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...

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...

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 ...

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...

The basis for Hitchcock's 1927 movie by the same name, as well as a more recent major motion picture from 2009, this award-winning audio of Marie Belloc Lowndes' classic thriller still packs a wallop.An elderly couple living in Victorian London struggle against despair as their small resources dwindle. When an eccentric and mysterious gentleman answers their advertisement for a lodger, they celebrate. But as women begin dying at the hands of “The Avenger” on the fo...

Originally broadcast nationwide in 1993, this meticulously researched five-part historical drama is being published by Blackstone to commemorate Benjamin Franklin’s 300th birthdayThis production reveals the multifaceted, complex Franklin’s little-known adventures in London before the Revolution. For fifteen years, he lived on Craven Street off the Thames, where he established a surrogate family, began his autobiography, and became America’s most famous citizen.As tensions h...

On the eve of World War II, a murder in New York City draws two vastly different men, an American detective and a German intelligence officer, into the gathering storm.The death of a spinster nurse killed in her apartment was one of hundreds of simple homicides, indistinguishable from any other in 1938. A suspect was caught and convicted. Then Private Investigator Fintan Dunne is lured in to the case, and coerced by conscience into unraveling the setup that has put an innocent man ...

Inspired by the classic silent film of 1919, this original audio play won the Independent Publishers Award in 1998 for best direct-to-audio production. John de Lancie stars as a young poet who visits a fair one night with his friend and girlfriend. Entering Dr. Caligari’s tent, they meet the mysterious Cesare, a kind of zombie, who is neither alive nor dead—and who forecasts doom for our high-strung protagonist and his friends.Combining the directness of an old-time radio play and ...

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...

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...

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...

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...