The Story of My Life is the explosive and exhilarating autobiography by the infamous libertine Giacomo Casanova. Intense and scandalous, Casanova's extraordinary adventures take the listener on an incredible voyage across 18th-century Europe - from France to Russia, Poland to Spain and Turkey to Germany, with Venice at their heart. He falls madly in love, has wild flings and delirious orgies, and encounters some of the most brilliant figures of his time, including Catherine the Great, Louis XV and Benjamin Franklin. He holds a verbal dual with Voltaire and finds himself hauled before the court multiple times.

The first part of the Memoirs of Giacomo Casanova, a special film tie-in version. The film, starring Heath Ledger as Casanova with Jeremy Irons and Sienna Miller, will be released in UK February 2006.

First published in 1621, and hardly ever out of print since, it is a huge, varied, idiosyncratic, entertaining and learned survey of the experience of melancholy, seen from just about every possible angle that could be imagined. The Anatomy of Melancholy, presented here with all the original quotations in English, is, at last, available on audiobook in its entirety.

A milestone in the history of the novel, Samuel Richardson’s epistolary and elaborate Clarissa follows the life of a chaste young woman desperate to protect her virtue. When beautiful Clarissa Harlowe is forced to marry the rich but repulsive Mr. Solmes, she refuses, much to her family’s chagrin. She escapes their persecution with the help of Mr. Lovelace, a dashing and seductive rake, but soon finds herself in a far worse dilemma. Terrifying and enlightening, Clarissa weaves a tapestry of narrative experimentation into a gripping morality tale of good versus evil.

The Decameron is one of the greatest literary works of the Middle Ages. Ten young people have fled the terrible effects of the Black Death in Florence and, in an idyllic setting, tell a series of brilliant stories, by turns humorous, bawdy, tragic and provocative. This celebration of physical and sexual vitality is Boccaccio's answer to the sublime other-worldliness of Dante's Divine Comedy.

In 1572, Montaigne - nobleman, humanist, and thoroughly Renaissance man - retired to the seclusion of his estate in the Dordogne and started to write. From his pen poured a stream of "essays" - attempts to capture the observations that came to him on an idiosyncratic range of subjects, from ancient customs, cannibals, and books to thumbs, war-horses, and the wearing of clothes. He made the study of himself the starting point for investigations into how to live, and wrote with a startlingly modern candor about love, grief, friendship, sex, and death.

In this final master-work of The Rational Male series, Rollo Tomassi breaks down the fundamental mechanics of Game, intersexual social skills, and the nuts and bolts psychology that makes it work. The Players Handbook is not a "how-to" book, it's a "why-it-works" book. It’s not an instruction manual—it is the missing textbook on Game and understanding intersexual dynamics. Game is an adaptive set of social skills and best practices in navigating intersexual dynamics in a modern sexual marketplace.

Set in the court of Urbino in 1507, Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier presents an invaluable look at court life and culture during the Renaissance. Over four nights of dialogue, the book explores the key question, ‘What should a courtier be like?’ and presents a deep and timeless discussion that is reminiscent of Plato’s Symposium and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and invites comparisons with Machiavelli’s The Prince.

The classic samurai novel about the real exploits of the most famous swordsman. Miyamoto Musashi becomes a reluctant hero to a host of people whose lives he has touched and by whom he has been touched. Inevitably, he has to pit his skill against the naked blade of his greatest rival.

Johann Wolfgang Goethe was a colossus of German literature and a true Renaissance man. A novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher, he wrote the first international bestseller, The Sorrows of Young Werther, and his epic masterpiece Faust is one of the most famous and celebrated dramas of all time.

Prince Lyov Nikolayevitch Myshkin is one of the great characters in Russian literature. Is he a saint or just naïve? Is he an idealist or, as many in General Epanchin's society feel, an "idiot"? Certainly his return to St. Petersburg after years in a Swiss clinic has a dramatic effect on the beautiful Aglaia, youngest of the Epanchin daughters, and on the charismatic but willful Nastasya Filippovna. As he paints a vivid picture of Russian society, Dostoyevsky shows how principles conflict with emotions - with tragic results.

This is the story of the rise to national power of a desperately poor young man from the Texas Hill Country. The Path to Power reveals in extraordinary detail the genesis of the almost superhuman drive, energy, and ambition that set LBJ apart. It follows him from the Hill Country to New Deal Washington, from his boyhood through the years of the Depression to his debut as Congressman, his heartbreaking defeat in his first race for the Senate, and his attainment, nonetheless, at age 31, of the national power for which he hungered.

Delve into the labyrinth of Jorge Luis Borges’s thoughts on the theory and practice of literature, and learn from one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century not only what a writer does but also what a writer is. For the first time ever, here is a volume that brings together Borges’s wide-ranging reflections on writers, on the canon, on the craft of fiction and poetry, and on translation—an ars poetica of one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers.

