Fiction - Literary audiobooks

The Scarlet Letter - Abridged

By: Nathaniel Hawthorne

Narrated by: Elizabeth McGovern

Length: 3 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: Yes

'Ah, but let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will be always in her heart.' A tale of sin, punishment and atonement, The Scarlet Letter exposes the moral rigidity of a 17th-Century Puritan New England community when faced with the illegitimate child of a young mother. Regarded as the first real... Read more

Cent éléphants sur un brin d'herbe - Abridged

By: Le Dalaï Lama

Narrated by: Jean Leclerc

Length: 1 hour 13 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Sur le ton chaleureux et confidentiel qui lui est naturel même en présence de nombreux interlocuteurs, le Dalaï-lama livre le fruit de ses réflexions sur l'homme, l'environnement, sur la société, les institutions, la politique, les religions. Que propose-t-il ? "Quel est votre secret ?", lui demande-t-on partout où il est invité. "Sagesse,... Read more

Heart of Darkness - Abridged

By: Joseph Conrad

Narrated by: Joss Ackland

Length: 3 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: Yes

‘The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness.’ At the peak of European Imperialism, steamboat captain Charles Marlow travels deep into the African Congo on his way... Read more

Far from the Madding Crowd - Abridged

By: Thomas Hardy

Narrated by: Martin Shaw

Length: 2 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Hardy’s classic ‘pastoral tale’ of wilful and capricious Bathsheba Everdene and her three suitors, the faithful shepherd, the lonely widower and the dashing but faithless soldier. An immediate success when it was first published in 1874, Thomas Hardy’s ‘pastoral tale’ of the wilful and capricious Bathsheba Everdene, her... Read more

Gulliver’s Travels - Abridged

By: Jonathan Swift

Narrated by: Martin Shaw

Length: 3 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Swift’s scornful satire, written “to vex the world rather than divert it”, takes a caustic look at those most contemporary concerns irrational prejudice, social inequality, ivory tower elitism and the correct way to open a boiled egg. 'I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little... Read more

Ivanhoe - Abridged

By: Sir Walter Scott

Narrated by: Brian Cox

Length: 3 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Set in the 12th century, during the reign of Richard the Lionheart, Ivanhoe tells of the love of Wilfred of Ivanhoe for the Lady Rowena, his father Cedric’s ward. Cedric intends Rowena for the oafish Athelstane, and banishes his son. 'The love of battle is the food upon which we live – the dust of the mêlée is the breath of... Read more

Kidnapped - Abridged

By: Robert Louis Stevenson

Narrated by: Tom Conti

Length: 2 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: Yes

The classic adventure story of kidnap, shipwreck, murder and pursuit as young David Balfour tries to claim the inheritance he has been cheated out of. ‘I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both; and I believe they both get paid in the end; but the fools first.’ Orphaned as a young teenager, Lowlander... Read more

Lord Jim - Abridged

By: Joseph Conrad

Narrated by: Joss Ackland

Length: 2 hours 45 minutes

Abridged: Yes

‘Who could tell what forms, what visions, what faces, what forgiveness he could see in the glow of the west!’ Jim is a well-bred young romantic who takes to the seas with hopes of adventure and the aspiration to prove his mettle. When the boat he sails in threatens to sink, Jim abandons ship in fear in order to... Read more

Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch

By: Dai Sijie

Narrated by: B.D. Wong

Length: 7 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

Following his runaway best seller, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Dai Sijie gives us a delightful new tale of East meets West: an adventure both wry and uplifting about a love of dreams and the dream of love, and the power of reading to sustain and inspire the spirit.

After years of studying Freud in Paris, Mr. Muo returns home to... Read more

The Crazyladies of Pearl Street - Abridged

By: Trevanian

Narrated by: Tom Bosely

Length: 5 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Legendary writer Trevanian brings readers his most personal novel yet: a funny, deeply felt, often touching coming-of-age novel set in 1930s America.

Six-year-old Jean-Luc LaPointe, his little sister, and his spirited but vulnerable young mother have been abandoned—again—by his father, a charming con artist. With no money and nowhere else... Read more

A Long Way Down

By: Nick Hornby

Narrated by: Scott Brick

Length: 8 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

New York Times-bestselling author Nick Hornby mines the hearts and psyches of four lost souls who connect just when they've reached the end of the line. A Long Way Down is now a major motion picture from Magnolia Pictures starring Pierce Brosnan, Toni Collette, Aaron Paul, and Imogen Poots.

