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Comedy

Nightmare Abbey Audiobook Free: A Satirical Masterclass in Audio – Free Download

Deep in the fens of the British coast sits the gloomy mansion that goes by the name Nightmare Abbey. It is inhabited by persons of very low opinion of the human race, and in fact they pride themselves in the depths of their detestation. Others of its denizens believe the ultimate exercise and product of the human mind ought to be chaos. Now let the young master of the house get snared by the wiles of a beautiful young lady. And for good measure, toss in another beautiful young lady. Now Scythrop (named in honor of an ancestor who became bored with life and hanged himself) is about to find that two such make too much of a good thing! Peacock wrote Nightmare Abbey as a satire, and he has folded in allusions to or quotations from literally dozens of other works. He makes use of many long, impressive-sounding words (some of which he very possibly made up!). Ignore these and his occasional Latin phrase, treat the rest as a farce, and you’re on track for a fun listen!(Summary be Mark F. Smith)

History

Over the Top Audiobook Free: A Raw Journey Through WWI Trenches – Free Download

Arthur Guy Empey was an American who responded to the sinking of the Lusitania by enlisting with the British Army to fight in France. His experiences in the trenches, including his ultimate wounding and convalescence, became this book. When published in 1917, it was a major hit and helped the recruiting effort when America entered the Great War.

If you’ve heard of the horror of trench warfare in WWI and want to see it from below dirt level, Empey offers it all here.

Also included is Empey’s popular “Tommy’s Dictionary of the Trenches” which humorously demistifies the slang used by the British soldier. (Summary by Mark F. Smith)

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Time Machine (Version 2) Audiobook Free: Journey Through Victorian Dystopia – Free Download

Surely the Time Traveler threw great dinner parties! His guests were treated to a once-in-forever trial of a miniature time machine – an exquisite miniature that acted so flawlessly as to appear to be stage magic. That his guests did not believe the explanation – the machine vanished into the mists of the future – was patent. Still, a couple of the more thoughtful had reservations about branding the demonstration an outright trickery. And what about the nearly-complete full-size Machine in the Traveler’s laboratory?

Confronted at the next party by the disheveled Traveler, who had apparently suffered privations and who displayed two curious flowers of no known type, the Narrator’s wonderment increased. For the Traveler provided a perfectly arresting story to explain his condition – a surprising tale of a far future where humankind divides into a carefree above-ground race, the Eloi, and a mechanical subterranean race, the Morlocks. A tale in which it appears that the inheritors of the Earth inhabit it as cattle for the feeding of their underground cousins!

Believe, or disbelieve? But perhaps the inventive genius of a man who can translate “thousands of millions of days” of time travel into an exact date should not be doubted! (Intro by Mark F. Smith)

Fiction & Literature

Lone Star Ranger Audiobook Free: A Journey Through the Wild West – Free Download

Buck Duane, son of a famous gunfighter, falls prey to the old problem – called out by a cowboy who wants to make trouble, Duane kills him and then must ride off to the lawless country near the Neuces River to escape being arrested and perhaps, hanged. His brief encounter with deadly gunplay has ignited a deep urging to repeat the adrenaline rush but is tempered by ghosts that haunt his sleep. He only dares to release his inner demon when he is taking down an outlaw who is particularly known for his brutality. He develops a reputation for killing the most notorious Texas outlaws, which draws an unexpected interest: a captain of the Texas Rangers offers him a pardon and a ranger’s badge if he will infiltrate the gang of the shadowy figure known as “Cheseldine” who wields vast power in West Texas, and make it possible for the Rangers to break the gang’s hold on the region’s towns. Duane accepts, never guessing in his wildest nightmares that he would sniff out this Cheseldine, his hideouts, his lieutenants… and fall in love with his daughter!

Self Development

How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day Audiobook Free: Redefining Self-Development – Free Download

“Which of us lives on twenty-four hours a day? And when I say ‘lives,’ I do not mean exists, nor ‘muddles through.'” — Arnold Bennett knew a “rat race” when he saw one.

Every day, his fellow white-collar Londoners followed the same old routine. And they routinely decried the sameness in their lives.– So Bennett set out to explain how to inject new enthusiasm into living. In this delightful little work, he taught his fellow sufferers how to set time apart for improving their lives. Yes, he assured them, it could be done. Yes, if you want to feel connected with the world, instead of endlessly pacing the treadmill (or, “exceeding your programme”, as he called it), you must do so.

