Classic Audiobook Collection

The Death Disk by Mark Twain audiobook. Genre: dramaMark Twain's 'Death Disk' was inspired by the historical account of the execution of Colonel John Poyer of Pembroke, Wales on April 21, 1649. A small child was given the responsibility of selecting which of three rebel leaders of a civil uprising would receive a death penalty. The unfortunate fate was given to Poyer who was shot in front of a large crowd at Covent Garden. In 1883 Twain read about the child's role in the execution in a copy of Carlyle's Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, (Wiley & Putnam, 1845, pp. 344-345). In his personal notebook, Twain's imagination led him to remark, 'By dramatic accident, it could have been his own child' (Notebook #22, reprinted in Mark Twain's Notebooks & Journals, Volume III, 1883-1891, p. 14). In December 1883, Twain wrote his friend William Dean Howells, 'Now let's write a tragedy' (Mark Twain-Howells Letters, Volume II, p. 455). In his letter to Howells, he included the manuscript of the closing scene where a young girl unknowingly gives her own father a death sentence. Twain's original version ended in the father's execution.Twain's plan to complete the tragedy went nowhere for over a decade. In December 1899 he wrote from London to Katharine Harrison that he had recently completed 'The Death Disk.' Twain had revised the story and it now included a miraculous ending well-suited for the Christmas season. It was published in the 1901 Christmas issue of Harper's Magazine. On February 8, 1902, the story was staged as a one-act play at the Children's Theatre at Carnegie Hall. According to an announcement in The New York Times, February 7, 1902, child actress Beatrice Abbey (stage name of Mrs. Ethel Foster Hollearn) would star in the lead role in the play titled 'Little Lady and Lord Cromwell.'In Twain's autobiographical dictation on August 30, 1906, he recalled the struggles he had with the story. By that time he also recalled the title incorrectly: 'In the course of twelve years, I made six attempts to tell a simple little story which I knew would tell itself in four hours if I could ever find the right starting point. I scored six failures; then one day in London I offered the text of the story to Robert McClure and proposed that he publish that text in the magazine and offer a prize to the person who should tell it best. I became greatly interested and went on talking upon the text for half an hour; then he said, 'You have told the story yourself. You have nothing to do but put it on paper just as you have told it.' I recognized that this was true. At the end of four hours, it was finished, and quite to my satisfaction. So it took twelve years and four hours to produce that little bit of a story, which I have called 'The Death Wafer'' (Mark Twain in Eruption, pp. 199-200).For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate)(00:00:00) Chapter 01(00:13:35) Chapter 02 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fennimore Cooper’s Literary Offences by Mark Twain audiobook. Genre: comedyIn Fennimore Coopers Literary Offences, Mark Twain turns his sharp wit on one of America's early bestselling novelists, James Fenimore Cooper, and invites listeners into a gleefully rigorous takedown of what Twain sees as careless storytelling. Framed as a mock-serious piece of criticism, the essay begins with Twain's bafflement at Cooper's popularity and quickly becomes a tour of the alleged sins of romantic adventure fiction: improbable action, muddled geography, convenient coincidences, and prose that stumbles over clarity and common sense. Along the way, Twain lays out his famous set of rules for writing fiction and then, point by point, argues that Cooper violates nearly all of them, using examples from the Leatherstocking novels and their heroic frontier icon, Natty Bumppo. The result is part comedy, part craft lecture, and part cultural argument about what readers should demand from stories. Whether you love classic frontier tales or enjoy watching a master satirist sharpen his knives, this short work is a lively listen about taste, technique, and the pleasures of saying the quiet part out loud.For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate)(00:00:00) Chapter 01 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Christian Science by Mark Twain audiobook. Genre: religionChristian Science is a 1907 collection of essays Mark Twain wrote about Christian Science, beginning with an article that was published in Cosmopolitan in 1899. Although Twain was interested in mental healing and the ideas behind Christian Science, he was hostile towards its founder, Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910). He called her, according to American writer Caroline Fraser, '[g]rasping, sordid, penurious, famishing for everything she sees—money, power, glory—vain, untruthful, jealous, despotic, arrogant, insolent, pitiless where thinkers and hypnotists are concerned, illiterate, shallow, incapable of reasoning outside of commercial lines, immeasurably selfish.'For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate)(00:00:00) Chapter 01(00:06:05) Chapter 02(00:30:53) Chapter 03(00:43:09) Chapter 04(00:50:33) Chapter 05(01:01:03) Chapter 06(01:29:47) Chapter 07(01:56:54) Chapter 08(02:01:21) Chapter 09(02:14:32) Chapter 10(02:29:32) Chapter 11(02:50:47) Chapter 12(03:01:14) Chapter 13(03:14:49) Chapter 14(03:20:48) Chapter 15(03:34:37) Chapter 16(04:33:03) Chapter 17(05:01:57) Chapter 