The earliest extant heroic epic in any European vernacular, Beowulf is considered the most important poem in Old English. The title character is a warrior of superhuman strength who accomplishes glorious deeds to honor his king. He also represents the ideal lord and vassal, generous to his own men while fulfilling all the forms of courtesy at court. The narrative itself falls into two parts: Beowulf first rescues the royal house of Denmark from two marauding monsters; then, after having ru...

With the premiere of two new film versions of the Snow White tale, Blackstone enters the fray with its own adult, edgy, and not altogether serious full-cast exposé of fairy-taledom. At last it can be told! Was Snow White really as pure as the driven snow? Did her allegedly wicked stepmother get a bum rap from the Grimm brothers? What went on behind the closed Dutch doors of the dwarves’ cottage? How many handsome princes does it take to screw in a light bulb? These and other burning questi...

Blackstone Audio presents an eclectic mix of stories, plays and sketches dedicated to the thinking paranoiac. Gore, sex, horror, literature and edifying morals—what more could you want from an audiobook?This collection includes "In a Grove," upon which Akira Kurosawa based his classic film, Rashomon; an adult fairy tale by the author of Winnie-the-Pooh; the real story (honest!) behind Edgar Rice Burroughs's novel The Moon Maid; and cautionary and scary ta...

More democracy means more freedom. Or does it?American democracy is, in many people's minds, the model for the rest of the world. Fareed Zakaria points out that the American form of democracy is one of the least democratic in use today. Members of the Supreme Court and the Federal Reserve, institutions that fundamentally shape our lives, are appointed, not elected. The Bill of Rights enumerates a set of privileges to which citizens are entitled, no matter what the majority says. By...

On the eve of World War II, a murder in New York City draws two vastly different men, an American detective and a German intelligence officer, into the gathering storm.The death of a spinster nurse killed in her apartment was one of hundreds of simple homicides, indistinguishable from any other in 1938. A suspect was caught and convicted. Then Private Investigator Fintan Dunne is lured in to the case, and coerced by conscience into unraveling the setup that has put an innocent man ...

Three generations of Roths live together in a crowded tenement flat. Long-widowed Manya is the family’s head and its heart. She’s renowned throughout the neighborhood for her cooking, and every noontime the front room of the flat turns into Manya’s private restaurant. But Manya is no soft touch, except, perhaps, where her granddaughter Elka is concerned. Precocious Elka is her closest companion and confidante. Through Elka’s eyes we come to know the fascinating characters who move in and o...

Eastern Europe, 1956 — Comrade Inspector Ferenc Kolyeszar, a proletariat writer as well as a state militia homicide detective, is a man on the brink. Estranged from his wife, whom he believes is cheating on him with one of his colleagues, and frustrated by writer’s block, Ferenc’s attention is focused on his job. But his job is growing increasingly political, something that makes him profoundly uncomfortable. When Ferenc is asked to look into the disappearance of a party member’s wife and ...

Blackstone is pleased to present the first ever audio recordings of the only two Holmes plays written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This specially commissioned production by the Hollywood Theater of the Ear is a unique, must-have audio for all Sherlockians.In Sherlock Holmes, Professor Moriarity, the Napoleon of crime, plots with would-be blackmailers to have Holmes killed. And the normally love-proof Holmes falls for an exceptional woman.What is the secret of the shocking dea...

From pre-Civil War Virginia to the prairies of the far west, this epic follows young Lew Dorset as he journeys in search of his father.Lew's skill with firearms gets him a job as a hunter with a trader heading onto the prairies to barter with the Indians. There he meets young Chuck Morris, and together they take on a Cheyenne attack party. Finding shelter in a Sioux village, they absorb the native culture. Lew comes to know the great Sioux chieftains, becoming blood brothers with S...

The only complete trilogy to survive from ancient Greek theater is presented here in this sound recording of all three plays: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides.In the Oresteia, Aeschylus dramatizes the myth of the curse on the royal house of Argos. Action begins when King Agamemnon returns victorious from the Trojan War but is treacherously slain by his wife. It ends with the trial of their son, Orestes, who slew his mother to avenge her treachery—a trial with the ...

Olen Steinhauer's first two novels, The Bridge of Sighs and The Confession, launched an acclaimed literary crime series set in post–World War II Eastern Europe. Now he takes his dynamic cast of characters into the shadowy political climate of the 1960s. State Security Officer Brano Sev's job is to do what his superiors ask, no matter what—even if that means leaving his post to work the assembly line in a factory, fitting electrical wires into gauges. So when he gets a dir...

Songs on Bronze is the first major retelling of Greek mythology in half a century; a set of lively, racy, dramatic versions of the great myths which, in a multicultural society, are recognized more than ever as stories without equal.Modern translations of the Greek myths have often sought to instruct, to edify, or to impart a personal philosophy. Songs on Bronze is different. Nigel Spivey gives us the Greek myths as the spellbinding stories they are. In bold, sens...