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Popular Novels

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Popular Novels includes Heart of Darkness (2006), On the Road (2002), Someplace to Be Flying (2005), Fifth Business (1970), Under the Volcano (1984).

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Heart of Darkness

by: Joseph Conrad
release date: Jan 01, 2006
Heart of Darkness
A ferryboat captain in search of a notorious ivory trader ventures into an African jungle, where he discovers a dark side of the human condition. In this burning indictment of colonialism, Joseph Conrad drew upon his own shipboard experiences in the region formerly known as the Belgian Congo. His novella explores the potential for evil that lurks behind the illusion of civilized restraint.
No student of modern fiction can afford to neglect Heart of Darkness or to overlook its narrative and symbolic richness, penetrating character studies, and psychological power. A definitive survey, this Dover Thrift Study Edition offers the novel's complete and unabridged text, plus a comprehensive study guide.Created to help readers gain a thorough understanding of the content and context of Heart of Darkness, the guide includes:
• Chapter-by-chapter summaries
• Explanations and discussions of the plot
• Question-and-answer sections
• Conrad biography
• List of characters and more 

On the Road

by: Jack Kerouac
release date: Dec 31, 2002
On the Road
The quintessential American vision of freedom and hope—vibrant, compelling, and full of wonder

On the Road chronicles Jack Kerouac's years traveling the North American continent with his friend Neal Cassady, "a sideburned hero of the snowy West." As "Sal Paradise" and "Dean Moriarty," the two roam the country in a quest for self-knowledge and experience. Kerouac's love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz combine to make On the Road an inspirational work of lasting importance. Kerouac's classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be “Beat” and has inspired every generation since its initial publication more than fifty years ago. This Penguin Classics edition contains an introduction by Ann Charters.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Someplace to Be Flying

by: Charles de Lint
release date: Jul 14, 2005
Someplace to Be Flying

Lily is a photojournalist in search of the "animal people" who supposedly haunt the city's darkest slums. Hank is a slumdweller who knows the bad streets all too well. One night, in a brutal incident, their two lives collide--uptown Lily and downtown Hank, each with a quest and a role to play in the secret drama of the city's oldest inhabitants.

For the animal people walk among us. Native Americans call them the First People, but they have never left, and they claim the city for their own.

Not only have Hank and Lily stumbled onto a secret, they've stumbled into a war. And in this battle for the city's soul, nothing is quite as it appears.

Fifth Business

by: Robertson Davies
Fifth Business
Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As Ramsay tells his story, it begins to seem that from boyhood, he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious, influence on those around him. His apparently innocent involvement in such innocuous events as the throwing of a snowball or the teaching of card tricks to a small boy in the end prove neither innocent nor innocuous. Fifth Business stands alone as a remarkable story told by a rational man who discovers that the marvelous is only another aspect of the real.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Under the Volcano

by: Malcolm Lowry
Under the Volcano
One of the twentieth century's great undisputed masterpieces, Malcolm Lowry's "Under the Volcano" includes an introduction by Michael Schmidt in "Penguin Modern Classics". It is the fiesta 'Day of the Dead' in the small Mexican town of Quauhnahuac. In the shadow of the volcano, ragged children beg coins to buy skulls made of chocolate, ugly pariah dogs roam the streets and Geoffrey Firmin - ex-consul, ex-husband, an alcoholic and a ruined man - is living out the last day of his life. Drowning himself in mescal while his former wife and half-brother look on, powerless to help him, the consul has become an enduring tragic figure. As the day wears on, it becomes apparent that Geoffrey must die. It is his only escape from a world he cannot understand. His story, the image of one man's agonised journey towards Calvary, became a prophetic book for a whole generation. Malcolm Lowry (1909-1957) was born and died in England. Between school and studying English at St Catherine's College, Cambridge he spent five months at sea as a deckhand, an experience which gave him the material for his first novel, "Ultramarine" (1933). After marrying in Paris, he moved to New York where he completed "In Ballast to the White" (1936). "Under The Volcano" was begun in Hollywood, coloured by a short stay in the Mexico that it describes, and eventually finished in Dollarton, British Columbia. If you enjoyed "Under the Volcano", you might like F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Beautiful and the Damned", also available in "Penguin Classics". "A Faustian masterpiece". (Anthony Burgess).

