books tagged “classic fiction”

books tagged “classic fiction”

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  • The 39 Steps: Alfred Hitchcock Classics
    by John Buchan
    ISBN 1419151126 (1-4191-5112-6)
    Softcover, Kessinger Pub Co

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    He told me some queer things that explained a lot that had puzzled me - things that happened in the Balkan War, how one state suddenly came out on top, why alliances were made and broken, why certain men disappeared, and where the sinews of war came from. [via]

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  • The Adventures of Peter Pan
    by J. M. Barrie
    ISBN 1421806363 (1-4218-0636-3)
    Hardcover, 1st World Library

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    Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, "Oh, why can't you remain like this for ever!" This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end. Of course they lived at 14 [their house number on their street], and until Wendy came her mother was the chief one. She was a lovely lady, with a romantic mind and such a sweet mocking mouth. Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get, though there is was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner. [via]

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  • Agnes Grey: Library Edition
    by Anne Bronte
    ISBN 1419105213 (1-4191-0521-3)
    Softcover, Kessinger Pub Co

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    "Agnes Grey" is the story of its title character who takes up a position as a governess. Anne Bronte's first novel was based on her own experiences as a governess and depicts the loneliness and isolation of the position. Agnes Grey as governess of the Bloomfield and Murray households experiences hardship and humiliation as a result of the families' snobbery. "Agnes Grey is" as much an autobiographical account of Bronte's own experiences as it is an indictment of the shallowness of the upper class. [via]

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  • The Ambassadors
    by Henry James
    ISBN 1419152017 (1-4191-5201-7)
    Softcover, Kessinger Pub Co

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    The Ambassadors, which Henry James considered his best work, is the most exquisite refinement of his favorite theme: the collision of American innocence with European experience. This time, James recounts the continental journey of Louis Lambert Strether--a fiftysomething man of the world who has been dispatched abroad by a rich widow, Mrs. Newsome. His mission: to save her son Chadwick from the clutches of a wicked (i.e., European) woman, and to convince the prodigal to return to Woollett, Massachusetts. Instead, this all-American envoy finds Europe growing on him. Strether also becomes involved in a very Jamesian "relation" with the fascinating Miss Maria Gostrey, a fellow American and informal Sacajawea to her compatriots. Clearly Paris has "improved" Chad beyond recognition, and convincing him to return to the U.S. is going to be a very, very hard sell. Suspense, of course, is hardly James's stock-in-trade. But there is no more meticulous mapper of tone and atmosphere, nuance and implication. His hyper-refined characters are at their best in dialogue, particularly when they're exchanging morsels of gossip. Astute, funny, and relentlessly intelligent, James amply fulfills his own description of the novelist as a person upon whom nothing is lost. --Rhian Ellis [via]

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  • The Ambassadors, 1903
    by Henry James
    ISBN 1406790281 (1-4067-9028-1)
    Softcover, Read Books

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    The Ambassadors, which Henry James considered his best work, is the most exquisite refinement of his favorite theme: the collision of American innocence with European experience. This time, James recounts the continental journey of Louis Lambert Strether--a fiftysomething man of the world who has been dispatched abroad by a rich widow, Mrs. Newsome. His mission: to save her son Chadwick from the clutches of a wicked (i.e., European) woman, and to convince the prodigal to return to Woollett, Massachusetts. Instead, this all-American envoy finds Europe growing on him. Strether also becomes involved in a very Jamesian "relation" with the fascinating Miss Maria Gostrey, a fellow American and informal Sacajawea to her compatriots. Clearly Paris has "improved" Chad beyond recognition, and convincing him to return to the U.S. is going to be a very, very hard sell. Suspense, of course, is hardly James's stock-in-trade. But there is no more meticulous mapper of tone and atmosphere, nuance and implication. His hyper-refined characters are at their best in dialogue, particularly when they're exchanging morsels of gossip. Astute, funny, and relentlessly intelligent, James amply fulfills his own description of the novelist as a person upon whom nothing is lost. --Rhian Ellis [via]

