Plot summary (from the publisher): Willa Cather’s first published novel, set in Boston, London, and Paris, is the story of a man unable to resolve the contradictions in his own nature. The central figures are Bartley Alexander, a world-famous engineer; his wife; Winifred, a Boston society matron; and his former love, Hilda Burgoyne, a London [...]
Plot summary (from the publisher): The work that signaled Fitzgerald’s maturity as a storyteller and novelist, The Beautiful and Damned is a devastating portrait of the excesses of the Jazz Age. Anthony Comstock Patch is a Harvard-educated gallant who leisurely aspires to author a book as he awaits an enormous inheritance upon his grandfather’s death. [...]
Plot summary (from the publisher): Widely recognized as Willa Cather’s greatest novel, My Ántonia is a soulful and rich portrait of a pioneer woman’s simple yet heroic life. The spirited daughter of Bohemian immigrants, Ántonia must adapt to a hard existence on the desolate prairies of the Midwest. Enduring childhood poverty, teenage seduction, and family [...]
Plot summay (from the publisher): MAIN STREET follows the life of young Carol Milford, a liberal, free-spirited young woman who has moved to the backward and stultified town of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota with her conservative husband Will Kennicott. Finding life in Gopher Prairie too confining, Carol sets out to reform the town, forming clubs and [...]
Plot summary (from the publisher): The arrival of two newcomers in the quiet village of Mellstock arouses a bitter feud and leaves a convoluted love affair in its wake. While the Reverend Maybold creates a furore among the village’s musicians with his decision to abolish the church’s traditional ‘string choir’ and replace it with a [...]
Summary: This is an audiobook collection of Edgar Allan Poe short stories and poetry, including “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Purloined Letter,” “The Thousand-and-Second Night of Scheherazade,” “A Descent into the Maelstrom,” “The Raven,” and “The Masque of the Red Death.” All works are read by David Case. “Murders in the Rue Morgue” is [...]
Plot summary (from the publisher): When small-town Carrie Meeber arrives in 1890s Chicago, she cannot know what awaits. Callow, beautiful, and alone, she experiences the bitterness of temptation and hardship even as she sets her sights on a better life. Drawn by the seductive desire to rise above her social class, Carrie aspires to the [...]
Plot summary (from the publisher): Carpenter Adam Bede is in love with the beautiful Hetty Sorrel, but unknown to him, he has a rival, in the local squire’s son Arthur Donnithorne. Hetty is soon attracted by Arthur’s seductive charm and they begin to meet in secret. The relationship is to have tragic consequences that reach [...]
Plot summary (from the publisher): Harry Haller is a sad and lonely figure, a reclusive intellectual for whom life holds no joy. He struggles to reconcile the wild primeval wolf and the rational man within himself without surrendering to the bourgeois values he despises. His life changes dramatically when he meets a woman who is [...]
Synopsis (from the publisher): Published in 1957, Atlas Shrugged was Ayn Rand’s greatest achievement and last work of fiction. In this novel she dramatizes her unique philosophy through an intellectual mystery story that integrates ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, politics, economics, and sex. Set in a near-future U.S.A. whose economy is collapsing as a result of the [...]