There was no mistake this time: he had struck gold at last! It had lain there before him a moment ago—a misshapen piece of brown-stained quartz, interspersed with dull yellow metal; yielding enough to have allowed the points of his pick to penetrate its honeycombed recesses, yet heavy enough to drop from the point of his pick as he endeavored to lift it from the red earth. He was seeing all this plainly, although he found himself, he knew not why, at some distance from the scene of his discovery, his heart foolishly beating, his breath impotently hurried. Yet he was walking slowly and vaguely; conscious of stopping and staring at the landscape, which no longer looked familiar to him. He was hoping for some instinct or force of habit to recall him to himself; yet when he saw a neighbor at work in an adjacent claim, he hesitated, and then turned his back upon him. Yet only a moment before he had thought of running to him, saying, "By Jingo! I\'ve struck it," or "D—n it, old man, I\'ve got it"; but that moment had passed, and now it seemed to him that he could scarce raise his voice, or, if he did, the ejaculation would appear forced and artificial. Neither could he go over to him coolly and tell his good fortune; and, partly from this strange shyness, and partly with a hope that another survey of the treasure might restore him to natural expression, he walked back to his tunnel. Views: 203
Herman Melville was a well-known American novelist in his day, with best-sellers like Typee, but by the time he died in 1891, he had fallen into obscurity. Although his first few books were popular, they too began to collect dust and be forgotten in the country.Then came the Melville Revival in the early 20th century, which breathed life into his legacy and brought his work back to the forefront. Of course, the book that benefited the most from that revival is now considered one of the greatest American novels ever written: Moby Dick. Views: 203
"No works in juvenile fiction contain so many of the elements that stir the hearts of children and grown-ups as well as do the stories so admirably told by this author." -Louisville Daily Courier "The story of a little Norman boy in the time of Louis XII, who went daily to St. Martin\'s abbey to help the monks who made the wonderful illuminated books….He worked with one of the monks who was the most skillful of them all on an hour book which the king wanted as a gift to his bride….Finally a little prayer to the king which he put into the book brought great fortune." -The New York Times Brother Stephen has the heart of an artist and wishes to leave the abbey to travel and see the world. However, King Louis has decreed that an "hour book" be made for his bride, Lady Anne, which in turn causes the Abbott to refuse Brother Stephen\'s request to leave the brotherhood as his illuminations are the most beautiful, and as such, he desires that Brother Stephen should be the one to make the hour book. This decision angers Brother Stephen. Will Brother Stephen stay at the abbey and carry out his task or will he refuse and bring about a ban against him, a serious matter indeed. Or will he choose to stay? And how does Gabriel, the little colour grinder with such a beautiful disposition help him to decide? Views: 202
It was past midnight when he was awakened by the familiar clatter of boulders down the grade, the usual simulation of a wild rush from without that encompassed the whole mill, even to that heavy impact against the door, which he had heard once before. In this he recognized merely the ordinary phenomena of his experience, and only turned over to sleep again. But this time the door rudely fell in upon him, and a figure strode over his prostrate body, with a gun leveled at his head. In a Hollow of the Hills by Bret Harte is a classic adventure story. The very first scene, which takes place in a valley, prepares the readers for the ensuing events. The riders seem to be unable to move ahead as the visibility is very low. The opening dialogue makes it clearer that the dialect is purely American, mostly used by the farmers, cowboys, and riders in the Western America. The setting and the ambiance created by the author is highly emphatic, for the supporting narration and the accompanying dialogue add to the realism. If you rejoice in reading pure American classics, this is the book for you, in fact, most of the novels and stories written by Bret Harte are there to delight you. He was born in Albany, New York, as Francis Brett Hart. He was named after his great-grandfather Francis Brett, and his family name was Hart. When he was young his father changed the spelling of the family name from Hart to Harte. Later, Francis preferred to be known by his middle name, but he spelled it with only one "t", becoming Bret Harte. He moved to California in 1853, later working there in a number of capacities, including miner, teacher, messenger, and journalist. He spent part of his life in the northern California coastal town of Union (now known as Arcata), a settlement on Humboldt Bay that was established as a provisioning center for mining camps in the interior. Views: 202
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are... Views: 202
