You Cant Win by Jack Black audiobook.

Genre: biography

First published in 1926, You Cant Win is the hard-edged, darkly funny autobiography of Jack Black, a drifter and career thief who came of age in the American West during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Told in a blunt, conversational voice, Black traces his early fascination with the underworld, the mentors who school him in the craft of stealing, and the shifting code of honor that governs the road. From boxcars and flophouses to saloons, gambling rooms, and prison yards, he moves through a world where hunger, pride, and quick thinking decide who survives the night. But every score carries a cost: betrayals come fast, the law closes in without mercy, and the habits that keep him afloat also keep him trapped. As Black cycles between fleeting freedom and confinement, he begins to question whether a different kind of life is possible and what it would take to claim it. Part social history, part confession, You Cant Win is a vivid portrait of poverty, temptation, and the fight to outgrow the story you have been living.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 00

(00:09:00) Chapter 01

(00:19:23) Chapter 02

(00:31:41) Chapter 03

(00:56:00) Chapter 04

(01:34:18) Chapter 05

(02:05:46) Chapter 06

(02:31:15) Chapter 07

(02:53:45) Chapter 08

(03:20:25) Chapter 09

(04:04:54) Chapter 10

(04:22:03) Chapter 11

(04:50:26) Chapter 12

(05:16:56) Chapter 13

(05:51:27) Chapter 14

(06:04:55) Chapter 15

(06:47:29) Chapter 16

(07:08:19) Chapter 17

(07:48:10) Chapter 18

(08:31:52) Chapter 19

(09:17:16) Chapter 20

(09:51:35) Chapter 21

(10:25:59) Chapter 22

(10:48:59) Chapter 23

(11:26:39) Chapter 24

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The Hampdenshire Wonder by J. D. Beresford audiobook.

Genre: scifi

In a quiet English village in Hampdenshire, the birth of Victor, the son of humble farm laborers, should be an ordinary event. Instead, from his earliest days Victor displays a strange, unsettling difference - a mind that seems to operate on a level no one around him can name, explain, or comfortably accept. As the boy grows, local figures including sympathetic friends and cautious professionals try to make sense of what they are witnessing, while neighbors and authorities respond with a volatile mix of wonder, suspicion, and moral panic. J. D. Beresford builds the story through observation and testimony, turning a small rural community into a pressure chamber for big questions: What does society owe to someone who does not fit its definitions of childhood, intelligence, or even humanity? Is Victor a miracle, a warning, or simply a new kind of person? As curiosity hardens into fear and private lives become public property, Victor's family is pulled between love, confusion, and the crushing demands of a world determined to label him. Part psychological study and part speculative thought experiment, the novel explores empathy, conformity, and the costs of being truly different.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:16:09) Chapter 02

(01:12:49) Chapter 03

(01:28:24) Chapter 04

(02:00:16) Chapter 05

(02:21:41) Chapter 06

(02:38:00) Chapter 07

(03:15:07) Chapter 08

(03:27:47) Chapter 09

(04:01:37) Chapter 10

(04:22:15) Chapter 11

(04:57:48) Chapter 12

(05:01:43) Chapter 13

(05:17:25) Chapter 14

(05:46:28) Chapter 15

(06:10:11) Chapter 16

(06:30:01) Chapter 17

(06:36:55) Chapter 18

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White Jacket by Herman Melville audiobook.

