First appearing in print in 1890, the character of Sherlock Holmes has now become synonymous worldwide with the concept of a super sleuth. His creator, Conan Doyle, imbued his detective hero with intellectual power, acute observational abilities, a p...

The Complete Stories of Sherlock Holmes, Volume 1

Here in one recording is every Sherlock Holmes story ever written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Originally appearing in serial form, these famous stories are here presented in the order in which they were first published beginning in 1887. Included in t...

The Complete Stories of Sherlock Holmes

Volume two in this series consists of one novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and two collections of short stories, which include "Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" and "The Return of Sherlock Holmes" (a total of 23 stories). These creations by Doyle rep...

The Complete Stories of Sherlock Holmes, Volume 2

This classic war memoir, first published in 1920, is based on the author's extensive diaries describing hard combat experienced on the Western Front during World War I. It has been greatly admired by people as diverse as Bertolt Brecht and Andre Gide...

The Storm of Steel

Arthur Conan Doyle never wasted time in getting his stories moving. His plots are always direct and refreshingly lucid, and the narrative has a velocity that sweeps you along right to the end. This was no doubt a large part of his immense worldwide s...

The Complete Stories of Sherlock Holmes, Volume 3

This is the breathtaking adventure of the great Carthaginian general who shook the foundations of Rome. When conflict between Rome and Carthage resumed in 219 B.C., after a brief hiatus from the first Punic War, the Romans decided to invade Spain. El...

Hannibal

Julius Caesar wrote his exciting Commentaries during some of the most grueling campaigns ever undertaken by a Roman army. The Gallic Wars and The Civil Wars constitute the greatest series of military dispatches ever written. As literature, they are r...

The Commentaries

Paradise Lost, along with its companion piece, Paradise Regained, remain the most successful attempts at Greco-Roman style epic poetry in the English language. Remarkably enough, they were written near the end of John Milton's amazing life, a bold te...

Paradise Lost & Paradise Regained

Here in a single volume is the entire, unabridged recording of Gibbon's masterpiece. Beginning in the second century at the apex of the Pax Romana, Gibbon traces the arc of decline and complete destruction through the centuries across Europe and the ...

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Translated by W. E. D. Rouse, The March of the Ten Thousand is one of the most admired and widely read pieces of ancient literature to come down to us. Xenophon employs a very simple, straightforward style to describe what is probably the most exciti...

The March of the Ten Thousand

Initially, the Thirty Years War was precipitated in 1618 by religious conflicts between Protestants and Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire. But the conflict soon spread beyond religion to encompass the internal politics and balance of power within th...

The Thirty Years War

The Iliad is one of the most enduring creations of Western Civilization and was originally written to be recited or chanted to the accompaniment of various instruments. Properly performed, this work today is just as meaningful, just as powerful, and ...

The Iliad

A History of the Middle Ages is the amazing story of European man in transition. It is a dramatic chronicle of 1,000 years of political, social, and economic transformation beginning with the dissolution of the classical Mediterranean civilization an...

A History of the Middle Ages

This magnificent novel is about the murder of a miserly, aged pawnbroker and her younger sister by a radical, destitute St. Petersburg student named Raskolnikov, and the emotional, mental, and physical effects that follow. It is a remarkable masterpi...

Crime and Punishment (Audio Connoisseur Edition)

On September 11, 2001, nearly 3,000 people died in terrorist attacks upon the United States. Hijacked planes struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, while an additional plane crashed into the fields of Pennsylvania. This series of events resu...

The 9/11 Commission Report

The Aeneid represents one of the greatest cultural and artistic achievements of Western Civilization. Within the brooding and melancholy atmosphere of Virgil's pious masterpiece lies the mythic story of Aeneas and his flight from burning Troy, taking...

The Aeneid

The central core of the stories concerns a Persian king and his new bride. The king has a brother who is a vizier in faraway Samarcand, and he invites him to come to the palace for a visit. Just before his departure, the vizier is shocked to discover...

