Audio books

 

Glimpses of the Moon, The

Author : Edith Wharton

Performed By : Anna Fields

Publisher : Blackstone Audio Inc

Runtime : 9 hours

Categories : Classic Literature

Our Price : $34.95 $29.95

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"As Wharton tells [the] story, the sharp irony of both her prose and her characters

bleeds into pools of true feeling."Kirkus Reviews

"There are only three or four American novelists who can be thought of as 'major'and Edith

Wharton is one."Gore Vidal

Set in the 1920s, The Glimpses of the Moon details the romantic misadventures

of Nick Lansing and Susy Branch, a couple with the right connections but not much in the way of funds.

They devise a shrewd bargain: they'll marry and spend a year or so sponging off their wealthy friends,

honeymooning in their mansions and villas.



As Susy explains, "We should really, in a way, help more than we should hamper each other. We both

know the ropes so well; what one of us didn't see the other mightin the way of opportunities, I mean.

And then we should be a novelty as married people. We're both rather unusually popularwhy not be

frank?and it's such a blessing for dinner-givers to be able to count on a couple of whom neither one

is a blank."



The other part of the plan is that if either one of them meets someone who can advance them socially,

they're each free to dissolve the marriage. How their plan unfolds is a comedy of Eros that will charm

all fans of Wharton's work.

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Felix Holt, The Radical

Author : George Eliot

Performed By : Nadia May

Publisher : Blackstone Audio Inc

Runtime : 18 hours

Categories : Classic Literature

Our Price : $33.95

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"George Eliot's work places great importance on setting...much background is provided to make the nineteenth-century love triangle come alive. Narrator Nadia May fills the listener in with brisk, breathless cadences, breezing through the lengthy descriptions like a lovable neighborhood gossip. Her crisp accent, pauses between sentences, and mastery of tone help the listener understand the predicament of Esther Lyon....As she reads the text, May seems to be enjoying it herself, which enables the listener to do the same."--AudioFile

Relinquishing thoughts of a materially rewarding life, the respectably educated Felix Holt returns to his native village in North Loamshire and becomes an artisan. He is a forceful young man of honor, integrity, and idealism, burning to participate in political life so that he may improve the lot of his fellow artisans.

Contrasted with Felix Holt is the intelligent, economically secure Harold Transome, just returned from the East to assume responsibility for Transome Court, his inherited manor home, and to take a seat in Parliament.

Both men vie for the hand of Esther, a young woman of charm and virtue, who must choose between a life of idealism and a life of refinement.

The narrative is enhanced by plot twists involving illegitimacy and lines of inheritances, as well as by Eliot's vivid character studies, including the corrupt political agent Johnson, Harold Transome's mother, with her fears of a secret being revealed, and the loyal servant Denner.