Charles Dickens

Penguin Classics presents Hard Times, Charles Dickens's stark exposé of capitalist exploitation during the industrial revolution, now adapted for downloadable audiobook. Read by the actor Michael Pennington. Coketown is dominated by the figure of Mr Thomas Gradgrind, school headmaster and model...

Born and brought up in the appalling deprivation of the workhouse, the orphaned Oliver escapes and heads for London, only to fall into the hands of the notorious Fagin and his gang of child thieves. But Oliver is an innocent at heart, and the attempts by Fagin and the impudently witty Artful...

In the polluted and poverty-ridden Coketown, Louisa and Tom Gradgrind endure a cold and loveless childhood at the hands of their self-satisfied and unimaginative father Thomas. Starved of affection, Louisa is forced into a miserable marriage with the self-made industrialist Josiah Bounderby...

An einem kalten, verregneten Winterabend sitzt ein junger, erfolgloser Arzt in seiner Praxis, als plötzlich eine mysteriöse Frau erscheint. Was als medizinischer Notfall beginnt, entwickelt sich zu einem psychologischen Albtraum über Schuld, Wahnsinn und das unausweichliche Schicksal.

Brought to you by Penguin. After reading Christmas Carol, the notoriously reculsive Thomas Carlyle was "seized with a perfect convulsion of hospitality" and threw not one but two Christmas dinner parties. The impact of the story may not always have been so dramatic but, along with Dickens other...

Tom Baker reads Charles Dickens' timeless seasonal story. Charles Dickens' story of solitary miser Ebenezer Scrooge, who is taught the true meaning of Christmas by the three ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future, has become one of the timeless classics of English literature. First...