When Mr Earnshaw brings a black-haired foundling child into his home on the Yorkshire moors, he little imagines the dramatic events which will follow. The passionate relationship between Cathy Earnshaw and the foundling, Heathcliff, is a story of love, hate, pity and retribution, the effects of which reverberate throughout the succeeding generations.
Swann in Love is the continuation of Swann's Way, the first part of Marcel Proust's monumental cycle Remembrance of Things Past. It tells the story of man-about-town Charles Swann's passionate, tormented love affair with the courtesan Odette de Crécy, and of its surprising outcome. Set in the degenerate demi-monde of nineteenth-century Paris as well as in the fashionable drawing rooms of the aristocracy, this new audiobook vividly brings to life the descriptive genius of the original novel.
'With the open sesame of language ready to hand, he suddenly began to find himself really penetrating a foreign country' In Mountolive the third volume in Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, the events surrounding the interwoven community of Nessim, Justine, Narouz, Pursewarden and the other major characters are given a very different perspective. The intrigues and complex relationships are seen through the political prism of a world plunging towards war. David Mountolive, once emotionally involved with Nessim's set, now returns to Egypt as the British ambassador...
After an unhappy childhood, 16 year-old Jane Eyre acquires the post of governess to a young girl at Thornfield Hall.
Plain and poor Jane may be, but she is not to be intimidated by the owner of Thornfield Hall, Mr. Rochester, who tries to goad her into defending herself against his verbal pinpricks. As a backdrop to this duel of minds, is evidence of a creature - or phantom - dwelling somewhere within these walls. Jane senses that something tragic must have occured in this place.
She ascertains that Rochester knows what is going on, but is determined to keep it to himself.
Jane is being drawn into a snare.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times'. A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens' only historical novel, sets personal happiness against the terrors of the French Revolution where the search for social justice sacrifices individual rights. Dr Manette has emerged from eighteen years' unjust imprisonment in the Bastille: by an ironic twist of fate, his daughter Lucie's marriage draws the family into a terrifying web of circumstance which, it seems, can only end in death by the guillotine.
Prince Lef Mikolayevitch Muishkin is one of the great characters in Russian literature. Is he a saint or just naïve, an idealist or, as many in General Yepanchin's society feel, an 'idiot'? Certainly, his return to St Petersburg after years in a Swiss clinic has a dramatic effect on the beautiful Aglaya, youngest of the Yepanchin daughters and on the charismatic but wilful Nastasio Phillipovna. As he paints a vivid picture of Russian society, Dostoyevsky shows how principles conflict with emotions - with tragic results.
Hoping to escape from a future without horizon, Emma marries the good and kind Charles Bovary, a doctor.
Finding herslf in another sort of prison however, she seeks comfort in the arms of lovers, and plays into the hands of opportunists.
She has not, after all, moved upwards, but rather sideways, into an even more claustrophobic existence. Trapped in a net of her own making, she becomes desperate. The more she struggles, the more she entangles herself.
The politics of love, the intrigues of desire ... love and murder, moved obscurely in the dark corners of Alexandria's streets and squares, brothels and drawing-rooms - moved like a great congress of eels in the slime of plot and counter-plot...' In Balthazar, the second volume in Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, the story and the characters come more clearly into focus. Darley, the reflective Englishman, receives from Balthazar, the pathologist, a mass of notes which attempt to explain what really happened between the tempestuous Justine, her husband Nessim, Clea the artist, Pursewarden the writer; new figures emerge and play key roles. Balthazar, in his 'Interlinear', explains and warns.
The Moonstone is a classic detective story.
John Herncastle, an English officer, kills three guards, and steals a precious jewel from the head of a Hindu moon-god, during the battle of Seringapatam. It passes into the hands of Miss Verinder, on the celebration of her eighteenth birthday.
The Brahmins then come to regain it. That night the moonstone disappears; but who has it?
The mystery is tackled by the resourceful detective, Sergeant Cuff.
This is an audio-dramatisation with full cast, sound effects, and 'audio-ambience' created for you by AudioscapePlayers.
Justine is the first volume in The Alexandria Quartet, four interlinked novels set in the sensuous, hot environment of Alexandria just before the Second World War. Within this polyglot setting of richly idiosyncratic characters is Justine, wild and intense, wife to the wealthy business man Nessim, a mari complaisant. Her emotional and sexual wildness fuels a highly-charged atmosphere which, caught famously by Durrell's poetic language, made Justine (1957), and the three novels that complete the Quartet - Balthazar (1958), Mountolive (1958), and Clea (1960) both a critical and a popular success.
Walter Hartright, a young Drawing teacher, encounters a woman at night, dressed in white, on his way to take up his post.
He does not know that she has escaped from an asylum. She appeals to him for help - and then seems to vanish.
An audio-dramatisation with full cast, sound effects, and 'audio-ambience' created for you by AudioscapePlayers.
To take on the bet - to go around the world in eighty days, faster than anyone had gone before - was madness. If Phileas Fogg missed a single connection he would lose £20,000. Phileas Fogg was an eccentric Englishman who lived a quiet ordered life and believed that, with technology and planning, nothing was unforseeable. But he could not plan for the ebullient nature of his French servant, Passepartout, for the adventures that crop up on their journey and for the totally unexpected collision with romance. The humour and freshness of Verne's writing - vivid despatches from a newly accessible world - make Around The World In Eighty Days an ideal subject for an audiobook.
