Books in Audio Editions series

These four stories are infused with the wit and imagination, the humor and wisdom, that characterizes all of Isaac Bashevis Singers work. Theodore Bikel reads these wise and funny tales in classic Yiddish storyteller cadence, injecting special warmth and resonance. The tales include Gimpel the Fool, Esther Kreindel the Second, The Spinoza of Market Street, and The Black Wedding.

[Read by Kymberly Dakin] The incomparable Alice Munro's bestselling and rapturously acclaimed Runaway is a book of extraordinary stories about women of all ages and circumstances - and about love and its infinite betrayals and surprises. The runaway of the title story is a young woman who is incapable of leaving her husband. In ''Passion,'' a country girl emerging into the larger world via a job in a resort hotel discovers, in a single moment of insight, the limits and lies of passion. Three stories concern a woman named Juliet - in the first, she escapes from teaching at a girls' school into a wild love affair; in the second, she returns with her child to the home of her parents, whose marriage she finally begins to examine; and in the last, her vanished child turns up caught in the grip of a religious cult. In these and other stories, Alice Munro's understanding of the people about whom she writes makes their lives as real as our own.

Benjamin Franklin was not only one of Americas Founding Fathershe was also a fascinating character who lived an exciting life. Whether carousing with prostitutes in Paris, taunting lightning bolts with kites, or founding Americas first volunteer fire fighting organization, Franklin was always at the center of activity. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin details this Americans early years, his career, and his conflicted relationship with his son.

In this brilliant piece of social comedy, E. M. Forster is concerned with one of his favorite themes: the undeveloped heart of the English middle classes, who are here represented by a group of tourists and expatriates in Florence. The English abroad are observed with a sharply ironic eye, but one of them, the young and unaffected Lucy Honeychurch, is also drawn with great sympathy. In her relationships with the unconventional Emersons and with her supercilious fiancé, Lucy is torn between lingering social and sexual Victorian proprieties and the spontaneous promptings of her own undeveloped heart.

Silas Marner, a weaver in the slum of Lantern Yard, stands falsely accused of stealing funds from his small Calvinist congregation. His life in tatters, Silas flees south and settles near the village of Ravenloe, only to have his life disrupted again when a local scoundrel, Dunsey Cass, steals his small fortune. It is only after becoming the guardian of an orphaned child that Silas luck begins to change as he is transformed from an embittered man into one capable of love and forgiveness, with the means for spiritual rebirth and redemption from his ruinous past.In Silas Marner George Eliot subtly critiques the impacts of industrialization, the role of the upper class and the function of organized religion.

This hilarious and touching novel embodies Forster's favorite theme — the "undeveloped heart" of the English middle classes. A Room with a View stars Lucy Honeychurch, a charming naif torn between lingering social and sexual Victorian proprieties and her own emotional needs. Forster’s outrageous spinsters, pompous clergymen, and outspoken patriots add wit to what is, in the end, not only a comic masterpiece but a compelling romance and social critique.