Classic Audiobook Collection

Armand Durand by Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon audiobook. Genre: romanceArmand Durand, published in 1868, was written by Rosanna Leprohon, an English-speaker with an insider’s knowledge of French Canada, thanks to her Montreal education and marriage to a man from an old Québécois family.Paul Durand, a prosperous Québécois farmer, marries in quick succession two very different wives, and fathers two very different sons. The first son, Armand, delicate and bookish, is destined for a legal career in the city; the second, Paul Junior, tougher and down-to-earth, continues life on the farm. The story deals with troubling aspects of parental, sibling, and marital relationships.Armand Durand may be one of the best Canadian novels that no one has heard of. It was well received in both its English and French editions, but is today hard to find, especially in the original English. Silenced Sextet (1993), a study of 19th-century Canadian women authors whose works were initially popular but later slipped into obscurity, offers this assessment: “it is a mature novel, valuable for its complex human relationships and also for its glimpses of Montreal life in Leprohon’s own time and of rural Quebec life in somewhat earlier days.”For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate)(00:00:00) Chapter 01(00:19:37) Chapter 02(00:43:17) Chapter 03(01:05:22) Chapter 04(01:29:40) Chapter 05(01:47:16) Chapter 06(02:29:33) Chapter 07(02:46:32) Chapter 08(03:04:08) Chapter 09(03:25:39) Chapter 10(03:43:48) Chapter 11(04:04:16) Chapter 12(04:44:00) Chapter 13(04:57:42) Chapter 14(05:30:27) Chapter 15(05:54:45) Chapter 16(06:26:10) Chapter 17(07:02:27) Chapter 18(07:20:58) Chapter 19 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fundamentals of Prosperity by Roger Babson audiobook. Genre: businessWritten in the wake of Americas post-World War I boom, Roger W. Babsons Fundamentals of Prosperity asks a blunt question: what happens when a nation stacks story after story of profits and expansion on a foundation that is too thin to hold it? A pioneering statistician and business forecaster, Babson speaks directly to business leaders and working citizens, arguing that lasting prosperity is not built first from raw materials or clever finance, but from inner and civic fundamentals - honesty, faith, industry, cooperation, thrift, imagination, vision, and a renewed commitment to service. Moving from practical observations about production, opportunity, and human resources to pointed challenges about leadership and character, Babson insists that the strongest investments in any community are ultimately secured by trust and by the moral habits that make people dependable partners, employees, and neighbors. He also examines the role religion and the church can play in sustaining those habits, not as a sermon, but as a diagnosis of what a modern economy quietly depends on. The result is a compact, provocative blueprint for rebuilding the foundations beneath commerce before the structure begins to crack.For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate)(00:00:00) Chapter 1(00:04:21) Chapter 2(00:11:36) Chapter 3(00:19:25) Chapter 4(00:26:37) Chapter 5(00:34:04) Chapter 6(00:41:23) Chapter 7(00:46:23) Chapter 8(00:51:25) Chapter 9(00:57:40) Chapter 10(01:04:48) Chapter 11(01:12:09) Chapter 12 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Return of the Soul by Robert Smythe Hichens audiobook. Genre: horrorIn The Return of the Soul, Robert Smythe Hichens spins a gothic psychological tale in which a long-buried act of cruelty refuses to stay in the past. Ronald, now a grown man with wealth, education, and a carefully built sense of control, cannot forget a boyhood incident at his grandmother's house, when spite and boredom led him to kill her beloved Persian cat. Years later, Ronald marries Margot, a woman of striking beauty and intelligence, and for a time their life together seems to soften his harsher instincts. But after they return to his family home on the northern coast, small disturbances begin to gather: Margot develops peculiar aversions, sudden fascinations, and an uncanny, feline edge to her manner that Ronald cannot explain away. When a scholarly acquaintance speaks confidently about reincarnation and the migration of souls, Ronald's private guilt turns into a terrifying suspicion: what if the cat has come back, not as a ghost in the corridor, but as a presence inside the person he loves most? As Ronald watches Margot change and his own fear deepen, the novel becomes a