Dracula

Audiobook

Bram Stoker

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is the OG vampire. He’s intelligent, cunning, polished, and entirely terrifying — the perfect foil for the pure-hearted team hell-bent on his demise.

The names of those heroes and heroines are firmly ensconced in pop culture: Jonathan and Mina Harker, Lucy Westenra, Dr. Seward, and Van Helsing. Their letters and diary entries, as well as newspaper articles and even a ship’s log, disclose the haunting story of the original bloodsucker. Getting caught up in their spellbinding accounts is as effortless and natural as slipping into a dream.

The story is a classic hero’s quest: Jonathan, a young solicitor eager to prove himself and marry his true love, journeys to an isolated castle in Romania to meet his client, the mysterious Count Dracula. Despite the Count’s cordial welcome, Jonathan is beleaguered by a sense of creeping dread, and his instincts are correct. He’s soon fleeing for his life and fighting to protect his friends from unsettling symptoms: sleepwalking, unaccountable blood loss, and those curious wounds on the throat.

Dracula is part of our cultural consciousness. If you’ve never read (or listened to) the 1897 novel that started it all, we emphatically urge you to rectify that situation immediately. Even if you think you know the story, it’s supremely suspenseful and surprisingly modern.

The Gothic plot moves at an action-movie pace. It almost seems like Stoker wrote some of the scenes — the hazardous flight from Dracula’s castle, the ghostly shipwreck off the coast of Whitby — with film in mind.

But it’s not all frantic carriage rides, harrowing escapes, and stakes through the heart. There are many moments of palpable emotion, and by the end, you realize this story about a monster was a tale of devoted friendship all along.

Narrated by 13 actors, including Katy Kellgreen, Alan Cumming, and Tim Curry, this production is powerful, haunting, and heart-breaking. No cheesy creaking doors or shrill screams here; it’s all sneaking horror, subtle sound effects, and affecting characterization that transports you directly to a Transylvanian castle and the dramatic shores of Whitby.

We are in Transylvania, and Transylvania is not England. Our ways are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things. Nay, from what you have told me of your experiences already, you know something of what strange things there may be. — Bram Stoker

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