Classic Audiobook Collection

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Redburn - His First Voyage by Herman Melville ~ Full Audiobook [adventure] Aug 29, 2024

Show notes

Redburn - His First Voyage by Herman Melville audiobook.

Genre: adventure

In Redburn - His First Voyage, Herman Melville follows Wellingborough Redburn, a sheltered young man from New York who, faced with family hardship and a restless need to prove himself, signs on as a common sailor aboard a merchant ship bound for Liverpool. Armed with little more than a few boyish notions of the sea and an old guidebook, Redburn quickly discovers that life before the mast is not the heroic dream he imagined. On deck he must learn the brutal rhythms of shipboard labor, navigate the scorn and rough humor of seasoned hands, and endure a strict hierarchy where inexperience can be dangerous. Ashore in England, Redburn confronts a foreign city marked by poverty, crowded streets, and uneasy moral contradictions, forcing him to question what he has been taught about class, nation, and human dignity. Part coming-of-age tale and part stark travel narrative, the story charts Redburn's loss of innocence as he struggles to find courage and compassion in a world that often rewards hardness over hope.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:59:33) Chapter 02

(02:03:12) Chapter 03

(03:03:48) Chapter 04

(03:53:54) Chapter 05

(04:41:47) Chapter 06

(05:32:00) Chapter 07

(06:31:17) Chapter 08

(07:21:11) Chapter 09

(08:19:22) Chapter 10

(09:04:57) Chapter 11

(10:09:02) Chapter 12

(11:07:32) Chapter 13

(11:58:11) Chapter 14

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Pierre, or The Ambiguities by Herman Melville ~ Full Audiobook [drama] Aug 23, 2024

Show notes

Pierre, or The Ambiguities by Herman Melville audiobook.

Genre: drama

In Pierre, or The Ambiguities, Herman Melville follows Pierre Glendinning, a young heir raised amid privilege and rigid expectations in rural New York. Poised to inherit status, security, and a conventional future, Pierre's life is unsettled when a mysterious young woman appears with a story that threatens to rewrite everything he believes about his family and his own identity. Driven by a fierce, idealistic sense of honor and a longing to act purely in a compromised world, Pierre makes a drastic choice that severs him from his mother, his fiancee Lucy, and the social order that once defined him. Seeking reinvention, he flees to the city and tries to build a new life through writing, only to confront the harsh economics of art, the duplicities of friendship, and the moral fog of desire, duty, and self-deception. Part psychological drama, part dark social satire, and part philosophical inquiry, the novel probes how love, faith, and family myths collide with secrecy and suspicion. As Pierre struggles to distinguish truth from performance, he is pulled deeper into a web of conflicting loyalties and interpretations where every motive can be read two ways.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(01:01:45) Chapter 02

(01:40:41) Chapter 03

(02:20:34) Chapter 04

(02:53:15) Chapter 05

(03:29:17) Chapter 06

(04:22:24) Chapter 07

(05:27:46) Chapter 08

(06:22:49) Chapter 09

(07:06:04) Chapter 10

(08:08:08) Chapter 11

(08:29:39) Chapter 12

(08:59:43) Chapter 13

(09:16:58) Chapter 14

(09:49:28) Chapter 15

(09:56:43) Chapter 16

(10:34:55) Chapter 17

(11:09:34) Chapter 18

(11:47:21) Chapter 19

(12:21:37) Chapter 20

(12:45:36) Chapter 21

(13:16:45) Chapter 22

(13:37:03) Chapter 23

(14:14:32) Chapter 24

(14:45:11) Chapter 25

(15:22:12) Chapter 26

(15:43:02) Chapter 27

(16:10:23) Chapter 28

(16:33:46) Chapter 29

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Billy Budd by Herman Melville ~ Full Audiobook [drama] Jul 27, 2024

Show notes

Billy Budd by Herman Melville audiobook.

Genre: drama

On the eve of war with revolutionary France, the British navy is stretched thin, and suspicion of mutiny hangs over every deck. Into this tense world steps Billy Budd, a young sailor pressed into service and assigned to the warship HMS Bellipotent. Handsome, hardworking, and widely liked, Billy seems the very image of innocence - until his presence stirs jealousy and fear in the ship's master-at-arms, John Claggart. As discipline tightens and rumors spread, an accusation places Billy in the sights of Captain Edward Fairfax Vere, a thoughtful commander torn between sympathy for the individual and duty to naval law. Confined by the rigid codes that keep a fighting ship afloat, Vere must weigh conscience against authority while the crew watches, aware that a single decision could ripple into unrest. Herman Melville's final, haunting novella becomes a chamber drama at sea, probing the costs of obedience, the ambiguity of justice, and the uneasy line between goodness and guilt. With the ocean as both backdrop and pressure cooker, Billy Budd builds toward a moral crisis in which character and command collide.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:16:21) Chapter 02

(00:34:57) Chapter 03

(00:54:09) Chapter 04

(01:13:26) Chapter 05

(01:26:44) Chapter 06

(01:40:10) Chapter 07

(02:05:07) Chapter 08

(02:29:59) Chapter 09

(02:45:54) Chapter 10

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Benito Cereno by Herman Melville ~ Full Audiobook [mystery] Jul 26, 2024

Show notes

Benito Cereno by Herman Melville audiobook.