Wise Blood

by: Flannery O'Connor
release date: Mar 18, 1996
Wise Blood
One of a series of titles first published by Faber between 1930 and 1990, and in a style and format planned with a view to the appearance of the volumes on the bookshelf. Flannery O'Connor's first novel concerns a man who, released from the armed services, returns to the evangelical Deep South.

Of Human Bondage

by: W. Somerset Maugham
Of Human Bondage
The first and most autobiographical of Maugham's masterpieces. It is the story of Philip Carey, an orphan eager for life, love and adventure. After a few months studying in Heidelberg, and a brief spell in Paris as a would-be artist, he settles in London to train as a doctor where he meets Mildred, the loud but irresistible waitress with whom he plunges into a tortured and masochistic affair.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Absalom, Absalom!

by: William Faulkner
Absalom, Absalom!
Quentin Compson and Shreve, his Harvard room-mate, are obsessed by the tragic rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen. As a poor white boy, Sutpen was turned away from a plantation owner's mansion by a negro butler. From then on, he was determined to force his way into the upper echelons of Southern society. His relentless will ensures his ambitions are soon realised; land, marriage, children. But in after the chaos of Civil War, secrets from his own past threaten to destroy everything he has worked for.

Moonheart

by: Charles de Lint
release date: Feb 15, 1994
Moonheart

When Sara and Jamie discovered the seemingly ordinary artifacts, they sensed the pull of a dim and distant place. A world of mists and forests, of ancient magics, mythical beings, ageless bards...and restless evil.

Now, with their friends and enemies alike--Blue, the biker; Keiran, the folk musician; the Inspector from the RCMP; and the mysterious Tom Hengyr--Sara and Jamie are drawn into this enchanted land through the portals of Tamson House, that sprawling downtown edifice that straddles two worlds.

Sweeping from ancient Wales to the streets of Ottawa today, Moonheart will entrance you with its tale of this world and the other one at the very edge of sight...and the unforgettable people caught up in the affairs of both. A tale of music, and motorcycles, and fey folk beyond the shadows of the moon. A tale of true magic; the tale of Moonheart.

Lolita

by: Vladimir Nabokov
release date: Jan 01, 1989
Lolita
8 cassettes / 12 hours
Unabridged.
Read by Jeremy Irons


Exhilarating, both appallingly funny and hauntingly sad, Lolita is Vladimir Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, a twentieth century classic whose characters' names have become synonymous with the outrages and degradations of obsessive passion. When the aging emigre Humbert Humbert falls in love with the precocious nymphet Dolores Haze, all the rules -- of desire, decency, and literature -- are broken.  Lolita has the power to shock, challenge, and enrapture anyone who listens to this masterful performance by Academy Award-winning actor Jeremy Irons.

Even if you're not a fan of audio - I urge you to listen to this recording. Engrossing, enraging, titillating, disturbing, fascinating -- Jeremy Irons oozes with all things right in literature.  The boundaries have been pushed.

The Sound and the Fury

by: William Faulkner
release date: Jan 01, 1990
The Sound and the Fury
Retells the tragic times of the Compson family, including beautiful, rebellious Caddy; manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant.

The Worm Ouroboros

by: E. R. Eddison
The Worm Ouroboros
Illustrations by Keith Henderson

Beloved

by: Toni Morrison
release date: Jan 01, 1998
Beloved
2 cassettes / 3 hours
Read by Lynn Whitfield

Beloved is also available Unabridged, read by the author, Toni Morrison


"An extraordinary novel." -The New York Times

Toni Morrison's magnificent Pulitzer Prize-winning novel brings the unimaginable experience of slavery into our comprehension.  Set in rural Ohio several years after the Civil War, it is the story of Sethe, an escaped slave, who has risked her life in order to wrench herself from  living death; who has lost a husband and buried a child; who has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad.  Sethe, who now lives in a small house on the edge of town with her daughter, Denver, her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, and a disturbing, mesmerizing apparition who calls herself Beloved.

