French Classics

'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times'; so the recording begins and ends with some of Dickens's best-known words, and between those lines is every Briton's view of the worst excesses of the French Revolution. Set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution, the audiobook tells the story of a French doctor who is imprisoned for 18 years in the Bastille in Paris. Upon his release, he moves to London with his daughter, Lucie, whom he had never met.

Cheveux blonds comme les blés, écharpe au vent... le petit prince est connu de tous. Les aventures de cet enfant pur et innocent tombé du ciel sont emplies d’amour, de poésie et de vérité. Voilà un message qui nous incite à poser un regard neuf sur notre humanité et notre condition humaine. C’est une invitation à revenir à l’essentiel, à célébrer la vie dans son expression la plus noble, en toute simplicité, avec les yeux du cœur.

For 15 years the weaver Silas Marner has plied his loom near the village of Raveloe, alone and unjustly in exile, cut off from faith and human love, he cares only for his hoard of golden guineas. But two events occur that will change his life forever; his gold disappears and a golden-haired baby girl appears. But where did she come from and who really stole the gold? This moving tale sees Silas eventually redeemed and restored to life by the unlikely means of his love for the orphan child Eppie.

Before marrying, Emma Bovary believed she would enter a life of luxury and passion like the sentimental stories she'd read in her novels and magazines. Now married to an ordinary country doctor her life is not the romantic ideal she imagined and seeks an escape through having extra-marital affairs. This devastating spiral into deceit and despair leads to catastrophic consequences. Emma Bovary continues to be enjoyed to this day because of its profound humanity, still as fresh today as when it was first written.

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French literature may be said to begin with the ninth century "Song of Roland," and it has since then churned out masterpiece after masterpiece in every century right up to the present. Beginning with Balzac and Dumas in the early part of the nineteenth century and proceeding to Sartre and Camus at the midpoint of the twentieth, the stories in this collection showcase the talents of some of the greatest French masters of the short story.

After fourteen years of wrongful imprisonment, merchant sailor Edmond Dantès escapes his grim island fortress. With the promises of youth erased and his betrothed now married to someone else, Dantès lives for one purpose: revenge.

This is the first part of Alexa Polidoro's famous French for Beginners course. After many years of developing and harnessing her language-teaching skills with The French Ecole and Lingomania, Alexa has now created this audio treat...

Maya is pretty, young and eager to escape her middleclass home. Ranjan is handsome, driven, well born and wealthy. Their arranged marriage seems a match made in heaven until Maya discovers that underneath her husband’s charming facade lies a cold-hearted, rigidly conservative monster...

U.G. Krishnamurti famously described enlightenment as a neurobiological state of being with no religious, psychological or mystical implications. He did not lecture, did not set up organizations, held no gatherings and professed to have no message for mankind. Known as the ‘anti-guru’, the...

Strange Obsession is the story of the gorgeous young super-model Amrita Aggarwal. Within months of her arrival in Bombay, she is the envy of its beautiful people. Then, one day, she attracts the attentions of a mysterious woman called Minx. As the months pass and the demands of her unwelcome...

A Place in My Heart is a many-splendored thing. It is a listicle. It is a celebration of the power of storytelling. It is also an account of a life lived in the Bollywood trenches. National Award-winning author, journalist and film critic Anupama Chopra writes about fifty films, artistes and...

Considered to be French novelist Victor Hugo's masterpiece, Les Miserables, which was published in 1862, is a sprawling historical and philosophical epic that covers from 1815 through the Paris Uprising in 1832. Notable for its many subplots and digressions from the main storyline, the novel's stated aim is a progress from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from falsehood to truth, which can be seen most clearly in the story of the central character Jean Valjean, an ex-convict who struggles to shake the sins of his past and become a good man.

Marseille, 1815. Edmond Dantès ramène à bon port, après la mort de son capitaine, le trois-mâts "Le pharaon". Bientôt capitaine de ce bateau et fiancé à la belle Mercédès, il voit ses espérances comblées. Jamais le bonheur n'a été aussi proche. Mais soudain, le soir du repas de fiançailles le rêve se brise. Une dénonciation anonyme, une machination diabolique le sépare de son amour, l'enterre vivant dans un cachot, séparé à jamais du monde des vivants. Edmond Dantès se retrouve prisonnier au château d'If. Qui veut lui nuire ? Pourquoi ?

Dans l’Italie bouleversée par l’épopée napoléonienne et ses lendemains, un jeune noble se lance à la poursuite de la gloire et de l’amour, partagé entre l’ardeur de la jeunesse et les ruses du pouvoir. Des élans romanesques aux calculs des salons et des palais, son destin vacille au rythme de l’Histoire, entre élans soudains et périls discrets.

Écrit au cœur des Rougon-Macquart, sous le Second Empire, L’Assommoir déploie, avec une rigueur implacable, la déchéance fatale d’une famille ouvrière, dans les faubourgs empestés. Au bout de l’ivrognerie et de la fainéantise, Zola montre les liens qui se relâchent, la promiscuité qui salit, une misère qui ronge.

Au cœur des passions et des périls, un nom attire tous les regards: le comte de Moret. Amours contrariées, honneur blessé, ambitions rivales et intrigues tapies dans l’ombre composent ce grand roman d’Alexandre Dumas, où le destin se joue autant au salon qu’au bout de l’épée. Entre serments chuchotés, défis au petit matin et volte-face du pouvoir, chaque chapitre précipite ses héros vers l’inconnu. Portée par le souffle du feuilleton, cette aventure de cape et d’épée mêle panache, émotion et suspense—un voyage sonore au tempo vif, vibrant de duels, de secrets et d’espoirs tenaces.

Dans le fracas d’un coup de vent d’équinoxe, un ballon emporté au-dessus du Pacifique descend, lest jeté par-dessus bord, jusqu’à frôler les vagues. Naufragés de l’air, ses passagers—dont un certain Cyrus—sont précipités vers l’inconnu. Sur une île que nul atlas ne nomme, il faut tout réinventer. Ingéniosité, entraide et courage deviennent lois de survie, tandis que la nature, à la fois généreuse et menaçante, impose ses règles. Et bientôt, au cœur de ce monde neuf, les questions se multiplient: que cache cette terre, jusqu’où mèneront leurs explorations?

From the Collins Crime Club archive, the first Inspector French novel by Freeman Wills Crofts, once dubbed ‘The King of Detective Story Writers’. THE FIRST INSPECTOR FRENCH MYSTERY At the offices of the Hatton Garden diamond merchant Duke and Peabody, the body of old Mr Gething is discovered...

Dans ces pages, un moraliste scrute les mœurs et les travers de son siècle, compose une galerie de caractères où l’ambition, la vanité et l’illusion se révèlent avec une lucidité implacable. À travers des aperçus vifs, une langue ciselée et une ironie qui n’exclut pas la pitié, l’auteur peint la comédie humaine et tend à chacun un miroir. Cette lecture audio restitue l’éclat d’un classique dont la finesse, l’esprit et la justesse parlent encore aujourd’hui: un voyage au cœur de nos contradictions, à savourer par touches, entre sourire et clairvoyance.