To the Lighthouse is Virginia Woolf’s arresting analysis of domestic family life, centering on the Ramseys and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland in the early 1900s. Nicole Kidman (Moulin Rouge, Eyes Wide Shut), who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Woolf in the film adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel

The Hours, brings the impressionistic prose of this classic to vibrant life.

A Room of One's Own, based on a lecture given at Girton College Cambridge, is one of the great feminist polemics. Woolf's blazing polemic on female creativity, the role of the writer, and the silent fate of Shakespeare's imaginary sister remains a powerful reminder of a woman's need for financial independence and intellectual freedom.

The Waves traces the lives of six friends from childhood to old age. It was written when Virginia Woolf was at the height of her experimental powers, and she allows each character to tell their own story, through powerful, poetic monologues. By listening to these voices struggling to impose order and meaning on their lives, we are drawn into a literary journey that stunningly reproduces the complex, confusing and contradictory nature of human experience. It is read with affection and skill by Frances Jeater.

Fantasy, love and an exuberant celebration of English life and literature, Orlando is a uniquely entertaining story. Originally conceived by Virginia Woolf as a playful tribute to the family of her friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West, Orlando's central character, a fictional embodiment of Sackville-West, changes sex from a man to a woman and lives throughout the centuries, whilst meeting historical figures of English literature.

The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful but slowly going under - maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.

Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.

Handsome, wealthy, and a veteran of service in India, Captain Edward Ashburnham appears to be the ideal "good soldier" and the embodiment of English upper-class virtues. But for his creator, Ford Madox Ford, he also represents the corruption at society's core. Beneath Ashburnham's charming, polished exterior lurks a soul well-versed in the arts of deception, hypocrisy, and betrayal.

Dorothea Brooke is an ardent idealist who represses her vivacity and intelligence for the cold, theological pedant Casaubon. One man understands her true nature: the artist Will Ladislaw. But how can love triumph against her sense of duty and Casaubon’s mean spirit? Meanwhile, in the little world of Middlemarch, the broader world is mirrored: the world of politics, social change, and reforms, as well as betrayal, greed, blackmail, ambition, and disappointment.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic American novel of the Roaring Twenties is beloved by generations of readers and stands as his crowning work. This new audio edition, authorized by the Fitzgerald estate, is narrated by Oscar-nominated actor Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain). Gyllenhaal's performance is a faithful delivery in the voice of Nick Carraway, the Midwesterner turned New York bond salesman, who rents a small house next door to the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby....

One of William Faulkner’s finest novels, As I Lay Dying, originally published in 1930, remains a captivating and stylistically innovative work. The story revolves around a grim yet darkly humorous pilgrimage, as Addie Bundren’s family sets out to fulfill her last wish: to be buried in her native Jefferson, Mississippi, far from the miserable backwater surroundings of her married life.

A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation, The Sun Also Rises introduces two of Hemingway’s most unforgettable characters: Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. The story follows the flamboyant Brett and the hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal bullfighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates. In his first great literary masterpiece, Hemingway portrays an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions.

Often cited as the best work of short fiction ever written, Joyce's elegant story details a New Year's Eve gathering in Dublin that is so evocative and beautiful that it prompts the protagonist's wife to make a shocking revelation to her husband - closing the story with an emotionally powerful epiphany that is unsurpassed in modern literature."The Dead" is the final short story in Joyce's 1914 collection Dubliners. It is the longest story in the collection and widely considered to be one of the greatest short stories in the English language.

Graham Greene’s evocative analysis of the love of self, the love of another, and the love of God is an English classic that has been translated for the stage, the screen, and even the opera house. Academy Award-winning actor Colin Firth (The King’s Speech, A Single Man) turns in an authentic and stirring performance for this distinguished audio release.