Meet Martin, JJ, Jess, and Maureen. Four people who come... Read more

Specimen Days

By: Michael Cunningham

Narrated by: Alan Cumming

Length: 4 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

A highly anticipated, bold new novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours—three linked visionary narratives set in the ever-mysterious, turbulent city of New York

In each section of Michael Cunningham's new book, we encounter the same group of characters: a young boy, an older man, and a young woman. "In the Machine" is a ghost... Read more

Specimen Days - Abridged

By: Michael Cunningham

Narrated by: Alan Cumming

Length: 9 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: Yes

A highly anticipated, bold new novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours—three linked visionary narratives set in the ever-mysterious, turbulent city of New York

In each section of Michael Cunningham's new book, we encounter the same group of characters: a young boy, an older man, and a young woman. "In the Machine" is a ghost... Read more

The Stranger

By: Albert Camus

Narrated by: Jonathan Davis

Length: 4 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

With millions of copies sold The Stranger is one of the most widely read novels in the world. It stands as perhaps the greatest existentialist tale ever conceived. When a young Algerian named Meursault kills a man, his subsequent imprisonment and trial are puzzling and absurd. This remarkable translation by Matthew Ward has been considered the... Read more

Haunted

By: Chuck Palahniuk

Narrated by: Various

Length: 13 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk is a novel made up of stories: Twenty-three of them, to be precise. Twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales you’ll ever encounter—sometimes all at once. They are told by people who have answered an ad headlined “Writers’ Retreat: Abandon Your Life for Three Months,” and who... Read more

The History of Love

By: Nicole Krauss

Narrated by: George Guidall, Barbara Caruso, Julia Gibson & ...

Length: 9 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

Nicole Krauss' first novel, Man Walks Into a Room, was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and her short fiction has been collected in Best American Short Stories. Now The History of Love proves Krauss is among our finest and freshest literary voices. It has been decades since Leo Gursky first surrendered his heart, then wrote a... Read more

The Bright Forever

By: Lee Martin

Narrated by: Various

Length: 7 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

A dark, harrowing novel about a nine-year-old girl's disappearance and the lasting impact it has on her close-knit community

On an evening like any other, nine-year-old Katie Mackey, daughter of the most affluent family in a small town on the plains of Indiana, sets out on her bicycle to return some library books.

This simple act is at the... Read more

Leeway Cottage - Abridged

By: Beth Gutcheon

Narrated by: Elizabeth Marvel

Length: TBA

Abridged: Yes

In this beautifully written tour de force of a novel, Beth Gutcheon takes readers back to the coastal village of Dundee, Maine. There, in a Victorian summer house called Leeway Cottage, we witness the scenes of a long 20th century marriage.In April of 1940, a rich girl of the Dundee summer colony named Sydney Brant marries a gifted Danish... Read more

Oh My Stars - Abridged

By: Lorna Landvik

Narrated by: Judith Ivey

Length: 4 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: Yes

I am convinced that at birth the cake is already baked. Nurture is the nuts or frosting, but if you’re a spice cake, you’re a spice cake, and nothing is going to change you into an angel food.

Tall, slender Violet Mathers is growing up in the Great Depression, which could just as well define her state of mind. Abandoned by her mother as a child,... Read more

Lettres à un jeune poète - Abridged

By: Rainer Maria Rilke

Narrated by: François Garagnon

Length: 54 minutes

Abridged: Yes

En 1903, un poète de vingt ans, Franz Xaver Kappus, alors étudiant à l'Académie militaire de Wiener-Neustadt, décide d'envoyer à Rainer-Maria Rilke, ses premiers essais poétiques accompagnés d'une lettre dans laquelle il lui avoue douter de sa vocation. Il ne pouvait espérer plus belle écoute et plus juste accueil à ses incertitudes. Pendant 5... Read more

Around the World in 80 Days

By: Jules Verne

Narrated by: Jim Dale

Length: 7 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

Shocking his stodgy colleagues at the exclusive Reform Club, enigmatic Englishman Phileas Fogg wagers his fortune, undertaking an extraordinary and daring enterprise to circumnavigate the globe in eighty days. With his French valet Passepartout in tow, Verne's hero traverses the far reaches of the earth, all the while tracked by the intrepid... Read more

Rules for Old Men Waiting

By: Peter Pouncey

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 6 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

A brief, lyrical novel with a powerful emotional charge, Rules for Old Men Waiting is about three wars of the twentieth century and an ever-deepening marriage. In a house on the Cape “older than the Republic,” Robert MacIver, a historian who long ago played rugby for Scotland, creates a list of rules by which to live out his last days. The most... Read more

The Journeys of Socrates - Abridged

By: Dan Millman

Narrated by: Sam Tsoutsouvas

Length: TBA

Abridged: Yes

The international bestselling author is back with a page-turning tale of the origins of the peaceful warriorIn the heart of nineteenth century Tsarist Russia an orphaned boy born of both Jewish and Cossack blood desperately seeks to find a place in a dangerous world. Sergei Ivanov’s (Socrates’) journey from a military academy to America is a... Read more

Sudden Rain - Abridged

By: Maritta Wolff

Narrated by: Barbara Rosenblat

Length: 9 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: Yes

A novel set in the fall of 1972, it perfectly captures, with expansive emotion and keen observation, the domestic trends. Read more