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  Shadow - A Parable

  Edgar Allan Poe

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  Title: Shadow – A Parable 
  Author: Edgar Allan Poe 
  Narrator: Jonathan Dunne 
  Original Publication: 1835 
  Public Domain: Yes 
  Series Placement: Number 42 in the Timeless Terrors series 
  Description: 
  “Shadow – A Parable” by Edgar Allan Poe is a brief yet profound meditation on death, memory, and the fragile line between the living and the departed. Set amid the aftermath of pestilence, seven figures gather in a dimly lit chamber, haunted by the ghostly presence of a shifting shadow that speaks not to the ear but to the soul. 
  First published in 1835, this early work reveals Poe’s mastery of atmosphere and allegory — a fusion of Biblical solemnity and gothic despair. The story’s vision of mortality and the dissolution of self foreshadows the existential darkness that would come to define Poe’s later works. 
  Narrated by Amazon bestselling horror author Jonathan Dunne, this performance imbues Poe’s haunting prose with a spectral intensity — a voice that rises from the silence of the grave to whisper of humanity’s inevitable end. While the text is in the public domain, this narration is an original performance and copyright © 2025 Jonathan Dunne. 
  Part of Timeless Terrors, a series devoted to resurrecting the masters of the macabre, Shadow – A Parable stands as an eerie meditation on the universality of death — a moment when even the proudest voices of the living fall silent beneath the eternal shadow.

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  Babylon Revisited - Like his...

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

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  Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on 24th September 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota into an upper-middle class family. Whilst his mother was pregnant with him, his two young sisters tragically died.  Fitzgerald once said this was when his destiny as a writer was ordained. 
   
  His intelligence and talent was recognised from an early age, with his first story, about a detective being published in the school magazine when he was just 13.   
   
  In 1913 he enrolled at Princeton but his devotion to his own literary pursuits resulted in him leaving and, rather bizarrely, joining the Army.  In 1918, stationed at Fort Sheridan near Montgomery, Alabama he met and became infatuated and then inseparable from Zelda Sayre.  Initially though she refused to marry him but with the success of ‘This Side of Paradise’, the fame and the flow of money enabled them both to begin a gilded life.  For them this was The Jazz Age.  For Fitzgerald he was already an alcoholic. 
   
  He continued to write with great mastery and the titles of his novels and many of his 164 short stories are household names.  The Great Gatsby, often cited as The Great American Novel was published to mixed reviews.  As America moved from the Great Depression to the slaughter of the Second World War his works and himself were seen as far too entwined with the decadent twenties. The world had moved on and he hadn’t.   
   
  Further tragedy was never far from his life. Zelda after years of erratic and now intolerable behaviour was committed to an institution in 1936.  His own sales began to decline and he became a hack for hire in Hollywood, dependent on increasing amounts of booze and the weekly pay check.  His drunken state had often resulted in arrest or hospitalisation, further imperiling his talents.   Despite his contribution to many MGM films he received only one credit. 
   
  The end came all too soon for one of America’s greatest ever writers.  On 21st December 1940, at only 44 years of age in Hollywood, F Scott Fitzgerald succumbed to a heart attack. 
   
  In this bittersweet story of a man who enjoyed the boom years of la dolce vita and now, in more straitened times, is unable to get what he really wants; the custody of his daughter.  He returns to Paris to meet the ghosts of those good times and to make amends for his past.

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  The Lost World

  Arthur Conan Doyle

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  Reporter Edward Malone, seeking a really heroic assignment to impress his would be paramour; Gladys, is sent to try to gain an interview with the irascible Professor Challenger. But he has little idea of the strange chain of events he is about to become embroiled in! He soon finds himself as a chronicler of a strange expedition that journeys to a strange hidden plateau, where dinosaurs and other strange life still lives...  
  Narrated by Michael Ward

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  Juvenilia – Volume II

  Jane Austen

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  "Run mad as often as you choose; but do not faint!"
  
  If Volume I was the spark, Juvenilia – Volume II is the fire. In this volume, a mid-teen Jane Austen takes aim at the "cult of sensibility" that dominated the novels of her day. The centerpiece, "Love and Freindship" (spelled intentionally with Austen's original flourish), is a brilliant epistolary parody featuring heroines who faint on every sofa they encounter and wander the countryside in a state of perpetual, melodramatic "distraction." This volume also features her iconic "History of England," where she gleefully abandons historical accuracy to defend Mary, Queen of Scots, and mock the "vile" Elizabeth I. It is a collection that proves Austen was a master of irony before she was even twenty.
  
  The Masterpiece of Parody: Love and Freindship: Through a series of letters, Austen deconstructs the romantic tropes of the era. Her characters, Laura and Sophia, believe that "feeling" is more important than "common sense," leading to a series of absurd adventures involving stolen money, secret marriages, and dying of a "chill" caught while fainting in the dew.
  
  The Bias of a Historian: In The History of England, Austen mocks the dry, "objective" historians of her time. Writing as a "partial, prejudiced, and ignorant historian," she proves that history is often just a matter of who you like and who you don't—a biting critique of how narratives are constructed that still feels modern today.
  
  A Developing Genius: From the unfinished "Lesley Castle" to the sharp "Collection of Letters," this volume shows Austen experimenting with different voices and structures. You can see the DNA of Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility being formed in these rowdy, rebellious pages.
  
  Join the fun at the Austen family table. Purchase "Juvenilia – Volume II" today.

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  The Importance of Being Earnest

  Oscar Wilde

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  Looking for a witty, entertaining and thought-provoking listen? Look no further than "The Importance of Being Earnest" by Oscar Wilde, brought to life in this audiobook. 
   
  Follow the hilarious exploits of two bachelors, Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff, as they navigate love, deception and social etiquette in Victorian England. With razor-sharp dialogue, Wilde satirizes the upper-class society of the time, exposing its hypocrisy and ridiculousness with wit and charm. 
   
  But "The Importance of Being Earnest" is more than just a comedy of manners. Beneath the surface, it raises important questions about identity, morality and the true nature of love. Through the characters of Jack and Algernon, Wilde explores the concept of "Bunburying" – the idea of leading a double life – and challenges the rigid social conventions of the day. 
   
  Narrated with all the style and flair you'd expect from Wilde himself, this audiobook is a must-listen for anyone who loves a good laugh and a good think. So sit back, relax, and let yourself be transported to a world of wit, charm and intellectual intrigue. 
   
  Cast 
  John Worthing: Dublin Gothic 
  Algernon Moncrieff: John Fricker 
  Rev. Chasuble: Martin Geeson 
  Merriman: mb 
  Lane: Algy Pug 
  Lady Bracknell: Ruth Golding 
  Gwendolyn Fairfax: Elizabeth Klett 
  Cecily Cardew: Arielle Lipshaw 
  Miss Prism: Carol Box 
  Narrator: Tiffany Halla Colonna

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  Mrs Dalloway

  Virginia Woolf

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  First published in 1925, set 'one Wednesday in mid-June', Mrs Dalloway charts the lives of several characters across a day in London. While Clarissa Dalloway goes about preparing for a high-society party she is to host that evening, pondering on her childhood and marriage, nearby Septimus Warren Smith, a First World War veteran, is plagued with memories of the war and of his friend who never returned.
  Weaving a multitude of voices and eras into one, dressed in the most beautiful of language, Mrs Dalloway has earned its reputation as one of the most iconic novels of the twentieth century and great successes of Modernist fiction.
  This edition also contains 'Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street', the short story upon which the novel is modelled.

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