Audio Books

Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast, Volume 1

William Cowper Brann
William Cowper Brann earned the nickname “The Iconoclast” by fearlessly attacking established beliefs and institutions which he thought to be pompous and self-serving. He settled in the wild and wooly West Texas town of Waco in the late 1800s as a newspaper man - first as a writer and then as owner of newspaper he named “The Iconoclast”. During this period, Catholics and Protestants were duking it out over the soul of Texas and there was even further sectarian strife among Protestants. Brann wrote prolifically and aired his Politically Incorrect views with vigor and colorful language.Described as a “slouch-hatted, gun-toting, beer-drinking, woman-worshiping man,” he assailed Baptists, Prohibition, blacks and universities as though engaged in a life-or-death gunfight; and actually he was killed in a gunfight at age 43. After he was shot in the back, drew his own gun and killed the man who had bushwacked him AND THEN walked directly to the jail before dying the next morning.He wrote entertaining, elevated prose; but occasionally colored his stories with barnyard terminology. Despite his blatant chauvinism, his voice was a reaction against many of the societal extremes of the day. ( William Jones )

Minstrel Weather

Marian Storm
A series of poetically written meditations on the seasons and other nature subjects. Or “ …Minstrel Weather, a series of open-air vignettes which circle the zodiac with the attentive eye of a naturalist and the enchanted ardor of a poet.”

Yellowstone National Park: Six Early Pieces

Various
Lost in the wilderness of The Yellowstone for over a month, nearly dying of starvation and wild animal attack, despairing of ever finding his way out. Here are six relatively unknown early pieces about the U.S.A.’s first national park. The first is a U.S. Geological booklet about initial exploration and Congress’s institution of the park. The next two are articles from Scribner’s Monthly, 1871, a very popular magazine of the time, describing the park’s features (vol 2 #1 pp 1-17 and vol 2 #2 pp 113-128) . The fourth piece is a narrative by the leader of the exploratory expedition described in the first piece, H.V. Hayden (Scribner’s Monthly, vol 3#2 pp 388-396, February 1872) The fifth piece is a lecture on the park by a very popular lecturer and writer, 1900 (John L. Stoddard’s Lectures, vol 10). The last piece is a man’s first-person narrative of his being lost in the Yellowstone wilderness for thirty-seven days, 1871, Scribner’s Monthly again (vol 3#1).

Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche: Volume 3

Friedrich Nietzsche
Volume 3 of the complete works contains several short critical introductory essays, five lectures under the heading "On the Future of our Educational Institutions," and finally an essay by the author entitled "Homer and Classical Philology." As always, Nietzsche believes in the importance of classical thought.

Square Deal

Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt became the 26th president of the United States when president William McKinley was assassinated in 1901. As the youngest president, Roosevelt advanced the progressive Republican program known as the “Square Deal” focused on conservation of natural resources, control of corporations, and consumer protection. Expanding on this theme, “The matter contained is this book has been carefully prepared from the many addresses by the President, the aim being to bring under each specific head the ideas expressed on many occasions, by Horace Markle.” Topics range from The Farmer to World Peace, and The Essence of Christian Character.

Gossip in a Library

Edmund Gosse
A collection of informal essays about books in his library. He combines commentary, translations, and humorous asides about authors and their subjects.

On

Hilaire Belloc
Hilaire Belloc, French by birth, British by naturalization, was a diverse and prolific writer of the early 20th century. His writing runs the range from poetry, political writings and children’s stories. He was a close friend, and sometimes collaborator with fellow Catholic G.K. Chesterton.
This book is a collection of essays and other short writings on a vast array of subjects ranging from observations on Bad Verse and Mumbo-Jumbo to Sailing the Seas and Hatred of Numbers.

Hope Farm Notes

Herbert W. Collingwood
“Most of these notes were originally printed in the Rural New-Yorker from week to week and covering a period of about 20 years. . . . From the very first the object of these notes has been to picture simply and truthfully the brighter, cheerful side of Farm Life.” (From the author’s preface) Herbert W. Collingwood gives us a delightful collection of essays reflecting his homespun wisdom and wit from the rural setting of the farm in early twentieth century America. He touches on subjects from baseball to Christmas, all reflecting his treasured values of home and family.

