You’re looking for the Best Books On Librivox? Then this article is helpful to you.
Librivox is an internet resource for free public domain audiobooks that I’ve enjoyed and used in the last couple of decades. Their purpose (which is commendable) would be to make all public domain publications available in sound versions.
How that they expect to do this would be to allow anybody to volunteer to read a magazine. This leaves their enormous selection at the hands of a mixed bag of excellent, fair, and poor readers.
Rather than complaining about the novels that are not worth listening to, I thought I would post a list of exceptional titles. The most gratifying listening experience comes if there’s a solitary narrator, but sometimes I make an exception for this. Enjoy these top recent Librivox recordings!
Top Rated Best Books on Librivox To Read
Here is a list of the Best Librivox Audiobooks that Penn Book recommended reading:
Behind the Green Door, Mildred A. Wirt
Mildred A. Wirt wrote the first 23 Nancy Drew books (Carolyn Keene). I adored Nancy Drew, but I didn’t realize the same author wrote additional children’s books.
This 17-book Penny Parker series about a feisty high school student turned sleuth. Penny encounters puzzles while reporting for her father’s publication.
I love Nancy Drew but prefer Penny. She’s more stubborn, reckless, and regularly overspends. Cheryl Adam reads well and has finished six novels from the bundle, making me giggle.
Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, Mary Seacole
During the Crimean War, half-Scottish, half-Jamaican nurse Mary Seacole adventured. Wonderful Adventures, another Librivox best, describes her travels in Central America and nursing experiences. Mrs. Seacole’s plainspokenness simplifies the nineteenth century.
A disenfranchised girl, man of color, and period-wearing person’s perspective is rare. Cori Samuel’s reading brings Mrs. Seacole’s cynicism to life.
The Rose Garden Husband, Margaret Widdemer
I love librarian romance audiobooks. In The Rose Garden Husband, children’s librarian Phyllis secretly wants a family. She marries a sick and takes care of him after losing confidence in love.
Naturally, things fail. This 1915 love is old-fashioned. It reinforces class and sex stereotypes and is hetero-normative. Though well-written.
The 1919 Pulitzer Prize-winning poet knows English. Mary Herndon Bell’s LibriVox narration enhances this beautiful story.
Lost Mans Lane, Anna Katharine Green
Inspector Gryce summons Miss Amelia Butterworth, an old friend, to investigate if people start disappearing from a country lane. Miss Butterworth exemplifies this busybody spinster sleuth.
Miss Butterworth’s arrival intrigued me as a Miss Marple fan. Anna Katharine Green was a pioneering mystery writer. She inspired Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
I loved Lane’s suspense and cozy mystery. The best LibriVox reader, Mary Beard, plays Miss Butterworth well.
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimension, Edwin Abbot Abbott
Flatland, published in 1884, is a science fiction classic and mathematical romp. Geometrical figures inhabit the two-dimensional tale.
A Square, the narrator, uses Lineland and Spaceland to explain his cultural habits and strange experiences. Portland—the only stage in this tiny universe—arrives.
Flatland is a fascinating mathematical investigation and a subtle Victorian social satire. Ruth Golding’s LibriVox recordings helped me discover this novel, which is one of the best world-building accomplishments I’ve ever seen.
The Thirty-nine Measures (1875 – 1940), John Buchan
On the eve of WWI, the resourceful engineer Richard Hannay gets drawn into a web of secret codes, spies, and murder.
Alfred Hitchcock’s 1939 film of the same name was based on this thrilling action adventure novel. Governor-General of Canada John Buchan (1875-1940) was a notable novelist.
Although criticized for anti-Semitic remarks in The Thirty-Nine Measures, this writer, who was listed on Hitler’s Sonderfahndungsliste (unique search record), was a Jewish sympathizer.
Relativity: The Special and General Theory (1879 – 1955), Albert Einstein
Einstein produced that introduction to Relativity’s space-bending and time-stretching. General and special relativity explain spacetime and gravitation, respectively. Einstein’s theories disintegrated time, shocking the world.
He simplifies his deep understanding of the topic in this book. Einstein said:
“The present book is intended, as much as you can, to provide specific insight into the theory of Relativity to those great readers that, from a general scientific and philosophical perspective, are thinking about the concept, but who aren’t familiar with the mathematical apparatus of theoretical physics“.
The publication is hard at times.
However, when approached, proves itself among the most lucid explanations of Relativity to be discovered everywhere.
The Parenticide Club (1842 – 1914), Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce (1842 – 1914?), best called journalist, satirist, and short story author. Cynical in perspective, economics in fashion; Bierce disappeared while an audience with Pancho Villa’s army.