Genre: adventure

Herman Melville's White-Jacket plunges listeners into the cramped, wind-whipped world of a U.S. Navy frigate at sea, where discipline is as relentless as the ocean. The story follows an intelligent, observant sailor known for the makeshift white coat he wears, a small act of individuality that quickly becomes a mark of identity in a floating city ruled by hierarchy and tradition. Aboard the warship, he learns the routines of reefing sails, standing watch, and enduring storms, but he also confronts the harsher weather of shipboard power: arbitrary authority, petty rivalries, and the ever-present threat of public punishment. As the crew cycles through drills, battles boredom, and navigates port calls and perilous passages, White-Jacket records the jokes, superstitions, and solidarities that keep sailors alive, while steadily questioning the moral cost of obedience. Part sea chronicle, part social indictment, the novel builds toward a tense struggle over what justice should look like when there is nowhere to escape and the law is enforced on an open deck.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:07:02) Chapter 02

(00:11:56) Chapter 03

(00:25:42) Chapter 04

(00:39:11) Chapter 05

(01:09:41) Chapter 06

(01:17:17) Chapter 07

(01:28:49) Chapter 08

(01:40:26) Chapter 09

(01:52:06) Chapter 10

(02:07:09) Chapter 11

(02:15:04) Chapter 12

(02:44:39) Chapter 13

(03:04:43) Chapter 14

(03:12:14) Chapter 15

(03:16:17) Chapter 16

(03:25:10) Chapter 17

(03:32:09) Chapter 18

(03:40:33) Chapter 19

(03:52:01) Chapter 20

(04:10:00) Chapter 21

(04:20:44) Chapter 22

(04:31:38) Chapter 23

(04:47:59) Chapter 24

(05:01:28) Chapter 25

(05:10:37) Chapter 26

(05:20:04) Chapter 27

(05:29:33) Chapter 28

(05:40:49) Chapter 29

(05:46:41) Chapter 30

(06:00:08) Chapter 31

(06:11:34) Chapter 32

(06:23:15) Chapter 33

(06:36:54) Chapter 34

(06:43:00) Chapter 35

(06:53:49) Chapter 36

(07:08:54) Chapter 37

(07:13:21) Chapter 38

(07:20:17) Chapter 39

(07:38:12) Chapter 40

(07:53:36) Chapter 41

(08:20:46) Chapter 42

(08:25:10) Chapter 43

(08:38:30) Chapter 44

(08:55:21) Chapter 45

(09:03:33) Chapter 46

(09:10:31) Chapter 47

(09:18:39) Chapter 48

(09:26:37) Chapter 49

(09:41:02) Chapter 50

(09:48:21) Chapter 51

(10:01:57) Chapter 52

(10:07:54) Chapter 53

(10:20:08) Chapter 54

(10:26:10) Chapter 55

(10:30:53) Chapter 56

(10:39:26) Chapter 57

(10:44:16) Chapter 58

(10:55:56) Chapter 59

(11:03:31) Chapter 60

(11:31:37) Chapter 61

(11:38:01) Chapter 62

(11:52:46) Chapter 63

(12:01:13) Chapter 64

(12:14:12) Chapter 65

(12:24:23) Chapter 66

(12:36:45) Chapter 67

(12:50:09) Chapter 68

(12:58:01) Chapter 69

(13:14:47) Chapter 70

(13:27:58) Chapter 71

(13:49:49) Chapter 72

(14:02:33) Chapter 73

(14:11:41) Chapter 74

(14:30:50) Chapter 75

(14:37:04) Chapter 76

(14:45:39) Chapter 77

(14:53:32) Chapter 78

(14:56:22) Chapter 79

(14:59:37) Chapter 80

(15:12:38) Chapter 81

(15:26:36) Chapter 82

(15:47:28) Chapter 83

(15:52:35) Chapter 84

(16:05:11) Chapter 85

(16:15:24) Chapter 86

(16:23:50) Chapter 87

(16:50:59) Chapter 88

(17:05:54) Chapter 89

(17:17:30) Chapter 90

(17:25:00) Chapter 91

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The Encantadas Or Enchanted Isles by Herman Melville audiobook.