The Arabian Nights Entertainments

A terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella; the sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor - these form a series of events that change the orphaned Pip's life forever, and he eagerly abandons his humble origins to begin a new life as a gentleman.

Great Expectations

Dante's Divine Comedy is considered to be not only the most important epic poem in Italian literature, but also one of the greatest poems ever written. It consists of 100 cantos, and (after an introductory canto) they are divided into three sections....

The Divine Comedy

The world of ancient Egypt springs magnificently to life in this astonishing historical novel of love, war, political intrigue, and religious revolution. Told from the first-person point of view, it is the story of Sinuhe, physician to the royal cour...

The Egyptian

An undeniable masterpiece of Western Civilization, The Metamorphoses is a continuous narrative that covers all the Olympian legends, seamlessly moving from one story to another in a splendid panorama of savage beauty, charm, and wit. It marked the fi...

The Metamorphoses

Historians universally agree that Thucydides was the greatest historian who has ever lived, and that his story of the Peloponnesian conflict is a marvel of forensic science and fine literature. That such a triumph of intellectual accomplishment was c...

The Peloponnesian War

Of Human Bondage is one of the greatest novels of modern times, and it is certainly Maugham's greatest achievement. It was published in 1914, when Maugham was at the height of his creative powers. The story concerns Philip Carey, afflicted at birth w...

Of Human Bondage

This is the incredible story of the world's greatest conqueror, a man who single handedly changed the course of history...and who was worshipped as a god. There have been many attempts in the 2,300 years since Alexander's death to tell the epic story...

Alexander the Great

In AD 66, nationalist and religious revolutionaries in Judaea led a ferocious revolt of the Jewish people against the authority of mighty Rome, culminating in the greatest upheaval and savagery the world had known up to that time. By the end of the c...

The Jewish War

In the early 13th century, a simple nomad chieftain managed to cobble together a powerful kingdom in the highlands of northern Asia, which was subsequently to challenge the greatest powers of the day. He was triumphant in all directions. This leader ...

Genghis Khan

This famous work by Lucretius is a masterpiece of didactic poetry, and it still stands today as the finest exposition of Epicurean philosophy ever written. The poem was produced in the middle of first century B.C., a period that was to witness a flow...

On the Nature of Things

In 1789 HMS Bounty under the command of Lieutenant William Bligh sailed off on a voyage to Tahiti in the South Pacific to obtain breadfruit trees for transplanting in the Caribbean. After a long, difficult voyage, in which a passage of Cape Horn had ...

Mutiny on the Bounty

The enigma of Alexander the Great has remained with us for 2,300 years. In spite of the best efforts of historians, Alexander is no less a mystery to us now than he probably was during his own lifetime. There was no one like him before or since. In t...

Alexander of Macedon

From the dignified grace of Augustus to the cruel debauchery of Nero, this history chronicles all the vices and virtues of the first 12 rulers of Imperial Rome. The Twelve Caesars was written based on the information of eyewitnesses and public record...

The Twelve Caesars

Sweeping out of Central Asia in the last half of the 14th century came the Tatar armies of Timur, known as Tamerlane in the West, and one of history's supremely gifted military leaders.  With consummate skill, Tamerlane cobbled together a kingdom fro...

Tamerlane

A History of Rome is the story of a tiny market town on the Tiber, its rise to world domination, and then its slow, terrible plunge to utter ruin. It is the single greatest event in all human history. Discover the fascinating origin of Rome and its m...

A History of Rome, Volume 1

In the space of 400 years, Western man methodically set out to explore and map the entire earth. During some of the most dangerous expeditions ever mounted, an extraordinary group of determined men forced passages through vast oceans, dark jungles, a...

The Great Age of Discovery, Volume 1

Plutarch (c. AD 46-AD 120) was born to a prominent family in the small Greek town of Chaeronea, about 20 miles east of Delphi in the region known as Boeotia. His best known work is Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, ...

