Welcome to the go-to audiobookstore for all your favourite books of yesteryear. Start building your collection today, for just £7.99 per audiobook.
“The Talking Pictures TV of audiobookstores,” – TechNews
Partnered with global audio-host Soundwise
Ariel is the fastest-growing audiobookstore for brand-new versions of classic crime, humour, adventure, sci-fi & travel from the libraries & bookshops of a bygone age – listen any time, anywhere, and begin your journey into the Golden Age of storytelling.
Unlike other companies Ariel Audio specialises only in vintage classics. All your favourite authors of yesteryear are here: H.G. Wells, Conan Doyle, Dorothy L. Sayers, Rider Haggard, John Buchan, E.W. Hornung, Erskine Childers, Joseph Conrad, Robert Louis Stevenson, Dorothy Bowers, Jerome K. Jerome, George & Weedon Grossmith & many many more, read by a splendid repertory company of vintage actors.
Julian Dutton – “One of the best vocal performers around,” – BBC Radio.
OUR MISSION
Fond memories of browsing in a secondhand bookshop and discovering a book to be treasured for years to come? Ariel Audio recreates that magical place, dusting off the gems of yesteryear and delivering them to you in shiny crystal clear audio for your listening pleasure.
Books you may have read and wish to rediscover, classics you’ve always meant to read but never got round to, neglected authors new to you – Ariel will allow you to build a virtual library of your favourite stories & nonfiction from the Golden Age of Humour, Crime, Travel & Adventure. Join the growing band of Ariel Book Club members, where every audiobook experience is a holiday.
- CRIME
- MYSTERY
- HUMOUR
- ADVENTURE
- SCI-FI
- FANTASY
- TRAVEL
- SHOWBIZ
- MEMOIRS
- CINEMA
- THEATRE
BROWSE OUR COSY BACKSTREET BOOKSHOP BELOW!
THREE MEN IN A BOAT by Jerome K. Jerome
The evergreen tale of Harris, George & ‘J’ as they escape the trammels of late-Victorian civilisation and take to the dreamy waters of the Thames can, like a favourite holiday destination, be revisited again and again. The misadventures of three clerks – not forgetting Montmorency the dog – is a landmark of comic realism, their antics among the funniest in all literature.
RAFFLES, THE AMATEUR CRACKSMAN by E.W. Hornung
The thrilling adventures of Raffles & his faithful sidekick Bunny, as they swagger their way through Edwardian London. Published in 1899 as a counterpoint to Sherlock Holmes & Dr. Watson, the immortal Raffles stories were a template for later anti-heroes like The Saint.
WHOSE BODY? by Dorothy L. Sayers
The very first adventure of that archetypal Gentleman Detective, Lord Peter Wimsey. Privy to a private fortune, the louche bon vivant thrilled readers by cruising England in his purring Daimler & solving crimes with the help of his trusty ex-Batman, Bunter. On its appearance in 1923 critics described Sayers’ debut as ‘…a stunning first novel that discloses the advent of a new star in the firmament, and one of the first magnitude.’
THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS by John Buchan
John Buchan wrote his immortal thriller in 1914 while convalescing in Broadstairs. When his six year old daughter visited she counted the number of steps to his room, proudly announced ‘Thirty-Nine!’ – and the first modern thriller was born. The book introduced to the world the figure of Richard Hannay, the ordinary Englishman thrust into extraordinary circumstances. An instant bestseller, it established the ‘man on the run’ as the template for a multitude of thrillers that followed.
THE DAUGHTER OF TIME by Josephine Tey
Voted the Greatest Crime Novel ever written by the British Crime Writer’s Association, the story of Inspector Alan Grant’s investigation of the murder of the Princes in the Tower is a literary masterclass in suspense and detection. Did Richard III murder his nephews the Princes in the Tower in 1483? On its publication Anthony Boucher called the book ‘one of the permanent classics in the detective field…. one of the best, not of the year, but of all time‘, & Dorothy B. Haughes said it is ‘not only one of the most important mysteries of the year, but of all years of mystery’. A must-listen to for all lovers of thrillers & literary fiction.
A JOBBING ACTOR by John Le Mesurier
The beautiful, funny, poignant memoirs of one of Britain’s best-loved thespians, A Jobbing Actor chronicles Le Mesurier’s career working with many of the jewels in the history of TV & film, including Peter Sellers, Tony Hancock, his beloved Hattie Jacques, and many more. Narrated by Julian Dutton, whose one-man show portraying Le Mesurier, Do You Think That’s Wise? is touring to critical acclaim 2019-2024.
