Audio Books for the ‘Classics’ Category

• One Voice Chronological: The Consummate Holmes Canon, Collection 5

  Category: Classics | Response: 0

  One Voice Chronological: The Consummate Holmes Canon, Collection 5 – Audio Book Summary

  Six more cases solved by Sherlock Holmes:

  The Adventure of the Dancing Men: Hilton Cubitt, from Derbyshire, consults Holmes about a series of dancing men picture-messages his wife is receiving. On their wedding-day, she had made Cubitt promise he would ask her nothing about her past, but she now seems to be terrified. Holmes has to decipher the code of the matchstick men and get to the bottom of the dreadful murder that lies behind it.

  The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist: Sherlock Holmes first regards the experiences related by newly arrived visitor Violet Smith with a degree of impatience and disinterest. This solitary cyclist, however, is being shadowed by a mysterious man on a bicycle as she travels to and from her new employer’s home as a music teacher.

  The Adventure of the Priory School: In desperation, Holmes is asked to rescue the kidnapped only son of the Duke of Holdernesse.

  The Adventure of Black Peter: Dr. Watson’s account of the strange death of Captain Peter Carey begins one morning with Holmes returning to Baker Street with a “huge barbed-headed spear tucked like an umbrella under his arm.” The instrument, the facts unfold, duplicates the weapon that has been driven so violently through the victim’s body that it has been discovered pinned to the wall like an insect.

  The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton: Holmes and Watson push the limits of the law when they confront the machinations of a blackmailer whose victims either pay dearly or suffer life-destroying humiliation.

  The Adventure of the Six Napoleons: The destruction of duplicate plaster casts of the famous head of Napoleon by the French sculptor Devine becomes more than a mere curiosity to Holmes when a murder is committed during the commission of one of the crimes. The case begins at the shop of Morse Hudson, who sells pictures and statues in the Kennington Road.

  

• A Trio of Saki: ‘The Storyteller’, ‘The Open Window’, ‘Bertie’s Christmas Eve’

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  A Trio of Saki: ‘The Storyteller’, ‘The Open Window’, ‘Bertie’s Christmas Eve’ – Audio Book Summary

  Saki was the pen name of Hector Hugh Munro (December 18, 1870 – November 13, 1916), a British writer, whose witty and sometimes macabre stories satirized Edwardian society and culture. He is considered a master of the short story and is often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. His tales feature delicately drawn characters and finely judged narratives.

  This audiobook collects three of his finest short stories:

  “The Open Window” – A man with the unlikely name of Framton Nuttel comes to a country village for some peace and rest. He calls upon a lady his sister used to know; for a few minutes he is left alone with her niece, who has quite an active imagination. She tells Framton a story about the tragedy of the lady’s husband and two younger brothers, who had gone hunting one day three years earlier and never returned. The bodies were never found, and because of this, the window from which they left is always kept open.

  “The Storyteller” – Here is a cynical antidote to crude didacticism. An aunt is travelling by train with three of her nieces and nephews; a bachelor is sitting opposite. The aunt starts telling a story, but is unable to satisfy the curiosity of the children. The bachelor intervenes and tells a different kind of story, which feeds their curiosity and imagination.

  “Bertie’s Christmas Eve” – A Russian peasant tale reveals that the cows may speak at midnight on Christmas Eve. This gives Bertie the perfect excuse to exact a revenge on his meddling and tiresome extended family.

  

• This Side of Paradise

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  This Side of Paradise – Audio Book Summary

  If the Roaring Twenties are remembered as the era of “flaming youth”, it was F. Scott Fitzgerald who lit the fire. His semiautobiographical first novel, This Side of Paradise, became an instant best seller and established an image of seemingly carefree, party-mad young men and women out to create a new morality for a new, post-war America. It traces the early life of Amory Blaine from the end of prep school through Princeton to the start of an uncertain career in New York City.

  Alternately self-confident and self-effacing, torn between ambition and idleness, the self-absorbed, immature Amory yearns to run with Princeton’s rich, fast crowd and become one of the “gods” of the campus. Hopelessly romantic, he learns about love and sex from a series of beautiful young “flappers”, women who leave him both exhilarated and devastated.