Genre: adventure

Herman Melville's The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles is a sequence of vivid, sea-borne sketches that carries listeners to the Galapagos Islands, a place sailors call enchanted not for comfort, but for the way it unsettles the mind. Guided by a narrator who moves between travelogue, legend, and meditation, the book surveys bleak lava fields, blasted coves, and a wildlife kingdom ruled by giant tortoises, iguanas, and predatory birds. Each island becomes its own moral climate, and the tales that cling to them are as sharp as the volcanic rock: castaways and runaways, roaming seamen, hard-eyed hunters, and solitary figures like the sorrowful Hunilla, whose life on the margins reveals what isolation can do to hope. Melville mixes maritime observation with a searching, sometimes darkly comic imagination, asking what 'civilization' means at the edge of the charted world, and how cruelty, chance, and endurance shape human fate. Part adventure narrative, part haunted geography, The Encantadas turns a remote archipelago into a mirror for ambition, loneliness, and the brutal indifference of nature.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:13:50) Chapter 02

(00:23:58) Chapter 03

(00:37:19) Chapter 04

(00:54:58) Chapter 05

(00:59:37) Chapter 06

(01:07:25) Chapter 07

(01:20:37) Chapter 08

(01:57:39) Chapter 09

(02:23:24) Chapter 10

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The Confidence-Man - His Masquerade by Herman Melville audiobook.

Genre: philosophy

On April Fool's Day, a steamboat pushes off from St. Louis and heads down the Mississippi, carrying a cross-section of antebellum America: merchants, widows, gamblers, clerks, reformers, and dreamers, all enclosed together in a floating marketplace of stories and schemes. As the day unfolds, a series of persuasive strangers appears among the passengers, each offering a different pitch - charity for the afflicted, investment opportunities, moral causes, miracle cures, and friendly counsel - and each demanding, in one form or another, an act of belief. Faces blur and identities shift as conversations turn into contests of trust, and small social rituals become high-stakes negotiations. Herman Melville builds the novel as a restless masquerade of voices: sharp satire, philosophical debate, and darkly comic encounters that expose how easily language can flatter, confuse, or compel. At its center is an unsettling question: what is confidence, and what happens to a society that treats it as both currency and weapon? As the steamboat drifts onward, the passengers must decide whom to believe, what their convictions are worth, and whether sincerity can survive in a world of performance.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:16:51) Chapter 02

(00:55:36) Chapter 03

(01:24:50) Chapter 04

(01:54:49) Chapter 05

(02:20:39) Chapter 06

(02:35:22) Chapter 07

(02:56:21) Chapter 08

(03:30:20) Chapter 09

(03:53:14) Chapter 10

(04:26:24) Chapter 11

(05:31:30) Chapter 12

(05:59:29) Chapter 13

(06:55:23) Chapter 14

(07:47:41) Chapter 15

(08:27:45) Chapter 16

(08:53:37) Chapter 17

(09:39:16) Chapter 18

(10:15:58) Chapter 19

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Redburn - His First Voyage by Herman Melville audiobook.

Genre: adventure

In Redburn - His First Voyage, Herman Melville follows Wellingborough Redburn, a sheltered young man from New York who, faced with family hardship and a restless need to prove himself, signs on as a common sailor aboard a merchant ship bound for Liverpool. Armed with little more than a few boyish notions of the sea and an old guidebook, Redburn quickly discovers that life before the mast is not the heroic dream he imagined. On deck he must learn the brutal rhythms of shipboard labor, navigate the scorn and rough humor of seasoned hands, and endure a strict hierarchy where inexperience can be dangerous. Ashore in England, Redburn confronts a foreign city marked by poverty, crowded streets, and uneasy moral contradictions, forcing him to question what he has been taught about class, nation, and human dignity. Part coming-of-age tale and part stark travel narrative, the story charts Redburn's loss of innocence as he struggles to find courage and compassion in a world that often rewards hardness over hope.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:59:33) Chapter 02

(02:03:12) Chapter 03

(03:03:48) Chapter 04

(03:53:54) Chapter 05

(04:41:47) Chapter 06

(05:32:00) Chapter 07

(06:31:17) Chapter 08

(07:21:11) Chapter 09

(08:19:22) Chapter 10

(09:04:57) Chapter 11

(10:09:02) Chapter 12

(11:07:32) Chapter 13

(11:58:11) Chapter 14

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Pierre, or The Ambiguities by Herman Melville audiobook.

