Read-along ready
Free public-domain audiobook + ebook pairs
Classics where both halves are free and legal, a Standard Ebooks text and a LibriVox recording, so you can read along with the narration, word by word. Every pair below is hand-checked.
Reading along keeps your attention on the page while a narrator carries the pace, but it only works if you have the ebook and the audiobook of the same book. For books still in copyright that usually means buying twice. For the classics, it’s all free.
These are public-domain titles with a clean ebook from Standard Ebooks and a matching audiobook from LibriVox. Download both, and they’re yours to keep.
The pairs
Dracula
Bram Stoker · 1897
The wall-crawl in Chapter III is worth the whole book. A genuinely great LibriVox reading.
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus
Mary Shelley · 1818
Shorter than its reputation, and the creature's own chapters read beautifully aloud.
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson · 1886
Barely three hours: a perfect first read-along to see if the format clicks for you.
The Time Machine
H. G. Wells · 1895
The Eloi and Morlocks land harder when you're watching the words and hearing them at once.
The War of the Worlds
H. G. Wells · 1898
The original alien-invasion novel. Reads like reportage, tense and quick.
Treasure Island
Robert Louis Stevenson · 1883
Pure adventure, written to be read aloud. Long John Silver rewards a good narrator.
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle · 1894
Short cases: read one along per sitting. Includes “The Final Problem.”
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
L. Frank Baum · 1900
Gentle and short, and a lovely one to read along with a child following the page.
The King of Elfland's Daughter
Lord Dunsany · 1924
The prose fantasy Tolkien and Gaiman both revered. Slower, dreamlike: read-along suits it.
A Princess of Mars
Edgar Rice Burroughs · 1912
The pulp sword-and-planet adventure that started it all, and the free sample inside Witbound.
Poetry, synced line by line
Poems are short, so they sync in seconds, and in verse the highlight follows the narrator line by line, which suits how poetry actually reads. Share a single line, with the narrator’s reading attached, straight to your friends.
The Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe · incl. The Raven, 1845
“Quoth the Raven” hits different when the line lights up as it's spoken.
Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman · 1855
“Song of Myself,” read aloud the way it was written to be.
How to read along with a pair
- Download the ebook (choose the .epub file) and the audiobook (choose the M4B or the MP3s) from the links above.
- Open Witbound on your iPhone or iPad and import both. The app matches every spoken word to the page, on the device, once.
- Press play. The narrator reads; the words light up. Tap any word to jump the narration there.
A note on LibriVox narration. LibriVox recordings are read by volunteers, so quality varies: some are wonderful, some are rough, and group readings switch narrator by chapter. Listen to a few minutes before you commit to a long book. If a reading isn’t for you, most classics have several versions on LibriVox to choose from.
Ebooks by Standard Ebooks, audiobooks by LibriVox, both public domain.