Profoundly affecting, this is one of Toni Morrison's greatest novels - a dazzling and spellbinding achievement.

The French Lieutenant's Woman

by: John Fowles
The French Lieutenant's Woman
book; classic; fiction; film tie-in

The Stand

by: Stephen King
The Stand

When a man escapes from a biological testing facility, he sets in motion a deadly domino effect, spreading a mutated strain of the flu that will wipe out 99 percent of humanity within a few weeks. The survivors who remain are scared, bewildered, and in need of a leader. Two emerge--Mother Abagail, the benevolent 108-year-old woman who urges them to build a community in Boulder, Colorado; and Randall Flagg, the nefarious "Dark Man," who delights in chaos and violence.

(This edition includes all of the new and restored material first published in The Stand: The Complete And Uncut Edition.) 

A Prayer for Owen Meany

by: John Irving
release date: Aug 01, 2010
A Prayer for Owen Meany
Owen Meany, the only child of a New Hampshire granite quarrier, believes he is God's instrument; he is.
This is John Irving's most comic novel, yet Owen Meany is Mr. Irving's most heartbreaking character.
"Roomy, intelligent, exhilarating and darkly comic...Dickensian in scope....Quite stunning and very ambitious."
LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEW
"John Irving is an abundantly and even joyfully talented storyteller."
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOKR EVIEW

Shane

by: Jack Schaefer
Shane
Shane was made into an award-winning film that—like the novel—became a standard by which later westerns were judged. Readers who have already felt the novel's power or are approaching it for the first time, will find this edition indispensable for coming to terms with its fascinating simplicity, its richness, and its puzzles. 

This edition reprints the original text of the novel (in 1954 it was edited to remove words that might offend). In addition, the best critical essays about Schaefer and about Shane are included to provide historical and comparative background. An interview with Jack Schaefer and an afterword written by him complete this volume.

Lord of the Flies

by: William Golding
release date: Jan 01, 2005
Lord of the Flies
William Golding's classic novel of primitive savagery and survival is one of the most vividly realized and riveting works in modern fiction. The tale begins after a plane wreck deposits a group of English school boys, aged six to twelve on an isolated tropical island. Their struggle to survive and impose order quickly evolves from a battle against nature into a battle against their own primitive instincts. Golding's portrayal of the collapse of social order into chaos draws the fine line between innocence and savagery.

Gone with the Wind

by: Margaret Mitchell
release date: Jan 01, 1991
Gone with the Wind
Margaret Mitchell's epic novel of love and war won the Pulitzer Prize and went on to give rise to two authorized sequels and one of the most popular and celebrated movies of all time.

Many novels have been written about the Civil War and its aftermath. None take us into the burning fields and cities of the American South as Gone With the Wind does, creating haunting scenes and thrilling portraits of characters so vivid that we remember their words and feel their fear and hunger for the rest of our lives.

In the two main characters, the white-shouldered, irresistible Scarlett and the flashy, contemptuous Rhett, Margaret Mitchell not only conveyed a timeless story of survival under the harshest of circumstances, she also created two of the most famous lovers in the English-speaking world since Romeo and Juliet.

Slaughterhouse-Five

by: Kurt Jr. Vonnegut
release date: Jan 01, 2003
Slaughterhouse-Five
Billy Pilgrim travels through time to relive parts of his life. 2 cassettes.

The Grapes of Wrath, The Collectors Edition,

by: John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, The Collectors Edition,
Full maroon leather with gilt lettering and design work. Raised bands on spine, all edges gilt, silk end papers, attached page marker and illustrated with lithographs by Thomas Hart Benton.

Gravity's Rainbow

by: Thomas Pynchon
Gravity's Rainbow
Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, "Gravity's Rainbow" is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the 20th century as Joyce's "Ulysses" was to the first.