Parallel Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans

The Dark Ages is the story of the birth of Western civilization. It was a harrowing crucible of war, destruction, and faith. For over 100 years, Charles Oman's famous history has remained one of the finest sources for the study of this period. Coveri...

The Dark Ages: 476-918

First published in 1719 in London, the first edition of Robinson Crusoe gave credit to the work's fictional protagonist, Robinson Crusoe, as its actual author instead of Daniel Defoe. This led many readers to believe Robinson Crusoe was a real person...

Robinson Crusoe

William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) was born at the height of British Imperial power. When he died, the British Empire was all but a memory. In Maugham's lifetime, as his civilization slowly disappeared, people from all walks of life - the proud, th...

Short Stories of William Somerset Maugham, Volume 1

This is the story of Margaret Hale, a young English woman who accompanies her family's move from rural southern England to the industrial north. It proves to be a difficult change, with all the attendant social conflicts and cultural misunderstanding...

North and South

With Caesar's assassination comes renewed civil war. The aristocratic senatorial faction is defeated and the Republican form of government is replaced by dictatorship. Caesar's adopted nephew, Augustus, comes to power as the first Roman Emperor and p...

A History of Rome, Volume 2

When Livy began his epic The History of Rome, he had no idea of the fame and fortune he would eventually attain. He would go on to become the most widely read writer in the Roman Empire and was eagerly sought out and feted like a modern celebrity. An...

The History of Rome, Volume 1, Books 1 - 5

A History of Greece is the thrilling story of the rise to power and influence of the greatest civilization the world has ever known. As Cyril Robinson's exquisite narrative unfolds, we find ourselves plunged into mankind's greatest and most magnifice...

A History of Greece, Volume 1

The Arthurian legend of Camelot has been told many times, but never better than by Alfred Tennyson. Employing some of the most stirring and beautiful blank verse ever written, Tennyson crafted his version of the Knights of the Round Table over the co...

Idylls of the King

The story of the Roman Republic is the greatest epic in human history. Seen in the long perspective of time, it seems too fantastic to be real. From its modest beginnings as a convenient fording place on the Tiber to its eventual destiny as the mistr...

A History of the Roman Republic, Volume 1

Polybius says that he wrote his Histories "to find out by what means and by what political system the entire world was brought under the domination of Rome..." And as he states, it was an event totally without precedent. Within the short space of abo...

Rome and the Mediterranean Vol. 1

Out of the mixture of Latin & Germanic paganism and the Christianity of the Early Middle Ages sprung one of the world's supremely great pieces of literature. J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings, delivered a famous lecture to the British A...

Beowulf

The Odyssey is the greatest adventure story ever written, and one of the great epic masterpieces of Western literature For almost 3,000 years, it has been a storehouse of ancient Greek folklore and myth. It is also our very first novel, if we think o...

The Odyssey

Russian literature exudes an atmosphere of mysticism, which is said to be a natural result of the simplicity of her people. Often, instead of being "about" anything, Russian stories sometimes seem to be the "thing" in itself. Be this as it may, it is...

Classic Russian Short Stories, Volume 1

In the pantheon of ancient men of letters, none hold a more venerated position than the Roman historian, Tacitus, venerated alike for the accuracy of his chronicles as well as for the superiority of his style. He was a writer of unexcelled genius and...

The Complete Works of Tacitus: Volume 1: The Annals, Part 1

Unlike the other arts, American literature has been a powerful, influential, and leading aspect of American culture. By turns sedate and mercurial and possessing a moral mind set of various social values, the American short story reveals in its pages...

Classic American Short Stories, Volume 1

Among the finest poets of ancient Greece was Hesiod, a contemporary of Homer, who lived in the eighth century B.C. It is still a matter of dispute whether Homer or Hesiod was the earlier poet, and sometimes whether they were one and the same person! ...

The Works and Days

The first crusade of 1096 unleashed a wave of impassioned, personally felt, deeply pious Christian fury that was expressed in a mass movement centered in France and spreading to other European kingdoms, including Flanders, German speaking principalit...

