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...

When this groundbreaking, serialized dramatization premiered on 320 US radio stations, critics were unanimous in their praise, and it won numerous honors, including the George Foster Peabody Award, the Pulitzer Prize of broadcasting. Now twenty years after its first airing, Blackstone Audio is pleased to present this outstanding production.The 2,600-year-old poem tells of a man, a hero of cunning rather than brawn, who inhabits three worlds: first, the world of his...

In The Tempest, long considered one of Shakespeare’s most lyrical plays, Prospero, a sorcerer, and his daughter, Miranda, have been stranded on an enchanted island for twelve years. When a shipwreck—caused by the eponymous tempest—brings enemies to the island, the stage is set for comedy, romance, and reconciliation. The Tempest embodies both seemingly timeless romance and the historically specific moment in which Europe began to explore and conquer the New World. Its poetic beauty, comple...

Based on Johnston McCulley’s The Curse of Capistrano first published in 1919 by pulp magazine All-Story WeeklySet in Los Angeles during the era of early nineteenth century Colonial Spanish California, the story introduces us to wealthy, young aristocrat Don Diego de la Vega, son of the richest ranchero in the country. Don Diego is an idler who has never concerned himself with more than the cut of his clothes. Unlike other full-blooded youths of his age, he presents himself as a fop...

This is an exuberant group portrait of four extraordinary writers—Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker, and Edna Ferber—whose loves, lives, and literary endeavors captured the spirit of the 1920s.Marion Meade re-creates the aura of excitement, romance, and promise of the 1920s, when these literary heroines did what they wanted, said what they thought, and kicked open the door for twentieth-century women, setting a new model for every woman tryi...

Blackstone is pleased to present the first ever audio recordings of the only two Holmes plays written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This specially commissioned production by the Hollywood Theater of the Ear is a unique, must-have audio for all Sherlockians.In Sherlock Holmes, Professor Moriarity, the Napoleon of crime, plots with would-be blackmailers to have Holmes killed. And the normally love-proof Holmes falls for an exceptional woman.What is the secret of the shocking dea...

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...

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...

The only complete trilogy to survive from ancient Greek theater is presented here in this sound recording of all three plays: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides.In the Oresteia, Aeschylus dramatizes the myth of the curse on the royal house of Argos. Action begins when King Agamemnon returns victorious from the Trojan War but is treacherously slain by his wife. It ends with the trial of their son, Orestes, who slew his mother to avenge her treachery—a trial with the ...

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...

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...