Like Anne Frank, Flory Van Beek was a young girl caught in the ruthless Nazi occupation of Holland—but Flory survived to recount her extraordinary story of persecution and survival.Flory and her husband, Felix, endured the sinking of a ship bound for safety in the New World, the increasing danger of the occupation, and finally a life in hiding. There, cut off from the outside world and their families, they faced the hunger and stress of daily life in confined quart...

Long before Western writers had even conceived the idea of writing detective stories, the Chinese had developed a long tradition of literary works that chronicled the cases of important district magistrates. One of the most celebrated of these was Judge Dee, who lived in the seventh century AD.This book, written anonymously in the eighteenth century, interweaves three of Judge Dee’s most baffling cases: a double murder among traveling merchants, the fatal poisoning of a bride on he...

The insidious Fleet Street barber slit his first throat in an 1846 "penny dreadful," one of those gaudy serialized novels that gleefully offered thrills and gore to sensation-hungry Victorians. TitledThe String of Pearls, it told of Sweeney Todd, whose shop stood next to St. Dunstan's Church, just a few blocks from the Royal Courts of Justice. On this site, he robbed and murdered hundreds of customers. To dispose of their remains, he carried them to an underground bakery of one Mrs. Lovett...

More democracy means more freedom. Or does it?American democracy is, in many people's minds, the model for the rest of the world. Fareed Zakaria points out that the American form of democracy is one of the least democratic in use today. Members of the Supreme Court and the Federal Reserve, institutions that fundamentally shape our lives, are appointed, not elected. The Bill of Rights enumerates a set of privileges to which citizens are entitled, no matter what the majority says. By...

“Joan of Arc, a village girl from the Vosges, was born about 1412—burnt for heresy, witchcraft, and sorcery in 1431—rehabilitated after a fashion in 1456—designated Venerable in 1904—declared Blessed in 1908—and finally canonized in 1920. She is the most notable Warrior-Saint in the Christian calendar, and the queerest fish among the eccentric worthies of the Middle Ages.”—George Bernard ShawWith Saint Joan, Shaw reached the height of his fame as a dramatist. Fascinated by the stor...

With the premiere of two new film versions of the Snow White tale, Blackstone enters the fray with its own adult, edgy, and not altogether serious full-cast exposé of fairy-taledom. At last it can be told! Was Snow White really as pure as the driven snow? Did her allegedly wicked stepmother get a bum rap from the Grimm brothers? What went on behind the closed Dutch doors of the dwarves’ cottage? How many handsome princes does it take to screw in a light bulb? These and other burning questi...

Blackstone Audio is proud to present seven great plays in a collection that illustrates the development of European drama from ancient times to the threshold of the modern theater: Medea by Euripides, The Tempest by Shakespeare, The Imaginary Invalid by Molière, Camille by Dumas, An Enemy of the People by Ibsen, Arms and the Man by Shaw, and Uncle Vanya by Chekhov.A superb repertory company with distinguished guest arti...

The earliest extant heroic epic in any European vernacular, Beowulf is considered the most important poem in Old English. The title character is a warrior of superhuman strength who accomplishes glorious deeds to honor his king. He also represents the ideal lord and vassal, generous to his own men while fulfilling all the forms of courtesy at court. The narrative itself falls into two parts: Beowulf first rescues the royal house of Denmark from two marauding monsters; then, after having ru...

In the folklore of Eastern European Jewry, a dybbuk is a wandering soul that comes to rest in the body of a living person. In this case, the dybbuk is an impoverished student that possesses a young bride on her wedding day. She is taken to a great Chassidic rabbi for exorcism. But before he can expel the spirit, the sage must discover who the dybbuk was in life, why he has possessed the maiden, and most importantly, how to balance the scales of cosmic justice.Part folk tale, part l...

Blackstone Audio presents an eclectic mix of stories, plays and sketches dedicated to the thinking paranoiac. Gore, sex, horror, literature and edifying morals—what more could you want from an audiobook?This collection includes "In a Grove," upon which Akira Kurosawa based his classic film, Rashomon; an adult fairy tale by the author of Winnie-the-Pooh; the real story (honest!) behind Edgar Rice Burroughs's novel The Moon Maid; and cautionary and scary ta...

Blackstone Publishing presents a faithful, full-cast dramatization of The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett’s intense and immersive hard-boiled detective classic that redefined the genre.“Don’t be too sure I’m as crooked as I’m supposed to be. That kind of reputation might be good business.”—Samuel Spade, private investigatorBrilliant detective Sam Spade is the quintessential private eye, with his own code of ethics. When a standard stakeout goes wr...

It’s midnight. Turn out the lights, cuddle with your true love, and shiver to fright-meisters Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, and H. P. Lovecraft.Quicken your pulse with the elegant terror of Henry James, Edith Wharton, and Guy de Maupassant. Chortle at the black glee of H. H. Munro and Ambrose Bierce.These fourteen tales, plays, and poems, gleaned from cultures around the world, range from wickedly comic to deathly serious, from New England reserv...