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Summer of the Monkeys

Monkeys Out In The Middle Of Nowhere Staring At Him! A tree full of monkeys the last thing fourteen-year-old Jay Berry Lee thought he'd find on one of his treks through Oklahoma's Cherokee Ozarks. Jay learns from his grandfather that the monkeys have escaped from a circus and there is a big reward for anyone who finds them. He knows how much his family needs the money. Jay is determined to catch the monkeys. It's a summer of thrills and dangers no one will ever forget.
Views: 2 612

Johnny Got His Gun

This was no ordinary war. This was a war to make the world safe for democracy. And if democracy was made safe, then nothing else mattered--not the millions of dead bodies, nor the thousands of ruined lives... This is no ordinary novel. This is a novel that never takes the easy way out: it is shocking, violent, terrifying, horrible, uncompromising, brutal, remorseless and gruesome... but so is war. Winner of the National Book Award "Mr. Trumbo sets this story down almost without pause or punctuation and with a fury amounting to eloquence."-- "The New York Times" "It is hard to imaging a more persuasive argument for staying out of war than this smooth, savage, brilliant tale."-- "Chicago Daily News"
Views: 2 610

The Bluest Eye

Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, prays every day for beauty. Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for normalcy, for the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to finally fit in.Yet as her dream grows more fervent, her life slowly starts to disintegrate in the face of adversity and strife. A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity, Toni Morrison’s virtuosic first novel asks powerful questions about race, class, and gender with the subtlety and grace that have always characterized her writing. From the Trade Paperback edition.
Views: 2 588

Sons and Lovers

**"She was a brazen hussy." "She wasn't. And she was pretty, wasn't she?" "I didn't look ... And tell your girls, my son, that when they're running after you, they're not to come and ask your mother for you - tell them that - brazen baggages you meet at dancing classes"** The marriage of Gertrude and Walter Morel has become a battleground. Repelled by her uneducated and sometimes violent husband, delicate Gertrude devotes her life to her children, especially to her sons, William and Paul - determined they will not follow their father into working down the coal mines. But conflict is evitable when Paul seeks to escape his mother's suffocating grasp through relationships with women his own age. Set in Lawrence's native Nottinghamshire, Sons and Lovers is a highly autobiographical and compelling portrayal of childhood, adolescence and the clash of generations.
Views: 2 573

All Things Bright and Beautiful

The sequel to All Creatures Great and Small continues the adventures of veterinarian James Herriot in a small town in Yorkshire, England  After his first day on the job, James Herriot’s mentor warns him that the life of a country veterinarian is full of small triumphs and big disasters, but that he’d never be bored. From night visits to drafty barns during freezing northern England winters, to the beautiful vitality of rural life in the summertime, to the colorful menagerie of animals—and their owners—that pass through his office, Herriot experiences new challenges and joys every day. In these pages, Herriot trains under his eccentric boss Siegfried Farnon in a rustic English village, courts the woman that becomes his wife, and meets the people he would come to write about for a lifetime.
Views: 2 501

The Sign of the Beaver

Left alone to guard the family's wilderness home in eighteenth-century Maine, a boy is hard-pressed to survive until local Indians teach him their skills.
Views: 2 373

The Brothers Lionheart

The Brothers Lionheart (Swedish: Bröderna Lejonhjärta) is a children's fantasy novel written by Astrid Lindgren. It was published in the autumn of 1973 and has been translated into 46 languages. Many of its themes are unusually dark and heavy for the children's book genre. Disease, death, tyranny, betrayal and rebellion are some of the dark themes that permeate the story. The lighter themes of the book involve platonic love, loyalty, hope, courage and pacifism. The two main characters are two brothers; the older Jonatan and the younger Karl. The two brothers' surname was originally Lion, but they are generally known as Lionheart. Karl's nickname is Skorpan (Rusky) since Jonatan likes these typical Swedish toasts or crusts. In Nangijala, a land in "the campfires and storytelling days", the brothers experience adventures. Together with a resistance group they lead the struggle against the evil Tengil, who rules with the aid of the fearsome fire-breathing dragon, Katla.
Views: 2 306

