Technology is ubiquitous in our world, and it’s all based on scientific discoveries. Let’s look at the beginnings of what we consider normal these days with 10 gems from our catalog.

One of the best-known families of scientists with three Nobel Prizes to their name are the Curies. The biography of Pierre Curie, written by his wife Marie Curie, gives insights into their public as well as their private lives.

For actress Ruth Morton, there is barely a distinction between these two. But when this gains her the attention of a stalker, detective couple Richard and Grace Duvall must look behind the scenes of the Film of Fear in the book by Frederick Arnold Kummer.

Everybody is afraid of something, whether it be spiders, the dark, strangers… Arthur Christopher Benson explores the reasons and psychology behind it in Where No Fear Was: A Book About Fear.

Robert Graves had to face his fears in the trenches of WWI. His early poetry, Over the Brazier, was published around that time, and it includes topics related to astronomy like the Jolly Yellow Moon and Star Talk.

There must have been a lot of talk when a group of space explorers strand on a distant planet. There, they try to colonize it despite the alien life surrounding them. Florence Carpenter Diendonne describes what happens in those 33 Years in a Star.

Much more pleasant is the trip through India with a steam-powered elephant. Until one of the group is targeted by his arch nemesis – who also wants to take control of the country… See what they do to step up to the challenge in Jules Verne’s novel The Steam House – also available in Spanish.

When a certain Mr. Snell calls on Nicholas Carter about a kidnapping, he is so unconvincing that the famous detective refuses to take the case. Can the Photographer’s Evidence change his mind?

Much more persuasive was the man who seduced Madeline, much to her fiance’s chagrin. When she cannot get over the incident, he gets her to undergo Dr. Heidenhoff’s Process to remove the haunting memory. See if it’s successful in the novel by Edward Bellamy.

Could the hive mind of bees be erased? While this is not addressed in la vie des abeilles, Maurice Maeterlinck discusses everything else going on in a beehive. This book is also available in German and English.

Science is never “done”, we discover something new every day. Paolo Mantegazza explores life in l’anno 3000 through the eyes of a couple planning to get married. Written in 1897, many of his predictions already came true – who knows where we’ll go from here?

Enjoy – and stay curious!

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