The Roman historian Tacitus was a successful politician who eventually became governor of the province of Asia. He is thought to have died around AD 120 and benefitted from the patronage of the Flavian emperors. The Histories, of which only just over four out of 14 books survive, covers the years following the assassination of the Emperor Nero: Rome was plunged into further civil war with the Year of the Four Emperors (AD 69), which culminated in the accession of Vespasian, the first of the Flavians.

Plutarch (c. AD 46-AD 120) was born to a prominent family in the small Greek town of Chaeronea, about 20 miles east of Delphi in the region known as Boeotia. His best known work is the Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, arranged in pairs to illuminate their common moral virtues and vices. The surviving lives contain 23 pairs, each with one Greek life and one Roman life as well as four unpaired single lives.

It’s 1984, and life has changed beyond recognition. Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, is a place where Big Brother is always watching, and nobody can hide. Except, perhaps, for Winston Smith. Whilst working at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, he secretly dreams of freedom. And in a world where love and sex are forbidden, where it’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe, he meets Julia and O’Brien and vows to rebel.

It’s the summer of ’77 in New York City, and the only thing more unnerving than the scorching heatwave is the rampant murder, leaving washed-up homicide detective Richard Dietrich on edge. When Dietrich investigates a brutal mob hit the brass doesn’t want him to solve, he goes from phoning it in to getting in over his head. Caught up in a mysterious second homicide with an even more perplexing perpetrator, Dietrich starts to second guess his instincts—and his memory—as he searches for answers at the bottom of a bottle.

The 13 chapters of The Art of War, each devoted to one aspect of warfare, were compiled by the high-ranking Chinese military general, strategist, and philosopher Sun-Tzu. In spite of its battlefield specificity, The Art of War has found new life in the modern age, with leaders in fields as wide and far-reaching as world politics, human psychology, and corporate strategy finding valuable insight in its timeworn words.

After their mother passes, three estranged siblings reunite to sort out her estate. Beth, the oldest, never left home. She stayed with her mom, caring for her until the very end. Nicole, the middle child, has been kept at arm’s length due to her ongoing battle with a serious drug addiction. Michael, the youngest, lives out of state and hasn’t been back to their small Wisconsin town since their father ran out on them seven years before. While going through their parents’ belongings, the siblings stumble upon a collection of home videos and decide to revisit those happier memories.

But Jason Asano is settling into his new life. Now, a contest draws young elites to the city of Greenstone to compete for a grand prize. Jason must gather a band of companions if he is to stand a chance against the best the world has to offer. While the young adventurers are caught up in competition, the city leaders deal with revelations of betrayal as a vast and terrible enemy is revealed. Although Jason seems uninvolved, he has unknowingly crossed the enemy’s path before.

Renowned as much for her wit and satirical social commentary as for her stories of love and romance, Jane Austen remains unfailingly relevant and one of Britain’s best loved authors. In this Audible Original collection, an all-star list of narrators (Billie Piper, Claire Foy, Emma Thompson, Florence Pugh and Gugu Mbatha-Raw) capture Austen’s pin-sharp humour and tone in these dramatisations of her six beloved novels accompanied by a full cast.

The modern audience hasn't had a chance to truly appreciate the unknowing dread that readers would have felt when reading Bram Stoker's original 1897 manuscript. Most modern productions employ campiness or sound effects to try to bring back that gothic tension, but we've tried something different. By returning to Stoker's original storytelling structure - a series of letters and journal entries voiced by Jonathan Harker, Dr. Van Helsing, and other characters - with an all-star cast of narrators, we've sought to recapture its originally intended horror and power.

Audible Originals takes to the high seas to bring to life this timeless tale of pirates, lost treasure maps and mutiny. When weathered old sailor Billy Bones arrives at the inn of young Jim Hawkins' parents, it is the start of an adventure beyond anything he could have imagined. When Bones dies mysteriously, Jim stumbles across a map of a mysterious island in his sea chest, where X marks the spot of a stash of buried pirate gold.

Luxury villas on hot white sand, views for miles over turquoise water. Flawless hostess Penny gathers guests to an island for her husband’s birthday celebrations. But she soon regrets inviting self-obsessed Eloise. When a child vanishes on the night of the party, their perfect island weekend is ripped apart. Even paradise harbours murky secrets… Has he been taken? Has he drowned? In the panic to find any trace, Penny casts about for someone to blame—even if that person is her own daughter, Rosie. Even clear waters descend to pitch black.

The doorbell rings, just days after my beloved husband’s sudden death. I don’t recognise the woman on our doorstep, with her blonde highlights, a diamond bracelet identical to my own and a bouncing baby boy in her arms. As I show her inside, I notice her eyes grow wide as she takes in our spacious hallway, and the big squashy sofas that we all used to pile on. She glances at the silver-framed family photos and my little daughter hiding behind my skirts. She looks at me, her blue eyes serious. ‘I’m sorry’ she says. ‘I am your husband’s girlfriend. And this is his son.'