Genre: drama

In Pierre, or The Ambiguities, Herman Melville follows Pierre Glendinning, a young heir raised amid privilege and rigid expectations in rural New York. Poised to inherit status, security, and a conventional future, Pierre's life is unsettled when a mysterious young woman appears with a story that threatens to rewrite everything he believes about his family and his own identity. Driven by a fierce, idealistic sense of honor and a longing to act purely in a compromised world, Pierre makes a drastic choice that severs him from his mother, his fiancee Lucy, and the social order that once defined him. Seeking reinvention, he flees to the city and tries to build a new life through writing, only to confront the harsh economics of art, the duplicities of friendship, and the moral fog of desire, duty, and self-deception. Part psychological drama, part dark social satire, and part philosophical inquiry, the novel probes how love, faith, and family myths collide with secrecy and suspicion. As Pierre struggles to distinguish truth from performance, he is pulled deeper into a web of conflicting loyalties and interpretations where every motive can be read two ways.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(01:01:45) Chapter 02

(01:40:41) Chapter 03

(02:20:34) Chapter 04

(02:53:15) Chapter 05

(03:29:17) Chapter 06

(04:22:24) Chapter 07

(05:27:46) Chapter 08

(06:22:49) Chapter 09

(07:06:04) Chapter 10

(08:08:08) Chapter 11

(08:29:39) Chapter 12

(08:59:43) Chapter 13

(09:16:58) Chapter 14

(09:49:28) Chapter 15

(09:56:43) Chapter 16

(10:34:55) Chapter 17

(11:09:34) Chapter 18

(11:47:21) Chapter 19

(12:21:37) Chapter 20

(12:45:36) Chapter 21

(13:16:45) Chapter 22

(13:37:03) Chapter 23

(14:14:32) Chapter 24

(14:45:11) Chapter 25

(15:22:12) Chapter 26

(15:43:02) Chapter 27

(16:10:23) Chapter 28

(16:33:46) Chapter 29

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Billy Budd by Herman Melville audiobook.

Genre: drama

On the eve of war with revolutionary France, the British navy is stretched thin, and suspicion of mutiny hangs over every deck. Into this tense world steps Billy Budd, a young sailor pressed into service and assigned to the warship HMS Bellipotent. Handsome, hardworking, and widely liked, Billy seems the very image of innocence - until his presence stirs jealousy and fear in the ship's master-at-arms, John Claggart. As discipline tightens and rumors spread, an accusation places Billy in the sights of Captain Edward Fairfax Vere, a thoughtful commander torn between sympathy for the individual and duty to naval law. Confined by the rigid codes that keep a fighting ship afloat, Vere must weigh conscience against authority while the crew watches, aware that a single decision could ripple into unrest. Herman Melville's final, haunting novella becomes a chamber drama at sea, probing the costs of obedience, the ambiguity of justice, and the uneasy line between goodness and guilt. With the ocean as both backdrop and pressure cooker, Billy Budd builds toward a moral crisis in which character and command collide.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:16:21) Chapter 02

(00:34:57) Chapter 03

(00:54:09) Chapter 04

(01:13:26) Chapter 05

(01:26:44) Chapter 06

(01:40:10) Chapter 07

(02:05:07) Chapter 08

(02:29:59) Chapter 09

(02:45:54) Chapter 10

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Benito Cereno by Herman Melville audiobook.