Iron Men and Saints

There have been few masters of the short story as popular as W. S. Maugham. His dry wit, worldweary loftiness, pungent cynicism, and penetrating powers of observation have contributed to the creation of some of the greatest short stories ever written...

The Complete Short Stories, Volume One

The spirit of Christmas has never been captured better than by Charles Dickens' masterpiece about Scrooge, Tiny Tim, Bob Cratchit, and all those wonderful spirits, especially the ghost of Jacob Marley. It can be fairly stated that Dickens was so succ...

A Christmas Carol [Audio Connoisseur Version]

As the 18th century approached its midpoint, commercial and military competition between the European states became fierce. And whoever obtained accurate information about distant lands would hold an advantage. Were there continental landmasses in th...

The Great Age of Discovery, Volume 2

Unquestionably, Herodotus has left mankind one of the world's greatest works of literature. But what, precisely, is it? The Persian Wars is part history, part geography, part anthropology...and completely entertaining. It possesses a charm that is le...

The Persian Wars, Volume 1

The Sermon on the Mount represents the essence of both Christ's teachings and the teachings of Vedanta, an ancient Indian philosophy that teaches the oneness of life. God lies within us and at the same time is everything we see.  This realization is ...

The Sermon on the Mount According to Vedanta

Audie Award Nominee, Classics; Best Male Narrator  Widely considered the greatest of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, The Hound of the Baskervilles was originally serialized in The Strand Magazine from August 1901 to April 1902. It is the third...

The Hound of the Baskervilles

After 18 years of desperate struggle, Rome has gradually turned the tide against Hannibal, and now the Carthaginian finds himself bottled up in the toe of Italy while Scipio ruthlessly tightens the noose around Carthage on the African mainland. Knowi...

Rome and the Mediterranean Vol. 2

William Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965), novelist, playwright, short-story writer, and the highest paid author in the world in the 1930's, nevertheless failed to gain the critical acclaim he so desperately wanted during his lifetime. "I have never pre...

Short Stories of William Somerset Maugham, Volume 2

Between 1796 and 1815, the continent of Europe was held in thrall by one of the most remarkable personalities of modern times, a man whose name was on the lips of every man, woman, and child: Napoleon Bonaparte. Certainly, one would have to go back t...

Napoleon

A History of Greece continues with the bitter struggle between Sparta and Athens for mastery of the Hellenic world. Though Sparta finally emerges victorious, her victory soon turns to ashes with the ascendancy of Thebes and the still greater power of...

A History of Greece, Volume 2

William Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965) took his reading material quite seriously. He said, "When I read a book, I seem to read it with my eyes only. But now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it b...

Short Stories of William Somerset Maugham, Volume 3

A bloody revolt by a North African prince and a plot to seize control of Rome are the subjects of two short masterpieces of ancient history by the illustrious Roman chronicler, Sallust. The Jugurthine War tells the story of the crafty Numidian, Jugur...

The Jugurthine War & The Conspiracy of Cataline

At the beginning of the 16th century, a religious revolution shattered the outward appearance of conformity among Europe's Roman Catholics...a conformity that had been the basis of Western European unity for over a thousand years. Why did it happen? ...

The Reformation

In June 1917, W. S. Maugham was asked by the British Secret Intelligence Service, to undertake a special mission in Russia to support Kerensky's government. The mission failed, and two and a half months later, the Bolsheviks took control. Maugham sub...

Complete Short Stories, Volume Two

Europe underwent profound upheavals in the decades immediately following the downfall of Napoleon, and that tumult was the result of a series of economic, political and social changes whose origins reached back into the eighteenth century.  Starting ...

Europe Since 1815, Volume 1

Herodotus was a Greek historian born in Halicarnassus, subject at the time of the great Persian Empire. He lived in the fifth century BC (c. 484 - c. 425 BC), a contemporary of Socrates. He is often referred to as "The Father of History", a title ori...

