Great Classics

A fascinating collection of some of the great - but less well known - fairy tales of all time.

Warm and delightfully festive, this charming and long forgotten holiday classic was inspired, in part, by Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol and other celebrations of old-time Yule. Splendid suppers, rural churches, cheerful dances, and hearty spirits imbue this short novel with the magic of the season.

Published in 1915 and set in the 1890s, The Song of the Lark tells the story of Thea Kronberg, a gifted young singer who blazes her way into the world’s greatest opera houses. Thea’s arduous journey begins in Moonstone, Colorado, a burgeoning Western town, where she is one of seven children. Following an artistic awakening at an Arizona canyon, she eventually finds fame as an acclaimed opera singer, performing in Germany and at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York.

Two works by the Roman historian, Tacitus. Agricola is a portrait of Julius Agricola, a governor of Roman Britain, and the first surviving account of the geography, climate, and peoples of Britain. The German tribes of Northern Europe are discussed in Germania.

The Great Gatsby takes us to New York in the 1920s, where jazz can be heard everywhere, underground alcohol trade flourishes, and the mafia rules the city. It is a time of great crisis and equally great profits. A time when it was easiest to become somebody in a short period after previously being nobody. Such a person was Jay Gatsby, dreaming of great wealth and power. To fulfill these dreams, he gets involved in the gears of the criminal underworld and high finance.

John Clare was the forgotten Romantic poet, until the late 20th century. Known by his contemporaries as the Peasant Poet, he recorded in his poems the natural landscape of rural England before the Industrial Revolution. His poems rival Wordsworth’s for their sensitivity to nature and pantheism: ‘I feel a beautiful providence ever about me,’ Clare wrote. But his life was a long struggle against poverty and mental collapse. Some of his finest poems were written in the local asylum

"The Great Gatsby" is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and Gatsby's obsession to reunite with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan.

Unveil the secrets of the Chinese language and culture as you embark on a captivating journey with Sun Tzu's renowned masterpiece, The Art of War for Language Learners. Immerse yourself in this comprehensive audiobook, which offers a contemporary approach to learning Chinese and presents timeless wisdom from China's most celebrated classic.

Here, for the first time, we are publishing four great classics in one place—for your listening and learning pleasure. We have called this library The Ultimate Personal Power Classics Library because each of these classics features a specific aspect or piece of what comprises personal power, confidence and influence, that when these pieces are collected together, comprise the “whole picture” of an individual who is acknowledged as one of great overall power, confidence and influence.

Published when Josephine Johnson was only 24 years old, Now in November made Johnson the youngest ever winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1935. It is a beautifully told account of one farming family’s challenges to scrape by and earn a living from mortgaged land over the course of a single year, narrated by one of three sisters—the introspective and thoughtful Margaret. As the household is ravaged by Depression-era hardship and the environmental blights of the Dust Bowl, the family’s unique vulnerabilities are pushed to a breaking point.

Written in 1923 and originally published in France, The Great American Novel examines the impossibility of writing such work in America. Williams not only writes the novel with poetic satire and pathos but allows us into his writing process, as he strives to define a young America at the end of a World War and the beginning of the “Roaring ‘20s”.

A Winchester Model 1873 rifle was found leaning against a pinion tree in the high Nevada desert in 2014. It had been there, undisturbed, for over 130 years. Nobody knows who left it there. But perhaps ...there was a Shoshone boy and his father on a hunting trip, a cowboy and his partner, a classic Western story about cattle drives, bandits, and ranching in the high Nevada desert. The discovery of a cave, hot summers, cold winters - all result in a reason for the rifle being left leaning against the tree over 130 years ago. The actual Forgotten Winchester was discovered in November 2014 in ...

Underneath the steps leading down to Eric's basement is a hidden storage place. It's dusty and old, nothing special at all. But when Eric, Julie, and Neal all huddle inside the gray room together, something unbelievable happens. A glittering light and then a rainbow-colored staircase appear. As the kids take their very first step down into the mysterious land of Droon, they know that only magic and adventure await them!

Annus mirabilis is Latin for "wonderful year," "miraculous year," or "amazing year." For jazz, that year was 1959. It was a pinnacle and hinge point year where the forms and advancements of the past decade were consolidated and recapitulated, and jazz stretched out in a new direction. Vistas and possibilities opened up to be explored, explicitly considered, and developed in the next decade. It was a zenith with the Janus-like quality of looking backward and forward and created some of the most beautiful and challenging music ever recorded. Included here are the albums released in 1959 that ...

Fresh out of Glasgow Veterinary College, to the young James Herriot 1930s Yorkshire seems to offer an idyllic pocket of rural life in a rapidly changing world. But from his erratic new colleagues, brothers Siegfried and Tristan Farnon, to incomprehensible farmers, herds of semi-feral cattle, a pig called Nugent and an overweight Pekingese called Tricki Woo, James finds he is on a learning curve as steep as the hills around him. And when he meets Helen, the beautiful daughter of a local farmer, all the training and experience in the world can’t help him.

Now settled into the sleepy Yorkshire village of Darrowby, and married to Helen the farmer’s daughter, James Herriot thinks he’s finally got himself sorted. But life as a vet in the 1930s was never going to be easy. Quite aside from his unpredictable colleagues, brothers Siegfried and Tristan Farnon, he must contend with new-fangled medical techniques, delivering calves after far too much homemade wine, and a grudge-holding dog called Magnus who never forgets.

Awful, rich people - and the folks who want to be just like them. Drawing freely from the real people and actual events of its setting in 1920s Long Island (with literary license, of course), The Great Gatsby looks at the acquisition of the American Dream of wealth, power, and prestige, and what the costs are to those who realize that dream. And if that sounds a bit too highbrow for you, there are speakeasies, a broken nose, wild parties, and a bit of rough and tumble as well.

Contents: • Washington Irving: Rip Van Winkle • Edgar Allan Poe: The Murders In The Rue Morgue • Fyodor Dostoevsky: Notes From The Underground • Franz Kafka: The Metamorphosis • Charles Dickens: The Chimes • Ivan Turgenev: Mumu • Francis Scott Fitzgerald: The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button • Joseph Conrad: Heart Of Darkness • Ambrose Bierce: Chickamauga • Arthur Conan Doyle: A Study In Scarlet • H. P. Lovecraft: At the Mountains of Madness • Nathaniel Hawthorne: Roger Malvin's Burial • Guy de Maupassant: Necklace• Leo Tolstoy: God Sees The Truth, But Waits.

Considered one of the all-time great American works of fiction, Fitzgerald’s glorious yet ultimately tragic social satire on the Jazz Age encapsulates the exuberance, energy and decadence of an era. After the Great War, the mysterious Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire, pursues wealth, riches and the lady he lost to another man with stoic determination. He buys a mansion across from her house and throws lavish parties to entice her. When Gatsby finally does reunite with Daisy Buchanan, tragic events are set in motion.

This anthology of Kipling's most famous poems - including "If", "Mandalay", "Gunga Din" - is taken from Naxos AudioBooks' Great Poets series. Though sometimes still regarded as a product of the colonial era, Kipling touches a very popular nerve in Britain's literary tradition and is regarded more generously now as a master of popular verse. It is often forgotten that he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1907.