Showing results by publisher "Spoken Realms" in Literary Fiction

It is the dawn of the French Revolution when masses of hungry peasants burn the chateaux of aristocrats throughout France. After the death of his estranged family, an 18-year-old nobleman, the Marquis Marcel de la Croix, is forced to raise the royalist banner. The wreck of his family fortress becomes a bastion for newly disenfranchised aristocrats, and Marcel and his fiery associate, Pierre Lafont, lead a rebel group called the League of the Star. After a bitter falling out with Lafont, Marcel escapes to England incognito, hoping to put the past behind him.

Northanger Abbey is one of Jane Austen’s first novels, though it was not published until after her death, and contains some of her most biting satire. Catherine Morland, the novel’s naive and provincial heroine, has formed her idea of the world from Gothic novels, full of gloomy Italian castles, long-kept secrets, and dastardly villains. However, when she travels to the city of Bath and encounters a wider society, she will discover that all her reading has ill-prepared her for the real world.

This is the classic tale of a knight from King Arthur's Round Table who makes a dangerous deal with a mysterious visitor. The production is based on Jessie L. Weston's 1900 prose edition of a 14th-century poem.

One of the early 20th century’s mystery writing masters, G.K. Chesterton, spins a tale set on the wild shores of Cornwall, England. Here the locals fear a grove of trees, the “peacock trees,” believed to spread disease and eat people. Squire Vane dismisses such talk as mere superstition. When three guests arrive, the discussion about the trees enrages the Squire who vows to show them how foolish this myth is by spending a night in the grove. The next day, he’s nowhere to be found. And then begins the effort to solve this latest mystery, made more difficult by the characters’ pride.

What would you do with a talisman that could grant you three wishes? Any three wishes you could imagine? In the classic horror short story, The Monkey's Paw, by W.W. Jacobs, the White family discovers that sometimes, wishes are too good to be true. When Sergeant Major Morris, an old friend who served in the military and has traveled to far off lands, introduces the Whites to a mummified monkey's paw that he claims can grant the owner three wishes. He leaves them with a warning: IF you use the monkey's paw, be careful what you wish for!

Lucy Honeychurch is a young English girl abroad in Italy for the first time and is ready to experience all the beauty, art, and romance it has to offer. She is hampered by the oppressive attentions of her chaperone, her prim cousin Charlotte, as well as the presence of a substantial British expatriate and tourist community in Florence.

The story opens on the first sledding day of the season, and all of the children in town are out in force. Our hero and heroine, 13-year-olds Jack Minot and Janey Pecq, go down a particularly treacherous run and are both seriously injured. Over the next year, Jack and Jill (as she is called) are nurtured back to health by their widowed mothers. As the seasons pass, we become intimately acquainted with not only Jack and Jill, but their group of friends.

Everything in the world revolves around just him. Or does it? A moral fable on delusions of self-importance. First published 1888 in The Happy Prince and Other Tales.

A moral fable on true and fake friendship. Hugh the Miller is little Hans's best friend...or is he? First published in 1888 in The Happy Prince and Other Tales.

Sally Carrol Happer is a popular 19-year-old girl living in Tarleton, Georgia. She is bored with her life in Tarleton, and, much to the chagrin of her local friends, she becomes engaged to Harry Bellamy, who is from a northern town. She brushes off the concerns of her friends and describes that she needs something "more in her life" and to see "things happen on a big scale".

Siddhartha, the respected son of a Brahmin, is expected, by all who know him, to follow in the footsteps of his father. No matter what rituals and meditations Siddhartha undergoes, he is totally unsatisfied with self, rituals, and learning. Sidhhartha leaves his father's house and together with his close friend Govinda, he starts his journey to enlightenment. He starts his journey with the ascetics, and moves on to learn what Gotama can teach, finally discovering his path for himself.

The Beautiful and Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1922 novel, introduced Fitzgerald fans to 22-year-old Gloria Gilbert, a drop-dead gorgeous, selfish, gumdrop-addicted beauty from Kansas City, and 25-year-old Anthony Patch, a handsome, heir-to-a-fortune, careless, spoiled Harvard graduate and New York bon vivant. The novel opens in 1913, a time of flappers, jazz clubs, silent movies, and, for those who could afford it, a 24/7 world of parties, booze, and social extravagances.

In This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald gives us Amory Blaine, who, from boyhood through his early 20s, is on a quest for his identity, his philosophy, and his sense of place in a world never quite his own, a world in which he moves with barely concealed ego-fueled disgust and contempt. Fitzgerald's breakthrough novel, written in 1920 when the author was 23, manages to be both a thinly veiled autobiography and a sincere attempt by Fitzgerald to get into the head of the young, privileged personages of his time.

Why can't Millie Lord remember who she is? What is Birdly Laughing? Does Dr. Nottle's Cheese Diet work? Crane Mansions is a novel for grown-up children, a darkly comic and magical world in which the wondering, fantasy, and confusion of children come face-to-face with the schemes, delusions, and machinations of adults.

Charles Dickens' classic Yuletide tale is one of the most popular tales of personal redemption in world literature, and has been adapted many times for presentation on film and on stage.

Franz Kafka's haunting short story about a man both on display and marginalized by a fickle society.

One of the earliest creative approaches to feminist literature, this sinister horror story tells of a woman's mental anguish and unconscious struggle with conformity in a society that generally viewed women as weak and hysterical creatures unable to think for themselves. The author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935), a prominent American feminist, paved the way for other authors like Sylvia Plath and Alice Walker. She suffered mental illness during her life and ultimately committed suicide.

What a coincidence. The mummies wake up once a millennium, and who should stumble into the pyramid but our hero? This is a fun little story about a British ne'er-do-well who has found possible wealth and prosperity by becoming engaged to the rather plain - and plain is a nice word for it - daughter of a new English nobleman. But wait. He wanders into the pyramid when the mummies have their 24 hours of life once a millennium, and he falls madly in love with the Pharaoh's daughter, who is some 6,000 years old.

The dark strains of madness that permeate many of the works of Edgar Allan Poe make their way through this macabre story. This memorable short story bears a resemblance to Poe's Tell Tale Heart. In both stories guilt leaves a murderer with a singular choice.

A longing for spring just isn't enough for the poet. He sees evidence that new life begins after death. His longing goes beyond the daisy, the aroma, and the warmth of the sun. He longs for a new home that transcends the short life of a flower. A poem story evoking an anticipated future. Narrated by Glenn Hascall.