Travel Fiction Classics

Sir Richard Francis Burton and Algernon Charles Swinburne are sucked into the perilous depths of a moral and ethical vacuum when Lord Palmerston commissions Burton to investigate assaults on young women committed by a weird apparition known as Spring Heeled Jack - and to find out why werewolves are terrorizing London's East End.

More than 20 years ago, Frances Mayes - widely published poet, gourmet cook, and travel writer - introduced readers to a wondrous new world when she bought and restored an abandoned Tuscan villa called Bramasole. Under the Tuscan Sun inspired generations to embark on their own journeys.

A scientist and gentleman inventor in industrialized Victorian England claims to have irrefutable proof that time is not simply a concept - it's a whole other dimension. When he reveals the prototype of a time-traveling machine to his peers, he's met with skepticism at first...until he returns one week later, disheveled, bloody, and with a fantastic story to tell.

Goethe was probably the greatest universal genius who ever lived. Although known primarily as a poet, playright, and novelist, he was also known for his work in anatomy, botany, color, art criticism, and jurisprudence. Many people are deterred from attempting to read anything by Goethe because of his extremely penetrating intelligence and dense prose. But his travel diary, Italian Journey, is by far easier to digest than anything else by him.

Created as an experiment by the time-traveling goddess Pallas Athene, the Just City is a planned community populated by over 10,000 children and a few hundred adult teachers from all eras of history, along with some handy robots from the far human future - all set down together on a Mediterranean island in the distant past.

"In mid-July of 1879, John Muir sailed for the first time through the sheer-walled fjords of Alaska's Inside Passage. 'Never before this,' he wrote, 'had I been embosomed in scenery so hopelessly beyond description.' During the previous 15 years, Muir had vanished into the north woods of Canada, walked a thousand miles from Kentucky to the Gulf of Mexico, and nested himself in the granite heart of California's Sierra Nevada mountains. Wild nature burned with volcanic intensity in the core of John Muir's soul."

A savage and hilarious satire, Gulliver's Travels sees Lemuel Gulliver shipwrecked and adrift, subject to bizarre and unnerving encounters with - among others - quarrelling Lilliputians, philosophising horses, and the brutish Yahoo tribe that change his view of humanity - and himself - forever. Swift's classic of 1726 portrays mankind in a distorted hall of mirrors as a diminished, magnified, and finally, bestial species, presenting us with a comical yet uncompromising reflection of ourselves.

Ostensibly written by an English knight, The Book of Marvels and Travels claim to recount his experiences in Egypt, the Levant, India, and China. It describes a journey from Europe to Jerusalem and further into Asia, and the many weird and wonderful peoples and practices of the East. The author claims to have traveled in land populated by Amazons, dog-headed people, cannibals, one-footed tribes, and Pygmies.

The attempted suicide of a countess and the death of a billionaire in the same luxury Paris hotel send Maigret to the Riviera and then to Switzerland, as he searches for the truth amid the glittering world of the super rich. Eyes half closed, head tilted against the back of his seat, he seemed not to be thinking, as the plane flew over a thick carpet of bright clouds. In reality, he was making an effort to bring names and shadowy figures to life, names and figures that even this morning had been as unknown to him as the inhabitants of another planet.

The Irish Classics Collection is a wide-ranging collection of 9 classic works of fiction and poetry by Irish authors, read by an award-winning cast of narrators. Included here are stories by some of the greatest writers of all time, including James Joyce; Bram Stoker; Oscar Wilde; W.B. Yeats; Elizabeth Bowen; and more.

The hunt for his killer leads a dead professor of supernatural phenomena into the perilous intrigues of aliens, fairy folk, and time travelers in this classic of science fiction. Until the day he was murdered, Professor Peter Maxwell was a respected faculty member of the College of Supernatural Phenomena. Imagine his chagrin when he turns up at a Wisconsin matter transmission station several weeks later and discovers he's not only dead but unemployed.

A mysterious woven metal artifact is found at a paleontological dig in Africa. Mystified experts, confounded by the impossible timeline they get from traditional dating methods, call upon a stubborn young man with a unique talent. Matthew Turner's gift is also his curse: When he touches any object, his awareness is flooded with the thoughts and feelings of those who touched it before him. It is a talent that many covet, some fear, and almost no one understands.

Published just months before his death in 1768, A Sentimental Journey is Sterne's lightly fictionalised account of his own European travels; and being Sterne, it is more about digressions, misunderstandings and risqué jokes than the places he visits. Narrated by the (apparently) innocent Parson Yorick, who appeared in Sterne's other masterpiece, Tristram Shandy, it is full of anecdote and incident, and is far more about the people than the landscapes on the road from Calais.

The stories you’ve dreamed of; the people you crave to meet; or would love to be. The aliens who’d make you shiver, or laugh. The huge risks of guiding your spacecraft here, or there. The adventures you’d have if only you had the nerve… Or the utter romance of doing that… The humour of orbital disasters and alien conflicts; the perils of ill-advised time-interference; the sheer romance of null-gravity love; the terrors of a leaky hull; the fear of a bullying boss when you’re a thousand light years beyond.; the choices you face in the big, black Vac. Mostly a laugh or a satisfied...

Following a conversation with a talking slot machine, Professor Edward Lansing finds himself mysteriously transported to a tavern on a long and empty road. It is immediately obvious to the educator that he is no longer on campus - or even Earth - and that he is not alone. Lansing's new companions - a female engineer, a military officer, a humorless priest, a poetess, and a robot named Jurgens - all hail from separate alternate realities and share Lansing's confusion.

The stories you’ve dreamed of; the people you crave to meet; or would love to be. The aliens who’d make you shiver, or laugh. The huge risks of guiding your spacecraft here, or there. The adventures you’d have if only you had the nerve… Or the utter romance of doing that… The humour of orbital disasters and alien conflicts; the perils of ill-advised time-interference; the sheer romance of null-gravity love; the terrors of a leaky hull; the fear of a bullying boss when you’re a thousand light years beyond.; the choices you face in the big, black Vac. Mostly a laugh or a satisfied...

After disappearing amidst a spray of bullets, antiques dealer Sarah Lester leaves behind no body, only questions. Sarah’s friends are left dealing with the aftermath of her disappearance, including an investigation into the provenance of her antiques, which threatens to crush The Old Curiosity Shop. As Sarah struggles to reunite with her father, she continues the search for her mother, unaware the violent colonial past has followed her home, putting herself, and those she loves in danger.

In honor of Madeleine L'Engle's 100th Birthday, fans are invited to enjoy this archival audiobook, originally recorded in 1996 and newly restored! Listen to the voice of the author as Madeleine L'Engle reads A Swiftly Tilting Planet.

In honor of Madeleine L'Engle's 100th Birthday, fans are invited to enjoy this archival audiobook, originally recorded in 1994 and newly restored! Listen to the voice of the author, as Madeleine L'Engle reads A Wind in the Door.

Gulliver's Travels is an adventure story (in reality, a misadventure story) involving several voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon, who, because of a series of mishaps en route to recognized ports, ends up, instead, on several unknown islands living with people and animals of unusual sizes, behaviors, and philosophies, but who, after each adventure, is somehow able to return to his home in England where he recovers from these unusual experiences and then sets out again on a new voyage.