Showing results for "The Classics" in Literature & Fiction

A workhouse orphan, Oliver experiences the terror and brutality of the criminal underworld. His companions, a thief, a whore, a pickpocket, and a fence, are destined for gruesome ends, but Oliver emerges unscathed from the darkness of the underworld.

In this slyly funny and lavishly inventive novel, Nobel Prize winner V. S. Naipaul traces the unlikely career of Ganesh Ramsumair, a failed schoolteacher and impecunious village masseur who in time becomes a revered mystic, a thriving entrepreneur, and the most beloved politician in Trinidad. Witty, tender, filled with the sights, sounds, and smells of Trinidad's dusty Indian villages, The Mystic Masseur is Naipaul at his most expansive and evocative.

A Signature Performance: Four-time Emmy Award winner David Hyde Pierce delivers an air of lovable self-importance in his rendition of the classic social satire that remains as fresh today as the day it was published.

Despite the title, Dickens's portrayal of early industrial society is less relentlessly grim than that in novels by contemporaries such as Elizabeth Gaskell or Charles Kingsley. Hard Times weaves the tale of Thomas Gradgrind, a hard-headed politician who raises his children Louisa and Tom without love and to have no empathy, their lives completely devoid of beauty, culture, or imagination. Only after a series of crises does their father realise that the manner in which he raised his children has ruined their lives.

Brought to you by Penguin. A wickedly clever satire uses comic inversions to offer telling insights into the nature of man and society, the Penguin Classics edition of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels is edited with an introduction and notes by Robert Demaria, Jr. Gulliver's Travels describes...

A stunning collection of Just William stories, narrated by Martin Jarvis. These BBC radio readings of the adventures of William have come to be some of the most loved adaptations.

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Pearl Mackie, best known for her role in Dr Who. When sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at nineteen, she decides her only choice is to descend upon relatives in deepest Sussex. At the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm, she...

Raised by vampyre relatives, Jane grows to resent the lifestyle's effect on her upbringing. No sunlight, nighttime hours, and a diet of bloody red meat is no way for a mortal girl to live. Things change for Jane when the ghost of her uncle visits her, imparts her parents' slayer history, and charges her with the responsibility of striking out to find others of her kind and learn the slayer ways.

Flatland is populated by Squares, Triangles, Circles, and Lines, all of which are strictly divided by class and gender. However, our narrator, A Square, living a practical life in this two-dimensional universe, dreams of other worlds. Perhaps A Sphere, a figure from a three-dimensional realm, can help drive home the point. But, as A Square soon discovers, educating Flatland about the shapes of things to come proves to be a dangerous infraction.

From Boston's social underworld emerges Verena Tarrant, a girl with extraordinary oratorical gifts, which she deploys in tawdry meeting-houses on behalf of "the sisterhood of women". She acquires two admirers of a very different stamp: Olive Chancellor, devotee of radical causes, and marked out for tragedy; and Basil Ransom, veteran of the Civil War, with rigid views concerning society and women's place therein. Is the lovely, lighthearted Verena made for public movements or private passions?

A master of Russian realism, Anton Chekhov is renowned for his meticulously observed plays and short stories exploring the human condition, in all its joys and sorrows. Included here are six of his best-known dramas, as well as Michael Frayn's adaptation of Wild Honey, drawn from an early, untitled Chekhov play; and one documentary exploring Chekhov's life and work.

In music, counterpoint is the art of writing melodies that play in conjunction with one another, according to a strict set of rules, in order to emphasize the melody by contrast. In debate, point/counterpoint is a means of persuasion in which the speaker begins by conceding to their opponent’s argument before refuting it wholeheartedly. Aldous Huxley follows these traditions in his masterpiece Point Counter Point. The polarity between passion and reason in the intellectual life of the 1920s is demonstrated both in form and in theme in Huxley’s ambitious satire.

Join Oasis Audio for 100 radio shows from across all genres. Thrill to detective stories and mysteries, dig your spurs in for some dusty trail Western adventures, laugh until you cry with the kings and queens of radio comedy, sit on the edge of your seat for the greatest radio dramas. Be filled with nostalgia as you enjoy this unique collection of 100 of the all-time best radio shows.

Gogol's phantasmagorical tale about a man whose nose decides to abscond and begin living a life of its own is one of the earliest and most celebrated examples of absurdist literature. Apart from its recondite humor, it is remarkable for Gogol's skill in characterization and his ability to paint a picture of contemporary life in Russia in a few verbal brushstrokes.

Galapagos takes the listener back one million years to AD 1986. A simple vacation cruise suddenly becomes an evolutionary journey. Thanks to an apocalypse, a small group of survivors stranded on the Galapagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave, new, totally different human race. Kurt Vonnegut, America's master satirist, looks at our world and shows us all that is sadly, madly awry - and all that is worth saving.

An entertaining and surprising ride through an India you thought you knew...

Welcome to The Problem Club, where logic takes a holiday and wit is the law of the land. In this delightful collection of early 20th-century comic tales by Barry Pain, twelve eccentric gentlemen gather regularly in an upscale London club to tackle bizarre, imaginative challenges—each one a “problem” designed to confound, amuse, and showcase their cleverness.

The acclaimed BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Anthony Trollope's gently satirical tales of provincial life One of the most respected, successful chroniclers of nineteenth-century life, Anthony Trollope is still widely read and much-loved today. The Barchester Chronicles - witty moral comedies with...

The Golden Age of Radio featured many of the greatest comedy teams of all time, and this collection features the best of the best. This 17-episode collection features duos including Abbott and Costello, the Bickersons, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Fibber McGee and Molly, Baby Snooks and Daddy, Lum and Abner, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, and Phil Harris and Alice Faye. You’ll laugh till your sides ache at these great comedy duos!

Thirteen dramatised courtroom tales of conflicting evidence, exasperating witnesses and slippery counsel, from the writer of Brothers in Law What does it feel like to be a Judge? Listen to these self-contained dramas and you can almost feel you are looking at proceedings from the lofty position...