Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), read as an unabridged audio book by star performer Nickolas Grace,  was intended to be a serious travel guide. It failed dismally in this respect, but succeeded in becoming an hilarious account of a boating holiday on the Thames, between Kingston and Oxford.

The three men were based on the author and two of his friends. The holiday was a typical boating holiday of its time carried out on what was known as a Thames Camping Skiff. The dog, Montmorency, however, was entirely fictional, but, as Jerome remarked, *had much of me in it.*

The book was denounced as “vulgar” by the literary establishment, but it was hugely popular amongst what were known as the clerking classes who yearned to be “free from that fretful haste, that vehement striving that is every day becoming more and more the bane of nineteenth century life”. It has coined one of the great quotes about the pressures of the modern working life – “I like work. It fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”

The Chronicles of Clovis, published in 1911, was the third in Saki (H H Munro)’s series of delightfully vicious stories. As an insider, Saki was ideally poised to eviscerate the Edwardian middle class way of life, and his pitiless and magnetic sense of humour teamed with an ability to wield that sharpest of writer’s tools, the (very) short story, make these some of the funniest and most quotable of tales. Ian Richardson is simply stunning in what has become one of his last works - The Chronicles of Clovis audiobook by Saki (H H Munro)

Classical actor and James Bond villain Toby Stephens brings his brooding intensity to Joseph Conrad’s terrifying and exhilarating exploration of evil that served as the inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola’s movie Apocalypse Now. This unabridged audio book sees Conrad’s iconic characters, Marlow and Kurtz, on a journey to the very depths of human nature.

It follows Marlow as he recounts, from dusk through to late night, his adventure into the Congo transporting ivory, and his more pressing assignment - to return Kurtz in a cover up, to a group of men aboard a ship anchored in the Thames Estuary.

Heart of Darkness is available in MP3 or iPod audiobook format for you to download immediately.