The Histories

Trying to squeeze an entire history of Chinese civilization into a brief, one volume account is a formidable task, but one that has succeeded brilliantly here. Hilda Hookham has provided us with a concise story that, while not getting too entangled w...

A History of China

Considered his masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter is Hawthorne's story of Hester Prynne and her daughter, Pearl, conceived through an adulterous affair with a Puritan pastor in 17th century Boston. From start to finish, the book explores the themes of l...

The Scarlet Letter

When the Muslims swept out of the Arabian peninsula in the eighth century, one of the first areas to fall under their power was the Holy Land; it was an event that would have long term consequences for three distinct civilizations.  The conflict betw...

The Crusades

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, (1860-1904), was born in Russia at Taganrog on the Sea of Azov. His name has become synonymous with a certain literary style much admired and widely copied since his death. Typically, a Chekhov story is a "mood", a state of m...

The Short Stories of Anton Chekhov, Volume 1

Tom Jones is a splendid Hogarthian panorama of 18th century English life and morals, encompassing both city and country, and comprising some of the greatest comic characters in British literature. First published in 1749, it was an instant success and has gone on to become a classic of its genre. Quite simply, there has never been anything like it.

Tom Jones

In the last half of the fourth century, the Roman Empire began to feel the stress of renewed pressure on its borders as Germanic and Asian tribes moved westward. As these tribes settled, they began to form alliances and to convert to Christianity. Bu...

The Invasion of Europe by the Barbarians

Starting with Book Five, Volume 2 of The Persian Wars enters directly into the intrigues between the Greeks and Persians. Darius, infuriated with Athens because of her support for the liberation of the Ionian Greeks, initiates the first invasion of G...

The Persian Wars, Volume 2

Unquestionably, Herodotus has left mankind one of the world's greatest works of literature. The Persian Wars is part history, part geography, part anthropology...and completely entertaining. It possesses a charm that is legendary. But, over and above...

The Persian Wars

The Goths are the most enigmatic of all the ancient German tribes. Their name today is still widely in use for a variety of cultural and artistic movements. But unlike other famous German tribes whose names are still descriptive of nations they found...

The Story of the Goths

In 1938 Maugham wrote, "Fact and fiction are so intermingled in my work that now, looking back on it, I can hardly distinguish one from the other." Maugham also wrote that most of his short stories were inspired by accounts he heard firsthand during ...

Complete Short Stories, Volume 3

The bitter conflict between England and France we call The Hundred Years War, and lasting 116 years between 1337 and 1453, was fought over claims by the English kings to the French throne. By the end of this titanic struggle, it can fairly be said th...

The Hundred Years War, Volume 1

China has been a wellspring of storytelling for over 2,000 years. Sadly, this fantastic literature is little known in the west outside the halls of academia, though a handful of recent 20th century authors have attained a respectable following. The s...

Classic Chinese Short Stories, Volume 1

Livy continues his magnificent epic, with Rome in complete ruin after the Gallic invasion and sack of the city in 310 B.C. Led by Camillus, one of Rome's great heroic patricians, the city regains her self-confidence and once more becomes the leader o...

The History of Rome, Volume 2: Books 6 - 10

Mention the name of Friedrich Nietzsche almost anywhere and you are apt to receive a strong emotional response, either negatively or positively. Few persons will say they have no opinion. And for good reason. Employing some of the most withering atta...

The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche

By the middle of the second century B.C., the Roman Republic has been changed completely from the sober and virtuous character of the previous generations of self-sacrificing soldier-farmers. Rome has become a wealthy, diverse metropolis of many conf...

A History of the Roman Republic, Volume 2

The Annals, Part 2 picks up in the year A.D. 32 with the increasingly menacing and tyrannical behavior of Tiberius. With hundreds murdered or driven to suicide and many more in exile, Tiberius descends steadily into growing lust and debauchery on his...

The Complete Works of Tacitus: Volume 2: The Annals, Part 2

William Somerset Maugham (1874�1965) was born at the height of British imperial power. When he died, the British Empire was all but a memory. In Maugham's lifetime, as his civilization slowly disappeared, people from all walks of life, the proud, the...

