Discover the Best Sellers Audiobooks in Classics, British Literature

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Title: The Sowers

Author: Henry S. Merriman

Narrator: Peter Joyce

Format: Unabridged

Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-01-15

Publisher: Assembled Stories

Genres: Classics, British Literature

Publisher's Summary:

A romantic adventure yarn of plotting and corruption largely set against the panorama of Imperialist Russia but with some of the skullduggery taking place in the major capitals of Europe.

An old Etonian and half Russian, Prince Paul Alexis, inherits the Osterno estate in the Steppes. Naive and honest, but helped by experienced campaigner Steinmetz, he forms a progressive but illegal Charity League to succour the needs of the starving uneducated peasantry who are ravaged by cholera.

When the League is betrayed there are severe consequences for the neighbouring nobility and Paul himself only just escapes a violent death at the hands of his own serfs. Who has betrayed them? Is it Claude de Chauxfille Paul's erstwhile rival in love or is the beautiful Etta, his wife, keeping more secrets than he or Steinmetz can guess?

With intrigue and deception at every turn The Sowers was Merriman's biggest best seller eventually reprinted 30 times.

Critic Reviews:

"No wonder The Sowers was a Victorian bestseller. Set mainly in the Siberia of Imperial Russia, it has love, corruption, betrayal, jealousy, heroic charity, uprisings - and hair-raising sleigh journeys. Prince Paul Alex has inherited the family estate and, fired by compassion for peasants ravaged by starvation and cholera, he forms an illegal charity league and, incognito, he relieves their sufferings. But someone has betrayed the league and death threatens. Peter Joyce's excellent narration conveys the tension without melodrama. I was hooked for all twelve hours. Further review of The Sowers" (Observer)

Members Reviews:

The early 20th century James Patterson

This author was the James Patterson of his time. His novels deal with big issues and produce a great literary experience. I have read three of his novels and intend to read all that he has written.

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Title: The Diary of Mr. Poynter

Author: M. R. James

Narrator: Cathy Dobson

Format: Unabridged

Length: 27 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-27-15

Publisher: Red Door Audiobooks

Genres: Classics, British Literature

Publisher's Summary:

Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936), who wrote as M. R. James, was an English author, mediaeval scholar, and provost of King's College, Cambridge, and of Eton College. He is best known for his outstanding ghost stories. James reinvented the ghost story for the modern audience by moving away from Gothic elements and using realistic contemporary settings. His protagonists and plots often reflected his own antiquarian interests. Accordingly he is known as the originator of the "antiquarian ghost story".

"The Diary of Mr. Poynter" tells the story of a book collector who buys a set of ancient diaries. In one of these is pinned a rather unusual sample of fabric, which, at the insistence of his aunt, he has copied to make curtains for their new house. Once the curtains are hanging, strange phenomena begin to take place in the house....

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Title: The Easter Egg

Author: H. H. Munro - "Saki"

Narrator: Mike Vendetti

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-22-15

Publisher: Spoken Realms

Genres: Classics, British Literature

Publisher's Summary:

"The Easter Egg", a short story by H. H. Munro ("Saki"), is not a happy Easter story but a tale of a proud and brave mother who loves her son even though the son is timid and perhaps cowardly. The story takes place prior to World War I, and the son, in his one act of bravery, prevents an international incident that possibly would have started the war sooner.

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Title: The Salt of the Earth

Author: George Gissing

Narrator: Cathy Dobson

Format: Unabridged

Length: 25 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-16-15

Publisher: Red Door Audiobooks

Genres: Classics, British Literature

Publisher's Summary:

George Robert Gissing (1857-1903) was a popular English novelist and short story writer who also worked as a teacher and tutor throughout his life. The Salt of the Earth is the poignant story of an overly kind-hearted, generous, and devoted clerk whose good nature and lack of self-assertion invites the exploitation of all around him.

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Title: The House of Cobwebs

Author: George Gissing

Narrator: Cathy Dobson

Format: Unabridged

Length: 52 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-16-15

Publisher: Red Door Audiobooks

Genres: Classics, British Literature

Publisher's Summary:

George Robert Gissing (1857-1903) was a popular English novelist and short story writer who also worked as a teacher and tutor throughout his life.

The House of Cobwebs is the story of an emerging friendship between two unlikely housemates: a young, struggling novelist and his landlord, a middle-aged retired assistant chemist who has inherited three dilapidated houses which are most definitely not fit for human habitation.

Members Reviews:

Antidote to Downton Abbey

George Gissing died in 1903 at the age of 46, one of many English artists who were victims of lung trouble. This volume of 15 short stories was published posthumously in 1906. The kindle edition includes an informative introduction, a kind of eulogy, which is well worth reading. It tells us what the literary world thought of Gissing when he had just died. A weakness of this edition: we are not told when the stories were written and if they were previously published anywhere else.

The stories are about Gissing's usual themes: white collar poverty, obstacles to mobility, class differences, social ambitions, artists' troubles. A frequent trait of his people is that they will rather accept humiliation than fight for their rights or their truth. Some act differently but are usually not rewarded for their guts.

