Books in Complete Classics series

Virginia Woolf's third novel, Jacob's Room, marked a radical, new departure in her style: the most experimental of all her novels, it enacts the 'smashing and crashing' of form that Woolf called for in the modernist movement. Set in pre-war England, the novel tells the life story of Jacob Flanders. Through the collective memories of those who knew him, we follow his childhood, through to his time at Cambridge, and then into adulthood. Jacob's Room is an evocative and poignant story, made more so so as Woolf describes scenes and characters with a beauty unsurpassed. The author combines language in a majestic manner as she meditates on the inexorable flux of life and provides an elegiac stream found in her best-known work such as To the Lighthouse

In the village of Cranford, decorum is maintained at all times. Despite their poverty, the ladies are never vulgar about money (or their lack of it), and always follow the rules of propriety. But this discretion and gentility does not keep away tragedy; and when the worst happens, the Amazons of Cranford show the true strength of their honest affections. A masterpiece of social comedy, "Cranford" is as moving as it is funny, and as sharp as it is tender.

MP3 CD Format Anna Karenina is beautiful, married to a successful man, and has a son whom she adores. But a chance meeting at a train station in Moscow sets her passionate heart alight, and she is defenseless in the face of Count Vronsky's adoration. Having defied the rules of nineteenth-century Russian society, Anna is forced to pay a heavy price. Human nature, with all its failings, is the fabric of which this great and intense work is composed. Anna Karenina has been described as the perfect Russian novel.

Mary Shelley's poignant exploration of the true depths of ambition and humanity has had a profound effect on readers since its conception in 1816. When scientist Victor Frankenstein forms a creature from the body parts of corpses, thus shattering the perceived limits of scientific understanding, the consequences are devastating on both a personal and a wider level. Our natural sympathies are challenged as Frankenstein becomes disgusted with his creation, who, in turn, begins to suffer from an acute sense of loneliness. When his desire for a companion is thwarted, he vows to take revenge upon Frankenstein. What ensues is singularly chilling in this gothic classic, which has spawned numerous film and theatre interpretations.

Wilkie Collins is a master of suspense, but his transfer to audiobook requires a cast of readers to faithfully reflect the eleven different characters who tell the story. Walter Hartright, a drawing teacher to two sisters, wants to marry Laura, though she is betrothed to another. But who is the mysterious woman in white who he encounters? Naxos AudioBooks brings together a strong cast to bring alive the mystery and suspense of The Woman in White.

Though famous for War and Peace, Tolstoy was equally adept at shorter works as is shown by this novella. Ivan Ilyich Golovin is a high court judge living a carefree life in St Petersburg. One day, without warning, he is beset by pains and soon has to come to terms with the fact that he is going to die. The judge must learn to face death without fear and yet feel compassion for the family he is leaving behind.

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Elizabeth Gaskells birth we embark on a series of unabridged and abridged recordings of her major novels. North and South follows our widely-praised recording of Cranford (2008), transporting the listener to the heart of Victorian England by vividly delineating the social landscape and an unlikely romance which flourishes within it. Saddened to be leaving behind the sophistication of the South, Margaret Hale approaches her new life in the unrefined, industrialised North with dread. Appalled at the poverty, struggle, and mean conditions that surround her, her revulsion particularly centers on the factory owner John Thornton. Yet, when circumstances conspire to bring them together, Margaret begins to see past crude stereotypes. Conjuring up a fantastic sense of time and place, Gaskells novel of romantic suspense and changing perceptions, is a sheer delight in the hands of Manchester-born reader, Clare Wille.

Here, for the first time as an unabridged audiobook, this enigmatic modern classic details the adulterous entanglements of two couples on seemingly normal, friendly terms. The truth of these liaisons emerges, retrospectively and in fragments, from the viewpoint of the innocent and unsuspecting John Dowell. Dowells perpetual failure to grasp and understand the nature of the infidelities of the people around him makes this a compelling and intriguing first-person narrative. The gap between one persons interpretation of events and the reality is deftly illustrated in what has been critically acclaimed as a near perfect novel and one of the greatest English classics of the twentieth century. Kerry Shales reading is superb, evoking all the suspense and the subtleties of this fine novel.

For three hundred years The Pilgrims Progress has remained perhaps the best-loved and most read of devotional fictions. In plain yet powerful and moving language, Bunyan tells the story of Christians struggle to attain salvation and the Gates of Heaven. He must pass through the Slough of Despond, ward off the temptations of Vanity Fair and fight the monstrous Apollyon... In Part II, his wife and children follow the same path, helped and protected by Great-heart, until for them too the trumpets sound on the other side.