Jay Gatsby is still in love with Daisy, whom he met during the war when he was penniless. Having made himself wealthy through illegal means, he now lives in a mansion across the bay from the home of Daisy Buchanan, who has since married for money. Holding on to his illusion of Daisy as perfect, he seeks to impress her with his wealth, and uses his new neighbor, Nick Carraway (our narrator), to reach her.

Daisy’s wealthy but boring husband is cheating on her. When his mistress is killed in an accident caused by Daisy, Gatsby covers for her and takes the blame. The result is a murder and an ending that reveals the failure of money to buy love or happiness.

Fitzgerald’s elegantly simple work captures the spirit of the Jazz Age and embodies America’s obsessions with wealth, power, and the promise of new beginnings.

This special unabridged, multivoiced production of Mary Shelley’s masterpiece of nineteenth-century Gothic horror is narrated by film and television star Anthony Heald, joined by Grammy winner Stefan Rudnicki and actor Simon Templeman, under the direction of award-winning audio producer Yuri Rasovsky.

Dr. Victor Frankenstein, an ambitious young scientist, is consumed by a fanatic desire to create a living being. He fashions an eight-foot creature and succeeds in animating him but, horrified by his visage, perceives his creation to be a monster and frightens him away. The monster, wandering in search of human companionship, is spurned and repulsed by all he approaches and learns to hate and to kill. He confronts his maker with a terrible choice: unless Frankenstein creates for him a mate, he will go on a rampage of destruction.

A subversive tale about the corrupt tendencies in humanity’s most “civilized” ambitions, this haunting thriller, the original science fiction novel, maintains its hold in the collective imagination centuries after its first publication.

Who could forget the pranks, the adventures, the sheer fun of Tom Sawyer? From Tom’s sly trickery with the whitewashed fence to his and Becky Thatcher’s calamities in Bat Cave, the enjoyment never ends.

Just what did boys do in a small town during the mid-1800s, a time when there were no televisions, no arcades, and no videos? They whitewashed fences, floated down rivers, traded marbles, formed secret societies, smoked pipes, and, on occasion, managed to attend their own funerals. Yes, they may have been a bit mischievous, but as Aunt Polly said of Tom when she believed him to be dead, “He was the best-hearted boy that ever was.” Aunt Polly’s sentiments reveal one of Mark Twain’s cardinal philosophies: In this deceitful and infirm world, innocence can be found only in the heart of a boy.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a humorous and nostalgic book depicting the carefree days of boyhood in a small Midwestern town. The characters are based on Twain’s schoolmates and the town, Hannibal, Missouri, is where Twain grew up.

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. Long ago the districts waged war on the Capitol and were defeated. As part of the surrender terms, each district agreed to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to appear in an annual televised event called “The Hunger Games.” The terrain, rules, and level of audience participation may change, but one thing is constant: kill or be killed. There can only be one winner.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister’s place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to death before, and survival is second nature for her. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity—and life against love.

Blackstone Audio and Downpour.com teamed up with New York Times bestselling author Chuck Palahniuk to offer this short story exclusively in audio. Originally published in Playboy magazine, “Romance” is a twisted love story like only Chuck could tell.

Warning: contains mature content

The earliest extant heroic epic in any European vernacular, Beowulf is considered the most important poem in Old English. The title character is a warrior of superhuman strength who accomplishes glorious deeds to honor his king. He also represents the ideal lord and vassal, generous to his own men while fulfilling all the forms of courtesy at court. The narrative itself falls into two parts: Beowulf first rescues the royal house of Denmark from two marauding monsters; then, after having ruled his people peacefully for fifty years, he is called upon to combat a dragon that is terrorizing the countryside.

Combining mythical elements with actual historical figures and events, the narrative ranges from fierce action sequences to detailed portrayals of court life and earnest considerations of social and moral dilemmas, all in a tone of sustained grandeur.

Forget the old deferred life plan that has you working hard through the best of years of your life only to retire at the end. There is no need to wait, and every reason not to. Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, experiencing high-end world travel, earning a monthly five-figure income with zero management, or just living more and working less, this book is the blueprint.

In this step-by-step guide to luxury lifestyle design, Tim Ferris explains how he went from working eighty hours per week for $40,000 per year to earning $40,000 per month in just four hours per week, allowing him to travel the world and fulfill his dreams—and how you can, too. With more than one hundred pages of new, cutting-edge content, this expanded edition offers new tools and tricks for living like a millionaire vagabond, even in unpredictable economic times. Added features include templates for eliminating email and negotiating with bosses and clients, plus real case studies from readers who have doubled their income and reinvented themselves by following Tim’s revolutionary paradigm.

On a brisk autumn day, a twelve-year-old boy stands on the shores of the gray Atlantic, near a silent amusement park and a fading ocean resort called the Alhambra. The past has driven Jack Sawyer here: his father is gone, his mother is dying, and the world no longer makes sense. But for Jack everything is about to change. For he has been chosen to make a journey back across America—and into another realm.

