This is as much about French literature - a large subject! - as it is about oral comprehension.  I detest audio books in English, to be honest, but listening to a French short story, read by a an actor with a beautiful voice; that is something else. And you read the text yourself - out loud - to improve your pronunciation.  (If you want to speak French like Peter Mandelson, that's fine, but it's not compulsory....)

The site I use most at the moment is Numilog.  Here is the entry to their page of audio books. It's a nice idea. You buy a recording of an audio book, and you download it from their site as a .WMA file. Cost is about 12 Euros.  And of course, you borrow the text from the library.

The ones I' ve bought and enjoyed so far are: -

Mateo Falcone.  The formidable short story of Corsican  pride is a good one to start with. You also get two other stories La perle de Grenade, and l'enlèvement de la redoute.

Tristan et Iseult.  Be careful with this.  You will be lucky to find the same translation in the library. On the other hand, the reading is wonderful.

Trois Contes.  You can't get better than this chef-d'oeuvre of Flaubert.  Un coeur simple, La légende de Saint Julien l'Hospitalier, and Hérodias. Quite amazing.

La Morte Amoureuse.  I love this one.  The ultimate vampire story by a master. A corker of a long short story/novella by Théophile Gautier (not Pascal as Numilog's site would have you believe)

Colline. Jean Giono.  A lovely pastoral story for your collection

La Vénus d'Ille.  You can tell I like Mérimée.  A rattling good yarn.

Tamango.  Mérimée Again.

Sylvie.  Now here is a real favourite. A world of pastoral magic and romance; it reminds me a little of Twelfth Night. A very great work.

Le Bal du Comte Orgel. Raymond Radiguet was a young prodigy and friend of Cocteau.  Precious, literary, and rather difficult.

Antéchrista. Amélie Nothomb. I very much like this Belgian lady, whose style is surrealist and fresh. Very easy to follow.

Note: the links above may change if Numilog re-order their catalogue. Drop me a line if they don' t work

Another, and very nice site, is Archivox. Many readings of Contes, Fables, exerpts from novels.  I refer you to the Conditions Générales which make it clear that you should not make recordings from the site (using Audacity). You are supposed to listen on line.

Télérama Radio offers beautifully read livres audio in weekly series. I highly recommend these. The only drawback is the works are lesser-known and therefore difficult to find as texts in the library.

An unbelievable page, part of tromal.net. Une trentaine de romans audio. Quoi de plus doux pour l'âme que d'écouter celle des autres! Absolutely.

From tromal.net

Le Petit Prince. Different voices, beautifully acted.

You'll find reference in 'Picks' to the newsgroup alt.binaries.ebooks.french. I do not recommend that anyone downloads illegitamate copies of audio books, but the group exists, and so I tell you about it.