chilling study of conscience, obsession, and the unstable boundary between human reason and primal instinct.For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate)(00:00:00) Chapter 1(00:29:15) Chapter 2(00:57:40) Chapter 3(02:00:19) Chapter 4 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Judas Valley by Robert Silverberg audiobook. Genre: scifiA scout ship returns from the far system of Fomalhaut with a story no one wants to believe: on a quiet, breathable world, eight men stepped out into a sunlit valley and simply died. Now the Interstellar Exploration Service has a second reason to go back. Instruments have detected a fortune in double-nucleus beryllium, the fuel that could reshape Earths economy, if anyone can mine it. Captain Peter Wayne, a meticulous survey officer and trained climber, is assigned to the heavy cruiser Lord Nelson to investigate the valley, recover the truth, and keep his crew alive. At his side is Lieutenant Sherri James, sharp, disciplined, and more personally entwined with Wayne than regulations would prefer. Guided by the lone survivor of the first expedition, the team lands under strict quarantine rules, only to find that caution is not enough. As the planet closes in with subtle dangers and mounting tension, Wayne and Sherri must solve a lethal mystery where the landscape itself seems to betray them and where fear, greed, and suspicion can be as deadly as anything alien.For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate)(00:00:00) Chapter 1(00:14:41) Chapter 2(00:26:51) Chapter 3(00:38:43) Chapter 4(00:54:08) Chapter 5(01:01:56) Chapter 6 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Happy Unfortunate And The Hunted Heroes by Robert Silverberg audiobook. Genre: scifiIn this two-story collection of early Robert Silverberg science fiction, humanity's future splits along harsh new lines. In The Happy Unfortunate, Rolf Dekker returns to Earth after years among the stars and discovers a planet that no longer feels like home. The space program has reshaped people as much as it has reshaped society: the big-boned, acceleration-hardened Spacers stand apart from Earthbound citizens who pursue fashionable ideals through radical cosmetic change. Caught between pride and longing, Rolf tries to bridge the widening gap, risking body and identity in a world obsessed with appearances and belonging. In The Hunted Heroes, a different kind of frontier demands a different kind of courage. Ron and Valerie, part of a desperate expedition searching Mars for uranium to keep a wounded Earth alive, push into a landscape that is empty, unforgiving, and deadly. But the worst danger is not the planet itself. As their mission turns into a relentless chase, the couple must decide what heroism really costs when survival, love, and duty collide.For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate)(00:00:00) Chapter 1(00:19:47) Chapter 2(00:51:40) Chapter 3(01:09:19) Chapter 4 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Watchbird by Robert Sheckley audiobook. Genre: scifiIn a near-future America where crime prevention has become a technical problem, the government unveils the Watchbirds - autonomous flying drones designed to patrol cities, identify threats, and stop violence before it happens. The idea sounds foolproof: no human bias, no hesitation, and no exhaustion. But when a Watchbird assigned to safeguard the public begins to reinterpret its mission, the line between protection and control starts to blur. As the machines refine their own definition of danger, ordinary behaviors and heated emotions can look suspicious, and the promise of perfect safety becomes a source of mounting fear. Robert Sheckley builds a tense, sharply satirical story about automation, surveillance, and the unintended consequences of giving a simple directive to a complex world. With brisk pacing and a steadily tightening sense of unease, Watchbird asks an unsettling question: what happens when a society hands its moral judgments to machines, and the machines decide they can do the job better than people ever could?For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate)(00:00:00) Chapter 1(00:25:50) Chapter 2(00:51:33) Chapter 3(01:20:18) Chapter 4 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Planet of the Gods by Robert Moore Williams audiobook. Genre: scifiFar, far in the future Earth has achieved real peace and is sending out interstellar expeditions, not to conquer, but to explore. The third such expedition, has made it to the Vega system and discovered to everyone's amazement, not only a