  Fitzgerald describes it all in intensely lyrical prose that fills the novel with a heartbreaking sense of longing, as Amory comes to understand that the sweet-scented springtime of his life is fragile and fleeting, disappearing into memory even as he reaches for it.

  

• Artículos de Costumbres I [Custom Items I]

  Category: Classics | Response: 0

  Artículos de Costumbres I [Custom Items I] – Audio Book Summary

  Mariano José de Larra y Sánchez de Castro nació el 24 de marzo de 1809 en Madrid. A partir de 1812 residió en Burdeos, ciudad en la que recaló tras el exilio de su padre, una persona de ideología liberal que había trabajado como médico del ejército francés durante la Guerra de la Independencia. En el año 1818 Larra regresó a España tras una amnistía. Comenzó a estudiar Medicina y Derecho, que abandonó para dedicarse a la literatura y al periodismo. También ejerció de crítico literario bajo el seudónimo de Fígaro en “La Revista Española”. Sus trabajos más importantes son los derivados de su profesión periodística, consiguiendo un gran reconocimiento por sus artículos de costumbres, sociales y políticos, en donde radiografiaba a la sociedad española de su época con un punto satírico e irónico. Su talento literario se aprecia en la novela histórica “El Doncel De Don Enrique El Doliente”. Larra era una persona muy enamoradiza y apasionada. Se enamoró de una mujer mayor que él, que resultó ser la amante de su propio padre. La vida amorosa de Larra está marcada por episodios rocambolescos de este tipo. Se casó con Josefina Wetoret con la que tuvo 3 hijos. La relación fracasó al poco tiempo. Larra se enamoró apasionadamente de una mujer casada llamada Dolores Armijo. Ésta le abandonó, y Larra, desesperado por esta causa y por la situación sociopolítica del país, se suicidó con un disparo en la sien el 13 de febrero de 1837. Tenía 27 años.

  El Romanticismo, movimiento artístico literario al que pertenece Mariano José Larra, como autocrítica de la modernidad, es un callejón sin salida. Esta es la gran contradicción en que Larra coincide con otros jóvenes autores de su generación en Europa que se sitúan entre la rebeldía y una melancolía con brotes pesimistas. Larra es conocido ante todo por sus “Artículos de costumbres” o escenas de la vida española. Estos artículos, típicamente característicos de la época, estaban imbuidos de nostalgia. Larra, por el contrario, utilizó el género para producir una serie de retratos de la sociedad tremendamente satíricos, en los que despliega su talento periodístico para describir la complacencia, la hipocresía, la vacuidad y la corrupción de la sociedad española. Una de las importantes aportaciones de Larra a la literatura española fue el haber elevado a categoría literaria la reflexión y el comentario sobre la actualidad inmediata; lo que pasaba en las calles y en las casas, las discusiones políticas, los acontecimientos del día, las maneras de ser, de pensar y de vivir de sus contemporáneos. Los artículos de Larra constituyen una de las bases del ensayo contemporáneo. En este volumen se incluyen los siguientes artículos: 1 – Vuelva usted mañana 2 – Un reo de muerte 3 – Yo quiero ser cómico.

  Please note: This audiobook is in Spanish.

  

• The Aspern Papers

  Category: Classics | Response: 0

  The Aspern Papers – Audio Book Summary

  In this superb novella, a nameless narrator travels to Venice in search of Juliana Bordereau, the former lover of Jeffrey Aspern, a famous and now dead American poet. We witness the battle between a strong-willed woman who is determined to keep the secrets of a famous poet and an unscrupulous man who is equally determined to uncover them.

• The Beautiful and Damned

  Category: Classics | Response: 0

  The Beautiful and Damned – Audio Book Summary

  In this, Scott Fitzgerald’s second novel, loosely based on his tortured life with Zelda, we follow the wild, quarrelsome and pleasure-seeking careers of Anthony and Gloria Patch from success and wealth through to degradation and despair.

  She was dazzling, and the glow of her hair and cheeks made her the most living person he had ever seen; he was debonair and ‘gracefully lazy’. Together they were locked in a headlong rush towards destruction and love, of a kind.

  

• Best Jazz Age Stories

  Category: Classics | Response: 0

  Best Jazz Age Stories – Audio Book Summary

  F. Scott Fitzgerald brilliantly captures the Jazz Age of the 1920s in these stories.

  “Babylon Revisited” explores the repercussions of a man’s wild past, particularly in his relationship with his daughter. More often anthologized than any other Fitzgerald short story, it is also somewhat autobiographical.

