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  To Build a Fire

  Jack London

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  The classic short story - To Build a Fire - by American author Jack London, is brought to life in ways he probably never imagined when it was published in 1908. The subtle blending of narration and music create a vivid image of the “Man” and his “Wolf Dog” as they set out on foot along the Yukon in temperatures colder than –50 F. With plans to meet his friends at a logging camp by 6:00pm, the Man finds himself pitted in a life and death struggle with nature. Whether or not you’ve read this great American classic, you’ll be riveted by this audio version with sound enhancements of the Man’s harrowing adventure in the Gold Rush Era of Alaska.Public Domain (P)2012 Brook Forest Voices

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  Anthem

  Ayn Rand

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  “It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil.” Deep issues of conscience are explored in Ayn Rand’s dystopian tale of a man who dares to fight against a system that invades his very mind and identity.

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  The Cloak

  Nikolai Gogol

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  Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) was a preeminent Ukrainian-born story writer. He is particularly famous for those stories which veer in the direction of surrealism and the grotesque.The Cloak is one such tale. Akaky Akakiyevich is a reclusive and widely ridiculed lower official whose job is to copy letters. He lives a hand-to-mouth existence with his elderly landlady and has little money. But the harsh weather in St. Petersburg necessitates the purchase of a new cloak. His existing cloak, threadbare and filthy, is the butt of jokes among his comrades, and the tailor refuses to patch it up any further.Akaky Akakiyevich has somehow to scrape together the money for a new one. As he begins to save for it, the cloak begins to take on a much greater significance in his life. He dreams of it, visualises it, plans it with the tailor and scrimps and saves until the glorious day when he is able to actually commission its manufacture.The cloak is his pride and joy...but disaster waits around the corner. And in true Gogol style, the story takes a weird twist.

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  Hard Times (Legend Classics)

  Charles Dickens

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  “It is said that every life has its roses and thorns; there seemed, however, to have been a misadventure or mistake in Stephen’s case, whereby somebody else had become possessed of his roses, and he had become possessed of somebody else’s thorns in addition to his own.” 
  Published originally in weekly instalments, Hard Times is focusing on Mr Gradgrind’s flawed model of upbringing and its lifelong impact on the wellbeing and destinies of his children. The novel, in fact, follows two opposing ways an individual can be formed. On the one hand, there is Tom and Louisa whose numerous misfortunes are predetermined by their father’s insistence on knowing bare facts without reaching for the substance. They are ill-equipped for the real world and, as a result, Louisa suffers emotionally having had a marriage of convenience, while Tom intentionally devises to incriminate another for his own misdeed. On the other hand, there is Mr Gradgrind’s student Sissy, whose guardian he becomes upon her father’s disappearance. Despite Mr Grandgrind’s scorn, she approaches things with a genuine sensibility that helps her to lead a happier and more fulfilled life. The readers are prompted to ponder throughout the novel whether Mr Gradgrind will eventually acknowledge his failure as a parent. 
  Hard Times is an unusually short novel for Dickens and the only one not to feature London scenes. Instead, it is set in the North and beside addressing the issues of education, it also exposes the harsh daily living conditions of regular working-class people and the negative side of industrialisation. The author captures the zeitgeist of a new era where the old and new ways have to coexist and where many are continuously being left behind either by being deprived financially or spiritually. While maxims and cold facts are effective for scientific progress and the operations of complex machinery, they are not a prerequisite for human happiness. The volume’s solid subject matter is intertwined with the gripping elements of suspense that will undoubtedly appeal to a diverse audience. 
  The Legend Classics series:Around the World in Eighty DaysThe Adventures of Huckleberry FinnThe Importance of Being EarnestAlice's Adventures in WonderlandThe MetamorphosisThe Railway ChildrenThe Hound of the BaskervillesFrankensteinWuthering HeightsThree Men in a BoatThe Time MachineLittle WomenAnne of Green GablesThe Jungle BookThe Yellow Wallpaper and Other StoriesDraculaA Study in ScarletLeaves of GrassThe Secret GardenThe War of the WorldsA Christmas CarolStrange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr HydeHeart of DarknessThe Scarlet LetterThis Side of ParadiseOliver TwistThe Picture of Dorian GrayTreasure IslandThe Turn of the ScrewThe Adventures of Tom SawyerEmmaThe TrialA Selection of Short Stories by Edgar Allan PoeGrimm Fairy TalesThe AwakeningMrs DallowayGulliver’s TravelsThe Castle of OtrantoSilas MarnerHard Times

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  To the Lighthouse

  Virginia Woolf

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  Set on an island off the Scottish coast, To the Lighthouse minutely examines the fleeting impressions of a large cast of family, friends, lovers, and hangers-on. Who can we be, Virginia Woolf invites us to ask, if no one can ever know our hearts - if they're unknowable even to ourselves? To the Lighthouse remains one of the most important Modernist novels, exquisitely composed by one of the most gifted writers of the Modernist movement.
  The opening section follows the passage of a day with a thwarted objective: to go to the nearby lighthouse. The concluding section revisits this expedition a decade later, when so much is irrevocably changed, as a chance to glimpse interpersonal understandings and connections. The novel provides a brilliant example of stream-of-consciousness writing, and raises questions that provoke us still: questions about whether children are the fullest realization of one's posterity, how women artists are regarded socially, and how money and status enable - or close off - networks, relationships, and the dreams we hold most dear.
  As masterful as its technique is, however, the lasting value of this novel for twenty-first-century readers may be its sharp representation of the emotional labor that people - particularly women - perform in order to manage the needs and expectations of others. Woolf wrote in an age when women's participation in society was tightly restricted by class norms and stultifying domesticity. Nearly a century later, scholars still have a great deal to say about Mrs. Ramsay, Lily Briscoe, and the tension between Mr. Ramsay and his son James.
  Woolf's fifth novel, and one of her most successful books both critically and commercially, To the Lighthouse was originally published in 1927, simultaneously in England and the United States. Due to a quirk in the management and correction of the proofs, according to scholar Hans Walter Gabler, the two editions were "not identical, since in a significant number of instances Virginia Woolf marked up the first proofs differently" for her two publishers.

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  Magna Moralia

  Aristotle

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  Magna Moralia (English: Great Ethics) discusses topics including friendship, virtue, happiness and God. It is disputed whether Aristotle wrote Magna Moralia. This author concludes that it is absurd to suggest that God contemplates only God but does not propose an alternative activity for God. (Summary by Geoffrey Edwards)

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