New Reviews: Classics

David Timson captures gentleman robber Arsène Lupin's multiple identities as he takes listeners through the many twists and turns of Maurice Leblanc's classic story. Timson gives the stranger who robs Rudolph Kesselbach an airy tone, even as menace creeps into his voice. Listeners will soon realize that the stranger is Lupin. Timson adopts a cackling voice when Lupin expresses... Read More

Mike Vendetti narrates this classic WWI story, told from a German soldier's point of view. Paul endures all the brutalities of the Great War that we can imagine--and those that we cannot. Vendetti's deep pitch and rhythmic cadence mirror the random, horrific trajectory of Paul's experiences with trench warfare. Every moment in this story, the good and bad, illustrates the life... Read More

In the days before typewriters and copy machines, there were scriveners--people who meticulously copied documents for lawyers and businessmen. Golden Voice narrator Edoardo Ballerini captures the intelligent, genteel, and, finally, compassionate voice of the narrator of this classic story, who hires a quiet scrivener named Bartleby for his law firm. At first, all is well as... Read More

Henry James's 1878 novella about a flirtatious American girl who is traveling in Europe is part of a growing series of short classics narrated by Edoardo Ballerini. The story has only a small number of characters, but they are diverse, and Ballerini handles them all capably. He gives convincing voices to both the title character and her suitors, one American and one Italian.... Read More

David Timson performs in the character of author Bernard Mandeville as he is revealed in this early-eighteenth-century satirical discourse on economics and morality. In his engaging performance, Timson explicates and clarifies the text, making it easier to absorb while also enlivening it. Subsequent dialogues between a Mandeville proponent, narrated by Justin Avoth, and a... Read More

Golden Voice narrator Edoardo Ballerini has the perfect voice to match the crisp rhythms and assured ease of Hemingway's celebrated prose style in his bestselling semi-autobiographical 1929 classic about an American adventurer who joins the Italian Army in WWI. Known for its realistic depiction of the violence and destruction of war, the novel follows the travails and growth of... Read More

Seth Numrich narrates this classic Jazz Age novel with an introduction by Jesmyn Ward, foreword by Eleanor Lanahan, and afterword by James L.W. West III. The story follows the mysterious Jay Gatsby through the eyes of Nick Carraway, and Nick's cousin, Daisy. Numrich captures Nick's optimism and Daisy's softness with his lively narration. Excelling at long passages full of... Read More

As Kevin R. Free deftly narrates this 1928 bestseller with understated ease, the strength, newfound artistic freedoms, and dizzying magic of the Harlem Renaissance come to life. The Roaring Twenties roar loudly in wonderfully vivid descriptions of gambling, prostitution, cutting-edge jazz, and perfectly groomed mobsters, but it's the story of a job-hopping down-on-his-luck... Read More

Golden Voice Nicholas Boulton gives yet another excellent performance in this second part of Gorky's three-part autobiography. Sometimes titled in English "My Apprenticeship," this work, published in 1916, covers his youth and is as unsentimental as the first part, MY CHILDHOOD. Boulton is superb--as he is in all the many other Naxos classics of Russian literature that he's... Read More

Charlotte Brontë's skill ensured her place in literary history, and this audiobook delves deeply into her life and times. Lucy Scott is the consummate British narrator. Her brisk pace and animated tone remain consistent throughout this extensive audio performance. Supporting cast members are used well to voice various primary sources; these moments highlight the quotations and... Read More

Alison Larkin's bright narration takes listeners to the charming fictional town of Middlemarch, England. Individual goals, loves, and desires intertwine as early-nineteenth-century characters find themselves navigating restrictive social norms amid political and social change. Larkin's narration captures the complex residents as they come to terms with the new world they find... Read More

Quentin Crisp's classic autobiography, originally published in 1968, receives a vibrant new audiobook performance from Christian Coulson. Crisp, the irrepressible gay icon with a delightfully dry wit and unabashed self-expression, takes listeners from his early-twentieth-century British childhood through his seemingly unlikely rise to international celebrity as an openly gay... Read More

With his erudite-sounding English accent, Justin Avoth ably narrates Nabokov's memoir of his early years in pre-Revolutionary Russia and his life as an emigré, ending with a chapter about his time as a translator for the U.S. Army in Berlin immediately after the end of WWII. A composer himself, Nabokov (first cousin of writer Vladimir Nabokov) offers many vignettes of famous... Read More

Golden Voice Rupert Degas captures this first novel in Ford Madox Ford's tetralogy, PARADE'S END. It revolves around WWI and Christopher Tietjens, an aristocrat who was decent, principled--even noble--in a way that is rapidly vanishing. Sometimes impressionistic yet realistically detailed, it paints the world in tones of heightened emotion. Degas's voice is excellent, his... Read More

Laurel Lefkow performs the second in Willa Cather's Great Plains trilogy in a precise, sweet voice that highlights the author's expressive prose. The 1915 novel is the story of Thea Kronberg, a talented girl from a humble home in a Colorado mountain town who, through hard work and luck, goes on to operatic fame. Set in the era of the burgeoning West, replete with railroads,... Read More

Gerry O'Brien skillfully narrates a newly translated collection of Irish stories first collected more than 900 years ago. In the earliest anthology of stories and poems relating to the pursuit of Irish independence, characters from folklore are intermixed with stories of St. Patrick. Pagan and Christian worlds collide in the tales being shared. O'Brien's tone is pleasant to the... Read More

With his bass voice and vocal flair, narrator Bill Homewood transports listeners to France, where we meet D'Artagnan 20 years after his adventures in THE THREE MUSKETEERS. Cardinal Mazarin, the power behind the throne, summons D'Artagnan and commands him to find his former friends, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. France is on the brink of a civil war, and England is in turmoil, so... Read More