18(05:42:05) Chapter 19(05:43:59) Chapter 20(05:58:48) Chapter 21(05:59:39) Chapter 22(06:05:16) Chapter 23(06:07:58) Chapter 24(06:09:32) Chapter 25(06:25:53) Chapter 26(06:37:18) Chapter 27(06:40:25) Chapter 28(06:41:50) Chapter 29(07:05:50) Chapter 30(07:14:13) Chapter 31(07:18:32) Chapter 32(07:36:37) Chapter 33(07:38:25) Chapter 34(07:55:05) Chapter 35 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alonzo Fitz & Other Stories by Mark Twain audiobook. Genre: comedyAlonzo Fitz & Other Stories gathers a handful of Mark Twain's sharpest late-career short pieces - brisk, mischievous, and built to be read aloud. Across these compact tales and sketches, Twain turns everyday American confidence into comedy: earnest people chase grand plans, argue over respectable opinions, and stumble into consequences they never imagined. In the title story, a seemingly ordinary situation swells into a comic tangle of assumptions and reactions, showing how quickly pride and certainty can outrun common sense. Elsewhere, Twain plays with exaggeration, improbable coincidences, and mock-serious logic to poke at fashion, public judgment, and the self-important tone of modern progress. Each story is short on patience for pretension and long on wit - the kind that lands as a joke, then lingers as a critique. Whether he is describing a community in uproar or a single character making a spectacularly human mistake, Twain keeps the pace quick, the language clean and punchy, and the target unmistakable: the ways people fool themselves, especially when they are trying hardest to look wise.For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate)(00:00:00) Chapter 01(00:43:35) Chapter 02(00:59:33) Chapter 03(01:15:03) Chapter 04(01:28:18) Chapter 05(01:56:44) Chapter 06(02:12:30) Chapter 07(02:22:02) Chapter 08(02:28:41) Chapter 09(02:43:43) Chapter 10(02:51:28) Chapter 11(02:59:27) Chapter 12(03:08:13) Chapter 13 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ultima Thule by Mack Reynolds audiobook. Genre: scifiRonny Bronston has spent his whole life dreaming of an off-world posting with United Planets, the sprawling interstellar authority that promises peace, progress, and a place for ambitious young men to prove themselves. When he finally lands a provisional slot in the Bureau of Investigation, Section G, he expects glamorous diplomacy and clear-cut heroics. Instead, he is dropped into a maze of interviews, procedures, and quiet political pressures where every promotion has a price and every official slogan hides an inconvenient reality. His first case is the kind that can make a career or end it: track down Tommy Paine, a long-rumored agitator whose name is linked to uprisings and ideological contagion on world after world. Chasing a man who may be terrorist, prophet, or manufactured myth forces Ronny to confront how empires maintain order, how revolutions spread, and how easily truth can be packaged as policy. As the hunt pulls him farther from the safety of headquarters and deeper into contested cultures at the edge of human space, Ronny must decide what loyalty actually means when the system itself may be the most dangerous mystery of all.For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate)(00:00:00) Chapter 1(00:09:20) Chapter 2(00:20:33) Chapter 3(00:31:38) Chapter 4(00:40:43) Chapter 5(00:49:01) Chapter 6(00:58:27) Chapter 7(01:08:12) Chapter 8(01:21:12) Chapter 9(01:37:58) Chapter 10(01:51:12) Chapter 11(02:02:01) Chapter 12(02:13:39) Chapter 13 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Good Wives by Louisa May Alcott audiobook. Genre: familyIn Good Wives, Louisa May Alcott returns to the March family as the four sisters step beyond girlhood and into the complicated, exhilarating work of becoming adults. Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy each face choices that test their ideals and reshape their bonds: love that asks for sacrifice, ambition that demands courage, and duty that can both steady and constrain. As they navigate new homes, new responsibilities, and the shifting expectations placed on women, the sisters discover that growing up is not a single leap but a series of everyday decisions - some joyful, some painful, all defining. With their mother Marmee as a steady moral compass and their neighbor Laurie never far from their lives, the March sisters learn that family is not only a comfort but also a challenge: a place where dreams collide, tempers flare, and forgiveness must be earned. Tender, witty, and honest about the costs of maturity, Good Wives explores what it means to build a life without losing yourself, and how love in all its forms can change the course of a household forever.For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate)(00:00:00) Chapter 01(00:23:48) Chapter 02(00:38:50) Chapter 03(01:02:19) Chapter 04(01:19:35) Chapter 05(01:54:35) Chapter 06(02:21:54) Chapter 07(02:49:17) Chapter 08(03:13:35) Chapter 09(03:40:53) Chapter 10(04:05:51) Chapter 11(04:36:18) Chapter 12(04:57:03) Chapter 13(05:09:54) Chapter 14(05:38:15) Chapter 15(06:03:08) Chapter 16(06:27:47) Chapter 17(06:40:34) Chapter 18(07:06:38) Chapter 19(07:26:20) Chapter 20(07:57:42) Chapter 21(08:09:19) Chapter 22(08:21:54) Chapter 23(08:52:26) Chapter 24 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Lost Princess of Oz by L. Frank Baum audiobook. Genre: fantasyWho is stealing all the magic in Oz? Dorothy and her friends set out to comb all of Oz, not only for magic stolen from Glinda and the Wizard, but