Tom Jones, a foundling, is brought up by the kindly Mr. Allworthy as if he were his own son. Forced to leave the house as a young man after tales of his disgraceful behavior reach his benefactor's ears, he sets out in utter despair, not only because of his banishment but because he has now lost all hope of gaining the hand of the beautiful Sophia. But she too is forced to flee her parental home to escape an undesirable marriage and their stories and adventures intertwine.

The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling force and acuity. It begins with a boy. Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.

It is a June day in London in 1923, and the lovely Clarissa Dalloway is having a party. Whom will she see? Her friend Peter, back from India, who has never really stopped loving her? What about Sally, with whom Clarissa had her life’s happiest moment? Meanwhile, the shell-shocked Septimus Smith is struggling with his life on the same London day.

This is the remarkable story of a day in the life of one woman, Clarissa Dalloway, the people in her circle, and those touching upon her friends and acquaintances.

The events of the story occupy a single June day in post-World War I Central London, as wealthy and fashionable society hostess Clarissa Dalloway is preparing for a party she is to give that evening. Through her thoughts and memories, the voices of others who have touched on her life and will attend her party, Virginia Woolf shows her genius as a writer who is both accessible and popular.

Virginia Woolf’s most famous "stream of consciousness" novel, Mrs. Dalloway, records the events of one June day in 1923 - the day on which Clarissa Dalloway is hosting a party in her London home. Mrs. Dalloway continues to fascinate and challenge, hinting at homosexuality, mental illness, racial prejudice, infidelity, and unrequited love. It presents a perfect picture of London between the wars, in an England where the class system is still firmly entrenched while carrying throughout an undercurrent of rage at the resulting inequalities.

A single day becomes the entirety of a life in Virginia Woolf’s enduring exploration of a woman’s soul and purpose. As society hostess Clarissa Dalloway prepares for a party, she also reflects hour by hour on her past, her secret burdens, her safe marriage, and other compromises that have brought her to this moment in time. But elsewhere in London, a stranger, a damaged World War I veteran, makes irreversible choices of his own - choices that will intrude on Mrs. Dalloway’s reverie before the night is over.

Considered to be one of Virginia Woolf's most popular novels, Mrs. Dalloway follows one high-society woman as she goes about her day planning a splendid party for her acquaintances. As she goes about her day, she ponders on the life she could be living had she not married the reliable Richard Dalloway and instead sought the enigmatic Peter Walsh. At one point, she muses on the fact that she had not the option to be with a close female friend of hers. The novel then takes a turn to follow Septimus Smith, First World War veteran plagued with deferred traumatic stress.

In the aftermath of World War I, Clarissa Dalloway is an upper-class politician’s wife, who longs for the carefree, impassioned days of her youth. Her marriage to a sensible man gives her many opportunities to socialize and progress in society, but this practicality also prevented her from following other romantic and personal passions. These old regrets come to new light as Clarissa is reintroduced to Peter Walsh, a man she loved—and who had proposed to her—in her younger days.

Mrs. Dalloway is a novel by Virginia Woolf, published in 1925, that details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional upper-class woman in post-First World War England. It is one of Woolf's best-known novels. The book describes Clarissa's preparations for a party she will host in the evening, and the ensuing party. With an interior perspective, the story travels forwards and backwards in time, to construct an image of Clarissa's life and of the inter-war social structure. The novel addresses the nature of time in personal experience through multiple interwoven stories.

Mrs. Dalloway was the breakthrough novel by Virginia Woolf that solidified her reputation as one of the most important writers of her era. Written in a new, free-wheeling style for the time, the book details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a British socialite in post-First World War England. The book takes place in a single day, and describes the eponymous lead character as she prepares for and hosts a party. Looping backwards and forwards in time, the listener is given a glimpse into the mind of Mrs. Dalloway, and several of her guests.

In the rigid theocracy of Salem, Massachusetts, rumors that women are practicing witchcraft galvanize the town. In a searing portrait of a community engulfed by panic—with ruthless prosecutors, and neighbors eager to testify against neighbor—The Crucible famously mirrors the anti-Communist hysteria that held the United States in its grip in the 1950’s.