Every month, Alexa users can get three completely free audio books to listen to through Audible. If you have not enjoyed an audio book before, this is a great way to give it a try before you sign up for an Audible account. Or simply take advantage of the offer and listen to the free books each month!
No Audible account is required, you just have to say to Alexa:
Alexa, what’s free from Audible?
Or, if you know the title
Alexa, play [book name] from Audible
When Alexa answers, you will be able to tell her which book you want to listen to first.
June’s Free Audible Books
The Pickwick Papers
When Samuel Pickwick decides to establish and preside over a travelling society, he unknowingly brings together three of the oddest men in all of London: Tracy Tupman, the loveless self-professed ladies’ man, Augustus Snodgrass, the poet who’s never put pen to paper, and Nathaniel Winkle, the endlessly clumsy sportsman.
Introductions made and plans established, the ‘Pickwickians’ set off in search of new adventures outside of the confines of the city. Along with a host of other colourful Dickensian characters such as Mr Pickwick’s love-struck landlady, Mrs Bardell, and his trusty sidekick, Sam Weller.
The Pickwick Papers manages to both move and amuse the listener as the protagonists find themselves in a whole host of bizarre situations they had not bargained for.
Oliver Twist
When young orphan, Oliver Twist, is sold into an apprenticeship with an undertaker, he leaves behind years of miserable servitude and mistreatment at an English workhouse. Hoping to move on to better things, he decides to escape his new, equally dreary surroundings and head to London.
It is there that the novel unravels as Oliver meets a host of larger-than-life characters, including The Artful Dodger, a high-ranking member of a juvenile pickpocketing gang, and their elderly leader, Fagin.
Desperate for affection and the sense of belonging that he has never known, Oliver unwittingly throws himself into a life of petty theft, which soon takes a violent turn with the introduction of one of Dickens’ most terrifying characters, Bill Sikes.
Exposing the cruel and inhumane treatment of orphans in 19th-century England, Dickens created one of the most significant social novels of all time. With it, he condemned the establishment for neglecting homeless children and leaving them vulnerable to recruiters who would exploit and abuse them. Oliver Twist cemented Dickens’ reputation as one of the most talented, influential and revolutionary of English authors.
Hard Times
‘Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life.’ So says Thomas Gradgrind, a wealthy, utilitarian school board superintendent. Father to Tom and Louisa, he shapes the minds of all the young children, including his own, with the exception of only one: the circus-born Sissy Jupe.
As the novel progresses, we see the lives of these three young children unfold, shaped by the beliefs and values they’ve been taught by their respective fathers and educators. Growing into a beautiful yet miserable young lady, Louisa is wed off to an associate of her father’s. Tom, dulled by his strict upbringing, becomes a dissipated, hedonistic gambler, and Sissy, their imaginative, creative and selfless guiding light, seeks to repair the damage done to her friends by years of utilitarian training.