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All episodes contained in this podcast are taken from librivox.org and are in the Public Domain.

LibriVox’s Short Mystery Story Collection 002: a collection of 10 short works of mysterious fiction in the public domain read by a group of LibriVox members.

This is the biography of Abraham Lincoln, written by two of his private secretaries. (Summary by ashleighjane)

The Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, is a work of enormous proportions. Setting out with the simple goal of offering "American households a mass of good reading", the editors drew from literature of all times and all kinds what they considered the best pieces of human writing, and compiled an ambitious collection of 45 volumes (with a 46th being an index-guide). Besides the selection and translation of a huge number of poems, letters, short stories and sections of books, the collection offers, before each chapter, a short essay about the author or subject in question...

Il Decamerone è una raccolta di cento novelle scritta da Giovanni Boccaccio tra il 1349 e il 1351.Le novelle sono raccontate a turno da un gruppo di 7donne e 3 uomini rifugiatisi in una villa fuori Firenze per sfuggire all'imperversare della peste.È considerata una delle opere più importanti della letteratura del Trecento europeo, ed e' la capostipite della letteratura in prosa in volgare italiano. (Riassunto di Eysiss)

Sixty-two short pieces, many/most of them originally published in The Pansy, a magazine for children. The topics are many and varied, but mostly involve children and teach a moral lesson. (Summary by TriciaG)PARENTAL WARNING: A couple stories, such as "Gertie's Sober Talk" and "Old Jack", are about animals that die or are put down, and who don't have souls.

This 1913 story is far more than a Christmas tale. It is a story about spiritual wisdom; the seeking of wisdom, the getting of wisdom, even when the seeking and the getting is obscure. Henry Collinton is an 81 year old, widowed, Episcopal Church bishop. The story opens on the morning of the Bishop’s last Christmas and ends with his death that night. We see him encounter four to him important people throughout the day, three friends and the Nazarene, the Christ, he has followed all his life. “Yet these things the Bishop did not know, for God was showing him more beautiful things, even as ...

From 1843 to 1848, Charles Dickens wrote a series of five novellas to be published at Christmas. Most people are familiar with the first, "A Christmas Carol." The others are "The Chimes," "The Cricket on the Hearth," "The Battle of Life," and "The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain." - Summary by Brad Filippone

This theatrical version of A Christmas Carol was performed at the Surrey Theatre in February 1844 just weeks after the publication of the novella by Dickens in December of the previous year. (There were 7 other adaptations also being shown on stage then, with only 1 version - not this one - being sanctioned by Dickens.) - Summary by ToddHWCast list:Ebenezer Scrooge, the Miser: Greg GiordanoFrank Freeheart, his Nephew: Agnes Robert BehrMr. Cheerly: James R. HedrickMr. Heartly: Chuck WilliamsonBob Cratchit, Scrooge's Clerk: BeeswaxcandleDark Sam: Wayne CookeCharacters in the Dream: Euston, a ...

The Lusiads (Os Lusíadas) is a Portuguese epic poem, written in the 16th century by Luis Vaz de Camões. The poem tells the tale of the Portuguese discoveries in the 15th and 16th centuries, specially the voyage to India by Vasco da Gama. Modelled after the classic epic tradition, Camões' Lusiads are considered not only the first literary text in Modern Portuguese, but also a national epic of the same level as Vergil's Aeneid. In the 19th century, Sir Richard Francis Burton translated Camões' Lusiads, in what he considered "the most pleasing literary labour of his life". (Summary by Leni)

“Who ever lov’d, that lov’d not at first sight?”The wonder-decade of the English drama was suddenly interrupted in 1592, when serious plague broke out in London, forcing the closure of the theatres. Leading playwrights took to penning languorously erotic poetry to make ends meet: so we have Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece - and Marlowe’s blazing masterpiece, Hero and Leander.Marlowe’s poem became more notorious than either of Shakespeare’s, due not only to its homophile provocations but also to the scandal attaching to every aspect of Marlowe’s brief life, violently ended...

This year's Christmas collection of short stories, poems and non-fiction features readings in English, French, German and Romanian - Summary by Ruth Golding.

Ten short poems about Christmas in California - Summary by Larry Wilson

Although the Sherlock Holmes canon traditionally consists of four novels and 56 short stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle, there are many Sherlock Holmes stories outside the canon. Most of these noncanonical stories were written by authors other than Doyle, but there are four short stories about Holmes written by Doyle that are nonetheless excluded from the canon, for various reasons. This LibriVox album consists of these four noncanonical stories. The first story, "The Field Bazaar", was first published in 1896 in a special issue of a University of Edinburgh student newspaper called The ...

Before he became a novelist, Dickens wrote several successful plays. This one from 1836, his first, he called, “A Comic Burletta in Two Acts”. Characters arrive at a village inn called “The St. James Arms” and much confusion ensues. (Summary by ToddHW)Cast:MR. OWEN OVERTON: NoelBadrianJOHN JOHNSON: Nathanial W.C. HigginsTHE STRANGE GENTLEMAN: David GoldfarbCHARLES TOMKINS: Algy PugTOM SPARKS: John TrevithickJOHN, TOM, WILL - Waiters 1, 2, 3: ToddHWJULIA DOBBS: Tiffany Halla ColonnaFANNY WILSON: Amanda FridayMARY WILSON: DuanMRS. NOAKES: Christine NendzaCHAMBERMAID: Eden ...

This second volume of the biography of Lord Cochrane deals with his fall from grace, imprisonment for debt, loss of honours, and attempts to clear his name. It has had a marked influence on naval fiction, most obviously on some of the novels by Patrick O'Brian. - Summary by Timothy Ferguson

Sonnet sequences, which these poems by Sidney made very popular in the Elizabethan age, reflected the Medieval motif of courtly love, whereby a wretched lover courts an unavailable woman, typically married already and faithful to her vows. The poet, although unsuccessful, is a slave to her beauty and virtue, which, by pulling in opposite directions, hold him in an agonizing tension that prolongs the sequence.Sidney wrestles creatively, though, with the restrictions of the ancient conventions. The first line of the first poem declares him an iconoclast, for he defies the very definition of a ...

À margem da história foi a primeira das obras póstumas de Euclides da Cunha, tentando recolher os muitos textos esparsos e inéditos do autor após sua morte inesperada e violenta. A maior parte do livro se compõe das anotações feitas pelo autor para um livro, nunca terminado, acerca da Amazônia, a ser intitulado "Paraíso Perdido", mas que foi publicado nesta coletânea sob o título "Terra Sem História". No volume encontram-se também compilados outros estudos variados sobre o Brasil. - Summary by Leni

These twenty-eight lectures to laymen are elementary and almost conversational. Freud sets forth with a frankness almost startling the difficulties and limitations of psychoanalysis, and also describes its main methods and results as only a master and originator of a new school of thought can do. A text like this is the most opportune and will naturally more or less supersede all other introductions to the general subject of psychoanalysis. It presents the author in a new light, as an effective and successful popularizer, and is certain to be welcomed not only by the large and growing number ...

Sketches by Boz is a collection of short pieces published by Charles Dickens in 1836 accompanied by illustrations by George Cruikshank. It consists of 56 passages divided into four sections: "Our Parish", "Scenes", "Characters", and "Tales". Of these, only the last contains fiction. (Summary by Wikipedia)