The Oval Portrait
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The Oval Portrait
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Narrated by:
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Sean Michael Hogan
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By:
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Edgar Allan Poe
About this listen
The Oval Portrait is a short horror story written by Edgar Allan Poe and first published in 1842. Our protagonist takes refuge in an abandoned castle and discovers a room with a series of paintings accompanied by a small book describing them. His attention is attracted by an oval portrait depicting a young woman of rare beauty.
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4 🌟
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5 out of 5 stars
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Classic
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4 out of 5 stars
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Turn of the Screw
- By: Henry James
- Narrated by: Emma Thompson, Richard Armitage - introduction
- Length: 4 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 5,396
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 4,894
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Story4 out of 5 stars 4,874
Academy Award, Golden Globe, and Emmy winner Emma Thompson lends her immense talent and experienced voice to Henry James' Gothic ghost tale, The Turn of the Screw. When a governess is hired to care for two children at a British country estate, she begins to sense an otherworldly presence around the grounds. Are they really ghosts she's seeing? Or is something far more sinister at work?
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great, but Mightn't be the Best on Audible
- By Gillian on 03-16-16
By: Henry James
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Supernatural Horror in Literature
- By: H. P. Lovecraft
- Narrated by: Sean Branney, Andrew Leman
- Length: 2 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 52
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 44
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 44
Between 1925-27, H.P. Lovecraft wrote Supernatural Horror in Literature, an extended essay about about the history of the weird tale. In it he describes supernatural horror from its earliest manifestations up to the 1920s. Lovecraft offers his own candid opinions on the merits (and deficiencies) of the world's canon of strange literature. The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society recorded the essay as an audiobook. Read by society founders Sean Branney and Andrew Leman, the recording is approximately three hours long.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A Fantastic Multi Dimensional Experience!
- By Sarah on 02-05-19
By: H. P. Lovecraft
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Against Nature (Against the Grain)
- By: Joris-Karl Huysmans
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 94
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 84
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 84
Against Nature was one of the most shocking French novels of the 19th century. When it was published in 1884, it thrilled the aesthetes, the poets, and the intellectuals of Europe on both sides of the Channel (notably Oscar Wilde) because for all its lofty tone, it had, as its core, an unbridled decadence, and it was this same character that challenged, even horrified, established bourgeois society.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An excellent reading of the Decadent classic
- By Mark Hedden on 06-13-17
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Nazi Literature in the Americas
- By: Roberto Bolaño, Chris Andrews - translator
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Story4 out of 5 stars 60
A tour de force of black humor and imaginary erudition, Nazi Literature in the Americas presents itself as a biographical dictionary of writers who espoused extreme right-wing ideologies in the 20th and 21st centuries.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Eerie and fascinating
- By Jikai Zenshin on 03-19-21
By: Roberto Bolaño, and others
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The Mark on the Wall
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Teresa Gallagher
- Length: 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 45
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 45
This is a story from the Classic Women's Short Stories collection.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The best story ever written
- By Deanna Salles-Freeman on 10-12-24
By: Virginia Woolf
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The Shunned House
- By: H. P. Lovecraft
- Narrated by: Felbrigg Napoleon Herriot
- Length: 1 hr and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 67
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 60
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Story4 out of 5 stars 59
The house on Benefit Street is shunned. With a dark forbidding exterior, a garden overrun by corrupt weeds and bent malformed trees, it simply looks wrong. The locals know its history, know how many people that house has killed, and fear it. Dr Elihu Whipple is not afraid of the house, he's fascinated by it and its history, and now he's decided to investigate its horrifying secret.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Pleasantly Surprised
- By B. Stiner on 07-08-23
By: H. P. Lovecraft
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Doug Bradley's Spinechillers Audio Books, Volume 1
- Classic Horror Stories
- By: Charles Dickens, H. P. Lovecraft, Saki, and others
- Narrated by: Doug Bradley
- Length: 2 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 92
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 86
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 84
This volume features William F Harvey's original undead hand story "The Beast with Five Fingers" that sparked many movies including Sam Raimi's "The Evil Dead". Poe's classic "The Tell Tale Heart" is joined by Lovecraft's creepy tale of alienation "The Outsider", and a chilling Dickens ghost story "The Signalman".
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent stories and wonderful performance
- By Gavin Lees on 10-12-18
By: Charles Dickens, and others
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The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu
- By: Sax Rohmer
- Narrated by: Gary Martin
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 34
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 13
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 14
The first of the popular mystery series introduces a pair of English detectives to their archnemesis, the diabolical Dr. Fu Manchu. Flavorful atmosphere, fast-paced action, and colorful characters enliven this classic of the genre.
By: Sax Rohmer
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The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Tales of Terror
- By: Robert Louis Stevenson
- Narrated by: Michael Kitchen
- Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 205
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 167
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 166
This dark psychological fantasy is more than a moral tale. It is also a product of its time, drawing on contemporary theories of class, evolution and criminality, and the secret lives behind Victorian propriety, to create a unique form of urban Gothic.
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4 out of 5 stars
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The Dark Human Heart
- By Jefferson on 01-30-11
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The Royal Game
- A Chess Story
- By: Stefan Zweig
- Narrated by: Dan Mellins-Cohen
- Length: 2 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 106
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 84
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 83
The fame of the The Royal Game is evident in the number of translations. The last work of the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig can be read today in over 60 languages. The first translation into English appeared in New York in 1944. In Germany, the book has become a constant bestseller. The first-person narrator learns of the presence of the world chess champion Mirko Czentovic on a boat trip from New York to Buenos Aires. Together with his acquaintance Mc Connor and other chess players, the first-person narrator manages to challenge the world champion to a game of chess.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Brief but wonderful
- By Cat S. on 02-17-21
By: Stefan Zweig
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A Woman of No Importance
- By: Oscar Wilde
- Narrated by: Miriam Margolyes, Samantha Mathis, Rosalind Ayres, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 34 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 225
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 188
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 188
Devilishly attractive Lord Illingworth is notorious for his skill as a seducer. But he is still invited to all the "best" houses, while his female conquests must hide their shame in seclusion. In this devastating drawing-room comedy, Oscar Wilde uses his celebrated wit to expose English society's narrow view of everything from sexual mores to Americans.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Pitch Perfect Performance
- By Cheryl on 08-26-12
By: Oscar Wilde
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Keats
- A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph
- By: Lucasta Miller
- Narrated by: Sally Scott
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 50
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 43
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Story5 out of 5 stars 42
Miller, through Keats’s poetry, brilliantly resurrects and brings vividly to life, the man, the poet in all his complexity and spirit, living dangerously, disdaining respectability and cultural norms, and embracing subversive politics. Keats was a lower-middle-class outsider from a tragic and fractured family, whose extraordinary energy and love of language allowed him to pummel his way into the heart of English literature; a freethinker and a liberal at a time of repression, who delighted in the sensation of the moment.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Romantic Life
- By David on 05-03-22
By: Lucasta Miller