Genre: mystery

Off the coast of Chile in the late 1700s, American sea captain Amasa Delano encounters a battered Spanish merchant ship drifting in uneasy silence. Its commander, Don Benito Cereno, appears sickly, distracted, and strangely dependent on his enslaved attendants, while the vessel itself seems plagued by shortages, confusion, and simmering disorder. Delano, practical and good-natured, boards to offer aid and quickly finds himself trying to make sense of contradictory details: whispered conversations that stop when he approaches, inexplicable weapons on deck, sailors who seem fearful, and a captain whose authority feels more theatrical than real. As Delano attempts to arrange supplies and repairs, he must decide whom to trust and what story to believe, even as his own assumptions shape every conclusion. Herman Melville builds a taut, atmospheric moral puzzle about perception, power, and the violence embedded in maritime empire, where the surface of polite cooperation hides a far more dangerous struggle. With mounting tension and an ever-tightening sense of menace, Benito Cereno draws listeners into a slow-burn confrontation between appearance and reality at sea.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:10:37) Chapter 02

(00:28:19) Chapter 03

(00:37:30) Chapter 04

(00:55:25) Chapter 05

(01:14:17) Chapter 06

(01:37:59) Chapter 07

(01:53:59) Chapter 08

(02:21:10) Chapter 09

(02:27:39) Chapter 10

(02:45:34) Chapter 11

(02:57:06) Chapter 12

(03:05:52) Chapter 13

(03:44:27) Chapter 14

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Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War by Herman Melville ~ Full Audiobook [poetry] Jul 25, 2024

Show notes

Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War by Herman Melville audiobook.

Genre: poetry

Published in the aftermath of the American Civil War, Herman Melville's Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War is a searching, many-angled meditation on a nation fractured and remade. Through a sequence of poems, Melville moves from the shock of first clashes and public rallies to the long grind of campaigns, prisons, hospitals, and hard-won victories, pausing on moments that official histories often pass over - a sentry's solitude, a town's anxious waiting, the sudden hush after artillery, the uneasy distance between home-front certainty and battlefield fact. Rather than offering a single heroic narrative, Melville presents a chorus of perspectives: soldiers and civilians, North and South, the confident and the haunted. The collection presses at difficult questions about leadership, loss, justice, and the moral costs of reunion, while also capturing the strange beauty that can appear amid ruin. Part elegy and part reckoning, these battle-pieces ask what it means to remember, to forgive, and to rebuild when the war is over but its echoes are not.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:00:58) Chapter 02

(00:02:12) Chapter 03

(00:06:52) Chapter 04

(00:09:19) Chapter 05

(00:11:18) Chapter 06

(00:14:14) Chapter 07

(00:15:35) Chapter 08

(00:16:28) Chapter 09

(00:18:44) Chapter 10

(00:37:45) Chapter 11

(00:40:05) Chapter 12

(00:42:39) Chapter 13

(00:45:24) Chapter 14

(00:47:28) Chapter 15

(00:49:00) Chapter 16

(00:51:42) Chapter 17

(00:53:35) Chapter 18

(00:56:30) Chapter 19

(00:59:13) Chapter 20

(01:03:33) Chapter 21

(01:04:44) Chapter 22

(01:07:35) Chapter 23

(01:09:29) Chapter 24

(01:12:11) Chapter 25

(01:13:26) Chapter 26

(01:17:06) Chapter 27

(01:26:39) Chapter 28

(01:28:04) Chapter 29

(01:30:40) Chapter 30

(01:37:38) Chapter 31

(01:39:55) Chapter 32

(01:41:18) Chapter 33

(01:43:02) Chapter 34

(01:44:26) Chapter 35

(01:46:01) Chapter 36

(01:48:23) Chapter 37

(01:52:11) Chapter 38

(01:53:52) Chapter 39

(01:55:12) Chapter 40

(01:56:23) Chapter 41

(01:59:22) Chapter 42

(02:00:58) Chapter 43

(02:01:59) Chapter 44

(02:04:27) Chapter 45

(02:05:59) Chapter 46

(02:07:21) Chapter 47

(02:10:05) Chapter 48

(02:11:17) Chapter 49

(02:12:29) Chapter 50

(02:13:45) Chapter 51

(02:14:56) Chapter 52

(02:17:40) Chapter 53

(02:20:22) Chapter 54

(02:21:20) Chapter 55

(02:22:24) Chapter 56

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Atomic! by Henry Kuttner ~ Full Audiobook [scifi] Jul 23, 2024

Show notes

Atomic! by Henry Kuttner audiobook.

