New Reviews: Classics

Narrator Lucy Scott is quite good as Aurora Leigh, who tells her own story in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's novel in verse. Scott hints at the various voices and deftly expresses the Victorian (often exaggerated) passions of the characters. The poetry is clear without undue vocal emphasis. There's not much she can do, however, to speed up the story. To a contemporary listener,... Read More

The embarrassment of riches among Naxos's narrators doesn't benefit this production, sadly. Wilkie Collins's melodramatic romance involves troubled marriages and religious intrigue. Nicholas Boulton's third-person narration also includes interpolated sections (mostly letters), in which the same characters Boulton has portrayed are acted by others. A long, final section of diary... Read More

Like many sci-fi authors, Bradbury predicted many of today's less admirable achievements, such as earbuds and huge TVs. So not surprisingly, this 1953 title is timeless. Penn Badgley, pleasant-voiced and convincing, is an outstanding narrator. His tone resonates with personality, and his subtle character shifts are effective, especially as he portrays this novel's antihero, a... Read More

The title of this audiobook refers to a style of architecture, Hudson River Bracketed, that was popular during Edith Wharton's lifetime. This is one of Wharton's lesser-known novels. Kate Reading's performance is precise and methodical--therefore, well suited to Wharton's style. Vance Weston is a young man who is finding his footing in early-twentieth-century America.... Read More

Zola seems equally focused on all forms of corruption in Second Empire France--financial, political, and sexual. So it's fitting that narrator Leighton Pugh applies a high level of emotional intensity to this tawdry drama. The novel ranges from near incestuous lovemaking in a literal hothouse to the intricate details of women's gowns, styles of architecture, and real estate... Read More

Narrator David Timson, renowned for his narration of the Sherlock Homes canon, performs this slowly unfolding tale of murder and deception written by a pioneer of detective stories in 1868. After the murder of two men and the injury of a third, sharp-eyed police detective Monsieur Lecoq follows clues through the streets of Paris. For the narrative Timson adopts a flat accent,... Read More

Jonathan Keeble's calm baritone adds just the right period touches to this seemingly simple mystery. In the small Dorsetshire village of Anneypenny, David Sewell witnesses the agonizing death of his friend. The local doctor claims the cause of death was gastric ulcers. David doesn't believe his diagnosis and slowly builds a case to prove otherwise. Keeble subtly introduces a... Read More

PIC is not much like Kerouac's other works in that the protagonist, Pictorial Review Jackson, is not based on the author. Pic is a 10-year-old Black orphan from rural North Carolina, and he's written to sound like just that. Dion Graham brings his usual masterful command of accents to Pic's story, in which his brother Slim rescues him from their aunt's house and carries him off... Read More

This audiobook, originally published in print in 1929, reintroduces a classic amateur sleuth from the Golden Age of detective stories. Celebrated narrator David Timson recounts how self-styled criminologist Ambrose Chitterwick witnesses a murder in the lounge of London's Piccadilly Palace Hotel and later investigates what took place. Timson accurately and sympathetically... Read More

London-born actor Rupert Degas brings his enticingly warm voice and an edge-of-your-seat intensity to his performance of John Buchan's famously propulsive spy thriller. Adapted many times, including by Alfred Hitchcock, the 1915 novel centers on mining engineer Richard Hannay, who hears of an international assassination plot and then must flee London when he becomes a murder... Read More