Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Classics

During a trip to Europe, wealthy American businessman Christopher Newman proposes marriage to the scintillating and beautiful aristocrat Claire de Cintré. To his dismay, he comes up against the machinations of her impoverished but proud family, who find Newman to be a vulgar example of the American privileged class. Brilliantly combining elements of comedy, tragedy, romance, and melodrama, this tale of thwarted desire vividly contrasts nineteenth-century American and European manners.

This spare, mesmerizing novel is Edith Wharton's money-can't-buy-happiness tale. Young Stephen Glennard, a lawyer, is poor, but he has an unanticipated gambling chip: a collection of love letters from a scorned, but now famous, lover, the distinguished novelist Margaret Aubyn. To raise money for his forthcoming wedding to another woman, Stephen stoops to selling the letters.

Here is the world's most famous master plan for seizing and holding power. Astonishing in its candor, The Prince is a disturbingly realistic and prophetic work on what it takes to be a prince, a king, a president.

Through 23 connected short stories, the author looks into the lives of the inhabitants of a small town in the American heartland. In a simple and intense style, these psychological portraits of the sensitive and imaginative of Winesburg's population are seen through the eyes of a young reporter-narrator, George Willard. Their stories are about loneliness and alienation, passion and virginity, wealth and poverty, thrift and profligacy, carelessness and abandon.

Here is the continuing adventure of one of fiction�s most dramatic heroes, Tarzan the ape-man. In this new episode, Tarzan has given up his jungle ways and is living contentedly on a farm with his beloved wife, Jane, as a wealthy member of British nobility. But when he returns one day from a trip to Nairobi, he finds his farm has been laid to waste by German troops, with no one left alive.

El Arte de la Guerra es el mejor libro de estrategia de todos los tiempos. Inspiró a Napoleón, Maquiavelo, Mao Tse Tung, y muchas más figuras históricas. Este libro de dos mil quinientos años de antigüedad es uno de los más importantes textos clásicos Chinos, en el que, a pesar del tiempo transcurrido, ninguna de sus máximas ha quedado anticuada, ni hay un solo consejo que hoy no sea útil. Pero la obra del general Sun-tzu no es únicamente un libro de práctica militar....

In this classic tale of the death of childhood, there is a savage comedy that owes much to Dickens. But for his portrayal of the child’s capacity for intelligent wonder, James summons all the subtlety he devotes elsewhere to his most celebrated adult protagonists. In the aftermath of an acrimonious divorce, young Maisie Farange finds herself shuttled back and forth between her father and mother and their new spouses, all of whom are monstrously self-involved. Neglected and exploited by everyone around her, Maisie herself becomes a pretext for sexual intrigue when her stepparents become attracted to each other.

You Know Me, Al is a classic of baseball, the game and the community. Jack Keefe, one of literature's great characters, is talented, brash, and conceited. Self-assured and imperceptive, impervious to both advice and sarcasm, Keefe rises to the heights, but his inability to learn makes for his undoing. Through a series of letters from this bush-league pitcher to his not-quite-anonymous friend Al, Lardner maintains a balance between the funny and the moving, the pathetic and the glorious.

Rooted in an actual case of wife-selling in early nineteenth-century England, the story builds into an awesome Sophoclean drama of guilt and revenge, in which the strong, willful Henchard rises to a position of wealth and power, only to achieve a most bitter downfall. Proud, obsessed, ultimately committed to his own destruction, Henchard is, as Albert Guerard has said, "Hardy's Lord Jim...his only tragic hero and one of the greatest tragic heroes in all fiction."

An ingenious Yankee mechanic, knocked unconscious in a fight, awakens to find himself in Camelot in 528 A.D. Imprisoned by Sir Kay the Seneschal and exhibited before the knights of the Round Table, he is condemned to death but saves himself by posing as a Merlin-like magician, correctly predicting an eclipse, and becoming a minister to King Arthur. He increases his power by applying 19th century knowledge of gunpowder, electricity, and industrial methods.

Abandoned by her lover and left to bring up their two children alone, Gervaise Macquart has to fight to earn an honest living. When she accepts the marriage proposal of Monsieur Coupeau, it seems as though she is on the path to a decent, respectable life at last. But with her husband's drinking and the unexpected appearance of a figure from her past, Gervaise's plans begin to unravel tragically.

The author of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle", Washington Irving perfected the American short story. His stories were written in an approachable tone and intended to entertain rather than enlighten. Originally published in 1819, "The Spectre Bridegroom" is a ghost story about a baron and his daughter in historic Germany. The tale revolves around the daughter’s betrothal to Count Van Altenburg and the strange occurrences that lead up to the wedding. One of the few Irving stories set outside of the United States, "The Spectre Bridegroom" is often seen as a commentary on the differences between American and European society.

Eugenia, a baroness divorced from a German prince, and her bohemian brother, Felix, are coming back to America. Raised and cultured in Europe, they are returning destitute to New England to seek out their rich and innocent cousins.

One of the most controversial Russian novels ever written, Fathers and Sons dramatizes the volcanic social conflicts that divided Russia just before the revolution, pitting peasants against masters, traditionalists against intellectuals, and fathers against sons. It is also a timeless depiction of the ongoing clash between generations.

McTeague, a strong but stupid dentist, marries Trina, introduced to him by her cousin Marcus Schouler. When Trina wins $5,000 in a lottery and increases the sum by shrewd investment, Schouler, who had wanted to marry Trina himself, feels cheated. In revenge, he exposes McTeague's lack of diploma or license. Forbidden to practice, McTeague becomes mean and surly, but the miserly Trina refuses to let him use her money, and they sink into poverty.

The Prairie marks the final chapter in James Fenimore Cooper's great saga of American frontiersman Natty Bumppo. Though nearly 90 in 1804, Bumppo is still competent as a frontiersman and trapper, now on the Great Plains. Once more he is drawn into conflict with society in the form of an emigrant party led by the surly Ishmael Bush and his miscreant brother-in-law, Abiram White. And once again this great man of nature is called upon to exhibit his courage and resourcefulness to rescue the innocent.

O Pioneers! is a story of the immigrants who came to America to build new lives for themselves. Struggling against poverty, ignorance, drought, and storm, they came to love and understand the land, until it rewarded them with a richness exceeding all imaginings.

The Professor, the first novel that Charlotte Brontë completed, is based on her experiences as a language student in Brussels in 1842. Told from the point of view of William Crimsworth, the only male narrator she created, the work questions many of the presuppositions of Victorian society.

Kate Croy is secretly engaged to Merton Denscher, a journalist who lacks money. By chance, Kate befriends Milly, an American heiress, and learns she is suffering from a fatal illness. Kate devises a scheme to maximize their combined assets: she encourages Merton to take an interest in Milly and marry her. Kate intends to make him a rich widower whom she herself can marry. But such well-laid plans are not enough for the subtlety of the heart.

One of the greatest treats in all world literature, this masterpiece from Mark Twain is revolutionary. It offers both brilliant humor and tragedy as Huck and Jim explore moral dilemmas of slavery and freedom. Huck, the narrator, is shrewd, ingenious, and literal--he reports on everything he sees, which allows the listener to experience the hypocrisy of "sivilization." This superb reading by Patrick Fraley is rich in the color and adventurous spirit of the Mississippi River.