One of the most influential and heralded works of fantasy ever written, The Talisman is an extraordinary novel of loyalty, awakening, terror, and mystery. Jack Sawyer, on a desperate quest to save his mother’s life, must search for a prize across an epic landscape of innocents and monsters, of incredible dangers and even more incredible truths. The prize is essential, but the journey means even more.

Let the quest begin.

They are hunting us.

In this sweeping, threaded narrative of the global phenomenon known as the Vampire Wars, mankind is unwittingly infected by a millennia-old bacteria unknowingly exhumed by a scientific expedition in Antarctica. Now, in some rare cases, a person’s so-called junk DNA becomes activated. Depending on their racial and ethnic heritage, they begin to manifest one of the many diverse forms of the “others” that are the true basis for the legends of supernatural creatures. These aren’t your usual vampires and werewolves—it goes much deeper than that.

Conceived by Jonathan Maberry, V Wars features stories from various frontlines as reported by such contributors as Nancy Holder, Yvonne Navarro, James A. Moore, Gregory Frost, John Everson, Keith R. A. DeCandido, and Scott Nicholson—as well as Maberry himself, of course. The result is a compelling series of tales that creates a unique chronicle of mankind’s response to this sudden, hidden threat to humanity.

The narrators of this audio production include Grammy, Emmy, Tony, and Audie award winners.

Outlander, Diana Gabaldon’s landmark novel of Scottish lore, has captured the hearts of millions of readers around the world and catapulted her to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. Intrigue, danger, and desire merge in this lush novel of loyalty and time travel.

In 1945, Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon. Their blissful reunion is shattered when she touches a boulder in one of the ancient stone ruins and is instantly transported to a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans … in 1743. Will Claire find her way back to her own time, or is her destiny forever linked with Clan MacKenzie and the gallant James Fraser?

Davina Porter’s lyrical narration will launch listeners into an exhilarating world of heroism, pulse-pounding adventure, and breathtaking romance as one woman is torn between past and present, passion and love.

Master Sun said: “Ultimate excellence lies not in winning every battle but in defeating the enemy without ever fighting.”

For more than two thousand years, The Art of War has stood as a cornerstone of Chinese culture, a lucid text that reveals as much about psychology, politics, and economics as it does about battlefield strategy. For those seeking a deeper understanding of this seminal work, scholar John Minford brings the words of Sun-tzu to life for modern listeners, presenting the core text in two formats:

Part I: The original text by Sun-tzu
Ray Porter reads the unadorned thirteen chapters, allowing listeners to form their own first impressions of the ancient words of wisdom ascribed to Sun-tzu.

Part II: The original text with running commentary
Read by Ray Porter and Lorna Raver, the original text is presented again, this time with extensive running commentary by traditional Chinese scholars and the translator, providing context and subtext for the work. Included is a lively, learned introduction, read by Lorna Raver, in which Minford explores the life and times of Sun-tzu and considers how best to read and understand the work today. 

Even those readers familiar with The Art of War will experience it anew, finding it more fascinating and more relevant than ever.

Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney in his suburban Massachusetts county for more than twenty years. He is respected in his community, tenacious in the courtroom, and happy at home with his wife, Laurie, and son, Jacob. But when a shocking crime shatters their New England town, Andy is blindsided by what happens next: his fourteen-year-old son is charged with the murder of a fellow student.

Every parental instinct Andy has rallies to protect his boy. Jacob insists that he is innocent, and Andy believes him. Andy must. He’s his father. But as damning facts and shocking revelations surface, as a marriage threatens to crumble and the trial intensifies, and as the crisis reveals how little a father knows about his son, Andy will face a trial of his own—between loyalty and justice, between truth and allegation, between a past he’s tried to bury and a future he cannot conceive.

Award-winning author William Landay has written the consummate novel of an embattled family in crisis—a suspenseful, character-driven mystery that is also a spellbinding tale of guilt, betrayal, and the terrifying speed at which our lives can spin out of control. 

“I’ve struck it!” Mark Twain wrote in a 1904 letter to a friend. “And I will give it away—to you. You will never know how much enjoyment you have lost until you get to dictating your autobiography.”

Thus, after dozens of false starts and hundreds of pages, Twain embarked on his “Final (and Right) Plan” for telling the story of his life. His innovative notion—to “talk only about the thing which interests you for the moment”—meant that his thoughts could range freely. The strict instruction that many of these texts remain unpublished for one hundred years meant that when they came out, he would be “dead, and unaware, and indifferent,” and that he was therefore free to speak his “whole frank mind.”

The year 2010 marked the one hundredth anniversary of Twain’s death. In celebration of this important milestone, here, for the first time, is Mark Twain’s uncensored autobiography, in its entirety, exactly as he left it. This major literary event offers the first of three volumes and presents Mark Twain’s authentic and unsuppressed voice, brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions, and speaking clearly from the grave, as he intended.