Showing results by publisher "Spoken Realms" in Literary Fiction

It is the dawn of the French Revolution when masses of hungry peasants burn the chateaux of aristocrats throughout France. After the death of his estranged family, an 18-year-old nobleman, the Marquis Marcel de la Croix, is forced to raise the royalist banner. The wreck of his family fortress becomes a bastion for newly disenfranchised aristocrats, and Marcel and his fiery associate, Pierre Lafont, lead a rebel group called the League of the Star. After a bitter falling out with Lafont, Marcel escapes to England incognito, hoping to put the past behind him.

Northanger Abbey is one of Jane Austen’s first novels, though it was not published until after her death, and contains some of her most biting satire. Catherine Morland, the novel’s naive and provincial heroine, has formed her idea of the world from Gothic novels, full of gloomy Italian castles, long-kept secrets, and dastardly villains. However, when she travels to the city of Bath and encounters a wider society, she will discover that all her reading has ill-prepared her for the real world.

Siddhartha, written by Hermann Hesse in 1920 deals with a man's lifelong search for self discovery during the time of Buddha. He grows up the son of a Brahman, and his quest for self discovery takes him through living as an asthetic until he actually meets the Buddha, but decides not to follow him, but rather discover the joys of sex and a wealth through a beautiful courtesan. He lives the life of the Playboy until one day he renounces it all to seek a more spiritual being. In the end Siddhartha does find enlightenment.

A Tale of Two Cities is one of Charles Dickens’ later novels, published and serialized in 1859. It is a compelling tale of love, sacrifice, and redemption set against the backdrop of the violence and horror of the French Revolution.

This is the classic tale of a knight from King Arthur's Round Table who makes a dangerous deal with a mysterious visitor. The production is based on Jessie L. Weston's 1900 prose edition of a 14th-century poem.

Franz Kafka's haunting short story about a man both on display and marginalized by a fickle society.

One of the early 20th century’s mystery writing masters, G.K. Chesterton, spins a tale set on the wild shores of Cornwall, England. Here the locals fear a grove of trees, the “peacock trees,” believed to spread disease and eat people. Squire Vane dismisses such talk as mere superstition. When three guests arrive, the discussion about the trees enrages the Squire who vows to show them how foolish this myth is by spending a night in the grove. The next day, he’s nowhere to be found. And then begins the effort to solve this latest mystery, made more difficult by the characters’ pride.

Siddhartha, the respected son of a Brahmin, is expected, by all who know him, to follow in the footsteps of his father. No matter what rituals and meditations Siddhartha undergoes, he is totally unsatisfied with self, rituals, and learning. Sidhhartha leaves his father's house and together with his close friend Govinda, he starts his journey to enlightenment. He starts his journey with the ascetics, and moves on to learn what Gotama can teach, finally discovering his path for himself.

What would you do with a talisman that could grant you three wishes? Any three wishes you could imagine? In the classic horror short story, The Monkey's Paw, by W.W. Jacobs, the White family discovers that sometimes, wishes are too good to be true. When Sergeant Major Morris, an old friend who served in the military and has traveled to far off lands, introduces the Whites to a mummified monkey's paw that he claims can grant the owner three wishes. He leaves them with a warning: IF you use the monkey's paw, be careful what you wish for!

Lucy Honeychurch is a young English girl abroad in Italy for the first time and is ready to experience all the beauty, art, and romance it has to offer. She is hampered by the oppressive attentions of her chaperone, her prim cousin Charlotte, as well as the presence of a substantial British expatriate and tourist community in Florence.

Tales of the Jazz Age is a delightful, sobering, thought-provoking, and downright curious collection of 11 of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short stories, published after his first two novels - This Side of Paradise (1920) and The Beautiful and Damned (1922) - but before The Great Gatsby (1925).

Bret Harte paints a timeless portrait of undesirables who are forced to leave a self-righteous town, and who, in the face of oncoming winter and in the company of a pair of innocents, learn to become bigger than themselves.

Lost love and a midnight visit from a raven bring one man to the brink of insanity. A classic poem by a master wordsmith. Narrated by Glenn Hascall.

Lydia Dawson is living on the Illinois frontier when she hears an unusual doctrine preached by a traveling minister from Ohio. Lydia’s heart is stirred, but she is forbidden by her family to have anything to do with this new-found religion called Mormonism. In Independence, Missouri, Christian Kade is facing mounting persecution because of his membership in the Church of Jesus Christ. How these two courageous people surmount their trials and come to share a triumphant love is the compelling story of riveting series of historical novels, The Kade Family Saga.

In This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald gives us Amory Blaine, who, from boyhood through his early 20s, is on a quest for his identity, his philosophy, and his sense of place in a world never quite his own, a world in which he moves with barely concealed ego-fueled disgust and contempt. Fitzgerald's breakthrough novel, written in 1920 when the author was 23, manages to be both a thinly veiled autobiography and a sincere attempt by Fitzgerald to get into the head of the young, privileged personages of his time.

Country girl Denise Baudu arrives in Paris hoping for a position in her uncle's clothing shop. However, her uncle's shop, along with other small shops in the area, is doing poorly. This is due to the large store across the street - The Ladies' Paradise - which is swallowing up the small specialty stores by offering 'one-stop shopping' at discounted prices. 19th Century Paris is experiencing the dawn of the department store. Despite her loyalty to her uncle, Denise is drawn to the progressive Ladies' Paradise and it's owner, the driven but charismatic Monsieur Mouret.

A moral fable on true and fake friendship. Hugh the Miller is little Hans's best friend...or is he? First published in 1888 in The Happy Prince and Other Tales.

The story opens on the first sledding day of the season, and all of the children in town are out in force. Our hero and heroine, 13-year-olds Jack Minot and Janey Pecq, go down a particularly treacherous run and are both seriously injured. Over the next year, Jack and Jill (as she is called) are nurtured back to health by their widowed mothers. As the seasons pass, we become intimately acquainted with not only Jack and Jill, but their group of friends.

Everything in the world revolves around just him. Or does it? A moral fable on delusions of self-importance. First published 1888 in The Happy Prince and Other Tales.

The little Swallow befriends the Happy Prince's statue and learns what love is. One of Wilde's magical morality tales.