The Magic World is an influential collection of twelve short stories by E. Nesbit. It was first published in book form in 1912 by Macmillan and Co. Ltd., with illustrations by H. R. Millar and Gerald Spencer Pryse. The stories, previously printed in magazines (like Blackie\'s Children\'s Annual), are typical of Nesbit\'s arch, ironic, clever fantasies for children.
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.
--This text refers to the Paperback edition. Views: 924
"One of the most celebrated writers of criticism in nineteenth-century Spain, Leopoldo Alas employed his satirical talent to powerful and humorous effect in fiction as well. In His Only Son, Bonifacio Reyes, a romantic flautist by vocation--and a failed clerk and kept husband by necessity--dreams of a novelesque life. Tied to his shrill and sickly wife by her purse strings, he enters timidly into a love affair with Serafina, a seductive second-rate opera singer, encouraged by her manager who mistakes Bonifacio for a potential patron. Meanwhile, Bonifacio's wife experiences a parallel awakening and in the midst of a long-barren marriage, surprises them both with a son--but is it Bonifacio's? In the accompanying novella, Doana Berta, an aged, poor, but well-born woman forfeits her beloved estate in search of a portrait that may be all that remains of the secret love of her life"-- Views: 924
Now the fog was clearing and the mist was lifting, and the bright sunshine was struggling to penetrate the billows of damp vapor and touch with its glory the things of the world beneath. In the lower harbor there still was a chorus of sirens and foghorns, as craft of almost every description made way toward the metropolis or out toward the open sea. The Manatee, tramp steamer with rusty plates and rattling engines and a lurch like that of a drunken man, wallowed her way in from the turbulent ocean she had fought for three days, her skipper standing on the bridge and inaudibly giving thanks that he was nearing the end of the voyage without the necessity for abandoning his craft for an open boat, or remaining to go down with the ship after the manner of skippers of the old school. Views: 919
Edith Nesbit's natural gift for storytelling has brought her worldwide renown as a classic children's author. But beyond her beloved children's stories lay a darker side to her imagination, revealed here in her chilling tales of the supernatural. Haunted by lifelong phobias which provoked, in her own words, 'nights and nights of anguish and horror, long years of bitterest fear and dread', Nesbit was inspired to pen terrifying stories of a twilight world where the dead walked the earth. All but forgotten for almost a hundred years until In the Dark was first published 30 years ago, this collection finally restored Nesbit's reputation as a one of the most accomplished and entertaining ghost-story writers of the Victorian age. With seven extra newly-discovered stories now appearing for the first time in paperback, this revised edition includes an introduction by Hugh Lamb exploring the life of the woman behind these tales and the events and experiences that contributed to her... Views: 918
When the brig Amaryllis was swallowed in a hurricane, the captain and all the crew were swallowed, too. For thirty years the captain's widow, Geneva Reade, has waited, certain that her husband will send her a message from the bottom of the sea. But someone else is waiting, too, and watching her, a man called Seward. Into this haunted situation comes Jenny, the widow's granddaughter. The three of them, Gran, Jenny, and Seward, are drawn into a kind of deadly game with one another and with the sea, a game that only the sea knows how to win. Views: 914
During the First World War, just behind the eastern front, there was a forest, where Austrians and Hungarians used to hang deserters. To this place came Apostol Bologa, a young Romanian officer eager to serve his country. Born in a Romanian region of Transylvania which was then under Hungarian rule, he had naturally enough joined the Austro-Hungarian army. But soon Romania itself entered the war, and Bologa found himself fighting his own people.
The Forest of the Hanged asks a fundamental question about war: namely, why does a man fight? Apostol condemns an officer to death for desertion and attempting to give information to the enemy. He watches the execution of the officer with satisfaction until he witnesses a fellow soldier's grief and pity for the dead man. At this point his world shifts. His growing self-doubt and uncertainty lead him to question beliefs he once held without question. Unprepared for his own reaction when he is once again called to sit on a court martial, he finds that he too must go to the forest.
