Books in Classics Collection series

Featured title on PBS's The Great American Read in 2018Audie Award, Fiction, 2013Margaret Atwood's popular dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale explores a broad range of issues relating to power, gender, and religious politics. Multiple Emmy and Golden Globe award-winner Claire Danes (Temple Grandin, Homeland) gives a stirring performance of this classic in speculative fiction, one of the most powerful and widely read novels of our time.After a staged terrorist attack kills the President and most of Congress, the government is deposed and taken over by the oppressive and all controlling Republic of Gilead. Offred, now a Handmaid serving in the household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife, can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost even her own name. Despite the danger, Offred learns to navigate the intimate secrets of those who control her every move, risking her life in breaking the rules in hopes of ending this oppression.The Handmaid's Tale is part of Audible’s A-List Collection, featuring the world’s most celebrated actors narrating distinguished works of literature that each star had a hand in selecting.

Ben-Hur could be said to be the first American blockbuster. When it was published in 1880, it sold over two million copies and was translated into numerous languages. It combines all the best elements of popular classic, epic, and action stories against a background of authoritative historical detail. The pace and immediacy of Ben-Hur was the basis of its appeal to filmmakers—Charlton Heston's portrayal of the title role became one of the classics of the cinema. Wallace's original novel has been largely forgotten now, but as this reading shows, the story, together with the sweeping rhythm of the writer's prose, make it ideally suited to audio.This novel is part of Brilliance Audio's extensive Classic Collection, bringing you timeless masterpieces that you and your family are sure to love.

Nicholas Nickleby combines comedy and tragedy in a tale of triumph over adversity in a story that mirrors Dickens' own rise from poverty to great success.After his father dies, Nicholas Nickleby if left to take care of his mother and sister. His uncle, Ralph Nickleby, a disobliging businessman, dislikes Nicholas, sending him away to work at a menial job for a wicked conman. Though many trials assail his family and despite the social injustice he faces, Nicholas believes he can succeed.This novel is part of Brilliance Audio's extensive Classic Collection, bringing you timeless masterpieces that you and your family are sure to love.

"Rowdy" Vaughan—he had been christened Rowland by his mother, and rechristened Rowdy by his cowboy friends, who are prone to treat with much irreverence the names bestowed by mothers—was not happy. He stood in the stirrups and shook off the thick layer of snow which clung, damp and close-packed, to his coat. The dull yellow folds were full of it; his gray hat, pulled low over his purple ears, was heaped with it. He reached up a gloved hand and scraped away as much as he could, wrapped the long-skirted, "sour-dough" coat around his numbed legs, then settled into the saddle with a shiver of distaste at the plight he was in, and wished himself back at the Horseshoe Bar.

The compelling autobiographical work of noted orator, minister, and abolitionist Frederick DouglassFrederick Douglass was an American abolitionist, women's suffragist, editor, orator, author, statesman, and reformer. He was called both "The Sage of Anacostia" and "The Lion of Anacostia" and is one of the most prominent figures in African-American history and United States history. He was born into slavery but secretly taught himself to read and write—a crime punishable by death. Because of this, we now possess what may be the most eloquent indictment of slavery ever written. This audiobook takes us into the fields, cabins, and manors of the pre-Civil War South and shows in vivid detail the heartlessness of slaveholders. Douglass finally managed to escape and became a famous orator, minister, and leader of his people.This work is part of Brilliance Audio's extensive Classic Collection, bringing you timeless masterpieces that you and your family are sure to love.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic American story of Hester Prynne, accused of adultery, ostracized by her Puritan community, and abandoned by both her lover and her husbandThe story opens in Puritan Boston, a settlement only fifteen or twenty years old. A young woman stands on a scaffold clasping a three-month-old baby. As a married woman with a missing husband and a new baby, Hester Prynne could have been sentenced to death for the crime of adultery. Instead she is condemned to always wear the letter A as a badge of her shame. As she stands there, she sees her long-missing husband, who has been held captive by Indians. While the town chorus is murmuring against her and her old and unattractive husband stares silently at her, the young and handsome clergyman publicly demands the name of her partner in crime—while desperately praying that she won't reveal him.The Scarlet Letter rightfully deserves its stature as the first great novel written by an American, the novel that announced American literature equal to any in the world.This novel is part of Brilliance Audio's extensive Classic Collection, bringing you timeless masterpieces that you and your family are sure to love.

The last novel to be completed by one of the masters of Victorian-era fictionLike his novels A Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield, Our Mutual Friend stands as a landmark of English literature. John Harmon returns from England expecting to receive an inheritance, though he knows that he must marry a stranger in order to collect it. Deciding that it would be best to discreetly observe the woman he has been constrained to marry, he fakes his own death in the Thames and takes on a new identity.Some of the memorable characters in this timeless novel include Bella who, unlike other Dickens heroines, cannot be accused of unnatural virtue; the insolent barrister Eugene Wrayburn; the amiable Boffin; and the rascal Silas Wegg.This novel is part of Brilliance Audio's extensive Classic Collection, bringing you timeless masterpieces that you and your family are sure to love.