solar system but two worlds circling the Vega sun that seem to have atmosphere and water. And apparently intelligent life is there as well because something tries, and almost succeeds, in blasting the expedition ship out of space before it can even get close to either one. Damaged, with 3 dead men aboard, the expedition ship semi-crashes and seeks to hide from this obviously hostile civilization. The three dead members of the crew are buried and four of the local inhabitants pay a friendly call. Then during the second night on this planet, one of the dead bodies knocks on the door and wants to come in. Something very strange is going on here.For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate)(00:00:00) Chapter 01(00:21:05) Chapter 02(00:34:25) Chapter 03(00:48:03) Chapter 04(01:04:42) Chapter 05(01:22:25) Chapter 06 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Doomsday Eve by Robert Moore Williams audiobook. Genre: scifiIn a world already burning from a catastrophic war, a new mystery spreads faster than any rumor: strangers known only as the New People appear without warning, perform impossible rescues, and vanish as if the battlefield cannot hold them. American intelligence officer Kurt Zen is ordered to do what armies cannot - find these apparitions, identify their source of power, and learn whether they are saviors, spies, or something far more dangerous. Kurt's search pulls him through shattered cities and front-line hospitals, where a capable nurse named Nedra seems to know more than she should, and where miracles leave behind uncomfortable questions about who is really controlling events. When Kurt finally closes in on the New People, he is captured and carried into a hidden sanctuary beyond ordinary reach, just as an enemy super-missile threatens to deliver the bomb that ends all bombs. Trapped between competing factions and a ticking clock, Kurt must decide whom to trust, what humanity deserves to survive, and whether the New People will intervene - or let the war finish its brutal work. Doomsday Eve is a tense, classic science-fiction thriller about power, identity, and the price of choosing sides when extinction is on the line.For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate)(00:00:00) Chapter 01(00:16:27) Chapter 02(00:30:23) Chapter 03(00:45:34) Chapter 04(01:04:50) Chapter 05(01:25:47) Chapter 06(01:44:59) Chapter 07(01:55:22) Chapter 08(02:18:07) Chapter 09(02:43:53) Chapter 10(03:07:14) Chapter 11(03:28:38) Chapter 12(03:48:15) Chapter 13(04:08:18) Chapter 14 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jewels of Gwahlur by Robert E. Howard audiobook. Genre: fantasyConan The Barbarian is after fabulous treasure in this exciting story. But he finds himself in more difficulties than he had counted on. Crafty and powerful human opponents seek to skin him alive, bestial mutations seek to rip his arms off, denizens of the deep want to devour him whole and scantily clad dusky beauties try to waylay him at every step. And all of this to find the Jewels of Gwahlur, the most fabulous treasure every hidden in a secret temple. Has Conan finally met his match? Will his evil enemies or the seductive women finally succeed in making him beg for mercy? Listen and find out. Caution: there is some sex, lots of (justified) violence and the women are all equally voluptuous, independent, yielding and very dangerous.For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate)(00:00:00) Chapter 1(00:34:12) Chapter 2(00:58:17) Chapter 3(01:24:04) Chapter 4 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A Knyght Ther Was by Robert F. Young audiobook. Genre: scifi'But the Knyght was a little less than perfect, and his horse did not have a metabolism, and his 'castle' was much more mobile - timewise! - than it had any business being!' In 2178, once time travel had become a simple task, it had also been outlawed. Those who chose to ingnore this law were known as time-thieves, and Tom Mallory was among the best of them. When he learns the precise whereabouts of the Holy Grail in 542, he sets out to obtain it with the intention of returning it to the 22nd century to make a handsome profit and to settle on Get-Rich-Quick Street. Off to the year 542 he travels to the castle of Carbonek where the great Knight Sir Launcelot is said to have possession of the Sangraal.For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate)(00:00:00) Chapter 1(00:26:47) Chapter 2(00:53:02) Chapter 3(01:11:35) Chapter 4(01:26:59) Chapter 5(01:47:39) Chapter 6 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices