Literary Fiction Audiobooks | Literature

"What does a man know about love? This is the story of three very different men in love with the same woman. It is also the story of that woman, Francine Widmer: twenty-seven, beautiful, intelligent, resourceful, and insistent on running her own life. Suddenly, control of Francine's life is torn apart when she is raped. Finding the doctors and police indifferent to the outrage of rape, yet wanting revenge, Francine selects as her instrument the best criminal lawyer in the country. As the story expands in ever-widening circles, and each brilliantly rendered character brings his or her case to center stage, we come to realize how varied the shapes of love are, the secrets of its dark side, and why revenge is the universal human emotion most people prefer to hide. This is the triumphant story about the true source of all of life's difficult problems and exciting opportunities: other people."

Sol Stein (Author), Marguerite Gavin (Narrator)

Audiobook

High Plains Tango: A Novel

"With over 10 million copies sold, bestselling author Robert James Waller returns with the haunting, evocative story of a small town, a beautiful and mysterious woman, and the man forever changed by both. The wild places are where no one is looking anymore. Out there on the high plains, among the Sioux reservations and the silent buttes, among the small towns dying and the people with them, you can hear the wind. And on the back of the wind is the sound of an old accordion—tangos—mingling with the lonely thump of a single drum in the nighttime and a far-off warrior’s cry. On the back of the wind is the smell of worn saddle leather and sawdust, of sandalwood, and smoke from ancient ceremonial fires. To this, to a town called Salamander, comes Carlisle McMillan, a traveler and master carpenter seeking a place of quiet amid the grinding roar of progress. Near Wolf Butte, a strange and apparently haunted monolith, he finds his quiet, or so he believes, and begins rebuilding a decrepit house as a tribute to the gruff old man who taught him a carpenter’s skills, rebuilding his life at the same time. He finds two very different, independent women: Gally Deveraux, who works at a diner in Salamander and longs for something more than she is, and Susanna Benteen, beautiful and enigmatic, who was drawn to Salamander for mysterious reasons of her own, a woman the town has labeled a witch. The women and his carpenter’s trade and an old Indian known as Flute Player bring Carlisle a sense of contentment for a while. But his quiet is shattered as bulldozer treads begin to turn and the Yerkes County War commences. Run or stand your ground, that is Carlisle’s dilemma, Gally on one side, Susanna on the other. Robert James Waller’s fully imagined characters become people we know and care for deeply. High Plains Tango is the hauntingly lyrical story of a small town in the middle of nowhere, a town that forever changed—and was forever changed by—one man."

Robert James Waller (Author), Robertson Dean (Narrator)

Audiobook

Broken for You

"A national bestseller, Broken for You is the story of two women in self-imposed exile whose lives are transformed when their paths intersect. Elderly Margaret Hughes is living alone in a mansion in Seattle, with only a massive collection of antiques for company, when she meets Wanda Schultz, a young woman with a broken heart who has come to Seattle to search for her wayward boyfriend. Both women are guarding dark secrets and have spent years building up protective armor against the outside world. But as the two begin their tentative dance of friendship, the armor begins to fall away. When Margaret opens her house to the younger woman, she discovers a way to redeem her cursed past, and Wanda learns the true purpose of her cross-country journey. This exuberant novel is a testament to the saving graces of surrogate families and shows how far the tiniest repair jobs can go in righting the world's wrongs.It is a work of infinite charm, wit, and heart as well as a glorious homage to the beauty of broken things."

Stephanie Kallos (Author), Anna Fields (Narrator)

Audiobook

One For My Baby

"New novel about men, love and relationships by the author of the Book of the Year, Man and Boy. Alfie Budd found the perfect woman with whom to spend the rest of his life, and then lost her. He doesn’t believe you get a second chance at love. Returning to the England he left behind during the brief, idyllic time of his marriage, Alfie finds the rest of his world collapsing around him. He takes comfort in a string of pointless, transient affairs with his students at Churchill’s Language School, and he tries to learn Tai Chi from an old Chinese man, George Chang. Will Alfie ever find a family life as strong as the Changs’? Can he give up meaningless sex for a meaningful relationship? And how do you play it when the woman you like has a difficult child who is infatuated with a TV wrestler known as The Slab? Like his runaway bestseller, Man and Boy, Tony Parsons’s new novel is full of laughter and tears, biting social comment and overwhelming emotion."

Tony Parsons (Author), Colin Buchanan (Narrator)

Audiobook

Treason’s Harbour

"Malta, in 1813, is ostensibly a safe harbour, yet the island is a nest of French spies, and even those in authority are not to be trusted. As Captain Jack Aubrey cools his heels in a Maltese harbour, awaiting repairs to his ship, war rages on. Fearing that hostilities will end before he has any further opportunities for fame and fortune, Aubrey accepts several secret missions, but all is not as it seems. Will a double agent be the undoing of both Jack Aubrey and his friend, ship’s surgeon Stephen Maturin? ‘This is O’Brian at his brilliant entertaining best. When he is on this form the rest of us who write of the Napoleonic conflict might as well give up and try a new career.’ BERNARD CORNWELL ‘Captain Aubrey and his surgeon, Stephen Maturin, compose one of those complex and fascinating pairs of characters which have inspired thrilling stories of all kinds since the Iliad.’ IRIS MURDOCH & JOHN BAYLEY"

Patrick O’brian (Author), Robert Hardy (Narrator)

Audiobook

Blue at the Mizzen

"For a man of war, peacetime is the ultimate challenge. Leaving behind them a Europe still taking stock after the definitive battle of Waterloo, Jack Aubrey and his friend Stephen Maturin set sail for Chile. But even with the newly minted peace, life at sea remains beset with danger and imminent disaster, and the political turmoil of the South American continent is equal to any threat they have yet faced. Out of loss – of purpose, of love – can the two friends rescue what they most desire? ‘Beyond his superbly elegant writing, wit and originality, [O’Brian] showed an understanding of the nature of a floating world at the mercy of the wind and sea which has never been surpassed.’ MAX HASTINGS, Evening Standard ‘From the opening page I was addicted to what I judge to be one of the greatest cycles of storytelling in the English language.’ WILLIAM WALDEGRAVE, Daily Telegraph"

Patrick O’brian (Author), Robert Hardy (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Family Way

"It should be the most natural thing in the world. But in Tony Parsons’ latest bestseller, three couples discover that Mother Nature can be one hell of a bitch. A hard-working trainee doctor, Megan Jewell finds herself accidentally pregnant. She wants a baby one day – but God, not now! Can Megan really bring a baby into the world when she can hardly look after herself? Megan’s happily married sister Jessica wants a baby – immediately. But can the perfect couple really find happiness without the child they so desperately crave? Cat Jewell, the oldest sister, is scarred by the memory of their mother walking out. She wants a baby – maybe. But what’s a girl to do when the man in her life has seen and done it all before? Will Cat be forced to choose between him and motherhood? And what of their partners? Kirk, the Australian beach bum who fathers Megan’s child… Paulo, the doting husband who sees the best thing in his life collapsing for want of a child… And Rory, the older man who just can’t face going through it all again. Tony Parsons shows us once again the dilemmas and decisions that confront men today. Modern-day relationships are tested in this very realistic, contemporary story about procreation and new life."

Tony Parsons (Author), Samantha Bond (Narrator)

Audiobook

Kidnapped

"The classic adventure story of kidnap, shipwreck, murder and pursuit as young David Balfour tries to claim the inheritance he has been cheated out of. ‘I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both; and I believe they both get paid in the end; but the fools first.’ Orphaned as a young teenager, Lowlander David Balfour’s only relative is his guardian and uncle, Ebenezer. Ill-thought of and disliked by many, it’s not long before Ebenezer betrays his nephew and David finds himself trapped aboard a ship. He soon strikes up a friendship with fugitive stranger and Scottish Highlander Alan Breck and becomes embroiled in the fierce Jacobite struggle against English rule. A tale of high-seas adventure, loyalty and fighting, the complex relationship between Alan and David stops Stevenson’s novel from becoming ‘just’ a boys adventure novel."

Robert Louis Stevenson (Author), Tom Conti (Narrator)

Audiobook

Tess of the d’Urbervilles

"Tess, the young and lovely heroine of Hardy’s classic tale, knows instinctively that the path she is choosing is the wrong one. But, a child of her times, what can she do but follow the dictates of her family? Against the lovely background of the English countryside, Thomas Hardy sets his tale of seduction and betrayal as Tess, his beautiful heroine, speeds to her destruction. Lusted after by one man, set on a pedestal by another, Thomas Hardy’s lovely heroine Tess is betrayed by both. Full of images of light and shade, Tess of the d’Urbervilles makes splendid listening in a tale that is both passionate and tender."

Thomas Hardy (Author), Peter Firth (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Blind Assassin

"Available for the first time as a downloadable audio file. ‘Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.’ Thus begins The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood’s new novel. Laura Chase’s older sister Iris, married at eighteen to a politically prominent industrialist but now poor and eighty-two, is living in Port Ticonderoga, a town dominated by their once-prosperous family before the First War. While bewailing her unreliable body and deriding those who try to help her, Iris reflects on her far from exemplary life and her perilous times, but in particular on the events surrounding her sister’s tragic early death. Chief among these was the publication of The Blind Assassin, a novel which earned the dead Laura Chase a dollop of notoriety as well as a cult following: as Iris says, she herself lives ‘in the long shadow cast by Laura’. Sexually explicit for its time and place, The Blind Assassin describes a risky affair in the turbulent thirties between a wealthy young woman and a left-leaning man on the run."

Margaret Atwood (Author), Lorelei King (Narrator)

Audiobook

Gulliver’s Travels

"Swift’s scornful satire, written “to vex the world rather than divert it”, takes a caustic look at those most contemporary concerns irrational prejudice, social inequality, ivory tower elitism and the correct way to open a boiled egg. 'I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.' Shipwrecked on the high seas, Lemuel Gulliver finds himself washed up on the strange island of Lilliput, a land inhabited by quarrelsome miniature people. On his travels he continues to meet others who force him to reflect on human behaviour – the giants of Brobdingnag, the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos. In this scathing satire on the politics and morals of the 18th Century, Swift's condemnation of society and its institutions still resonates today."

Jonathan Swift (Author), Martin Shaw (Narrator)

Audiobook

Far from the Madding Crowd

"Hardy’s classic ‘pastoral tale’ of wilful and capricious Bathsheba Everdene and her three suitors, the faithful shepherd, the lonely widower and the dashing but faithless soldier. An immediate success when it was first published in 1874, Thomas Hardy’s ‘pastoral tale’ of the wilful and capricious Bathsheba Everdene, her three suitors – the faithful shepherd Gabriel Oak, the lonely widower Farmer Boldwood, and the dashing but faithless Sergeant Troy – and the tragic consequences of her eventual choice remains one of the most enduring and popular English novels."

Thomas Hardy (Author), Martin Shaw (Narrator)

Audiobook

Literary Fiction Audiobooks in Literature