‘Julian Dutton gives a tour de force. An amazing performance – every word, every phrase, is John Le Mesurier,’ – British Theatre Guide.
FORTHCOMING AUDIOBOOKS FROM THE ARIEL COLLECTION –
THE TIME MACHINE by H.G. Wells
In a small study at number 18, Maybury Rd., Woking, in 1895, a young writer toiled away at his first novel, and the genre of science-fiction was born. H.G. Well’s thrilling masterpiece has never aged, continuing to delight readers with its adventure of a Victorian Professor plunging into the distant reaches of the future, meeting peril, dystopia, and love.
THE PICK OF PUNCH
When Henry Mayhew founded Punch Magazine in 1841 he cannot have known he was building a bedrock of British humour that would endure for more than a century and a half. The contributors to this irreverent organ across the decades are a roster of comic masters. Enjoy a selection of its best pieces from down the years. Punch may have gone, but the laughter has not.
KING SOLOMON’S MINES by H. Rider Haggard
Join the heroic Allan Quartermain – the forerunner of Indiana Jones – in his fabulous debut, that made H. Rider Haggard’s fame & fortune. Since it first appeared in 1894 this classic adventure story has been filmed many times, and never been out of print. The search for a missing explorer in the heart of Africa becomes a quasi-mythic quest for the fabled lost mine of Solomon, and a perennial pursuit of unimaginable wealth.
THE DIARY OF A NOBODY by George & Weedon Grossmith
Charles Pooter, resident of The Laurels, ‘a nice six-roomed residence, not counting basement,’ is one of the comic immortals of English literature, and an exemplar of the humour of aspiration. The golden rule of comic characters is that they have not one ounce of self-awareness, and Pooter’s solemnity in the face of social gaffes and disasters is a model of blissfully ignorant dignity. A comic classic that never stales.
THE PRISONER OF ZENDA by Anthony Hope
Not many novels establish an entirely new genre of literature – a notable exception is this swashbuckling adventure that poured from the fountain pen of Anthony Hope in 1894. Extravagant, fast-moving, packed with thrills, the story of the hapless holidaying Englishman forced to impersonate the abducted King of fictional Ruritania has the freshness of a Romanian mountain stream – an evergreen classic of the adventure genre.
PUCK OF POOK’S HILL by Rudyard Kipling
Kipling’s enchanting fantasy, published in 1906, mixes magic and history in what has been called a ‘triumph of archaeological imagination.’ The perennial Puck, fairy and weaver of spells, tells stories & fables to two children in the heart of the Sussex countryside, and in so doing a secret, hidden history of England unfolds – a history of lore, witchcraft and lingering paganism. In a work that pre-figures Tolkien – ‘Weland gave the Sword, The Sword gave the Treasure, and the Treasure gave the Law. It’s as natural as an oak growing,’ Puck of Pook’s Hill is an unmissable English classic.
THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE by Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson’s wife, Fanny, wrote: ‘In the small hours of one morning in 1885, I was awakened by cries of horror from Louis. Thinking he had a nightmare, I awakened him. He said ‘Why did you wake me? I was dreaming a fine bogey tale!’ Over the next three days he wrote perhaps one of the finest psychological thrillers ever conceived – at once a masterpiece of horror and a profound meditation on the binary drives of human nature.
MY CRAZY LIFE by Bud Flanagan
One of the great entertainers of the 20th century, Reuben Weintrop was born above a fish shop in Brick Lane, London, in 1896. As a youth he walked to Southampton to join the merchant navy and see the world. On his return he conquered the world – as Bud Flanagan. His career spanned the Golden Age of Variety, and his sparkling memoirs are a unique portrait of a vanished world of theatrical digs, comics, ventriloquists, dancers, jugglers – and laughter. An essential listen for all lovers of theatre, comedy and the history of Variety.
THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH by H.P. Lovecraft
With both his parents incarcerated in lunatic asylums, H.P. Lovecraft retreated inside his head and found masterpieces of the human psyche. Heir to Poe & de la Mare – no Lovecraft, no David Lynch. The Call of Cthulhu, At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow over Innsmouth: cross the borderlines of consciousness & enter a world of unimaginable horror, fear & terror, with the Lovecraft Collection, available only from Ariel Audio.
THE SECRET AGENT by Joseph Conrad
In Heart of Darkness Conrad’s hero Marlowe looks across at London from the Thames Estuary and murmurs – ‘…and this also… has been one of the dark places of the Earth.’ In The Secret Agent, his political masterpiece, that darkness is given a voice. The result is a sinister thriller so seminal in its power that without it there would have been no Graham Greene or John Le Carre. Astonishing in its clairvoyance, Conrad’s novel predicts terrorism & anarchism as a consequence of an abandonment of morality, making this book essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the twentieth century and beyond.
THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL by G.K. Chesterton
What would you do if you woke up to find yourself King? From the creator of the immortal detective Father Brown, Chesterton’s fable of how the anonymous Auberon Quin is appointed monarch of all England, is both a comic masterpiece and a jewel of the genre of satire, in the pantheon of Utopia & Gulliver’s Travels. Set in 1984, it inspired Orwell’s later novel of that name and, while considerably lighter in tone, shares with that dystopian work a fierce defence of individualism and the liberal English spirit.
THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD by Oliver Goldsmith
One of the funniest books in the English language, the tale of the Reverend Charles Primrose and his family, first published in 1766, was the most widely-read novel of the 19th century, a favourite of Dickens, George Eliot, Stendhal & many others. Goldsmith’s friend Dr. Johnson found him one day slumped at his desk, drunk & penniless. With trembling hand Goldsmith handed over a manuscript. Johnson read it, gave him a bag of sovereigns, and took it straight to a publisher. The book made Goldsmith’s fortune.
OLD CALABRIA by Norman Douglas
In 1915, with nothing but a stout stick and a willing donkey, philologist, explorer and Italophile Norman Douglas took to the hills and woods of ancient Southern Italy, and in so doing captured a unique snapshot of a now-vanished world. The people, the peasants, the vine-fringed hilltop villages, the crystal-blue Mediterranean, the churches – with the erudite Douglas every golden lane has a story, every backstreet taverna a vivid encounter, creating a fabulous classic of the travel genre.
THE BEST SUPERNATURAL TALES of Arthur Conan Doyle
When Sherlock Holmes wearied of mundane reality he reached for the cocaine: his creator Conan Doyle reached beyond reality to the occult. A household name for his Holmes & Watson stories, Sir Arthur’s lesser known supernatural fiction – first published in the Strand Magazine – are no less thrilling. His tales of Eygyptian magic, spectres & seances are guaranteed to raise the hackles of the most hardened of sceptics, and are presented here as an audiobook for the very first time.
LAUGH & LIVE by Douglas Fairbanks
Decades before the ‘health & wellness’ movement, Hollywood film star Douglas Fairbanks – bon vivant, actor, adventurer – published his recipe for a happy life. Join him as he reveals his own secrets of physical and mental fitness that took him from obscurity to the heights of Hollywood stardom. His secret? Laugh! A classic of the self-help genre from 1917.
BULLDOG DRUMMOND by Sapper
When ex-British Army Captain Hugh “Bulldog” Drummond, DSO, MC, places an advertisement in The Times stating his desire for an adventure, his creator Herman Cyril McNeile (‘Sapper’) had no inkling that his dashing British hero would lead directly to an admirer, Ian Fleming, creating his own hero in Drummond’s image. In short, no Drummond – no James Bond. Journey back to where it all began.
BROOD OF THE WITCH-QUEEN by Sax Rohmer
Best known for his Fu Manchu stories, Sax Rohmer’s Brood of the Witch-Queen, 1918, is considered by many to be his masterpiece. A supernatural tale of the occult, murder & love, even that master of horror H.P. Lovecraft himself hailed Rohmer’s book as ‘equal to Bram Stoker’s Dracula.’
PLUS! – EXCITING SPECIAL OFFERS, INCLUDING THE EDGAR WALLACE COLLECTION – THREE OF HIS GREATEST BOOKS AVAILABLE FOR AN INCREDIBLE £15!
Feast your ears on a trilogy of Edgar Wallace’s finest thrillers, all at the fantastic price of £15, exclusive to Ariel Audio subscribers. Lose yourself in the backstreets of Edwardian London, the bordellos of 1920s Paris and the secret offices of Whitehall, as the pen of one of the most prolific writers of the twentieth century takes you on a dizzying trip back in time: on the trail of criminals, as good fights evil in the suburbs and avenues of a lost England.
THE LOST WORLD COLLECTION – THREE CLASSICS FOR THE FANTASTIC PRICE OF £15!
These three masterpieces of the ‘Lost World’ genre of thriller have often been imitated but never bettered. Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle & Edgar Rice Burroughs – three very different authors yet with a single aim – to lead the spectator into realms of the unknown at a time when our world was not yet fully explored. A trilogy of epic fantasy adventures all for the fantastic price of £15 – exclusively to members.
Wherever you are – whether you’re commuting, exercising, or relaxing in a hammock with a gin & tonic – every Ariel Audio experience is a holiday. Escape to a Golden Age with Ariel.
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