To the Lighthouse is Virginia Woolf's most accomplished novel, and her most autobiographical. It tells of one summer spent by the Ramsay family and their friends in their holiday home in Scotland. Offshore stands the lighthouse, remote, inaccessible, an eternal presence in a changing world. A projected visit to the lighthouse forms the heart of this extraordinary novel which, through the minds of the various characters, explores the nature of time, memory, transience and eternity. The style has the clarity of a diamond which shimmers in the mind, making to the Lighthouse one o.

Chopin, K.: Awakening (The) (Abridged)

ELIOT, G.: Silas Marner (Abridged)

SUETONIUS: Lives of the Twelve Caesars (Abridged)

AUSTEN, J.: Northanger Abbey (Abridged)

SHAKESPEARE'S LOVERS

WILDE, O.: Lady Windermere' s Fan (Unabridged)

In the grotesque bell-ringer Quasimodo, Victor Hugo created one of the most vivid characters in classic fiction. Quasimodo�s doomed love for the beautiful gypsy girl Esmerelda is an example of the traditional love theme of beauty and the beast. Yet, set against the massive background of Notre Dame de Paris and interwoven with the sacred and secular life of medieval France, it takes on a larger perspective. The characters come to life: the poet Gringoire, the tormented priest Claude Frollo, the upright, fun-loving captain Phoebus and above all Quasimodo and Esmerelda themselves. It is a tale peppered with humor but fuelled by the anguish which unfolds beneath the bells of the great cathedral of Paris.

Here are sixteen tales from one of the great works of the Middle Ages. Ten young people have fled for a while, the terrible effects of the Black Death in Florence and, in an idyllic setting, tell a series of brilliant stories, by turns humorous, bawdy, tragic and provocative. This celebration of physical and sexual vitality is Boccaccio's answer to the sublime other-worldliness of Dante's Divine Comedy.

D. H. Lawrence is valued by many as a significant representative of modernism in English literature, and a visionary thinker. Considered the most widely read novel of the twentieth century, D. H. Lawrence’s fiery fifth book continues the loves and lives of The Rainbow’s Brangwen sisters, Gudrun and Ursula. Gerald Crich, son of a wealthy colliery owner, captures the heart of Gudrun, while Ursula becomes enamoured with Rupert Birkin, a school inspector- their complex relationship likely modeled on that between Lawrence, his wife Frieda, and John Middleton Murry and Katherine Mansfield. Things are far from harmonious, and the discord and conflict leads to many heated and elaborate philosophical discussions about modern society and the nature of love, while tragedy looms large. Lawrence held this to be his best book, and F.R. Leavis regarded it to be his most profound and rewarding.

A Study in Scarlet was the very first Sherlock Holmes novel. Here, in the most remarkably precise manner, Doyle produced two of the most well-known characters in English fiction. Their individual traits and their relationships, their ambitions and foibles are introduced against the backdrop of an exciting story of revenge and persistance, which starts in Victorian England but moves to the American West, and the environment of the early Mormon communities. It is a full novel, and is here read, unabridged in richly characterized style by David Timson. This is the fifth Naxos Audiobooks recor.

CANTERBURY TALES III, THE

White, T.H.: Once and Future King (The) (Unabridged)

Charles Darwin, father of evolution, was one of the greatest pioneers in science. His five-year voyage on the Beagle, his visit to the Galapagos Islands, his careful work in noting small differences of fauna on different islands all led to the concept of natural selection, which radically changed the way mankind and the animal world was viewed. But what kind of man was Darwin, and why did he keep his conclusions secret for so many years? In this clear but informative account, Peter Whitfield sets Darwin in the 19th-century society from which he sprang.

The Knight's Tale of medieval wars and chivalry is the first tale told to the pilgrims as they set out to Canterbury. It concerns Theseus, returning from fighting at Thebes, two brother knights Palamon and Arcite, imprisoned but yearning for their loves. But the real hero of this recording is Richard Bebb who, with the help of Professor Derek Brewer, the leading expert on Chaucerian pronunciation, makes the original Middle English not only comprehensible to the modern ear, but exciting.