This very rare, richly descriptive novel lays bare the inner conflict engendered by a total war, yet seldom expressed Views: 913
The Enchanted Castle is a children's fantasy novel by Edith Nesbit first published in 1907. The enchanted castle of the title is a country estate in the West Country seen through the eyes of three children, Gerald, James and Kathleen, who discover it while exploring during the school holidays. The lake, groves and marble statues, with white towers and turrets in the distance, make a fairy-tale setting, and then in the middle of the maze in the rose garden they find a sleeping fairy-tale princess. The "princess" tells them that the castle is full of magic, and they almost believe her. She shows them the treasures of the castle, including a magic ring she says is a ring of invisibility, but when it actually turns her invisible she panics and admits that she is the housekeeper's niece, Mabel, and was just play-acting. Views: 912
Tristram Shandy, widely regarded as one of the great works of English literature, is also one of the most difficult to read.This edition simplifies and shortens the book to two-thirds of its original length, making it accessible to the general reader while retaining its wit and style.Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, first published in 9 volumes between 1759 and 1767, is considered one of the great works of English literature. It is also widely regarded as one of the most difficult to read because of its density and erratic, leap-frogging plot. This abridgment shortens the book to two-thirds of its original length, and slightly simplifies it, making it accessible to the general reader whilst retaining Sterne's wit and style. Views: 903
The Iron Heel is a dystopian novel by American writer Jack London, first published in 1908. Generally considered to be "the earliest of the modern Dystopian," it chronicles the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States. It is arguably the novel in which Jack London's socialist views are most explicitly on display. A forerunner of soft science fiction novels and stories of the 1960s and 1970s, the book stresses future changes in society and politics while paying much less attention to technological changes. Views: 894
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Difficult to find original content? Want to enjoy all the classics?
Here you will find the book you need! Original content. Full. Clearly presented.
We are honored to bring you classics that are familiar to the public all over the world.
Difficult to find original content? Want to enjoy all the classics?
Here you will find the book you need! Original content. Full. Clearly presented.
We are honored to bring you classics that are familiar to the public all over the world.
Difficult to find original content? Want to enjoy all the classics?
Here you will find the book you need! Original content. Full. Clearly presented.
We are honored to bring you classics that are familiar to the public all over the world.
Difficult to find original content? Want to enjoy all the classics?
Here you will find the book you need! Original content. Full. Clearly presented.
We are honored to bring you classics that are familiar to the public all over the world.
Difficult to find original content? Want to enjoy all the classics?
Here you will find the book you need! Original content. Full. Clearly presented.
We are honored to bring you classics that are familiar to the public all over the world.
Difficult to find original content? Want to enjoy all the classics?
Here you will find the book you need! Original content. Full. Clearly presented.
We are honored to bring you classics that are familiar to the public all over the world.
Difficult to find original content? Want to enjoy all the classics?
Here you will find the book you need! Original content. Full. Clearly presented.
We are honored to bring you classics that are familiar to the public all over the world.
Difficult to find original content? Want to enjoy all the classics?
Here you will find the book you need! Original content. Full. Clearly presented.
We are honored to bring you classics that are familiar to the public all over the world.*
" Views: 888
Shakespeare’s *Richard II* presents a momentous struggle between Richard II and his cousin Henry Bolingbroke. Richard is the legitimate king; he succeeded his grandfather, King Edward III, after the earlier death of his father Edward, the Black Prince. Yet Richard is also seen by many as a tyrant. He toys with his subjects, exiling Bolingbroke for six years.
When he seizes the title and property that should be Bolingbroke’s, Richard threatens the very structure of the kingdom. Bolingbroke returns with an army that is supported by nobles and commoners alike, both believing themselves oppressed by Richard. This sets the stage for a confrontation between his army and the tradition of sacred kingship supporting the isolated but now more sympathetic Richard.
The authoritative edition of *Richard II* from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers, includes:
-Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play
-Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play
-Scene-by-scene plot summaries
-A key to the play’s famous lines and phrases
-An introduction to reading Shakespeare’s language
-An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play
-Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s vast holdings of rare books
-An annotated guide to further reading
Essay by Harry Berger, Jr.
The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare’s printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit Folger.edu.
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"FRENCH'S MOST FOCUSED, DARING, AND POWERFUL NOVEL."
