Classic Fiction audiobooks

Classic fiction is the wide shelf: the novels that taught later writers what a novel could do. Cervantes published Don Quixote in two parts, in 1605 and 1615, and much of what followed answers it in some way. In the 1800s the form became a public event, as Dickens's books arrived in monthly parts and Flaubert's Madame Bovary landed in court for its frankness. By the early 1900s Edith Wharton, Willa Cather and Thomas Mann were turning the same tools on New York society, the Nebraska plains and a dying Venice.

Many of these books were meant to be heard as well as read. Dickens toured with public readings of his own work, and A Christmas Carol was one of his standbys. Listening suits their large casts and generous pacing, and the full text on screen helps where it counts: keeping Bleak House's dozens of characters straight, catching Hardy's Wessex dialect, or rereading a sentence of Henry James that turns three times before it lands.

Where to start: A Christmas Carol, which most people know only from adaptations and which is short enough for one evening. Emma comes next, Austen's comedy about a clever young woman who is sure she knows what is best for everyone in Highbury. Madame Bovary follows a doctor's wife in Normandy whose novels have promised her more than her life delivers. Heart of Darkness is brief and haunting, Marlow telling a river story on a ship anchored in the Thames. Save Don Quixote for when you want a long companion, a country gentleman who has read so many knightly romances that he becomes a knight himself.