Genre: scifi

Six years after the Three-Hour War turned New York into a radioactive ruin, humanity survives by policing the bomb craters it has learned to fear. Across the world, hundreds of blast zones have become 'Rings' - dead centers surrounded by violent new growth, where mutation accelerates and anything might evolve into mankind's successor. At Biological Control Labs north of the shattered city, a weary field officer trains rookie Bob Davidson in the only rule that matters: never take chances with a Ring.When a midnight red alarm flares from Ring Seventy-Twelve, the two launch in a recon copter to investigate a cave-in and strange activity near a recent airliner crash. What they find is not just unfamiliar life, but something that can blind instruments, reshape the landscape, and push itself into a human mind. After a glimpse of a fog-shrouded 'Eye' and the sudden appearance of an impossibly blue lake, the men return with their memories fractured and their speech subtly constrained - as if some crucial truth has been locked behind a door inside their brains.Now, as colleagues call for immediate sterilization of the area, the narrator must fight invisible pressure, recover what he has been made to forget, and decide whether the standard solution might be the spark that ends the human era for good.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:13:52) Chapter 02

(00:28:26) Chapter 03

(00:41:55) Chapter 04

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Travels in Brazil, Volume 1 by Henry Koster ~ Full Audiobook [history] Jul 22, 2024

Show notes

Travels in Brazil, Volume 1 by Henry Koster audiobook.

Genre: history

In Travels in Brazil, Volume 1, Englishman Henry Koster offers a vivid, observant account of northeastern Brazil in the early nineteenth century, written from the perspective of a long-term resident rather than a passing tourist. Arriving for the sake of his health and drawn into local life, Koster journeys through Pernambuco and surrounding regions, moving between bustling port towns and the interior's plantations, rivers, forests, and small settlements. Along the way he records the rhythms of daily work and travel, the practical challenges of roads, weather, and lodging, and the complex social world shaped by slavery, commerce, religion, and colonial administration. Koster's narrative blends scene-by-scene travel with careful description of agriculture, animals, food, architecture, and regional customs, while also reflecting on the tensions and misunderstandings that arise when an outsider tries to navigate unfamiliar rules and hierarchies. The central drive of the book is his effort to make sense of a vast country in transition, balancing curiosity and critique as he documents what he sees and hears with a steady, sometimes surprising frankness.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:24:50) Chapter 02

(01:08:37) Chapter 03

(01:37:52) Chapter 04

(02:12:22) Chapter 05

(02:51:11) Chapter 06

(03:21:13) Chapter 07

(03:47:15) Chapter 08

(04:24:49) Chapter 09

(05:01:15) Chapter 10

(05:46:25) Chapter 11

(06:23:24) Chapter 12

(06:50:15) Chapter 13

(07:16:34) Chapter 14

(07:53:05) Chapter 15

(08:15:20) Chapter 16

(08:43:43) Chapter 17

(09:13:55) Chapter 18

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The Ivory Tower by Henry James ~ Full Audiobook [drama] Jul 16, 2024

Show notes

The Ivory Tower by Henry James audiobook.

Genre: drama

An unfinished manuscript written in ponderous, convoluted language making possible subterfuge and frankness in wealthy American society of James' purview, in which a character as unsuspecting as the reader gets embroiled more or less willingly in power shifts over a massive inheritance. The first part of the book is an example of James' late adoption of narrator as seemingly blinkered as his characters to the unseen, leaving the 'i's' deliberately undotted, as he says; and the second part is a great study in the stages of execution of a novel, notably sketching out the flow and identifying 'joints' in the drama, and resolving potential sticking points. James' style lends itself to filmic imagination.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 00

(00:03:01) Chapter 01

(00:27:31) Chapter 02

(01:00:23) Chapter 03

(01:21:10) Chapter 04

(01:44:26) Chapter 05

(02:24:22) Chapter 06

(02:57:20) Chapter 07

(03:17:27) Chapter 08

(03:41:19) Chapter 09

(03:58:08) Chapter 10

(04:14:37) Chapter 11

(04:31:21) Chapter 12

(05:01:16) Chapter 13

(05:23:05) Chapter 14

(05:38:08) Chapter 15

(06:01:10) Chapter 16

(06:21:05) Chapter 17

(06:48:56) Chapter 18

(07:18:35) Chapter 19

(07:37:35) Chapter 20

(07:59:21) Chapter 21

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Amelia (Vol 3) by Henry Fielding ~ Full Audiobook [drama] Jul 15, 2024

Show notes

Amelia (Vol 3) by Henry Fielding audiobook.