Four gruesome short stories about a murder inside the family were found through the softly innocent eyes of household members, generally the murderer himself.
The House of a Thousand Candles (1866 – 1947) by Meredith Nicholson
The House of a Thousand Candles was a 1906 bestseller. Young Jack Glenarm returns from Europe and Africa to read his grandfather’s will.
Inside, he can inherit his grandfather’s property if he stays for a year in the old guy’s unfinished House of a Thousand Candles in Annandale, Indiana, with his grandfather’s mystery valet for business.
The home will visit a little girl Jack has never met and prevent him to marry her if he breaks the will.
Jack expects to get bored quickly with this. After Jack arrives at Glenarm House, odd things happen, and he has the best experience of his life!
The Door Through Space (1930 – 1999), Marion Zimmer Bradley
Hurry Cargill was Terran Intelligence’s best ambassador on Wolf’s complex and intriguing world. He risked his life among these somber creatures. Before his fame, he completed the amazing missions.
That seemed over. Since he and a rival had ripped and invaded each other in a blood fight, he had sat behind a drab desk in the fenced-in Terran Headquarters for 60 years.
If THE DOOR THROUGH SPACE opened abruptly, the feud began and this conspiracy to test and destroy the Terran Empire began.
The Invisible Man (1866 – 1946), H.G Wells
This is a famous science fiction book. H.G. Wells (1866-1946) wrote about a scientist who discovers invisibility and uses it on himself.
The Invisible Man boards a train to parade at a country inn while searching for the antidote.
The House on the Borderland (1877 – 1918), William Hope Hodgson
Two gentlemen, Messrs Tonnison and Berreggnog, went to Ireland to fish in Kraighten in 1877. They found a journal amid the ruins of a strange dwelling. Its broken pages suggest an evil come from the draperies of impossibility.
This timeless book connects late 19th-century British clever and occult writers to modern horror literature. H. P. Lovecraft cites this and other Hodgson works as major influences.
History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, Volume 1 [of 3], Simon Dubnow
Simon Dubnow, born in 1860 into a poor Jewish family in Msts Law, Belarus, became a Jewish activist and judge. After Hitler took control, he moved to St. Petersburg, Odessa, Vilna, Kaunas, Berlin, and Riga, Latvia, because to his Jewish heritage.
He and tens of thousands of other Jews were sent to the Riga ghetto and murdered by Nazi forces in 1941.
His life symbolizes Eastern European Jewish suffering throughout the first half of the 20th century. This book covers 2000 years of Jewish beauty and suffering in Russia and Poland.
The Claverings, Anthony Trollope
“I consider that the narrative as a whole to the great, though I’m not aware that the people corroborated that verdict” – the writer.
The Claverings is the very best wrought iron of these audiobooks intended for The Cornhill and indeed guessed as any book he wrote.” – Sadleir.
Daniel Deronda, George Eliot
Two storylines intertwine in this 1876 classic: The first is about Gwendolen, one of Eliot’s greatest characters, who grows from a self-centered young beauty to a wise adult with a wider worldview.
Daniel Deronda, the adoptive son of an aristocratic Englishman, meets Mordecai, an ailing Jewish scholar, and his sensitive sister Mirah.
El Dorado, Baroness Emma Orczy
By Baroness Orczy, El Dorado is a sequel book to the classic adventure novel, The Scarlet Pimpernel. It was first published in 1913. The publication is notable since it is the partial basis for most movie treatments of the first publication.
Emma (version 3), Jane Austen
Jane Austen famously described Emma Woodhouse, the title character of her first book released in December 1815, as a heroine no one except herself will like. Emma’s charm and vivacity have made generations of viewers enjoy her mistakes.
Emma, handsome, bright, and rich, has nothing to do but try to couple her friends, and she misreads relationships and situations as well as her own heart.
Emma’s hypochondriac father, Mrs. Elton’s pride, Jane Fairfax’s mysticism, and Miss Bates’ constant chatter are among the book’s great characters.
Lady Audley’s Secret, Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Lady Audley’s Secret, Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s first book, was a popular audiobook. It follows Lady Audley, Lucy Graham, who hides a scandalous secret from her new husband and his family in this 1862 serial.
This startling Victorian tale of lunacy, bigamy, attempted murder, and charm was a hit. It’s one of the most captivating 19th-century novels.
Northanger Abbey (version 2), Jane Austen
Catherine Morland and her friends Mr. and Mrs. Allen tour Bath in Northanger Abbey. Catherine, 17, goes to balls with new friends like Isabella Thorpe.