also for the kidnapped princess, Ozma. Along the way, they explore regions never seen in other Oz books, meeting strange and interesting people and animals, and falling into peril more than once. It’s a desperate mission – for if the thefts are all linked, then it means that some magician unknown to them has acquired powers beyond any available to them now. How will they find him? And how will they conquer him? Not one of them knows – but with continuing faith that goodness will triumph, they march forth to try.For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate)(00:00:00) Chapter 1(00:02:27) Chapter 2(00:13:12) Chapter 3(00:20:08) Chapter 4(00:41:20) Chapter 5(00:48:59) Chapter 6(01:02:23) Chapter 7(01:18:37) Chapter 8(01:35:39) Chapter 9(01:52:22) Chapter 10(02:12:58) Chapter 11(02:24:48) Chapter 12(02:38:47) Chapter 13(02:57:55) Chapter 14(03:09:30) Chapter 15(03:19:56) Chapter 16(03:28:11) Chapter 17(03:42:25) Chapter 18(03:56:01) Chapter 19(04:04:48) Chapter 20(04:13:10) Chapter 21(04:24:59) Chapter 22(04:35:13) Chapter 23(04:50:56) Chapter 24(05:00:16) Chapter 25(05:06:03) Chapter 26(05:14:44) Chapter 27 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Greylorn by Keith Laumer audiobook. Genre: scifiCommander Greylorn has a problem. No, actually he has two of them. It's not enough that the remaining residents of Earth have pinned their last hope of salvation on him and his mission. He has to find a colony that presumedly was established at an unknown star two centuries before and beg their help. But first, he has the small matter of a mutiny on board his starship, and people are trying to kill him!Written in an era when radios used vacuum tubes, the scientific component of the story is quaint and dated. But Laumer makes the centerpiece of his tale the retelling of how, four years out on the voyage, his crew decides it wants to give up and go home when it meets an alien race... that apparently breeds humans in captivity as food animals!Beating the aliens, shanghaiing the crew, finding the colony and saving Mother Earth - just the ingredients for a rattling good yarn!For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate)(00:00:00) Chapter 01(00:17:42) Chapter 02(00:42:01) Chapter 03(01:00:35) Chapter 04(01:27:51) Chapter 05(01:49:05) Chapter 06 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran audiobook. Genre: philosophyThe prophet Al Mustafa, before leaving the city where he has been living twelve years, stops to address the people. They call out for his words of wisdom on many sides of the human condition, and he addresses them in terms of love and care. He has much to offer from his observations of the people, and he illustrates with images they can relate to. The author, Gibran, was influenced by the Maronites, the Sufis, and the Baha’i. His philosophy, though deist, is primarily aimed at the good within ourselves, and the common-sense ways in which we can unlock it. An illustration from his chapter on Friendship: “And let your best be for your friend. If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also. For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill? Seek him always with hours to live.” The prophet’s gentle words have inspired their translation into over 108 languages. Listen to them with an open mind. You may find some burdens and frustrations hidden within you easedFor ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate)(00:00:00) Chapter 01(00:11:04) Chapter 02(00:24:06) Chapter 03(00:38:13) Chapter 04(00:50:48) Chapter 05(01:01:53) Chapter 06(01:13:52) Chapter 07 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Master of the World by Jules Verne audiobook. Genre: scifiChief Inspector Strock gets the tough cases. When a volcano suddenly appears to threaten mountain towns of North Carolina amid the non-volcanic Blue Ridge Mountains, Strock is posted to determine the danger. When an automobile race in Wisconsin is interrupted by the unexpected appearance of a vehicle traveling at multiples of the top speed of the entrants, Strock is consulted. When an odd-shaped boat is sighted moving at impossible speeds off the New England coast, Stock and his boss begin to wonder if the incidents are related. And when Strock gets a hand-lettered note warning him to abandon his investigation, on pain of death, he is intrigued rather than deterred.Set in a period when gasoline engines were in their infancy and automobiles were rare, and when even Chief Inspectors had to engage a carriage and horses to move about, the appearance of a vehicle that can move at astounding speeds on land, on water - and as later revealed, underwater and through the air - marks a technological advance far beyond the reach of nations. It is technology invented by and for the sole benefit of a man who styles himself (with some justification) 'The Master of the World.'This book is a sequel to an earlier Verne novel, 'Robur the Conqueror', but enough detail is given to fully appreciate this story without having first read the other.For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate)(00:00:00) Chapter 1(00:15:42) Chapter 2(00:32:13) Chapter 3(00:55:21) Chapter 4(01:12:26) Chapter 5(01:29:36) Chapter 6(01:40:51) Chapter 7(01:58:29) Chapter 8(02:18:04) Chapter 9(02:20:24) Chapter 10(02:34:56) Chapter 11(02:53:29) Chapter 12(03:11:31) Chapter 13(03:29:32) Chapter 14(03:53:29) Chapter 15(04:11:40) Chapter 16(04:23:08) Chapter 17(04:48:37) Chapter 18 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices