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  Dracula

  Bram Stoker

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  "I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the super-sensitive skin of my throat and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited waited with beating heart." 
  In equal measures mesmerizing as it is diabolical, Dracula, told in epistolary format, is the story of Count Dracula and his attempt to move from Transylvania to England and the battle between him and a small team of people led by Professor Abraham Van Helsing.

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  The Inconsiderate Waiter

  J.M. Barrie

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  In the world of the Victorian Club, it does not do for a gentleman to be seen to take an interest in any member of the working classes. How dreadfully inconvenient then, when the narrator's waiter, begins to display alarming tendencies towards having a personality, a home life, emotions and fears of his own.The last thing any respectable gentleman should do is permit himself to be drawn into this other dubious world...let alone entertain emotions such as interest or pity for the underclass. So our gentleman is at great pains to avoid all of this. Great pains.

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  The Swimmer

  John Cheever

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  Here is one of twelve magnificent stories, originally part of The John Cheever Audio Collection, in which John Cheever celebrates—with unequaled grace and tenderness—the deepest feelings we have. 
  As Cheever writes in his preface, ""These stories seem at times to be stories of a long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with a river light, when you heard the Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationery store, and when almost everybody wore a hat.""

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  The Connoisseur

  Perceval Gibbon

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  Perceval Gibbon was born on the 4th November 1879 in Trelech, Carmarthenshire in Wales and, unusually, was partly educated at the Moravian School, in Koenigsfeld, Baden, Germany.  
   
  Gibbon’s early career was as a merchant seaman during which he travelled to Europe, Africa, and the Americas.  These early experiences were later reflected in his literary works. 
   
  He is perhaps best known for his 1912 novel ‘Margaret Harding’ but began his literary career as a poet with ‘African Items’ in 1903 followed quickly by two novels and then the first collection of his short stories in 1905: ‘Vrouw Grobelaar's Leading Cases’.  His short stories were much admired, and many contained cutting and ironic endings. 
   
  As a journalist he wrote for several newspapers including for the Rand Daily Mail and in the closing stages of the Boer War he wrote for the Natal Witness.  
   
  As the First World War began its titanic struggle across Europe Gibbon joined British Intelligence and was also a war correspondent with the Italian Army from 1917-1918.  
   
  By the end of the War he had advanced to the rank of Major in the British Royal Marines. 
   
  Perceval Gibbon died on the 30th May 1926.

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  The Story of the Amulet

  Edith Nesbit

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  The third installment of Edith Nesbit's Psammead Trilogy continues to follow the lives of the original five children and their magical endeavors. The children once again encounter the Psammead, but this time they also discover an ancient amulet that contains time-traveling powers and fuels their adventure throughout the novel. As the children experience different civilizations through time, they meet a multitude of new characters and explore many notable locales such as Atlantis before the flood, Babylon, and the Tin Islands. Profiting greatly from Nesbit's deep research of ancient civilizations, this final installment is a joyous listen for adults and children.

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  Claude Gueux

  Victor Hugo

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  Victor Marie Hugo was born on 26th February 1802 in Besançon, France.   
   
  There can be no doubt that Hugo is ranked as the greatest of French authors and poets. In addition to this he fought against social injustice throughout his life and from his frequent elections to the French Assembly. 
   
  Hugo published his first novel, Han d’Islande (1823), the year after his marriage and so began an immense canon of fiction and poetry not only for France but to World literature.  
   
  He was elected to the Académie Française in 1841 and the same year came a peerage and entrance to the Higher Chamber as a pair de France, where he spoke against the death penalty, social injustice and in favour of press freedom.  
     
  In the years leading up to the Revolution of 1848 Hugo began to lean towards Republicanism and greater freedoms.  With the formation of the Second Republic, he was again elected to the Assembly. 
   
  When Napoleon III seized power in 1851, and established an anti-parliamentary constitution, Hugo openly declared him a traitor to France. This, of course, meant exile where he remained until 1870.  In exile he published his greatest work ‘Les Misérables’, and further widely honoured collections of poetry. 
   
  Returning home he was again elected to the National Assembly and the Senate.  It was the time of the Franco-Prussian war and with Paris under siege and food ever more scarce, he wrote in his diary that he was now "eating the unknown". 
   
  Later he was instrumental in strengthening the rights of artists and copyright, steps which led to the international protections of the Berne Convention.  
   
  Victor Hugo died on 22nd May 1885, aged 83.    
   
  In ‘Claude Gueux’ one prisoner dares to challenge a system and its cruel Governor who takes away his only friend purely out of spite.  The consequences are appalling.

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