Isabella’s brother John Thorpe (James’s college acquaintance) and Henry Tilney pursue Catherine. She befriends Eleanor Tilney, Henry’s younger sister.
Henry’s worldview and audio books captivate her. General Tilney, Henry and Eleanor’s father, invites Catherine to Northanger Abbey, which she expects will be dark, medieval, and full of incredible mystery after reading Ann Radcliffe’s gothic novel The Mysteries of Udolpho.
A Room with a View (version 2), E. M. Forster
The 1908 novel A Room With a View follows Lucy Honeychurch, a young Englishwoman visiting Italy for the first time. Lucy meets George Emerson in Florence and kisses him, terrifying her spinster cousin Charlotte, her chaperone.
In England, Lucy must choose between George and her stuffy fiance Cecil Vyse. Like Howards End, Forster’s hilarious love satirizes turn-of-the-century English society.
The Turn of the Screw, Henry James
The Turn of the Screw is a novella written by Henry James. It’s a ghost story that was initially printed in 1898. A nameless governess accounts for the events of 2 ghosts that stalk the young kids she’s in control over. Is she dependable, or an inventive neurotic?
The Virginian, Owen Wister
Ostensibly a romance, the book revolves around an extremely mythologized version of the Johnson County War in 1890’s Wyoming. The publication takes this big ranchers’ aspect and portrays the lynchings as frontier justice, meted out by the protagonist, who’s part of a natural aristocracy among men.
Wives and Daughters (version 2), Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
From 1864 through 1866, Cornhill Magazine serialized Elizabeth Gaskell’s final work, which her editor concluded. It follows Molly Gibson, the daughter of a widower doctor in Wallingford, through 1830s English life. Molly faces a snobbish stepmother after Mr. Gibson remarries.
Cynthia, her new stepsister, comforts her. The women’s relationships with locals, especially the Squire of Hamley Hall and his family, lead to amusing, romantic, and tragic occurrences.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Life Among the Lowly is one of the most banned books in the United States. It was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe and dealt with slavery as a central theme.
Moby Dick, or The Whale, Herman Melville
Moby Dick is unlike any other novel, literature, or anything else. The novel’s central theme is the obsessional hunt of Captain Ahab, the man responsible for the book’s white whale.
There are also digressions, paradoxes, and philosophical riffs about whaling and life interspersed with the story. Some have even referred to 1851 Moby Dick’s first modern novel as the first modern novel.
A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens’s novel A Tale of Two Cities was set in Paris and London before and during the French Revolution. It is one of the most famous works in historical fiction literature. It depicts the demoralization of the French peasantry by the French aristocracy during the years leading to the revolution.
The revolutionaries also show brutality toward former aristocrats during the first years of the process. There are many social parallels between the novel and life in London in that period. These events are reflected in the lives of many characters.
The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
Kenneth Grahame’s children’s book The Wind in the Willows was first published in 1908. It alternates between slow and fast paced and focuses on four anthropomorphized animals living in a pastoral England. It is known for its mix of adventure, mysticism, and morality and its admiration for the evocation of nature’s Thames valley.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
The famous American story of youth, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), is well known. Mark Twain’s entertaining tale of boyhood adventures and scrapes is set in St. Petersburg, Missouri.
Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are a pair of boys who have many experiences. They race bugs in class, impress girls (especially Becky Thatcher) with stunts and fights in schoolyards, get lost in a cave, and play pirates on the Mississippi River.
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
Great Expectations is the thirteenth and penultimate novel of Charles Dickens. It is a bildungsroman that depicts the personal growth of a child called Pip.
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
Narration: Solo, Kara Shallenberg
A Christmas Carol is a novella written by Charles Dickens. It was first published by Chapman & Hall in London on December 19, 1843. It was a huge success and received critical acclaim.
Other Librivox Best Books Highly Recommended:
- His Last Bow, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling first published in magazines in 1893–94
- The Sign of the Four, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- A Study in Scarlet, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- A Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett
- Anne of Green Gables Series, Lucy Maud Montgomery
- The Valley of Fear, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (version 2) – Short stories – Read, Ruth Golding – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- Bleak House, Charles Dickens
- Hard Times, Charles Dickens
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby, Charles Dickens
- Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens
- Mark Twain: The Complete Interviews, Mark Twain
- Mark Twain: His Life and Work, William M. Clemens
- The Old Curiosity Shop, Charles Dickens
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum
- The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
- Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens
- Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885
- The Secret Garden, Frances H
- Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë – Narration: Solo, Elizabeth Klett
- Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson – Narration: Solo, Kara Shallenberg
- Heidi, Johanna Spyri – Narration: Solo, Kara Shallenberg
- The Swiss Family Robinson, Johann David Wyss – Narration: Solo, Kara Shallenberg
- Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll, William Glennon – Narration: Solo, Kara Shallenberg
How To Listen To Librivox Audio Files?