--New Woman
Famed presidential advisor Stephen Upton has suffered a stroke, and his four very different daughters gather in his perfectly appointed mansion outside Boston to await his death or recovery. Elizabeth, cold and calculating, fights hard for every success and pays a high price; beautiful Mary has always needed a man to support her tastes, but time is catching up with her; Alex can't remember her childhood and wants to know why; and Ronnie, illegitimate and proud, refuses to acknowledge her feelings for the man they all love and hate. In the weeks to come, they will learn one another's terrible secrets, and the astonishing truth about the life they might have shared....
Once again, Marilyn French has written an extraordinary novel of our times--a novel of family love and resentment, of sisterhood and fatherhood, of acceptance and rejection and the search for peace.
"SHOULD STRIKE A CHORD WITH EVERY WOMAN who is willing to think honestly about the place of femaleness in the world."
--Chicago Tribune Views: 886
Nellie, a cat marionette who loves to dance, finds adventure and freedom on a moonlit hilltop. Views: 883
Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was born on August 28th, 1814, at 45 Lower Dominick Street, Dublin, into a literary family with Huguenot, Irish and English roots. The children were tutored but, according to his brother William, the tutor taught them little if anything. Le Fanu was eager to learn and used his father's library to educate himself about the world. He was a creative child and by fifteen had taken to writing poetry. Accepted into Trinity College, Dublin to study law he also benefited from the system used in Ireland that he did not have to live in Dublin to attend lectures, but could study at home and take examinations at the university as and when necessary. This enabled him to also write and by 1838 Le Fanu's first story The Ghost and the Bonesetter was published in the Dublin University Magazine. Many of the short stories he wrote at the time were to form the basis for his future novels. Indeed, throughout his career Le Fanu would constantly revise, cannabilise, embellish and re-publish his earlier works to use in his later efforts. Between 1838 and 1840 Le Fanu had written and published twelve stories which purported to be the literary remains of an 18th-century Catholic priest called Father Purcell. Set mostly in Ireland they include classic stories of gothic horror, with grim, shadowed castles, as well as supernatural visitations from beyond the grave, together with madness and suicide. One of the themes running through them is a sad nostalgia for the dispossessed Catholic aristocracy of Ireland, whose ruined castles stand in mute salute and testament to this history. On 18 December 1844 Le Fanu married Susanna Bennett, the daughter of a leading Dublin barrister. The union would produce four children. Le Fanu was now stretching his talents across the length of a novel and his first was The Cock and Anchor published in 1845. A succession of works followed and his reputation grew as well as his income. Unfortunately, a decade after his marriage it became an increasing source of difficultly. Susanna was prone to suffer from a range of neurotic symptoms including great anxiety after the deaths of several close relatives, including her father two years before. In April 1858 she suffered an "hysterical attack" and died in circumstances that are still unclear. The anguish, profound guilt as well as overwhelming loss were channeled into Le Fanu’s work. Working only by the light of two candles he would write through the night and burnish his reputation as a major figure of 19th Century supernaturalism. His work challenged the focus on the external source of horror and instead he wrote about it from the perspective of the inward psychological potential to strike fear in the hearts of men. A series of books now came forth: Wylder's Hand (1864), Guy Deverell (1865), The Tenants of Malory (1867), The Green Tea (1869), The Haunted Baronet (1870), Mr. Justice Harbottle (1872), The Room in the Dragon Volant (1872) and In a Glass Darkly. (1872). But his life was drawing to a close. Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu died in Merrion Square in his native Dublin on February 7th, 1873, at the age of 58. Views: 872
Father John Calvin is a priest with a mission: Kill anyone the Vatican considers a threat. But when a demon possesses the young son of a Mafia strong-man his masters send Calvin on a mission of mercy. The priest must battle an ancient and familiar foe under the shadow of the boy's criminal father. In the end he will confront evil both supernatural and human. But his greatest enemy may lie within.The young son of powerful organized crime boss, Frank Mason, is possessed. Mason calls in a favor to a very special branch of the Vatican and a priest is sent. Father John Calvin must confront an ancient malice and in so doing face his own deep-seated evil. The battle between man and demon is only the beginning in this fast-paced supernatural thriller. Views: 871
