London Labour and the London Poor is a rare and fascinating insight into the lives and struggles of the 19th century poor. Written by journalist and reformer Henry Mayhew, a founder and editor of the satirical magazine Punch, it collects hundreds of testimonials from the lower strata of Victorian society. We encounter street entertainers, 'pure finders,' cabinetmakers, gingerbread sellers, 'screeve-fakers,' swindlers and burglars. We hear accounts from toshers finding items in sewers, people attempting to train pigs to dance, and witness the sale of everything from gilt watches and chickweed to needles, dog collars and eel soup. It is a remarkable work, said to have inspired the socially conscious fiction of Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, who described it as 'a picture of human life so wonderful, so awful, so piteous and pathetic, so exciting and terrible, that readers of romances own they never read anything like to it.' David Timson's sharp-witted and authoritative tone perfectly suits Mayhew's detailed social observations.

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 1 (Unabridged

Phineas Finn, a handsome young man of 23, comes to England to make his fortune in parliamentary politics. But despite all his aspirations, Finn is haunted by ethical questions as his personal convictions conflict with his duty towards his party. Loyalty versus honor, love versus money, and privacy versus prominence: our eponymous hero faces a variety of dilemmas as he navigates his way through the House of Commons. The second installment of Trollope’s celebrated Palliser series, Phineas Finn is a delightful and humorous look at the complexity of human relationships and the politics surrounding the Second Reform Bill of the 1860s.

WILDE, O.: Picture of Dorian Gray (The) (Unabridged)

Considered the bridge between romanticism and modernism, Matthew Arnold wrote verse that is simple, unadorned and straightforward. From the hypnotic and beautiful lines of Dover Beach to the pastoral narrative of The Scholar Gipsy, Arnold cast a gaze at the main intellectual issues of the nineteenth century while giving a timeless insight into man and nature. This collection covers his major poetic works, including the narrative poems, sonnets and elegiac poems, illuminating the lyricism and serenity of Arnold’s best poetry. The collection includes: Dover Beach, Desire, Longing, A Summer Night, Consolation, Philomela, A Dream, The Scholar Gipsy, East London, West London, Thyrsis, Immortality, Growing Old, A Wish, Bacchanalia; Or, The New Age, A Modern Sappho, The Hayswater Boat, The River, Human Life, The Buried Life, Austerity of Poetry, A Farewell, Requiescat

Once again, the itnrepid Zorro fights for justice! In the fourth of Naxos Audiobooks' Zorro titles, our hero's assistance is sought when the devious Pedro Morelos threatens the fortune of a wealthy heir, Vicente Canchola. Morelos hatches a plot to kidnap the Governor of California and extort profitable trade concessions from him. Zorro overhears this, but will he be able to foil the evil scheme, and stop the Canchola estate from falling into the wrong hands? This marks the final entry in the series; previous titles include The Mark of Zorro, The Further Adventures of Zorro, and Zorro Rides Again. Bill Homewood gives a lively and inimitably colorful reading as he is well accustomed to adventure stories, having previously recorded The Three Musketeers, She and the Four Just Men series.

Ulysses is one of the greatest literary works in the English language. In his remarkable tour de force, Joyce catalogues one day-16 June 1904-in immense detail as Leopold Bloom wanders through Dublin, talking, observing, musing-and always remembering.