Once you’ve downloaded any MP3 or Ogg Vorbis files to your computer, there are several ways you may listen to them:
On your laptop
The file format used by LibriVox audiobooks is not unique. So, suppose you’ve used your computer to listen to audio files (such as MP3 files), music CDs, or video DVDs. In that case, you’re already prepared to listen to our audiobooks.
You may listen to them on your computer’s speakers or connected headphones while using your preferred audio player (such as iTunes, Winamp, Quicktime, or Windows Media Player) to play them. If you don’t already have any of these programs installed, you can download them for free.
Troubleshooting
Check these things if you’ve never played audio or video on your computer before and you’re attempting to play an audiobook in your player application but getting no sound:
Make sure your computer’s speakers are working.
- Their power source and the cord to the computer’s sound out or speaker port are connected.
- Are activated: Most speakers have an on/off switch.
- Having the volume control set to a setting higher than the lowest.
Make sure that the system sound on your machine is set to:
- Mute is not on.
- The sound is amplified (this is different from the volume control on the speakers).
- Both are managed by the “Volume Control” software in Microsoft Windows.
on an MP3 player, such as an iPod
The audio files may be loaded onto an iPod or other portable digital audio player so you can listen while exercising or taking the dog for a walk.
Inside a CD player
You may play the files on your home radio or vehicle stereo by burning them to an MP3 disk or audio CD.
Best Readers On Librivox
Even if we appreciate these readers, you should listen to a sample of the first chapter online before downloading any books to see whether you would love the reader.
To see all the books a reader has contributed, click on their name to go straight to their Librivox page. Just a few of their favorite novels that they have read are listed here.
Additionally, for a more consistent reading experience, choose books that have been read by a single reader rather than a group since there may sometimes be one or two chapters where the reader’s voice makes it impossible for you to listen to.
Karen Savage
- Anne of Green Gables series
- The Secret Garden
- A Little Princess
- The Railway Children
- Jane Austen books
- Tales from Shakespeare
John Lieder
- The Adventures of Johnny Chuck
- The Adventures of Reddy Fox and others in the same series
- The Life of Abraham Lincoln
Mark F. Smith
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- The Adventures of Pinocchio
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
- The Call of the Wild
- Captains Courageous
- The Gettysburg Address
- Give Me Liberty speech
- Great Expectations
- Robinson Crusoe
- Swiss Family Robinson
- The Wind in the Willows
Laurie Ann Walden
- The Book of Dragons
- Old Mother West Wind
- Mother West Wind’s Children
Laura Caldwell
- Fifty Famous Stories Retold
- Beautiful Girlhood
- American History Stories
- Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare
Sibella Denton
- Cranford by Gaskell
- Emma by Jane Austen
- Four Great Americans
- History of Egypt 1-3
Kalynda
- Historical Tales 1-6
Phil Chenevert
- Just So Stories
- Aesop’s Fables
- As A Man Thinketh
- Dr. Montessori’s Own Handbook
- The Jungle Book
- Pinocchio
- Pollyanna
Abagail Rasmussen
- Little Women
- Kara Shallenberg
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
- A Christmas Carol
- Heidi
- A Little Princess
- Our Island Story
- Poems Every Child Should Know
- The Secret Garden
- Swiss Family Robinson
- This Country of Ours
- Treasure Island
Lee Ann Howlett
- Understood Betsy
Elizabeth Klett
- The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy
- The Children of Odin
- Jane Eyre
- A Little Princess
- Jane Austen – several
Mark Harris
- Reads several G. A. Henty books
What’re your favorite books in the Best Audio Books On Librivox? Please comment below! Happy Reading!
FAQs
What is Librivox?
Librivox is a free online library of audiobooks, mostly in the public domain. It provides free public domain audiobooks from the classic literature that can be downloaded or streamed online.
Is there an official LibriVox app?
LibriVox is a free app, yes. You can access it on its website or by downloading the LibriVox App for iPhone or Android.
Conclusion
The best book on Librivox is one that resonates with its audience. Everyone has different tastes and interests, so it’s important to find a book that speaks to you. Whether it’s a classic novel, a biography, or an instructional guide, Librivox has something for everyone. With its vast selection of audiobooks, Librivox offers the perfect way to enjoy literature without having to worry about cost or availability.
