Literary Criticism
The Regent
'The Regent' is, if not a sequel to 'The Card', then a 'Further Adventures of' the eponymous hero of that novel.Denry Machin is now forty-th…
The Moon and Sixpence
This Maugham novel is based on the life of the painter Paul Gauguin. The story is told by the narrator as he gradually comes to know the mai…
A Room with a View
When Lucy Honeychurch travels to Italy with her cousin, she meets George Emerson, a bohemian and an atheist who falls in love with her. Upon…
The Metamorphosis
The Metamorphosis (in German, Die Verwandlung, "The Transformation") is a novella by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915, and arg…
Candide
Candide is a relentless, brutal assault on government, society, religion, education, and, above all, optimism. Dr. Pangloss teaches his youn…
Clayhanger
A coming-of-age story about Edwin Clayhanger, who leaves school, has his ambition to become an architect thwarted by his tyrannical father, …
The Painted Veil
This Maugham classic is set in England and Hong Kong and in a cholera --ridden Chinese village in the 1920's. A committed, principled, epide…
The Man Who Lost Himself
Best known for his literary work The Blue Lagoon, which has been made into film several times over, H. De Vere Stacpoole’s first publication…
The Vicar of Wakefield
Published in 1766, 'The Vicar of Wakefield' was Oliver Goldsmith's only novel. It was thought to have been sold to the publisher for £…
The Gambler
The Gambler is a short novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky about a young tutor in the employment of a formerly wealthy Russian general. The novella r…
The Magic Mountain
Thomas Mann’s epic novel depicts a decaying, corrupted European society on the eve of the First World War. Set in a luxurious sanatorium hig…
Personality Plus
Personality Plus introduces listeners to Emma McChesney, a savvy and stylish divorced mother navigating the challenges of early 20th-century…
Oliver Twist
Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress is the second novel by Charles Dickens. The story is about an orphan Oliver Twist, who endures a…
Quicksand
Quicksand is a 1928 novel by Nella Larsen, a writer of the Harlem Renaissance. It focuses on Helga Crane, a mixed-race woman who is a school…
The Woman Who Did
Most times, especially in the time when this book was written (1895), it is just as nature and society would wish: a man and woman "fal…
Short Stories
This is a collection of short stories written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Dostoevsky), who is arguably better-known for his lengthy, contemplativ…
The Sun Also Rises
This first novel by Ernest Hemingway follows a group of American and British expatriates in the years following World War I as they travel f…
Crome Yellow
Crome Yellow, published in 1921 was Aldous Huxley’s first novel. In it he satirizes the fads and fashions of the time. It is the witty story…
The Marrow of Tradition
In The Marrow of Tradition, Charles W. Chesnutt--using the 1898 Wilmington, North Carolina massacre as a backdrop--probes and exposes the ra…
Ward No. 6
The line between sanity and insanity is blurred in this classic novella by Anton Chekhov. The disillusioned idealist Dr. Rabin is in charge…