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volunteers bring you eight different readings of William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 23, a weekly poetry project. (Summary by Annie Coleman)

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Poetry

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For Mother’s Day 2006, we’ve recorded five versions of this tribute to Mothers and their role in shaping the future. The title is very famous out of its context, but now you can hear how it was originally intended....

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Poetry

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volunteers bring you 16 recordings of While Gazing on the Moon's Light by Thomas Moore. This was the weekly poetry project for May 10th, 2009.

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Poetry

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Second, when telling such lies as may seem necessary to your international standing, do not tell the lies to the people who know the truth. Do not tell the Eskimos that snow is bright green; nor tell the negroes in Africa that the sun never shines in that Dark Continent. Rather tell the Eskimos that the sun never shines in Africa; and then, turning to the tropical Africans, see if they will believe that snow is green. Similarly, the course indicated for you is to slander the Russians to the English and the English to the Russians; and there are hundreds of good old reliable slanders which can still be used against both of them. There are probably still Russians who believe that every English gentleman puts a rope round his wife's neck and sells her in Smithfield. There are certainly still Englishmen who believe that every Russian gentleman takes a rope to his wife's back and whips her every day. But these stories, picturesque and useful as they are, have a limit to their use like everything else; and the limit consists in the fact that they are not true, and that there necessarily exists a group of persons who know they are not true...

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Essay/Short nonfiction

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A Crystal Age is a utopian novel written by W. H. Hudson, first published in 1887. The book has been called a significant S-F milestone and has been noted for its anticipation of the modern ecological mysticism that would evolve a century later....

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Science fiction

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The Westminster Larger Catechism, along with the Westminster Shorter Catechism, is a central catechism of Calvinists in the English tradition throughout the world. The Westminster Shorter Catechism was to be easier to read and concise for beginners and the Larger Catechism was to be more exact and comprehensive. The Catechism was completed by the Westminster Assembly in 1647. It was then adopted by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1648 and (with modifications relating to the civil magistrate) by the Presbyterian Synod of New York and Philadelphia in 1788....

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Religion

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The novel picks up where Tarzan of the Apes left off. The ape man, feeling rootless in the wake of his noble sacrifice of his prospects of wedding Jane Porter, leaves America for Europe to visit his friend Paul d'Arnot. On the ship he becomes embroiled in the affairs of Countess Olga de Coude, her husband, Count Raoul de Coude, and two shady characters attempting to prey on them, Nikolas Rokoff and his henchman Alexis Paulvitch. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

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Adventure, Teen/Young adult

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’s Short Story Collection 008: a collection of 20 short essays and fiction in the public domain read by a variety of members.

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Short stories, Essay/Short nonfiction

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volunteers bring you 12 recordings of The Old Roller Towel by Bert Leston Taylor. This was the Weekly Poetry project for February 27, 2011.

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Poetry

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The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle is a picaresque novel by the Scottish author Tobias Smollett (1721 – 1771), first published in 1751, and revised and reissued in 1758. It is the story of the fortunes and misfortunes of the egotistical dandy Peregrine Pickle, and it provides a comic and caustic portrayal of 18th century European society....

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Fiction, Literature

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Emily Brontë's only novel, published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, tells the tale of the all-encompassing and passionate, yet thwarted, love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys them and many around them. Now considered a classic of English literature, Wuthering Heights met with mixed reviews by critics when it first appeared, with many horrified by the stark depictions of mental and physical cruelty. Though Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre was originally considered the best of the Brontë sisters' works, many subsequent critics of Wuthering Heights argued that its originality and achievement made it superior....

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Romance, Tragedy, Literature

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A romance and adventure novel, set in England during the reign of Queen Anne. The book is much unlike the author's later detective short stories. The actual book is difficult to locate and appears to have been forgotten. It is not even listed by Wiki as part of the author's work, nevermind have any information on the book itself. (Summary by JCarson)...

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Fiction, Adventure, Romance

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The Dueling Machine is the solution to settling disputes without injury. After you and your opponent select weapons and environments you are injected into an artificial reality where you fight to the virtual death… but no one actually gets hurt. That is, until a warrior from the Kerak Empire figures a way to execute real-world killings from within the machine. Now its inventor Dr. Leoh has to prevent his machine from becoming a tool of conquest. – The Dueling Machine, written with Myron R. Lewis, first appeared in the May, 1963 issue of Analog Science Fact & Fiction. (Summary by Gregg Margarite)...

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Fantasy, Fiction, Science fiction

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volunteers bring you 11 different recordings of the Fisher’s Boy by Henry David Thoreau. This was the weekly poetry project for the week of May 13th, 2007....

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Poetry

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In The Feast of St. Friend, a Christmas book , Arnold Bennett shares his views on Christmas as the season of goodwill. As always, Bennett's writing includes some thought-provoking ideas liberally spiced with his wry sense of humour, and as always too, you can barely believe it was written so long ago. This was published exactly 100 years ago, in 1911. (Introduction by Ruth Golding)...

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Advice, Holiday, Humor

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On the surface, this short play is a slice-of-life story about a murder investigation in the rural United States. However, it is also a story about the relationships between men and women, husbands and wives, and the often-overlooked trifles which can say so much about a person's life. (Summary by Arielle Lipshaw)...

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Play

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An occasional collection of 10 horror stories by various readers. We aim to unsettle you a little, to cut through the pink cushion of illusion that shields you from the horrible realities of life. Here are the walking dead, the fetid pools of slime, the howls in the night that you thought you had confined to your more unpleasant dreams....

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Horror/Ghost stories, Short stories

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volunteers bring you 10 recordings of Song by Hartley Coleridge. This was the weekly poetry project for the week of November 16th, 2008.

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Poetry

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Sophocles' play dramatizes the aftermath of Agamemnon's murder by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. His daughter Electra is hungry for revenge and longs for the return of her brother Orestes to help her achieve her ends. (Summary by Elizabeth Klett)...

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Tragedy, Classics (antiquity), Play

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Short stories