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Searching by tag "Novels"

Closing Time - listen book free online

We all know that sequels can be a problem. Especially if your first novel happens to have been "Catch-22", breathtaking and one of the most significant novels of the twentieth century. Millions of copies sold and a phrase added to the language! The Big Read by the BBC ranked Catch-22 as number 11 on a web poll of the UK's best-loved book. The Observer listed Catch-22 as one of the 100 greatest... Read More

Catch-22 - listen book free online

“Catch-22” is a satirical novel by American author Joseph Heller, the son of poor Jewish parents. Heller wanted to be a writer from an early age. His experiences as a bombardier during World War II inspired Catch-22. While sitting at home one morning in 1953, Heller thought of the lines, "It was love at first sight. The first time he saw the chaplain, fell madly in love with him." Within the ne... Read More

Across the River and into the Trees - listen book free online

Ernest Miller Hemingway was the outstanding author, journalist, novelist, and short-story writer. His economical and understated style - which he termed the iceberg theory - had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction. Publication of The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms immediately established him as one of the greatest literary lights of the 20th century. His classic novella The Old Ma... Read More

The Garden of Eden - listen book free online

You definitely shouldn’t put The Garden of Eden on the back-burner in favour of Hemingway’s more famous works. The novel was published posthumously in a much-abridged form in 1986. Hemingway began The Garden of Eden in 1946 and wrote 800 pages. For 15 years, he continued to work on the novel which remained uncompleted. During that time he also wrote The Old Man and the Sea, The Dangerous Summer... Read More

Green Hills of Africa - listen book free online

"Green Hills of Africa” is a 1935 work of nonfiction by American writer Ernest Hemingway. It is an account of a month on safari he took in East Africa during December 1933. Accompanying Hemingway were his wife Pauline Pfeiffer Hemingway, a friend named Charles Thompson from Key West, Florida, a well-respected professional British hunter, Philip Percival, and a visitor Hans Koritschoner, an Aust... Read More

Islands in the Stream - listen book free online

Hemingway's legacy to American literature is his style: writers who came after him emulated it or avoided it. He wrote men’s books about manly subjects: war, bullfighting, deep sea fishing. He became the spokesperson for the post–World War I generation, having established a style to follow. Early in 1950, Hemingway started work on a "sea trilogy", to consist of three sections: "The Sea When You... Read More

Death in the Afternoon - listen book free online

An American journalist, novelist, and short-story writer Ernest Hemingway was an iconic author in American literature. He participated in World War I as an ambulance driver until he was injured; then again during World War II. He served as a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War; survived car accidents and plane crashes as well as mishaps on hunting and fishing expeditions. His debut n... Read More

A Farewell to Arms - listen book free online

American novelist and short-story writer awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 Ernest Hemingway’ was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school, he was leaving for the Italian Front in World War I. In 1918, he was seriously wounded and returned home. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his novel A Farewell to Arms. In 1929, Ernest Hemingway’s classic A Farewell to Arms wa... Read More

The Sun Also Rises - listen book free online

An American novelist and short-story writer Ernest Hemingway was an iconic author in American literature. He participated in World War I as an ambulance driver until he was injured; then again during World War II. He served as a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War; survived car accidents and plane crashes as well as mishaps on hunting and fishing expeditions. Eventually, Hemingway de... Read More

The Old Man and the Sea - listen book free online

The Old Man and the Sea is a short novel written by the American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Cuba, and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction by Hemingway that was published during his lifetime. The Old Man and the Sea became a Book of the Month Club selection and made Hemingway a celebrity. Published in book form on September 1, 1952, the first edition print run was 50... Read More

For Whom the Bell Tolls - listen book free online

Ernest Hemingway's novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls" was originally published in 1940 and follows a young American guerrilla fighter. Throughout 1937 and 1938, Hemingway travelled between Spain and America promoting the Loyalist cause. He helped in the production of a short film about the effects of the war in Spain on its people, The Spanish Earth, and made many publicity and fund-raising appear... Read More

The Hunchback of Notre Dame - listen book free online

French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement Victor Marie Hugo was born in 1802 in Besançon in the eastern region of Franche-Comté. Hugo is considered to be one of the greatest and best-known French writers. He was at the forefront of the Romantic literary movement with his play Cromwell and drama Hernani. In 1831, Victor Hugo published his most famous novel, “The Hunchback of... Read More

Jane Eyre - listen book free online

Most famous for her passionate novel Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë also published poems and three other novels. She was the third of six children of Patrick Brontë, an Irish crofter’s son who rose via a Cambridge education to become, in 1820, a perpetual curate at Haworth, in Yorkshire. Jane Eyre first published in 1847 as Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, with Currer Bell listed as the editor. It is... Read More

Villette - listen book free online
Reader: Nadia May

The three Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne each published works during the Victorian era. Villette uses the biographical structure commonly seen in traditional Victorian literature but deviates somewhat due to its autobiographical nature. Many of the events that happen to the protagonist of the story mirror the events in the author's life. Like Lucy, Charlotte Brontë experienced family... Read More

Wuthering Heights - listen book free online
Author: Emily Brontë
Reader: Hannah Gordon

Wuthering Heights is now a classic of English literature, but back in the Victorian era it was controversial because of its unusually stark depiction of mental and physical cruelty, and it challenged strict Victorian ideals regarding religious hypocrisy, morality, social classes and gender inequality. Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights was first published in London in 1847 by Thomas Cautley Newby... Read More

The Painted Veil - listen book free online

The highest paid author during the 1930s William Somerset Maugham was raised by a paternal uncle after both of his parents died before he was ten. For five years he studied medicine at the medical school of St Thomas's Hospital in Lambeth. The initial run of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, sold out so rapidly that Maugham gave up medicine to write full-time. During the First World War, he ser... Read More

The Summing Up - listen book free online

Nobody would dispute that William Somerset Maugham was a professional writer. He himself saw that as the only way to write, in order to be able to produce a body of meaningful work that would contribute to the field of literature. Besides the exigencies he puts on the writer, he also outlines the essential qualities of the critic, which are indeed demanding. W. Somerset Maugham was among the mo... Read More

Cakes and Ale - listen book free online

Cakes and Ale, or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard is a novel by the British author W. Somerset Maugham. Maugham drew his title from the remark of Sir Toby Belch to Malvolio in William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night: "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" Late in life, Somerset Maugham claimed that this was the favourite among his novels and it is easy to... Read More

The Narrow Corner - listen book free online

W. Somerset Maugham was a British playwright, novelist and short story writer. A year after his first novel Liza of Lambeth was published Maugham began contributing to magazines and periodicals; initially, these were short stories, but he also wrote opinion pieces, non-fictional and autobiographical work, and letters. Much of his non-fictional writing was published in book form. The Narrow Corn... Read More

The Spire - listen book free online

“There were three sorts of people. Those who ran, those who stayed, and those who were built in”. The Spire is a 1964 novel by the English author William Golding. William Golding was born in his grandmother's house, 47 Mount Wise, Newquay, Cornwall. Golding's mother, who was Cornish and whom he considered "a superstitious celt", used to tell him old Cornish fairy tales from her own childhood. I... Read More