A Handful of Dust

After seven years of marriage, the beautiful Lady Brenda Last has grown bored with life at Hetton Abbey, the Gothic mansion that is the pride and joy of her husband, Tony. She drifts into an affair with the shallow socialite John Beaver and forsakes Tony for the Belgravia set. In a novel that combines tragedy, comedy, and savage irony, Evelyn Waugh indelibly captures the irresponsible mood of the "crazy and sterile generation" between the wars.
Views: 2 215

Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

In the cloud-washed airspace between the cornfields of Illinois and blue infinity, a man puts his faith in the propeller of his biplane. For disillusioned writer and itinerant barnstormer Richard Bach, belief is as real as a full tank of gas and sparks firing in the cylinders...until he meets Donald Shimoda--former mechanic and self-described messiah who can make wrenches fly and Richard's imagination soar.... In Illusions, Richard Bach takes to the air to discover the ageless truths that give our souls wings: that people don't need airplanes to soar...that even the darkest clouds have meaning once we lift ourselves above them... and that messiahs can be found in the unlikeliest places--like hay fields, one-traffic-light midwestern towns, and most of all, deep within ourselves.
Views: 2 174

The Once and Future King (#1-4)

The extraordinary story of a boy called Wart – ignored by everyone except his tutor, Merlin – who goes on to become King Arthur. T.H. White’s masterful retelling of the Arthurian legend is an abiding classic. The Once and Future King, contains all five books about the early life of King Arthur (The Sword in the Stone , The Witch in the Wood , The Ill-Made Knight, The Candle in the Wind and The Book of Merlyn). Exquisite comedy offsets the tradegy of Arthur’s personal doom as White brings to life the major British epic of all time with brilliance, grandeur, warmth and charm
Views: 2 093

David Starr Space Ranger

Earth is on the brink of catastrophe. The vital foodstuffs supplied by its Martian colony are being poisoned. Working in secret, the ruling Council of Science sends David Starr, its youngest member, to the Martian farmlands to discover the truth behind the murders. . .
Views: 1 735

Night Chills

Designed by top scientists and unleashed in a monstrous conspiracy, night chills are seizing the men and women of Black River--driving them to acts of rape and murder. The nightmare is real. And death is the only cure. . . #1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz unleashes a contagion on a small Maine town—one that triggers the darkest desires of the soul.
Views: 1 521

The Razor's Edge

Larry Darrell is a young American in search of the absolute. The progress of this spiritual odyssey involves him with some of Maugham's most brillant characters - his fiancee Isabel, whose choice between love and wealth have lifelong repercussions, and Elliot Templeton, her uncle, a classic expatriate American snob. The most ambitious of Maugham's novels, this is also one in which Maugham himself plays a considerable part as he wanders in and out of the story, to observe his characters struggling with their fates.
Views: 1 477

Mrs. McGinty's Dead

Mrs. McGinty is dead and everyone suspects James Bentley, her slightly shifty lodger, but Superintendent Spence is suspicious enough to ask for Hercule Poirot's assistance. Soon, the seemingly simple situation turns into a complex web of lies and hidden identities. Unabridged. 5 CDs.
Views: 1 340

Pride and Prejudice

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. " So begins Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen's witty comedy of manners--one of the most popular novels of all time--that features splendidly civilized sparring between the proud Mr. Darcy and the prejudiced Elizabeth Bennet as they play out their spirited courtship in a series of eighteenth-century drawing-room intrigues. Introduction by Anna Quindlen. Commentary by Margaret Oliphant, George Saintsbury, Mark Twain, A. C. Bradley, Walter A. Raleigh, and Virginia Woolf. Includes a Modern Library Reading Group Guide
Views: 1 337