The Summing Up

Author Margaret Coit's Pulitzer Prize winning biography of John C. Calhoun is a towering accomplishment in the writing of American history, powerful in the fullest sense of the word. This is no bland recital of dates and events. It is a searing, blin...

John C. Calhoun: American Portrait

19th century Europe produced some of the greatest soldiers, statesmen, scientists, artists, and thinkers of any period in recorded history. And by the middle of that century nationalism had emerged triumphant from Ireland to Greece, and many new nati...

Europe Since 1815, Volume 2

Filial Sentiments of a Parricide by Marcel Proust  In this extraordinarily sensitive and penetrating psychological story, a series of letters from a family friend reveals far more than expected in hindsight.   An Incident in the Reign of Terror by Ho...

Classic French Short Stories, Volume 1

Beginning with the reign of Diocletian in A.D. 284 and ending at the death of Justinian in 565, the Roman Empire completes a transition from paganism to Christianity which is one of the most remarkable events in history. How was it possible to alter ...

The Late Roman Empire

Volume 1: Introduction and Books 1-6Tom Jones is a splendid Hogarthian panorama of 18th-century English life and morals, encompassing both city and country, and comprising some of the greatest comic characters in British literature. First published i...

Tom Jones, Volume 1

Since their first publication in 1812, Grimm's Fairy Tales have proven to be an enduring feature of Western literature. The stories have been translated into over 100 languages worldwide, and their influence has cast its spell on many film makers, as...

Grimm's Fairy Tales

 R. E. Lee by Douglas Southall Freeman was the recipient of the 1935 Pulitzer Prize for Literature. It was a richly deserved honor, for Freeman's biography of the distinguished Virginian went on to become one of the most celebrated of all American bi...

R. E. Lee: Volume One

In all of Roman history there was never a more turbulent year than A.D. 69, the ill-omened "Year of the Three Emperors". By some miracle, the greatest historian of the age, Tacitus, was able to chronicle those momentous events in a work he called The...

The Complete Works of Tacitus: Volume 3: The History

The Gospel of John is the fourth of the four gospels in the New Testament which describe the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. It begins with the witness and affirmation by John the Baptist and concludes with the death, burial, Resurrection, an...

The Gospel of John

The incredible saga of Hannibal and his invasion of Italy in 218 B.C. is the subject of this third volume of Livy's magnificent history. As only Livy can describe it, we are swept into the era of the Second Punic War and given a ringside view of the ...

The History of Rome, Volume 3: Books 21-25

To listen to The Satires by Juvenal is to come face to face with the corruption, the debauchery, the waste, the sloth, and the mean-spirited greed of ancient Rome...or is it more like modern times?  Indeed, these masterpieces of biting social comment...

The Satires

The story of French post-impressionist painter Paul Gauguin is one of the most remarkable tales of an artist that one can contemplate. It fired the imagination of W.S. Maugham to the extent that he wrote this fictionalized account of Gauguin's bizarr...

The Moon and Sixpence

After a long period of uneventful sieges and skirmishing, lasting from the death of Edward III in 1377 until the accession of Henry V in 1413, The Hundred Years War is suddenly and dramatically fanned into full fledged war in a third and final phase....

The Hundred Years War, Volume 2

In all of human history there has never been an era as richly endowed with human creativity as the Italian Renaissance. When the economic boom of the Late Middle Ages had allowed a flourishing and wealthy merchant class to emerge, a plethora of artis...

The Italian Renaissance

The exemplary life of a noble soldier/statesman, a description of ancient Germany, and a discussion of oratory are the subjects of three short masterpieces by the brilliant Roman historian, Tacitus.  The Life of Cnaeus Julius Agricola is an almost pe...

The Complete Works of Tacitus: Volume 4

Along with Virgil, Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) was the greatest poet produced by Rome, and in many ways his work has had arguably an even greater impact. He and Virgil were both discovered and brought to the court of Augustus by that remarkable...

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