Author

Washington Irving

Washington Irving
  • The most spine-tingling suspense stories from the colonial era—including Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, and H. P. Lovecraft, and many more

    This stunning anthology of classic colonial suspense fiction plunges deep into the native soil from which American horror literature first sprang. While European writers of the Gothic and bizarre evoked ruined castles and crumbling abbeys, their American counterparts looked back to the colonial era’s stifling religion, and its dark and threatening woods.

    Today the best-known tale of colonial horror is Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, although Irving’s story is probably best known today from various movie versions it has inspired. Colonial horror tales of other prominent American authors—Nathaniel Hawthorne and James Fenimore Cooper among them—are overshadowed by their bestsellers, and are difficult to find in modern libraries. Many other pioneers of American horror fiction are presented afresh in this breathtaking volume for today’s public readers.

    Some will have heard the names of Increase and Cotton Mather in association with the Salem witch trials, but will not have sought out their contemporary accounts of what were viewed as supernatural events. By bringing these writers to the attention of the contemporary readers, this collection will help bring their names—and their work—back from the dead.

  • Enjoy the traditions of holidays past with this classic collection of fun and touching stories.

    • A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, read by John Mawson
    • Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus by Francis Pharcellus Church, read by Paul Boehmer
    • The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry, read by Paul Boehmer
    • ’Twas the Night before Christmas by Clement C. Moore, read by Gregory Itzin
    • Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Dogs by Eleanor Hallowell Abbott, read by Dana Green
    • The Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter, read by Jane Carr
    • Old Christmas by Washington Irving, read by Gregory Itzin
    • Christmas at Red Butte by L. M. Montgomery, read by Dana Green
    • The Christmas Surprise at Enderly Road by L. M. Montgomery, read by Paul Boehmer
  • Enjoy a timeless collection of children's fables, fairy tales, and stories, all available in one audiobook. A Children's Listening Library: Volume 1 includes:

    1. Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes
    2. Selections from the Tales of Beatrix Potter
    3. Beauty & the Beast by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont 
    4. "East of the Sun, West of the Moon" by Peter Christen Asbj├©rnsen and J├©rgen Moe
    5. Cinderella based on Charles Perrault's version
    6. "The Frog Prince" and "Rumplestiltskin" by The Brothers Grimm 
    7. "The Land of the Blue Flower" by Frances Hodgson Burnett
    8. "Racketty-Packetty House" by Frances Hodgson Burnett
    9. Dollypogs by David Thorn
    10. The Reluctant Dragon by Kenneth Grahame
    11. "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" by Robert Browning
    12. "Paul Revere's Ride" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
    13. "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving
  • In the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town, New York, in a secluded glen called Sleepy Hollow, Ichabod Crane arrives to educate the children of the region. This lanky schoolmaster from Connecticut fancies the idea of marrying the beautiful Katrina Van Tassel, the eighteen-year-old daughter of a wealthy farmer, but there is a problem with his plan. Abraham “Brom Bones” Van Brunt, the town rowdy, has already set his heart on marrying her.

    This romantic rivalry climaxes one autumn night with the appearance of the legendary Headless Horseman, allegedly the ghost of a Hessian trooper who lost his head to a cannonball during the Revolutionary War. Every night he rides through the woods to the scene of the battle in search of his head.

    Since this story’s first appearance in 1820, generations of readers, young and old, have thrilled to the Headless Horseman galloping through the haunted woods of Sleepy Hollow. The rollicking tale of Ichabod Crane and his ill-fated courtship of Katrina Van Tassel has become a classic ghost story.

  • Washington Irving’s two most famous stories—available in one audiobook!

    One tells of Rip Van Winkle, who escaped the dreadful life of a hen-pecked husband by magical means. The other is of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman on their midnight ride. Experience the fright of poor Ichabod when assailed by the headless horseman and laugh at poor Rip who spends a lot of time sleeping to try to escape the headache of a nagging and ungrateful wife.

  • Written in 1831, Washington Irving’s dreamlike description of the Alhambra, the beautiful Moorish castle that defined the height of Moorish civilization, and of the surrounding territory of Granada remains one of the most romantic and entertaining travelogues ever written of this region in Spain.

    Enhanced here with exquisite Spanish guitar music, the narrative is a heady mix of historical fact, medieval myth and mystery, sensual descriptions, and an appreciation for a civilization that valued beauty, philosophy, literature, science, and the arts on an equal level with warrior skills. Secret chambers, desperate battles, imprisoned princesses, palace ghosts, and fragrant gardens, described in a wistful and dreamlike eloquence, will transport listeners to a paradise of their own.