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  • Anne of the Island
    by L.M. Montgomery
    ISBN 1588275965 (1-58827-596-5)
    Hardcover, Indypublish.Com

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    This volume contains "Anne of The Island" and "Anne of Windy Willows". Anne is older now, and her friends are beginning to get married and move away; meanwhile her romance with Gilbert Blythe begins to blossom, and there are developments in her career as a schoolteacher. [via]

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  • Walker, Alice: The Color Purple
    The Color Purple
    by Alice Walker
    ISBN 1568496281 (1-56849-628-1)
    Hardcover, Buccaneer Books

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  • The Deerslayer
    by James Fenimore Cooper, Bruce L. R. Smith
    ISBN 1593082118 (1-59308-211-8)
    Softcover, Barnes & Noble

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    The Deerslayer, by James Fenimore Cooper, 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:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    “Live by your own council. Be brave in the face of the unknown. Be always fair.
    -Natty Bumppo, The Deerslayer

    One of the greatest heroes in American literature, Natty Bumppo is the rugged frontiersman of James Fenimore Coopers Leatherstocking Tales, a series of five novels that includes The Last of the Mohicans and The Deerslayer. Although the final volume to be written, The Deerslayer is the first in the chronology of Natty Bumppos life, depicting the character as a young man testing himself in the wilderness, and against enemies, for the first time.

    Set in the 1740s just as the French and Indian wars have begun, the novel opens as Natty Bumppo—known as Deerslayer—and his friend Hurry Harry travel to Tom Hutters house in upstate New York. Hurry plans to marry Toms beautiful daughter Judith, while Deerslayer has come to help his close friend Chingachgook save his bride-to-be, Wah-ta-Wah, from the Huron Indians. When war breaks out, and Hurry and Tom are captured by Indians, Deerslayer must go on his first warpath to rescue them.

    One of the earliest novels to be considered truly “American," The Deerslayer is a masterpiece of suspense, adventure, and romance.
     
    Bruce L. R. Smith is a fellow at the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University. He is the author or editor of sixteen scholarly books, and he continues to lecture widely in the United States and abroad.
    [via]

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  • The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Svejk During the World War
    by Jaroslav Hasek
    ISBN 1585004286 (1-58500-428-6)
    Softcover, Authorhouse

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    Some writers so capture the soul and spirit of a people that they are identified with them forever after. In England, it was Charles Dickens, in the United States, it was Mark Twain. For the Slavic nations, and to some extent for all Central Europeans, it is the Czech writer, Jaroslav Hasek.

    Hasek's most important work was centered around a Czech soldier's experiences in World War One. It's actual title is The Fateful Adventures of The Good Soldier Svejk during the World War, but it is known by tens of millions of Central Europeans as simply, The Good Soldier Svejk. This monumental, humorous work is acknowledged as ". . . one of the greatest masterpieces of satirical writing" by no less a standard and exalted reference than the Encyclopedia Britannica.

    The book's central character is a quintessential, working-class citizen-soldier, often abused by the fates and the forces of the Austrian empire. In both civilian and military life, Svejk lives by his wits. His chief ploy is to appear witless to those in authority. In fact, he is fond of pointing out that he has been certified to be an imbecile by an official military medical commission. Consequently, he reasons, he cannot be held responsible for his sometimes questionable actions because he's a certified nitwit!