For time, as he gleefully notes, is the ultimate democracy. Each of us starts our day with 24 hours to spend. Even a saint gets not a minute more; even the most inveterate time-waster is docked not a second for his wastrel ways. And he can choose today to turn over a new leaf!

Bennett believed that learning to discern cause and effect in the world would give his readers an endless source of enjoyment and satisfaction. Instead of only being able to discuss what they had heard, they could graduate to what they thought… and lift themselves completely from the deadening influence of a day at the office. (Summary by Mark F Smith)

Fiction & Literature

Tarzan of the Apes Audiobook Free: Journey Through the Wild – Free Download

Tarzan of the Apes is Burroughs’ exciting, if improbable, story of an English lord, left by the death of his stranded parents in the hands of a motherly African ape who raises him as her own. Although he is aware that he is different from the apes of his tribe, who are neither white nor hairless, he nevertheless regards them as his “people.” When older, larger, stronger apes decide that he an undesirable to be killed or expelled from the tribe, it is fortunate that Tarzan has learned the use of primitive weapons.

Politics

Communist Manifesto (Version 2) Audiobook Free: Class Struggle Analyzed – Free Download

The Communist Manifesto was conceived as an outline of the basic beliefs of the Communist movement. The authors believed that the European Powers were universally afraid of the nascent movement, and were condemning as “communist,” people or activities that did not actually conform to what the Communists believed. This Manifesto, then, became a manual for their beliefs.

In it we find Marx and Engel’s rehearsal of the idea that Capital has stolen away the work of the artisan and peasant by building up factories to produce goods cheaply. The efficiency of Capital depends, then, on the wage laborers who staff the factories and how little they will accept in order to have work. This concentrates power and money in a Bourgeois class that profits from the disunity of workers (Proletarians), who only receive a subsistence wage.

If workers unite in a class struggle against the bourgeois, using riot and strikes as weapons, they will eventually overthrow the bourgeois and replace them as a ruling class. Communists further believe in and lay out a system of reforms to transform into a classless, stateless society, thus distinguishing themselves from various flavors of Socialism, which would be content to have workers remain the ruling class after the revolution.

The Manifesto caused a huge amount of discussion for its support for a forcible overthrow of the existing politics and society. (Summary by Mark F. Smith)

Fiction & Literature

Robinson Crusoe Audiobook Free: A Timeless Tale of Survival – Free Download

Shipwrecked and castaway, Daniel DeFoe’s hard-luck character is still the standard for “growing where you’re planted.” Captured by pirates, he makes his break in a small boat and undergoes desperate adventures before winning his way back to civilization. But Crusoe proves willing to chance his luck a second time when, after sweating his way to prosperity as a planter in Brazil, he undertakes a voyage that isn’t needful… and is marooned on a small island off South America.

Crusoe shows the value of single-minded labor as he pursues ways to feed, shelter, and clothe himself. His ardent wish is to escape his island – why is it that the only people who come there are cannibals? But he spends more than two decades in isolation before acquiring a sidekick – the man Friday you’ve probably heard of. And who would guess his way to salvation would depend on leading a last-ditch fight against a shipful of mutineers?

Fiction & Literature

Swiss Family Robinson Audiobook Free: A Journey of Survival and Discovery – Free Download

The Swiss Family Robinson has delighted generations of readers with its exciting tale of a family which, though shipwrecked, displays “the right stuff” and builds a charming colony that later, they do not want to leave. Cut off from the comforts and companionship of other humans, they use a familiarity with natural history and biology to find the resources and build the tools to construct a canoe, weave cloth, irrigate a garden, and turn an immense hollow tree into a lofty house with a spiral staircase. They domesticate buffaloes, wild asses, and monkeys. They establish farms and plantations. And finally, they have a terrifying encounter with natives from a nearby island.

Johann David Wyss, the author, did not live to complete his tale. Storytellers over the years have injected so many episodes into the various versions that probably none closely match the original. (Indeed, the Baroness de Montholieu expanded the book from two volumes into five when she translated it into French.) This effort was re-translated into English in 1849 by W.H.G. Kingston, abridging the edition severely. It follows the British sensibilities of the period in terms of sentence structure and emphasis.

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