Genre: mystery

Off the coast of Chile in the late 1700s, American sea captain Amasa Delano encounters a battered Spanish merchant ship drifting in uneasy silence. Its commander, Don Benito Cereno, appears sickly, distracted, and strangely dependent on his enslaved attendants, while the vessel itself seems plagued by shortages, confusion, and simmering disorder. Delano, practical and good-natured, boards to offer aid and quickly finds himself trying to make sense of contradictory details: whispered conversations that stop when he approaches, inexplicable weapons on deck, sailors who seem fearful, and a captain whose authority feels more theatrical than real. As Delano attempts to arrange supplies and repairs, he must decide whom to trust and what story to believe, even as his own assumptions shape every conclusion. Herman Melville builds a taut, atmospheric moral puzzle about perception, power, and the violence embedded in maritime empire, where the surface of polite cooperation hides a far more dangerous struggle. With mounting tension and an ever-tightening sense of menace, Benito Cereno draws listeners into a slow-burn confrontation between appearance and reality at sea.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:10:37) Chapter 02

(00:28:19) Chapter 03

(00:37:30) Chapter 04

(00:55:25) Chapter 05

(01:14:17) Chapter 06

(01:37:59) Chapter 07

(01:53:59) Chapter 08

(02:21:10) Chapter 09

(02:27:39) Chapter 10

(02:45:34) Chapter 11

(02:57:06) Chapter 12

(03:05:52) Chapter 13

(03:44:27) Chapter 14

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Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War by Herman Melville audiobook.

Genre: poetry

Published in the aftermath of the American Civil War, Herman Melville's Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War is a searching, many-angled meditation on a nation fractured and remade. Through a sequence of poems, Melville moves from the shock of first clashes and public rallies to the long grind of campaigns, prisons, hospitals, and hard-won victories, pausing on moments that official histories often pass over - a sentry's solitude, a town's anxious waiting, the sudden hush after artillery, the uneasy distance between home-front certainty and battlefield fact. Rather than offering a single heroic narrative, Melville presents a chorus of perspectives: soldiers and civilians, North and South, the confident and the haunted. The collection presses at difficult questions about leadership, loss, justice, and the moral costs of reunion, while also capturing the strange beauty that can appear amid ruin. Part elegy and part reckoning, these battle-pieces ask what it means to remember, to forgive, and to rebuild when the war is over but its echoes are not.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:00:58) Chapter 02

(00:02:12) Chapter 03

(00:06:52) Chapter 04

(00:09:19) Chapter 05

(00:11:18) Chapter 06

(00:14:14) Chapter 07

(00:15:35) Chapter 08

(00:16:28) Chapter 09

(00:18:44) Chapter 10

(00:37:45) Chapter 11

(00:40:05) Chapter 12

(00:42:39) Chapter 13

(00:45:24) Chapter 14

(00:47:28) Chapter 15

(00:49:00) Chapter 16

(00:51:42) Chapter 17

(00:53:35) Chapter 18

(00:56:30) Chapter 19

(00:59:13) Chapter 20

(01:03:33) Chapter 21

(01:04:44) Chapter 22

(01:07:35) Chapter 23

(01:09:29) Chapter 24

(01:12:11) Chapter 25

(01:13:26) Chapter 26

(01:17:06) Chapter 27

(01:26:39) Chapter 28

(01:28:04) Chapter 29

(01:30:40) Chapter 30

(01:37:38) Chapter 31

(01:39:55) Chapter 32

(01:41:18) Chapter 33

(01:43:02) Chapter 34

(01:44:26) Chapter 35

(01:46:01) Chapter 36

(01:48:23) Chapter 37

(01:52:11) Chapter 38

(01:53:52) Chapter 39

(01:55:12) Chapter 40

(01:56:23) Chapter 41

(01:59:22) Chapter 42

(02:00:58) Chapter 43

(02:01:59) Chapter 44

(02:04:27) Chapter 45

(02:05:59) Chapter 46

(02:07:21) Chapter 47

(02:10:05) Chapter 48

(02:11:17) Chapter 49

(02:12:29) Chapter 50

(02:13:45) Chapter 51

(02:14:56) Chapter 52

(02:17:40) Chapter 53

(02:20:22) Chapter 54

(02:21:20) Chapter 55

(02:22:24) Chapter 56

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