New Loyal books Podcasts

Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett

20 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago
The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) is considered Jewett’s finest work, described by Henry James as her “beautiful little quantum of achievement.” Despite James’s diminutives, the novel remains ...

2 B R 0 2 B by Kurt Vonnegut

1 episode - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 6 ratings
In this chilling short-story by a master of the craft, Kurt Vonnegut creates a fictional world of the future where life and death are no longer matters of individual choice or destiny. The title re...

Caedmon's Hymn by Caedmon

1 episode - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 1 rating
Cædmon was an Anglo-Saxon herdsman attached to the double monastery of Streonæshalch (657–681). Originally ignorant of the art of song, Cædmon learned to compose one night in the course of a dream....

Short Poetry Collection by Various

2 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 1 rating
Short Poetry Collection 001: a collection of 29 public-domain poems.

Ion by Plato

2 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago
In Plato’s Ion, Socrates questions Ion on whether he should really claim laud and glory for his ‘rhapsodic’ recitals of Homer’s poetry.

Afterward by Edith Wharton

2 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 2 ratings
A short story classified under the American Gothic genre, the piece depicts an eerie set of events following the distressing occurrences within the Boyne household, as their dream relocation takes ...

Poems of William Blake by William Blake

3 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★ - 5 ratings
Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul are two books of poetry by the English poet and painter, William Blake. Although Songs of Innocence was first...

Love and Friendship by Jane Austen

3 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 4 ratings
Begun when she was just eleven years old, Love and Friendship is one of Jane Austen's stories that very few readers may have encountered before. Austen experts feel that this story was written, l...

What Men Live By and Other Tales by Leo Tolstoy

4 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 3 ratings
Although Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was a wealthy landowner, in his later life he had what was considered a “religious awakening.” This experience went on to inform his writing and his lifestyle in pr...

Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson

6 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★ - 6 ratings
“Nature” is a short essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson published anonymously in 1836. It is in this essay that the foundation of transcendentalism is put forth, a belief system that espouses a non-tradit...

U.S. Historical Documents by Various

4 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 17 ratings
The Articles of Confederation: On November 15th, 1777 The Articles of Confederation became the first constitution of the United States, though not yet ratified by the thirteen original colonies. Ra...

An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde

4 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 1 rating
This story opens at a fashionable dinner party in Sir Robert Chiltern's home in the heart of London's stylish Grosvenor Square. One of Lady Chiltern's old school-friends, Mrs. Cheveley, a woman wit...

Common Sense by Thomas Paine

5 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 12 ratings
First published anonymously due to its seditious content in 1776, the pamphlet argues for the need of American colonists to pursue complete independence from Great Britain, and not be driven simply...

Red Shadows by Robert Ervin Howard

5 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago
Red Shadows is the first of a series of stories featuring Howard’s puritan avenger, Solomon Kane. Kane tracks his prey over land and sea, enters the jungles of Africa, and even faces dark Gods and ...

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

5 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★ - 10 ratings
William Shakespeare’s most well-known play is more than most people realize. While it is the story of star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet, it is also the story of two families in the middle of a...

Bill of Rights & Amendments to the US Constitution by Founding Fathers of the United States

5 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 20 ratings
The Constitution has a total of 27 amendments. The first ten, collectively known as the Bill of Rights, were ratified simultaneously. The following seventeen were ratified separately.

As You Like It by William Shakespeare

6 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 2 ratings
In a tiny French dukedom, a younger brother usurps his elder brother's throne. Duke Senior is banished to the Forest of Arden along with his faithful retainers, leaving his lovely daughter Rosalind...

Principles of Economics by Alfred Marshall

6 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★ - 1 rating
“The most valuable of all capital is that invested in human beings.” An uncannily prophetic quote from an 1890 book, Principles of Economics by Alfred Marshall presents an idea that has been accept...

Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

6 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 18 ratings
One of the earliest polished examples of existential literature, Notes from the Underground follows the life of a recluse and depicts his antagonistic attitude toward society. Written in two parts ...

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

6 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 7 ratings
First published in Blackwood’s magazine as a three part serial in 1899 and published in 1902, Heart of Darkness centers on the experiences of protagonist Charles Marlow as he is assigned the duty t...

The Tempest by William Shakespeare

6 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★ - 5 ratings
Banished from his own lands by a usurping brother, Prospero and his daughter Miranda have been living on a deserted island for years, until fate brings the brother within the range of Prospero's po...

Typhoon by Joseph Conrad

6 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 1 rating
First published in 1902 as a serial in Pall Mall Magazine, the adventure novel follows the disrupting events onboard a steamboat after it takes a perilous course at sea, which triggers a state of m...

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

6 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 4 ratings
Though it's titled The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, the man himself appears only in five scenes in the entire play! However, such is his impact on the events that surrounded him that he still remains ...

Boyhood by Leo Tolstoy

7 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★ - 1 rating
Boyhood is the second in Tolstoy's trilogy of three autobiographical novels, including Childhood and Youth, published in a literary journal during the 1850s. (Introduction by Bill Boerst)

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

7 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 2 ratings
If you've watched and loved the delightful musical My Fair Lady, then you'd love to read the wonderful play on which it is based. Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw is equally engrossing and as full ...

Three Short Works by Gustave Flaubert

7 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago
Here is a collection of strikingly different pieces by Flaubert: a prose poem in the voices of Death, Satan and Nero; the trials and apotheosis of a medieval saint; and the life of a selfless maid ...

Ten Days in a Madhouse by Nellie Bly

8 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 2 ratings
Long before Christiane Amanpour, Frances Fitzgerald and Martha Gellhorn blazed a trail in courageous investigative journalism, a pioneering and intrepid writer and journalist whose pen name was Nel...

As a Man Thinketh by James Allen

8 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 44 ratings
“A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts,” is one of the quotes from James Allen's classic self help books, As a Man Thinketh. Published in 1902,...

Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus by Francis Pharcellus Church

8 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 2 ratings
“Is There A Santa Claus?” was the headline that appeared over an editorial in the September 21, 1897 edition of the New York Sun. The editorial, which included the response of “Yes, Virginia, There...

Utopia by Sir Thomas More

12 episodes - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 2 ratings
He was a trusted aide of Henry VIII, but when he supposedly opposed the monarch's second marriage, he was thrown into prison and executed for treason. More than two hundred years later, he was cano...