Animal Farm

by: George Orwell
release date: Jan 01, 2007
Animal Farm
Animal Farm, by George Orwell - Akasha Classics, AkashaPublishing.Com - Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the henhouses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes. With the ring of light from his lantern dancing from side to side, he lurched across the yard, kicked off his boots at the back door, drew himself a last glass of beer from the barrel in the scullery, and made his way up to bed, where Mrs. Jones was already snoring. As soon as the light in the bedroom went out there was a stirring and a fluttering all through the farm buildings. Word had gone round during the day that old Major, the prize Middle White boar, had had a strange dream on the previous night and wished to communicate it to the other animals. It had been agreed that they should all meet in the big barn as soon as Mr. Jones was safely out of the way. Old Major (so he was always called, though the name under which he had been exhibited was Willingdon Beauty) was so highly regarded on the farm that everyone was quite ready to lose an hour¿s sleep in order to hear what he had to say.

Brave New World

by: Aldous Huxley
release date: Jan 01, 2006
Brave New World
FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. Huxley's classic prophetic novel describes the socialized horrors of a futuristic utopia devoid of individual freedom.

A Town Like Alice

by: Nevil Shute
release date: Jan 01, 2011
A Town Like Alice
Nevil Shute's bestselling novel of love, courage, and unfailing faith in humanity. Her time in occupied Malaya inured Jean Paget to illness, cruelty and death. Yet it was there that she first heard of Alice Springs, and fell in love with the gentle Australian and his strange tales.

Stranger in a Strange Land

by: Robert A. Heinlein
release date: Nov 01, 2003
Stranger in a Strange Land
Stranger in a Strange Land is the epic saga of an earthling, Valentine Michael Smith, born and educated on Mars, who arrives on our planet with ''psi'' powers - telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, telekinesis, teleportation, pyrolysis, and the ability to take control of the minds of others - and complete innocence regarding the mores of man.

After his tutelage under a surrogate-father figure, Valentine begins his transformation into a kind of messiah. His exceptional abilities lead Valentine to become many things to many people: freak, scam artist, media commodity, searcher, free-love pioneer, neon evangelist, and martyr.

Heinlein won his second Hugo Award for this novel, sometimes called his ''divine comedy'' and often called his masterpiece. Stranger in a Strange Land caused controversy and uproar when it was first published. Still topical and challenging today it is in the great tradition of stories that endure through the power of the author's imagination that stretches from Gulliver's Travels to 1984.

This Blackstone audiobook is the ''as published'' version, read from an Ace paperback published in 1987. It is not the uncut, uncensored version that Heinlein originally wrote , but which wasn't published until 1991.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

by: Robert Heinlein
release date: Aug 01, 2010
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
Luna is an open penal colony and the regime is a harsh one. Not surprisingly, revolution against the hated authority is planned. But the key figures in the revolt are an unlikely crew: Manuel Garcia O'Kelly, an engaging jack of all trades, the beautiful Wyoming Knott - and Mike, a lonely computer who likes to make up jokes...

Dune

by: Frank Herbert
release date: Jan 01, 2007
Dune
Here is the novel that will be forever considered a triumph of the imagination. Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, who would become the mysterious man known as Muad'Dib. He would avenge the traitorous plot against his noble family--and would bring to fruition humankind's most ancient and unattainable dream.

A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics, Dune won the first Nebula Award, shared the Hugo Award, and formed the basis of what it undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction.

The Great Gatsby

by: F. Scott Fitzgerald
release date: Jan 01, 2010
The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby celebrates a "heightened sensibility to the promises of life," an American capacity for hope that remains unsullied even by the falsity of what it pursues. Feel the texture of Fitzgerald's language as master reader Alexander Scourby, with cool precision, unfolds the mystery of Jay Gatsby. Gatsby embodies the nave American notion that it is possible to invent oneself and persuade the world to accept that definition. The novel that epitomizes the glamour and recklessness, promise and despair of the Jazz Age is a true classic of American literature. Complete and unabridged. 3 cassettes.

Catch-22

by: Joseph Heller
release date: Jan 01, 2007
Catch-22
During WWII, the rule is that anyone who is crazy must be grounded. But anyone sane enough to know he'd be crazy to keep flying is not crazy enough to be grounded. 2 cassettes.
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