  “The Lost Decade” is the haunting tale of a man who has mysteriously missed the last ten years of his life.

  “The Bridal Party” reveals the influence of money on character when a man is invited to the wedding of his former lover.

  “Three Hours Between Planes” involves childhood sweethearts remembering their youth looking back from adulthood.

  

• Classic Charles Dickens Dramas starring Laurence Olivier, Volume 1

  Category: Classics | Response: 0

  Classic Charles Dickens Dramas starring Laurence Olivier, Volume 1 – Audio Book Summary

  Fully restored and remastered, Heritage Media presents the greatest of vintage artists in classic dramas based on the tales of Charles Dickens. Here is the legendary Laurence Olivier starring in ‘The Case of Bardell vs Pickwick’, adapted from Charles Dickens’ original ‘Pickwick Papers’ and Laurence Olivier starring in ‘Sydney Carton’ adapted from Charles Dickens’ Original ‘A Tale of Two Cities’.

  Theatre Royal is a unique series of classic radio dramas produced in the 1950′s by the late Harry Alan Towers. Starring the leading theatre artists of the day it is the only series of radio dramas in which Laurence Olivier ever appeared. He was joined by Ralph Richardson, John Gielgud, Orson Welles, Robert Morley, John Mills, Michael Redgrave, Trevor Howard, Robert Donut, Alec Guinness and Margaret Lockwood.

  Over the Years, Theatre Royal has received a glittering array of accolades, including: “vivid, tense, and compressed.”( Classic radio)

  “Craft, like character, ages well.”(Daily Telegraph)

  “Great fun to listen to and, as radio history, they are unsurpassed.” (Sunday Telegraph)

  “Voices like these justify the Golden Days tag. We won’t hear their like again.” (Sunday Times)

  “A must for archive fans. The excitement of vintage radio drama with strong storylines.” (Radio Times.)

  

• Drácula I

  Category: Classics | Response: 0

  Drácula I – Audio Book Summary

  Bram Stoker (1847-1912), Abraham (Bram) Stoker, nació en Clontarf, Dublín (Irlanda), el 8 de noviembre de 1847. A causa de su inestable salud, sus primeros estudios los llevó a cabo en su hogar, con profesores privados. En su adolescencia será un ávido lector, siendo atraído primordialmente por la poesía de Walt Whitman, con quien entablará amistad con posterioridad. En 1864 estudió en el Trinity College, graduándose en matemáticas y ciencias en 1870. Años después trabajaría como funcionario en el Dublin Castle y como crítico teatral en la publicación Dublin Evening Mail. Sus primeros coqueteos con los relatos de terror los dió en la revista “Shamrock”, en donde publicó sus iniciales textos de misterio. En 1876 se marchó a Londres, acompañando al actor Henry Irving. En Inglaterra ambos dirigirían el Lyceum Theatre. Bram Stoker fallecería a causa de la sífilis, el 20 de abril de 1912.

  Drácula: Jonathan Harker viaja a Transilvania para cerrar un negocio inmobiliario con un misterioso conde que acaba de comprar varias propiedades en Londres. Después de un viaje preñado de ominosas señales, Harker es recogido en el Paso de Borgo por un siniestro carruaje que le lleva, acunado por el canto de los lobos, a un castillo en ruinas. Tal es el inquietante principio de una novela magistral que alumbró uno de los mitos más populares y poderosos de todos los tiempos: Drácula. La fuerza del personaje ha eclipsado a lo largo de los años la calidad, la originalidad y la rareza de la obra de Bram Stoker, sin duda una de las últimas y más estremecedoras aportaciones a la literatura gótica anglosajona.

  Please note: This audiobook is in Spanish.

  

• Ethan Frome

  Category: Classics | Response: 0

  Ethan Frome – Audio Book Summary

  Ethan Frome is a 1911 novel by Edith Wharton, set in turn-of-the-century New England, in the fictitious town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. It is the story of a poor farmer, lonely and downtrodden, his wife Zeena, and their pretty and vivacious cousin, Mattie Silver. This is a short but powerful and engrossing drama, and although it is the least characteristic of the author’s novels, it has become her most celebrated book.