to have jurisdiction. Washington DC did not pursue the case. Those who had kidnapped and enslaved Northup received no punishment. The work was told to and edited by David Wilson and was published on the heels of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s best-selling novel about slavery, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). Northup’s book was dedicated to Stowe and became a bestseller, selling 30,000 copies. After several editions the book fell into obscurity until it was re-discovered in the early 1960s. It has since been adapted and produced as the 1984 PBS television movie Solomon Northup’s Odyssey and the 2013 Academy Award-winning film 12 Years A Slave.
  • The Invisible Man - MP3 CD Audiobook

    H. G. Wells, Alex Foster

    MP3 CD Library Binding (MP3 Audiobook Classics, Jan. 1, 2015)
    The Invisible Man (1897) was the third of Wells’ five “scientific romances”. The title character, Griffin, is a scientist studying optics who discovers a way to change a body’s refractive index to that of air, thus rendering the body invisible. He successfully tests the invention on himself but fails to reverse the effects. He wraps himself in bandages, finds lodging at a village inn, and spends his days seeking an antidote, venturing out only at night. He falls behind on his bill and skips out by undressing and taking flight. Increasingly desperate, he seeks refuge in the home of Kemp, a former colleague, but finds he cannot manage in the open. He tries to use his invisibility to conduct a “Reign of Terror” but is foiled, leading to a dramatic, fatal denouement. The premise and the portrayal of the gradual progression from gifted obsessive to insane psychopath have become staples of the genre and have led to countless adaptations and offshoots.
  • The Invisible Man - MP3 CD Audiobook in CD jacket

    H. G. Wells, Alex Foster

    MP3 CD (MP3 Audiobook Classics, Jan. 1, 2015)
    The Invisible Man (1897) was the third of Wells’ five “scientific romances”. The title character, Griffin, is a scientist studying optics who discovers a way to change a body’s refractive index to that of air, thus rendering the body invisible. He successfully tests the invention on himself but fails to reverse the effects. He wraps himself in bandages, finds lodging at a village inn, and spends his days seeking an antidote, venturing out only at night. He falls behind on his bill and skips out by undressing and taking flight. Increasingly desperate, he seeks refuge in the home of Kemp, a former colleague, but finds he cannot manage in the open. He tries to use his invisibility to conduct a “Reign of Terror” but is foiled, leading to a dramatic, fatal denouement. The premise and the portrayal of the gradual progression from gifted obsessive to insane psychopath have become staples of the genre and have led to countless adaptations and offshoots.
  • Anthem - MP3 CD Audiobook in CD jacket

    Ayn Rand, Caden Vaughn Clegg

    MP3 CD (MP3 Audiobook Classics, Aug. 16, 2016)
    Anthem is set in a dystopian future Dark Age in which totalitarianism has extinguished individuality and imposed a strict order based on technology and collectivism. The main character is Equality 7-252, who is raised in a collective home and dreams of becoming a Scholar, since he was born with a “curse” that enables him to learn quickly and ask probing questions. His dream conflicts with the Life Mandate assigned by the Council of Vocations as a Street Sweeper. He discovers a tunnel in a work area containing metal tracks, a remnant from the Unmentionable Times. He goes exploring and soon steals some paper and begins a journal. He meets a Peasant girl, Liberty 5-3000, and falls for her, dubbing her “The Golden One”. Soon he rediscovers electricity and excitedly presents it to the World Council of Scholars, who are horrified by the threat to their Department of Candles and seek to destroy the invention and punish the inventor. Equality grabs the invention and escapes to the Uncharted Forest. The Golden One joins him a day later. They settle in a house in the mountains and spend their time reading books discovered in the library. They rediscover the word “I”, grapple with finding words to express love, rename themselves Prometheus and Gaea, and make plans for a future in which individuality is regained. Anthem was written while Rand was working on The Fountainhead and was published in England in 1938. It was revised and re-released in 1946 after the spectacular success of The Fountainhead and has since sold more than 3.5 million copies.
  • Anthem - MP3 CD Audiobook

    Ayn Rand, Caden Vaughn Clegg

    MP3 CD (MP3 Audiobook Classics, Jan. 1, 2016)
    Anthem is set in a dystopian future Dark Age in which totalitarianism has extinguished individuality and imposed a strict order based on technology and collectivism. The main character is Equality 7-252, who is raised in a collective home and dreams of becoming a Scholar, since he was born with a “curse” that enables him to learn quickly and ask probing questions. His dream conflicts with the Life Mandate assigned by the Council of Vocations as a Street Sweeper. He discovers a tunnel in a work area containing metal tracks, a remnant from the Unmentionable Times. He goes exploring and soon steals some paper and begins a journal. He meets a Peasant girl, Liberty 5-3000, and falls for her, dubbing her “The Golden One”. Soon he rediscovers electricity and excitedly presents it to the World Council of Scholars, who are horrified by the threat to their Department of Candles and seek to destroy the invention and punish the inventor. Equality grabs the invention and escapes to the Uncharted Forest. The Golden One joins him a day later. They settle in a house in the mountains and spend their time reading books discovered in the library. They rediscover the word “I”, grapple with finding words to express love, rename themselves Prometheus and Gaea, and make plans for a future in which individuality is regained. Anthem was written while Rand was working on The Fountainhead and was published in England in 1938. It was revised and re-released in 1946 after the spectacular success of The Fountainhead and has since sold more than 3.5 million copies.
  • Leaves of Grass - MP3 CD Audiobook