On Something

Hilaire Belloc
“Now that story is a symbol, and tells the truth. We see some one thing in this world, and suddenly it becomes particular and sacramental; a woman and a child, a man at evening, a troop of soldiers; we hear notes of music, we smell the smell that went with a passed time, or we discover after the long night a shaft of light upon the tops of the hills at morning: there is a resurrection, and we are refreshed and renewed.”
- Hilaire Belloc

From the Easy Chair Vol. 3

George William Curtis
The third volume of essays and observations From the Easy Chair of William Curtis, editor of Harper's Weekly and one of the founders of the American Republican party, and served Ulysses S. Grant; although he split from the party in the 1880s over the choice of presidential candidate. He was an original member of the New York Board of Education. ( Lynne Thompson)

Holiday Round

A. A. Milne
Alan Alexander Milne, popularly known as A. A. Milne, is best known – perhaps to most people only known – for his children’s book, Winnie the Pooh. Yet he was an incredibly prolific author. He published dozens of successful plays, myriad humorous articles written for internationally prominent journals, a wide range of social, political, and other nonfiction works, and even a murder mystery.

This collection is humorous throughout, but humorous in a particularly Milnesque way: he consciously and quite openly rejected the bitterness of satire in favor of a peculiarly gentle, often self-deprecating humor. Included here are dozens of short essays showing, among other things, Milne’s extraordinary capacity to understand – and be understood by – children, and his special affinity for women, as friends and as lovers.

Five Lectures on Blindness

Foley, Kate M.
The [five] lectures were written primarily to be delivered at the summer sessions of the University of California, at Berkeley and at Los Angeles, in the summer of 1918. . . they are the outgrowth of almost a quarter of a century spent in work for the blind, and were written from the standpoint of a blind person, seeking to better the condition of the blind. They were addressed not to the blind, but to the seeing public, for the benefit that will accrue to the blind from a better understanding of their problems. (Extract from the Forward by Milton J. Ferguson)

It Might Have Happened to You

Coningsby Dawson
This is a frank eyewitness description of the suffering, starvation in particular, that was widely experienced in Central and Eastern Europe in the aftermath of "The Great War". “It is not stating matters too strongly to say that…peace had caused at least as much misery as the four years’ fury of embattled armies.” It is a powerful political and anti-war statement with scant mention of any battle. – Lee Smalley

Hearts of Controversy

Alice Meynell
Alice Meynell was an English essayist, critic, and poet who was also a leading suffragist, serving as vice-president of the Women Writers' Suffrage League, She and her husband Wilfrid Meynell were active in publishing and editing literary works including helping to launch the first works of Francis Thompson, author of "Hound of Heaven." The Meynell's later converted to Roman Catholicism. In this volume, In this volume Meynell offers her impressions on some of the best known literary figures of her day including Charles Dickens, Tennyson.and the Bronte sisters.

Is the Bible Worth Reading and Other Essays

Lemuel Kelley Washburn
These are more than 100 short essays on all things atheism and freethought penned by Lemuel K. Washburn, an American freethought writer and editor for the Boston Investigator. He talks about a wide range of topics, for example about women and the church, human integrity, the character of god and the idea and teachings of Jesus. At the end of some essays there are aphorisms from his pen. Washburn is best known for the Cosmian Hymn Book: A Collection of Original and Selected Hymns, a collection of hymns promoted as "perfectly free from all sectarianism" published in 1888.

Women's Wild Oats: Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards

Catherine Gasquoine Hartley
A resounding and, for the times, outrageous look at restructuring British society using the first world war as trigger for changing the place of women in the workplace and their homes, right down to their relations with their children. These essays are persuasively argued and copiously documented.

Spirit of Place and Other Essays

Alice Meynell
Alice Meynell was an English essayist, critic, and poet who was also a leading suffragist, serving as vice-president of the Women Writers' Suffrage League. She and her husband Wilfrid Meynell were active in publishing and editing literary works including helping to launch the first works of Francis Thompson, author of "Hound of Heaven." This is a collection of her essays covering a wide range of topics from the opening essay on the "Spirit of Place" to a playful essay about the foot, and musing on topics such as rain, the horizon and the concluding essay, "Shadows."

