Great Classic Holiday Stories

Charles Dickens (1812-70) is one of the most recognized celebrities of English literature. His many books include Oliver Twist, Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol.

Francis Pharcellus Church (1839 1�706) was an American publisher and editor. Church is most remembered for his 1897 editorial “Yes Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus. 1�7/p>

O. Henry, the pseudonym of William Sydney Porter (1862-1910), was a prolific American short story writer, a master of surprise endings, who wrote about the life of ordinary people in New York City. A twist of plot, which turns on an ironic or coincidental circumstance, is typical of his stories. During his lifetime, O. Henry published over six hundred stories and ten collections, including Cabbages and Kings, The Four Million, The Trimmed Lamp, Whirligigs, and The Heart of the West.

Clement Clarke Moore (1779 1�763) was an American professor of oriental and Greek literature. He is the author of the yuletide poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas, 1�7 which became famous as “The Night before Christmas. 1�7/p>

Eleanor Hallowell Abbott (1872 1�758) was a nationally recognized American author. She was a frequent contributor to the Ladies 1�7 Home Journal.

Beatrix Potter is one of the world's best-loved children's authors of all time. From her first book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902) she went on to create a series of stories based around animal characters including Mrs Tiggy-winkle, Mr Jeremy Fisher and Tom Kitten. Her humorous, lively tales and beautiful illustrations have become a natural part of childhood. A source of inspiration was the Lake District where she lived for the last thirty years of her life as a farmer and conservationist.

Washington Irving, the first American writer to make his living by his profession, was born April 3, 1783. At the age of six he was introduced to his namesake, George Washington. He studied law but then was sent to Europe because of his health and was to spend 17 years abroad. When he was thirty-five his family's business went bankrupt. It was then that he began to support himself by writing. He wrote letters, essays and short fiction. Washington Irving died in 1859.

Lucy Maud Montgomery was born on November 30th, 1874, in Clifton, Prince Edward Island, Canada. Although she lived during a time when few women received a higher education, Lucy attended Prince Wales College in Charlottestown, PEI, and then Dalhousie University in Halifax. At seventeen she went to Halifax, Nova Scotia, to write for a newspaper, the Halifax Chronicle, and for its evening edition, the Echo. But Lucy returned to live with her grandmother in Cavendish, PEI, where she taught and contributed stories to magazines. It was this experience, along with the lives of her farmer and fisherfolk neighbors, that came alive when she wrote her Anne books, beginning with Anne of Green Gables (1908). Anne of Green Gables brought her overnight success and international recognition. It was followed by eight other books about Anne and Avonlea, as well as a number of other delightful novels, including her Emily series, which began in 1923 with Emily of New Moon. But it is her delightful heroine Anne Shirley, praised by Mark Twain as “the most moving and delightful child of fiction since the immortal Alice, 1�7 who remains a popular favorite throughout the world. She and her husband, the Rev. Ewen MacDonald, eventually moved to Ontario. Lucy Montgomery died in Toronto in 1942.

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Paul Boehmer is an American actor best known for his numerous appearances in the Star Trek universe, in addition to Frasier, Judging Amy, Guiding Light, and All My Children. He is a 1992 Masters of Fine Arts graduate of the Professional Theater Training Program at the University of Delaware. As a narrator, Paul has won several AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as an Audie Award.

Gregory Itzin is an American film and television actor. He is best known for his role as President Charles Logan in the series 24, a role for which he was twice nominated for a Primetime Emmy. He has had appearances in a number of television’s most popular shows during the span of his career, including, Matlock, ER, CSI, Friends, The West Wing, and three different Star Trek series. He’s also had roles in numerous films including, Adaptation, The Ides of March, and Lincoln. Most recently he’s had recurring roles in The Mentalist and Covert Affairs.

Dana Green is a talented actor and audiobook narrator. Her narrations include Join the Club and Betsy Ross and the Making of America.

Simon Vance is the critically acclaimed narrator of approximately 400 audiobooks, winner of forty-one AudioFile Earphones Awards, and a six-time Audies recipient. He was the winner of the 2012 Audie Awards for Best Male Narrator, the 2011 Best Voice in Biography and History, and the 2010 Best Voice in fiction by AudioFile magazine. Audiofile magazine named him a Golden Voice, and Booklist magazine named him a Voice of Choice.

 

Recently, Vance narrated Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies (a 2013 Audie Awards winner), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (winner of two 2013 Audie awards), and Benjamin Hoff’s The Tao of Pooh by (winner of one 2013 Audie Awards and two nominations). Some of his best-selling and most critically acclaimed performances include Mark Logue and Peter Conradi’s The King's Speech, Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, all 21 titles of Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander series, Frank Herbert’s original Dune series and Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.