    Walt Whitman

    MP3 CD (MP3 Audiobook Classics, Jan. 1, 2016)
    We forget how big America must have seemed to both Americans and Europeans in the nineteenth century, especially when one compared its sheer size to the square mileage of Europe. America was the beneficiary of Europe’s advances in the arts, music and literature; however, America was also the young buck who sought to mark its own territory, to etch its own profile, to speak with its own voice. Early American poetry had relied too much on the classical forms and well-mannered, albeit witty, content of seventeenth century English poems. However, with the English Romantics, Concord’s Emerson and Transcendentalism, America was ready to birth a distinctly American voice that would capture its sweep, its unbounded potential and vast promise. In 1855 an unknown, a self-proclaimed rough, age 37, a man in his prime, Walt Whitman (1819-1892) of New York, published the first edition of twelve poems titled Leaves of Grass. American poetry, all poetry, has never been the same since. This is the great American work, twelve poems that became more than 400 poems written over forty years of Whitman’s life. They celebrate the human being, the physical body, the heart, mind and transcendent soul. These poems revel in the unapologetic glory of the purely physical, sensual necessities, as well as the abstract mysteries of life. As with any genius, Whitman’s model was Life with a capital “L”, and he spent his adult years writing to represent Life as it is, without the artifice of masks, manners or social niceties. Like Life, and like America, Whitman’ poems are beautiful, wild, cruel, unpredictable, yearning, sensual, direct, desirous, self-evident, arbitrary, contradictory, and, sometimes, confusing. Whitman’s poetry is like the storm that destroys a town while it cleans the air and seeds the soil. His poetry is as large as America, as generous as America, and as grand as nature. It is the voice that says America is alive and well, generative, creative, filled with infinite promise. (Su
  • Leaves of Grass - MP3 CD Audiobook in CD jacket

    Walt Whitman

    MP3 CD (MP3 Audiobook Classics, Aug. 16, 2016)
    We forget how big America must have seemed to both Americans and Europeans in the nineteenth century, especially when one compared its sheer size to the square mileage of Europe. America was the beneficiary of Europe’s advances in the arts, music and literature; however, America was also the young buck who sought to mark its own territory, to etch its own profile, to speak with its own voice. Early American poetry had relied too much on the classical forms and well-mannered, albeit witty, content of seventeenth century English poems. However, with the English Romantics, Concord’s Emerson and Transcendentalism, America was ready to birth a distinctly American voice that would capture its sweep, its unbounded potential and vast promise. In 1855 an unknown, a self-proclaimed rough, age 37, a man in his prime, Walt Whitman (1819-1892) of New York, published the first edition of twelve poems titled Leaves of Grass. American poetry, all poetry, has never been the same since. This is the great American work, twelve poems that became more than 400 poems written over forty years of Whitman’s life. They celebrate the human being, the physical body, the heart, mind and transcendent soul. These poems revel in the unapologetic glory of the purely physical, sensual necessities, as well as the abstract mysteries of life. As with any genius, Whitman’s model was Life with a capital “L”, and he spent his adult years writing to represent Life as it is, without the artifice of masks, manners or social niceties. Like Life, and like America, Whitman’ poems are beautiful, wild, cruel, unpredictable, yearning, sensual, direct, desirous, self-evident, arbitrary, contradictory, and, sometimes, confusing. Whitman’s poetry is like the storm that destroys a town while it cleans the air and seeds the soil. His poetry is as large as America, as generous as America, and as grand as nature. It is the voice that says America is alive and well, generative, creative, filled with infinite promise. (Su
  • The War of the Worlds - MP3 CD Audiobook

    H. G. Wells

    2016 (MP3 Audiobook Classics, Jan. 1, 2016)
    In 1938 a radio broadcast describing the invasion of earth by Martians presented as a news bulletin by narrator Orson Welles led to widespread panic by listeners who believed actual events were taking place. In fact, the broadcast was a close adaptation of The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. Public interest in the possibility of intelligent life on Mars had first been aroused by the discovery of canals in 1877. On August 2, 1894 the British journal Nature reported that French astronomers had observed a light emanating from the edges of the disk of Mars “in the region of the planet not illuminated by the sun at the time of the observation”, prompting speculation that inhabitants of the planet were attempting to send signals at a time when the orbits of the planets were close and intensifying interest in alien encounters.
  • The Importance of Being Earnest - MP3 CD Audiobook

    Oscar Wilde

    MP3 CD Library Binding (MP3 Audiobook Classics, Jan. 1, 2015)
    The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People was first performed on February 14, 1895 at the St. James's Theatre in London. It is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personæ in order to escape burdensome social obligations. Working within the social conventions of late Victorian London, the play's major themes are the triviality with which it treats institutions as serious as marriage, and the resulting satire of Victorian ways. Contemporary reviews all praised the play's humor, though some were cautious about its explicit lack of social messages, while others foresaw the modern consensus that it was the culmination of Wilde's artistic career so far. Its high farce and witty dialogue have helped make The Importance of Being Earnest Wilde's most enduringly popular play. It has been revived many times since its premiere and has been adapted for the cinema on three occasions.