Horrified by the violence following Iran's 2009 contested presidential elections, the author, Mojdeh Marashi is reminded of her parents’ ordeal during another disheartening event for Iranian people, the 1953 coup d'état. Saboteur, the first of a series, is told by a pair of white doves who in the tradition of old Persian storytellers recount the event in a hot summer afternoon when a sea of men inHorrified by the violence following Iran's 2009 contested presidential elections, the author, Mojdeh Marashi is reminded of her parents’ ordeal during another disheartening event for Iranian people, the 1953 coup d'état. Saboteur, the first of a series, is told by a pair of white doves who in the tradition of old Persian storytellers recount the event in a hot summer afternoon when a sea of men inThis is a fictional memoir by Mojdeh Marashi, a writer, translator, artist and designer who is deeply influenced by the ancient and modern history of Iran. This story merges the world of magical realism in Persian literature that Mojdeh grew up reading, the reality of the world she lives in today, and the utopia she dreams about.Mojdeh is the translator (from Persian, with Chad Sweeney) of The Selected Poems of H. E. Sayeh: The Art of Stepping Through Time (White Pine, 2011). Her fiction was published in the anthology Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been: Women of the Iranian Diaspora (University of Arkansas, 2006). She was born in Tehran, Iran and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1977, and now lives and work in Palo Alto, California. She is the Managing Partner at Blurred Whisper, an Idea and Design studio in Palo Alto, California, which she co-founded in 2002.Mojdeh studied at California College of Arts (CCA) and later at San Francisco State University where she earned her M.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts and an M.A. in Creative Writing. Views: 202
Bestselling author "May Sarton has never been better than she is in this beautiful, harrowing novel about being old, unwanted, yet refusing to give up" (The Boston Globe). After seventy-six-year-old Caro Spencer suffers a heart attack, her family sends her to a private retirement home to wait out the rest of her days. Her memory growing fuzzy, Caro decides to keep a journal to document the daily goings-on—her feelings of confinement and boredom; her distrust of the home's owner, Harriet Hatfield, and her daughter, Rose; her pity for the more incapacitated residents; her resentment of her brother, John, for leaving her alone. The journal entries describe not only her frustrations, but also small moments of beauty—found in a welcome visit from her minister, or in watching a bird in the garden. But as she writes, Caro grows increasingly sensitive to the casual atrocities of retirement-home life. Even as she acknowledges her mind is... Views: 201
Lupita Espinoza was a forty year old, single mom who often wished of being anywhere in the world other than Corpus Christi. But when a geologist in Antarctica once again appears in her bathroom mirror, Lupita begins a journey that will take her to places never dreamt possible. The Looking Glass is Part Two of the multi-part series "The Wonderland".Lupita Espinoza was a forty year old, single mom who often wished of being anywhere in the world other than Corpus Christi. But when a geologist in Antarctica once again appears in her bathroom mirror, Lupita begins a journey that will take her to places never dreamt possible. The Looking Glass is Part Two of the multi-part series "The Wonderland", a science fiction romance where the girl gets the guy, the aliens, and her place in the universe. In the second part, with the reappearance of Dr. Bernie Skarpinski in her bathroom mirror, Lupita takes the next step toward independence, growth, and a real chance at the one thing she's always wanted ... love. Views: 201
From the National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids: an unforgettable odyssey into the mind of this legendary artist, told through the prism of cafés and haunts she has visited and worked in around the world.
M Train is a journey through eighteen "stations." It begins in the tiny Greenwich Village café where Smith goes every morning for black coffee, ruminates on the world as it is and the world as it was, and writes in her notebook. We then travel, through prose that shifts fluidly between dreams and reality, past and present, across a landscape of creative aspirations and inspirations: from Frida Kahlo's Casa Azul in Mexico, to a meeting of an Arctic explorer's society in Berlin; from the ramshackle seaside bungalow in New York's Far Rockaway that Smith buys just before Hurricane Sandy hits, to the graves of Genet, Plath, Rimbaud, and Mishima. Woven throughout are reflections on the writer's craft and on artistic creation, alongside signature memories including her life in Michigan with her husband, guitarist Fred Sonic Smith, whose untimely death was an irremediable loss. For it is loss, as well as the consolation we might salvage from it, that lies at the heart of this exquisitely told memoir, one augmented by stunning black-and-white Polaroids taken by Smith herself. M Train is a meditation on endings and on beginnings: a poetic tour de force by one of the most brilliant multiplatform artists at work today. Views: 201
In the winter of 1952, Isabel Carey moves to the East Riding of Yorkshire with her husband Philip, a GP. With Philip spending long hours on call, Isabel finds herself isolated and lonely as she strives to adjust to the realities of married life.
