European Fiction

Charles Strickland, a conventional stockbroker, abandons his wife and children for Paris and Tahiti, to live his life as a painter. While his betrayal of family, duty and honour gives him the freedom to achieve greatness, his decision leads to an obsession which carries severe implications.

The Count of Monte Cristo (French: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo) is an adventure novel written by French author Alexandre Dumas (père) completed in 1844. It is one of the author's most popular works, along with The Three Musketeers. Like many of his novels, it was expanded from plot outlines suggested by his collaborating ghostwriter Auguste Maquet. The story takes place in France, Italy, and islands in the Mediterranean during the historical events of 1815–1839: the era of the Bourbon Restoration through the reign of Louis-Philippe of France.

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 ?

At the height of World War II, the British Air Transport Auxiliary need help. A group of young women volunteer for action, but the perils of their new job don’t end on the tarmac. Things are tough in the air, but on the ground their abilities as pilots are constantly questioned. There is friction from the start between the new recruits. Spirited American Lizzie turns heads with her audacity, but few can deny her flying skills. She couldn’t be more different from shy, petite Ruby, who is far from diminutive in the sky. It falls to pragmatic pilot May to bring the women together.

Young, impressionable Aubrey is fascinated by the enigmatic Lord Ruthven, and accompanies him on a tour to Europe. But Aubrey develops a growing distaste for Lord Ruthven’s sinister and grotesque conduct - especially as it concerns human blood. This novella, penned during that tempestuous night in Switzerland amongst such notables as Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and Mary Shelley, served as the great inspiration for Bram Stoker to create Dracula.

A gripping and moving story of loss and love, of hatred and passion, and of horror and hope, set in Spain’s most evocative city during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s and the following decades. Ramon flees rural Andalucia for the apparent safety of Seville. In the city’s Triana district a flamenco dancer, Beatriz, faces a heart rending choice. And in northern Morocco, Izil reluctantly joins Franco’s invasion army to save his family from hunger. When a wealthy landowner becomes a key figure in Seville's oppressive government he seeks revenge, bringing despair. It seems all hope is ...

At the opening of The Claverings (1866) the beautiful Julia Brabazon jilts her lover Harry Clavering in order to make a marriage of convenience with a wealthy but dissolute earl. Harry licks his wounds, leaves London to train as a civil engineer, and falls in love with his employer's daughter, to whom he soon becomes engaged. But when Julia returns unexpectedly as a wealthy widow, the flame of Harry's old love is rekindled.

Real French people don’t speak like your textbook…so it’s no wonder you feel unprepared when it’s your turn to speak! Try the StoryLearning Method, and dive into a real-world, gripping drama between six characters that helps you learn authentic spoken French in the process.

Ashley Dunne is a bad boy, a notorious member of Dublin’s most ruthless gang. But when privileged daddy’s girl Ryan Mahony finds herself living on an urban estate they control, she can’t help feeling he’s not that bad at all. Ryan and Ash were never meant to cross paths: she’s always been sheltered by her successful barrister father. But when he’s unexpectedly sent to prison, she’s forced to move in with estranged relatives in the city, where a chance encounter with Ash sends sparks flying.

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.

One of the best-known collections of W. B. Yeats' prose, The Celtic Twilight explores the old connection between the Irish people and the magical world of fairies. Yeats, by traveling the land in the early 20th century and talking to the common people about their experiences with the creatures, yielded a colorful overview of Celtic fairy folklore.

It’s 1942. German Nazis occupy much of France. And twelve-year-old Miriam, who is Jewish, is not safe. With help and quick thinking, Miri is saved from the roundup that takes her entire Jewish neighborhood. She escapes Paris, landing in a small French village, where the spires of the famous Chateau de Chenonceau rise high into the sky, its bridge across the River Cher like a promise, a fairy tale.

This varied, well-chosen selection brings onto one audiobook the best of Dylan Thomas. Here is the legendary recording of "Under Milk Wood", with Richard Burton and Richard Bebb as narrators; but here also are two radio productions he wrote before that great classic, and though interesting in their own right, they show how "Under Milk Wood" grew gradually in his imagination.

The Riviera means indulgence - if you’ve got money. For Sadie Reynolds, a down-on-her-luck student, the Riviera means dingy hostels and back streets. When a wrong turn puts her in jeopardy, the last thing she expects is to be saved by the most handsome stranger she’s ever locked eyes with. When she later wakes up in a luxury suite with a Mediterranean view, she’s in the tender care of her rescuer: Olivier Dumont, France’s most eligible bachelor, billionaire hotelier, and heir to the Dumont fashion fortune.

On the Social Contract's appeal and influence has been wide-ranging and continuous. It has been called an encomium to democracy and, at the same time, a blueprint for totalitarianism. Individualists, collectivists, anarchists, and socialists have all taken courage from Rousseau's controversial masterpiece.

A pact is sealed in secret behind the foreboding walls of Newgate Prison. In return for one night of unparalleled pleasure, a dashing condemned criminal consents to wed a beautiful heiress, thereby rescuing her from an impending and abhorred arranged union. But in the fading echoes of hollow wedding vows, a solemn promise is broken, as a sensuous free spirit takes flight to a lush Caribbean paradise, abandoning the stranger she married to face the gallows unfulfilled.

RATCATCHER Book One of the acclaimed John Purkiss Spy Action Thriller series. When spies go rogue, they need to be stopped. That's where John Purkiss - the Ratcatcher - comes in. Purkiss's job is straightforward. Track down members of the intelligence services who are taking kickbacks, engaging in criminal activity, or otherwise abusing their positions, and bring them to justice. Straightforward doesn't mean easy... After a renegade British former intelligence agent, Fallon, is sighted in the Baltic city of Tallinn on the eve of a historic summit meeting between the Russian and Estonian ...

The Man of Property, the first novel in Galsworthy's epic social satire The Forsyte Saga, introduces us to Soames Forsyte, a solicitor and prominent man of his important family. Accustomed to getting whatever he wants, he sets his sights with absolute determination on the beautiful Irene in spite of her pennilessness and her indifference to him.

First published in 1925, The Painted Veil is an affirmation of the human capacity to grow, change, and forgive. Set in England and Hong Kong in the 1920s, it is the story of the beautiful but shallow young Kitty Fane. When her husband discovers her adulterous affair, he forces her to accompany him to a remote region of China ravaged by a cholera epidemic.

C. S. Lewis wrote of George MacDonald: "I know hardly any other writer who seems to be closer, or more continually close, to the Spirit of Christ Himself." Lewis also claimed that everything he wrote was influenced by this Scottish pastor and novelist who lived a century before Lewis. George MacDonald serves as an act of appreciation, with Lewis gathering 365 of the best and most profound lines from his mentor as well as providing a preface detailing the impact MacDonald had on Lewis' own literary and spiritual career.