LibriVox will turn 19 in a few days and thus enter the final one of its teenage years. Let’s take a look back at the last year with 10 newly arrived gems from our catalog.

A young man just arrived at River Hall, The Uninhabited House in a fashionable neighborhood. He doesn’t know that its owner is not departed as believed and soon, things take a strange turn in the book by Charlotte Riddell.

Sir Cyril Shenstone’s life is full of twists and turns: from orphan to bookkeeper to savior of damsels and princes to captain in the British Navy. G. A. Henty sets this adventure around the time When London Burned.

But the best adventures are true. T. E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia) recounts his experiences during the two years of the Revolt in the Desert the outcome of which shapes the Middle East until today.

To this day, Citizen Kane is hailed as a cinematic masterpiece. Peter Bogdanovich, himself an acclaimed movie director, prepared a film-by-film deep dive into The Cinema of Orson Welles.

Dive into the Mediterranean with Greek author Andreas Karkavitsas. In the 21 stories collected in Λόγια της Πλώρης: Θαλασσινά Διηγήματα (Words of the Sail: Sea Tales) he explores life with and near the sea in all its facets.

In a short pamphlet, the Minute Tapioca Co. presents numerous and Faster Ways to Favourite Dishes with tapioca. Eat all the way from soups and mains to pies and sweet desserts.

Bambi’s Life in the Woods starts out sweet, as it should. But when his mother is killed, the young deer must learn to make friends and stand on his own feet in the famous story by Felix Salten.

Lady Connie takes her life into her own hands when she meets Oliver Mellors. Soon, he becomes Lady Chatterley’s Lover in the book by D. H. Lawrence, scandalous at the time more for crossing class boundaries than for its eroticism.

When a nobleman falls from a horse at a costume party, he rises up as king Enrico IV. His family indulges his beliefs, but 12 years later, who is doing the acting? Find out in Luigi Pirandello’s Italian comedy.

Of joy and sorrow and everything in between: poetry runs the gamut of human emotions. This year, LibriVox catalogued the Short Poetry Collection #250 with 30 poems by various artists like Robert Frost, Lord Byron, Christina Rossetti, and others.

In the last 19 years, LibriVox volunteers have produced many more collections, plays, books, series… In total, this amounts to 19,584 finished projects in 48 languages read by more than 13,000 members.
Thank you all for your contributions over the years, you made us what we are today!

But there is more to do – and more to come. Sign up and help us

…make all books in the public domain available, narrated by real people and distributed for free, in audio format on the internet.

Hugh McGuire, founder of LibriVox

Summer time means vacation time! But how about instead of going to a different place, you could go to a different time? Take a trip through history with 10 gems from our catalog.

Henry Kenton is traveling from Kentucky to South Carolina on the eve of the American civil war. He is anxious to complete a secret mission in Joseph A. Altsheler’s novel The Guns of Bull Run, the first book in a series.

Catherine Radziwill takes us back to Rasputin and the Russian Revolution. She discusses the controversial preacher’s influence on the Tsar’s family just before the monarchy collapsed in 1917.

124 years earlier, the French Revolution disposed of Marie Antoinette and her Son, Louis Charles. Louise Mühlbach tells the story of the boy’s life after his parents were killed in 1793.

The French Revolution ended in the Reign of Terror, which is the backdrop to The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel over his nemesis Chauvelin. This is our dramatic reading of Emma Orczy’s novel.

Not long before in England, the Jacobite rising had failed. Ewen Cameron fled to the Scottish Highland only to be dragged back into the plot, endangering friends and family. Will there be a happy ending in D. K. Broster’s novel The Gleam in the North?

Next, let’s follow Sigrid Undset to rural Norway where Kristin Lavransdatter wants to marry Erlend. Her family disapproves of the match, but will she be allowed to wear The Bridal Wreath in the end?

All is fair in love and war… José Milla y Vidaure tells the story of two rival families who vie for power and how the Captaincy General of Guatemala ceased to exist because of a secret group known as Los Nazarenos.

For a long time, Christians had to worship in secret underground meetings. James Orr summarizes The History and Literature of the Early Church from the Apostolic Age to the persecutions in the Roman Empire.

When Christians had taken firm hold over Europe, they in turn persecuted other religions. Over 200 years, 9 Crusades were fought to recover the Holy Land from Islamic rule. Learn about their causes and aftermath in the book by George W. Cox.