Woken by intense cold one night, she discovers an old RAF greatcoat hidden in the back of a cupboard. Sleeping under it for warmth, she starts to dream. And not long afterwards, while her husband is out, she is startled by a knock at her window.
Outside is a young RAF pilot, waiting to come in.
His name is Alec, and his powerful presence both disturbs and excites her. Her initial alarm soon fades, and they begin an intense affair. But nothing has prepared her for the truth about Alec's life, nor the impact it will have on hers ... Views: 200
Chronicles the passions, conflicts, and dreams of a group of bohemians searching for truth while studying at a university. This book offers a portrait of an artist as a young man and shows a writer in the process of finding the voice that would eventually express the spirit of his contemporaries. Views: 200
This translation of Dante's lyrics follows the Barbi format and contains 118 poems. It seeks to follow the central issue of Dante's aesthetic: championing vernacular poetry. Dante relied on his vernacular and so these translations rely on the common language of today's speech, free verse, and open form, so as to give English readers an experience of Dante that is as contemporary to us as his poetic moment was to him. The original Italian appears on the facing pages of the text. Views: 198
CHAPTER I. I FIND MYSELF A FOUNDLING. My earliest recollections are of a square courtyard surrounded by high walls and paved with blue and white pebbles in geometrical patterns—circles, parallelograms, and lozenges. Two of these walls were blank, and had been coped with broken bottles; a third, similarly coped, had heavy folding doors of timber, leaden-grey in colour and studded with black bolt-heads. Beside them stood a leaden-grey sentry-box, and in this sat a red-faced man with a wooden leg and a pigtail, whose business was to attend to the wicket and keep an eye on us small boys as we played. He owned two books which he read constantly: one was Foxe\'s Martyrs, and the other (which had no title on the binding) I opened one day and found to be The Devil on Two Sticks. The arch over these gates bore two gilt legends. That facing the roadway ran: "Train up a Child in the Way he should Go," which prepared the visitor to read on the inner side: "When he is Old he will not Depart from it." But we twenty-five small foundlings, who seldom evaded the wicket, and so passed our days with the second half of the quotation, found in it a particular and dreadful meaning. The fourth and last wall was the front of the hospital, a two-storeyed building of grey limestone, with a clock and a small cupola of copper, weather-greened, and a steeply pitched roof of slate pierced with dormer windows, behind one of which (because of a tendency to walk in my sleep) I slept in the charge of Miss Plinlimmon, the matron. Below the eaves ran a line of eight tall windows, the three on the extreme right belonging to the chapel; and below these again a low-browed colonnade, in the shelter of which we played on rainy days, but never in fine weather—though its smooth limestone slabs made an excellent pitch for marbles, whereas on the pebbles in the yard expertness could only be attained by heart-breaking practice. Yet we preferred them. If it did nothing else, the Genevan Hospital, by Plymouth Dock, taught us to suit ourselves to the world as we found it. I do not remember that we were unhappy or nursed any sense of injury, except over the porridge for breakfast. The Rev. Mr. Scougall, our pastor, had founded the hospital some twenty years before with the money subscribed by certain Calvinistic ladies among whom he ministered, and under the patronage of a Port Admiral of like belief, then occupying Admiralty House. His purpose (to which we had not the smallest objection) was to rescue us small jetsam and save us from many dreadful Christian heresies, more especially those of Rome. But he came from the north of Britain and argued (I suppose) that what porridge had done for him in childhood it might well do for us— a conclusion against which our poor little southern stomachs rebelled. It oppressed me worse than any, for since the discovery of my sleep-walking habit my supper (of plain bread and water) had been docked, so that I came ravenous to breakfast and yet could not eat. Nevertheless, I do not think we were unhappy.... Views: 198
The Pursuit of the House-Boat is the sequel to A House-Boat on the Styx. The novel opens with the Associated Shades taking stock of their situation. Captain Kidd has hijacked the House-Boat and they must find a way to get it back, the group decides to hire the famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, who, at the time had just been killed off by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle gave his blessings for Bangs to use his character making this an authorized Sherlock Holmes adventure. Rollicking good fun! Views: 196
This is the story of two men who first become friends in 1970s New York, of the women in their lives, of their sons, born the same year, and of how relations between the two families become strained, first by tragedy, then by a monstrous duplicity which comes slowly and corrosively to the surface. Views: 196