A frequent character is the fallen gentleman who suffers from loss of status. Another one is he or she who has potential and ambitions but lacks means.

There is a thematic overlap with Henry James' stories, but from different heights and perspectives in society's hierarchies. HJ's stories are more complicated, but GG has a more sympathetic view of social problems. GG will take sides, HJ is too snobbish for that. While HJ is forever the ironic master of the universe, GG's sense of humor frequently buries itself in indignation. It does however surface once in a while.

The stories are a good introduction to GG's world and work, but only a few of them are up to his best standard.

Many people portrayed here have some kind of obsession. A house, a social status, books, marrying the wrong woman, manipulating other people...

Everyone is addicted to something, most frequently to their reputation.

I will not write in detail about all 15, but just mention some of the more interesting ones.

The title story, 'The House of Cobwebs', is a variation on the theme of the writer with no money. He finds an old unused house and obtains approval to spend a summer in it, while finishing a novel. He makes friends with the equally poor landlord, who has just inherited the house from an uncle, but will have to give it up in a year as it is on an expiring leasehold. He has no money for the necessary renovation, and no interest anyway, as he will have to give up the house soon.

'A Scrupulous Father' has a determined spinsterish young woman fight her father's refusal to let her meet a young man who looks substandard to him.

I vote for this story as the best in the collection.

'A charming family' is one that manages to con the landlady into becoming the housemaid and that leaves in the end without paying any of the rent. This has Kafka's sense of humor.

'The daughter of the lodge' could serve as an antidote to the unreal fun of Downton Abbey. Gifted and career-minded daughter of servant family runs foul with the masters, the baronet's wife and daughter, until her aging parents get turned out of their gardening lodge in punishment.

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Title: A Dill Pickle

Author: Katherine Mansfield

Narrator: Cathy Dobson

Format: Unabridged

Length: 18 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-13-15

Publisher: Red Door Audiobooks

Genres: Classics, British Literature

Publisher's Summary:

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction and a close associate of D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. A Dill Pickle is a wistful love story about a couple who meet again six years after their break-up, and for a moment the old passions, positive and negative, resurface in the course of a short, intense conversation.

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Title: A Long-Ago Affair

Author: John Galsworthy

Narrator: Cathy Dobson

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-13-15

Publisher: Red Door Audiobooks

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Classics, British Literature

Publisher's Summary:

John Galsworthy (1867-1933) was an English playwright and novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932.

A Long-Ago Affair is a poignant story of requited love and betrayal. A 16-year-old boy with a torrid crush on an older married woman finds himself unwittingly facilitating her secret love affair with another man.

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Title: The Scrupulous Father

Author: George Gissing

Narrator: Cathy Dobson

Format: Unabridged

Length: 34 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-09-15

Publisher: Red Door Audiobooks

Genres: Classics, British Literature

Publisher's Summary:

George Robert Gissing (1857-1903) was a popular English novelist and short-story writer who also worked as a teacher and tutor throughout his life.

The Scrupulous Father is an unusual love story set in the world of stifling Victorian propriety. Rose, the only daughter of the highly respectable and class obsessed Mr. Wiston, is drawn to a young, redheaded clerk at an inn while she is on holiday. The young man is outgoing, cheerful, and free of all the petty rules and inhibitions which dominate her own life.

When the young man joins Rose and her father in the railway carriage on their way back to London, Rose contrives to have a few moments alone with the young man. During this time she commits the unthinkable...and when her father finds out, Rose is faced with the greatest trial of her life.

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Title: The Trial for Murder

Author: Charles Dickens

Narrator: Cathy Dobson

Format: Unabridged

Length: 29 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-12-15

Publisher: Red Door Audiobooks

Genres: Classics, British Literature

Publisher's Summary:

An eerie and evocative ghost story by one of English literature's greatest writers. On looking out of his window, the narrator sees two men going down Piccadilly. The second man looks strangely unwell and waxen. When he is later called to jury service, the accused turns out to be the first man he had seen in Piccadilly...and the second his murder victim. Stranger still, the ghost of the murdered man is actively participating in the trial to ensure his murderer is brought to justice.

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Title: The Dabblers

Author: W. F. Harvey

Narrator: Cathy Dobson

Format: Unabridged

Length: 20 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-09-15

Publisher: Red Door Audiobooks

Genres: Classics, British Literature

Publisher's Summary:

William Fryer Harvey (1885-1937) was an English writer of short stories, most notably in the mystery and horror genres.

Born into a wealthy Quaker family in Yorkshire, he went to Balliol College, Oxford, and took a degree in medicine at Leeds. Ill health dogged him, however, and he devoted much of his recuperation to writing short stories.

The Dabblers

is a mysterious tale of strange rituals in the grounds of a boarding school on a particular night in June every year. Weird singing can be heard...and the locals mutter that The Dabblers are abroads.

But who are the mysterious Dabblers, and what are they doing abroad at midnight? One schoolteacher sets out to discover the secret....