Not that the muslims – moors as they were called then – were peaceful either. Pelayo or Cavern of Covadonga retells King Pelayo’s 722 battle against the moorish invasion of Asturia in Northern Spain. This epic poem was written by Anna C. M. Ritchie.

Enjoy – and have a good trip!

There is something in the air that makes June a perfect month to get married. Be inspired – or reminisce – with 10 gems from our catalog.

As far as inspiration goes, Edward J. Wood has done plenty of research already. Read about different ceremonies for The Wedding Day in All Ages and Countries as well as surrounding folklore and superstitions.

However, the very first question to ask is Why Marry? Although Helen has many suitors, she is determined to remain unattached. But it wouldn’t be a comedy by Jesse Lynch Williams if things would go her way that easily…

Edmund Spenser found himself in the opposite predicament: The lady of his choice only consented after two years of courtship. Good for us though, as we can read all the details about it in Amoretti and Epithalamion.

Sometimes, you get more than you bargained for. A young Englishman searches for a lost heir – and is heading straight into An Outback Marriage. Bush Poet Andrew Paterson depicts early Australian society with much humor.

A little humor goes a long way and can help over the inevitable bumps of any relationship. Mary Stewart Doubleday Cutting tells 11 Little Stories of Married Life that run the gamut from blissful to miserable.

Even before her wedding day, Betty knew where she was heading – and preferred to escape her overbearing groom, not to mention her family. Find out what’s in store for her now in Grace Livingston Hill’s Exit Betty.

It would have been better for the monk Astorre not to fulfill his father’s dying wish. Yet, he left his monastery to get married and finds it hard to adapt to worldly life. Conrad Ferdinand Meyer details what happens after Die Hochzeit des Mönchs.

What exactly is The Morality of Marriage? In this collection of essays, Feminist Mona Caird is critical of the state of marriage laws in the Victorian era and advocates for a more equal partnership instead.

But what does that mean – especially when the two partners have different cultural backgrounds? Mae Franking knows first hand and tells us about her experiences in My Chinese Marriage, ghostwritten by Katherine Anne Porter.

Sometimes it’s best just to be a guest, like at The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz. This allegory marks the third original manifesto of the Rosicrucians, in the very first translation by E. Foxcroft.

Enjoy – and have a great (wedding) day!

February – the month of carnival, Mardi Gras, Shrovetide, Shrove Tuesday… Whatever it’s called where you are from, let’s have fun with 10 hilarious gems from our catalog.

Humor is best delivered in short bursts. And it can’t get any pithier than Frontier Humor in Verse, Prose and Picture, little vignettes from 19th century Canada by Palmer Cox.

Mody Coggin Boatright remembers his good ol’ dialect for his Tall Tales From Texas. These eight stories feature horses, cowboys, campfires, and Pecos Bill.

What once was the pinnacle of behavior leaves us chuckling today. Then again, already in 1753, Jane Collier’s Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting was meant tongue-in-cheek.

Mark Twain was the master of humor – but in this one he might even be serious: Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences lists 114 (out of 115) offenses against literary art.

Humor is when you laugh regardless, says a German proverb, obviously inspired by the country’s bureaucracy… Rudolf Greinz writes about Der heilige Bürokrazius, a saint residing in public offices.

When Marc dreams up a lovely girl, he couldn’t have imagined that she’d come to life one day. Henry Farrell chronicles The Early Misadventures of Toffee in great detail.

The term misadventures doesn’t quite fit Roxy Hart’s crime – we’re talking murder after all. Maurice Watkins took the case from 1924 Chicago and turned it into a Broadway musical – and we made a play out of it.

How to exhibit Perfect Behavior at musicals, concerts, or in the opera was researched by Donald Ogden Stewart. This is an interesting glimpse what kind of social crises were feared in 1922.

No matter when, getting lost in New York counts as a crisis. Then again, since this is one of five Follies in Fiction penned by master humorist Stephen Leacock, it can’t be too serious.

Laughter is universal and independent of language and culture. Russian writer Nikolai Leskov collects seven short Святочные рассказы (Yuletide stories) on things that may not be as serious as they sound at first.

Enjoy – and do try to “laugh regardless”!