Genre: drama

In Volume 3 of Henry Fielding's Amelia, the Booths' hard-won hopes of a quiet domestic life are tested by the London world that never stops prying, judging, and tempting. Amelia Booth remains the steadfast heart of the story, a devoted wife and mother trying to keep her family intact while money troubles, gossip, and predatory 'friends' tighten their grip. Captain William Booth, loving but impulsive, struggles to balance honor with survival as debts, patronage, and a dangerous taste for risk pull him toward choices he cannot easily undo. As the couple moves between cramped lodgings, fashionable drawing rooms, and the shadowy machinery of courts and prisons, Fielding exposes how reputation can be manufactured, how justice can be bought, and how virtue is punished as often as it is praised. New confidants and old rivals press their claims, and private letters, secret meetings, and half-truths threaten to separate husband and wife. By turns tender, biting, and suspenseful, this volume deepens the novel's central conflict: can love and integrity endure in a society built to exploit weakness?

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:08:50) Chapter 02

(00:21:47) Chapter 03

(00:33:20) Chapter 04

(00:48:53) Chapter 05

(00:59:54) Chapter 06

(01:17:07) Chapter 07

(01:28:03) Chapter 08

(01:42:51) Chapter 09

(01:54:59) Chapter 10

(02:08:17) Chapter 11

(02:18:45) Chapter 12

(02:42:26) Chapter 13

(02:49:31) Chapter 14

(03:08:22) Chapter 15

(03:23:36) Chapter 16

(03:34:45) Chapter 17

(03:46:47) Chapter 18

(04:06:14) Chapter 19

(04:15:33) Chapter 20

(04:28:28) Chapter 21

(04:46:52) Chapter 22

(05:10:13) Chapter 23

(05:21:23) Chapter 24

(05:32:46) Chapter 25

(05:44:17) Chapter 26

(05:57:13) Chapter 27

(06:06:33) Chapter 28

(06:17:26) Chapter 29

(06:23:16) Chapter 30

(06:38:10) Chapter 31

(06:52:16) Chapter 32

(07:04:49) Chapter 33

(07:18:14) Chapter 34

(07:32:48) Chapter 35

(07:44:44) Chapter 36

(08:00:27) Chapter 37

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Amelia (Vol 2) by Henry Fielding ~ Full Audiobook [drama] Jul 13, 2024

Show notes

Amelia (Vol 2) by Henry Fielding audiobook.

Genre: drama

In Volume 2 of Henry Fielding's Amelia, the young married couple at the story's heart finds their hopes tested by London itself - its crowded streets, ruthless creditors, and glittering rooms where reputation can be bought or broken. Amelia Booth, steadfast and clear-eyed, fights to keep her household together as her husband, Captain William Booth, is pulled between love, pride, and the temptations of quick solutions. As money grows tighter and old acquaintances reappear, the Booths are drawn into a web of favors, rumors, and dangerous misunderstandings, where every choice seems to carry a hidden cost. Fielding blends sharp social observation with intimate domestic struggle, revealing how easily good intentions can be cornered by vanity, class pressure, and the slow grind of debt. Volume 2 deepens the couple's trials, introducing new allies and rivals while raising the stakes for Amelia's security and Booth's honor. At once tender, ironic, and suspenseful, this continuation asks what integrity looks like when survival depends on the very world that threatens to undo you.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:18:01) Chapter 02

(00:29:33) Chapter 03

(00:40:00) Chapter 04

(00:53:58) Chapter 05

(01:04:24) Chapter 06

(01:19:11) Chapter 07

(01:33:55) Chapter 08

(01:47:32) Chapter 09

(01:57:50) Chapter 10

(02:09:32) Chapter 11

(02:19:29) Chapter 12

(02:33:07) Chapter 13

(02:44:31) Chapter 14

(02:55:19) Chapter 15

(03:08:07) Chapter 16

(03:16:19) Chapter 17

(03:22:32) Chapter 18

(03:32:25) Chapter 19

(03:37:24) Chapter 20

(03:55:41) Chapter 21

(04:08:02) Chapter 22

(04:17:05) Chapter 23

(04:34:46) Chapter 24

(04:50:12) Chapter 25

(04:56:50) Chapter 26

(05:08:28) Chapter 27

(05:17:49) Chapter 28

(05:28:12) Chapter 29

(05:37:51) Chapter 30

(05:44:10) Chapter 31

(05:56:40) Chapter 32

(06:06:54) Chapter 33

(06:23:54) Chapter 34

(06:32:21) Chapter 35

(06:38:30) Chapter 36

(06:51:20) Chapter 37

(07:02:57) Chapter 38

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