Essays on Work and Culture

Hamilton Wright Mabie
The author investigates the world of work against a backdrop of culture. Each of the 25 essays focuses on one aspect of the topic. For example, the first essay, "Tool or Man?" looks at two views of man. One is that of strength as the provider of security. The other is that of aesthete, as an enthusiast of the arts or academics or religion. In our culture, provider of security is the winner every time. Man as a source of multiple talents cannot be allowed. As the author frames the argument, "Specialisation has been carried so far that it has become an organised tyranny." The author promotes the idea of a world in which we view the total man, not just the provider of security. In succeeding essays the author deals with growth from youth to maturity, the role of education, and man's search for freedom.

Essay on the Trial by Jury

Lysander Spooner
FOR more than six hundred years that is, since Magna Carta, in 1215 there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge of the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws.

So begins Spooner's epic on the jury, its origins and history. Spooner examines the history and powers of a jury, from the magna carta in King John's time, to the practices in the 18th century. A classic work on law, Spooner argues that the decision of the jury is sovereign over the king's law.

Bird Stories from Burroughs

John Burroughs
What a better way to learn about birds than to read this delightful collection of interesting bird stories! John Burroughs was a nature essayist. These creative, observation- and emotion-driven stories about birds (largely from the Northeastern states), have been gathered together into a single volume from all his various works. Every chapter follows one species of birds, and the chapters have been arranged chronologically according to the time of the bird's arrival during the year. This collection has lovely illustrations of the birds by Louis Agassiz Fuertes, and some stories also have poems to go along with them.

From October to Brest-Litovsk

Leon Trotsky
This account by Trotsky is of the events in Russia from the October Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd, to his signing of the Brest-Litovsk treaty with Germany on 3rd March 1918 which took Russia out of the First World War. The treaty exacted heavy losses for Russia in terms of annexations of land and financial indemnities to Germany. In this extended essay, Trotsky argues the reasons as to why he decided to sign what appears to be a disastrous agreement for Russia.

Religio Journalistici

Christopher Morley
The great Canadian journalist and humorist ruminates and reflects upon his life and calling in this 1924 little gem.

Holy Life the Beauty of Christianity

John Bunyan
Written in the late 1600s by John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim's Progress, this treatise exhorts Christians to holy living. Bunyan takes as his text Psalm 93:5, 'Holiness becometh thine house, O Lord, forever,' and from it he presents true holiness as true beauty, calling his fellow believers out of the religious hypocrisy of his era to a genuine pursuit of God. Spiritually, this work is a little-known gem from a respected religious figure, and historically it is a unique look at the Christian church and family in the seventeenth century. Whatever your reason for coming to 'A Holy Life,' it is worth the read...or listen.

Narratives of Colored Americans

Abigail Mott
Abigail Mott was a Quaker and abolitionist from New York who, along with fellow Quaker M. S. Wood, has compiled a provocative collection of stories of “Colored Americans.” They range from well-known figures such as Phillis Wheatley and Sojourner Truth to the common men and women who give poignant insights of their life. Selections consist of short anecdotes, essays, stories, letters and poetry. Many have strong religious and spiritual themes.

Women, Children, Love and Marriage

Catherine Gasquoine Hartley
This book contains a number of essays about various subjects pertaining to women, children love and marriage

Essays Irish and American

John Butler Yeats
From the noted artist and father of the celebrated Irish poet William Butler Yeats comes this short collection of essays on the literary life of their age. Included are two short biographical remembrances of the author.

Inner Life

John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier was an influential American Quaker poet and ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. He is usually listed as one of the Fireside Poets. Whittier was strongly influenced by the Scottish poet Robert Burns. In this book, John Whittier elaborates the Conflict With Slavery, Politics and Reform.

English Audio Books

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Dictionary 180,000

Fiction364

Action & Adventure315

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General694

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Classics (Greek & Antiquity)94

Crime & Mystery195

Detective322

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Dramatic Readings151

Epistolary Fiction47

Erotica12

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Historical Fiction433

Humorous Fiction387

Literary227

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Religious Fiction109

Romance477

Sagas16

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Sports Fiction9

Suspense & Espionage79

War & Military Fiction89

Westerns98

Fantastic Fiction103

Myths, Legends & Fairy Tales178

Horror & Supernatural Fiction150

Gothic Fiction25

Science Fiction490

Fantasy Fiction83

Short Stories260

Anthologies37

Single Author Collections142

Published before 180020

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General483

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Ballads & Epics43

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Non-Fiction427

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Memoirs187

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