    Yet, Svejk is not a coward, nor is he indolent. He is drafted back into the army as cannon fodder to die for an Emperor he despises. His method of subverting the Austrian Empire is to carry out his orders to an absurd conclusion. His is an inspired resistance. He holds the foreign authorities, and their Czech fellow travelers, accountable for their ridiculous platitudes and pseudo-patriotic blather. [via]

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  • The Golden Bowl
    by Henry James
    ISBN 1421914050 (1-4219-1405-0)
    Hardcover, Indypublish.Com

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    Henry James's 1904 novel "The Golden Bowl" is the story of Prince Amerigo, an impoverished but charismatic Italian nobleman who travels to London to marry Maggie Verver, only child of the wealthy American financier and art collector, Adam Verver. While in London, Prince Amerigo meets his former mistress, Charlotte Stant, and the two are soon engaged in an adulterous affair. Considered by some to be the last work of Henry James's "major phase", "The Golden Bowl" is a complex examination of marriage and adultery. [via]

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  • The Good Soldier
    by Ford Madox Ford
    ISBN 1406502081 (1-4065-0208-1)
    Softcover, Dodo Pr

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    "The Good Soldier" is the story of two couples. The first couple is English, Edward Ashburnham, the good soldier referenced in the title, and his wife Leonora. The second couple is American, John and Florence Dowell, who have been living abroad for quite some time. In a German spa prior to World War I the two couples meet and subsequently Edward and Florence become engaged in an affair. "The Good Soldier" is a tragic tale of passion. As John Dowell laments at the beginning of the book, it is "the saddest story I have ever heard." [via]

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  • The Good Soldier
    by Frank Kermode, Ford Madox Ford
    ISBN 1593082681 (1-59308-268-1)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford, 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:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     

    Handsome, wealthy, and a veteran of service in India, Captain Edward Ashburnham appears to be the ideal “good soldier and the embodiment of English upper-class virtues. But for his creator, Ford Madox Ford, he also represents the corruption at societys core. Beneath Ashburnhams charming, polished exterior lurks a soul well-versed in the arts of deception, hypocrisy, and betrayal. Throughout the nine years of his friendship with an equally privileged American, John Dowell, Ashburnham has been having an affair with Dowells wife, Florence. Unlike Dowell, Ashburnhams own wife, Leonora, is well aware of it.

    When The Good Soldier was first published in 1915, its pitiless portrait of an amoral society dedicated to its own pleasure and convinced of its own superiority outraged many readers. Stylistically daring, The Good Soldier is narrated, unreliably, by the naïve Dowell, through whom Ford provides a level of bitter irony. Dowells disjointed, stumbling storytelling not only subverts linear temporality to satisfying effect, it also reflects his struggle to accept a world without honor, order, or permanence. Called the best French novel in the English language, The Good Soldier is both tragic and darkly comic, and it established Ford as an important contributor to the development of literary modernism.

    Frank Kermode has taught at Manchester, London, and Cambridge Universities as well as at Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. Among his many books the most recent are Shakespeares Language, Pieces of My Mind, and The Age of Shakespeare.

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  • The Hound of the Baskervilles
    by Arthur Conan Doyle
    ISBN 142645547X (1-4264-5547-X)
    Softcover, Bibliobazaar

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    Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearth-rug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind him the night before. [via]

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  • Hound of the Baskervilles
    by Alexander Dumas
    ISBN 1562542893 (1-56254-289-3)
    Softcover, Saddleback Pub

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    Written at a point of crisis in his life, A Tale of Two Cities is the embodiment of Dickens' own passions and fears: the revolution which engulfs the characters symbolizes his own psychological revolution, and the three main characters become projections of Dickens himself. [via]

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  • The Hound of the Baskervilles: Another Adventure of Sherlock Holmes With, the Adventure of the Speckled Band
    by Arthur Conan Doyle, Francis O'Gorman
    ISBN 1551117223 (1-55111-722-3)
    Softcover, Broadview Pr

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    The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901-02) is Arthur Conan Doyle's most celebrated Sherlock Holmes adventure. At the end of the yew tree path of his ancestral home, Sir Charles Baskerville is found dead. Close by are the footprints of a gigantic hound. Called to investigate, Holmes seems to face a supernatural foe. In the tense narration of the detective's efforts to solve the crime, Conan Doyle meditates on late Victorian and early twentieth-century ideas of ancestry and atavism, the possible biological determination of criminals, the stability of the British landed classes, and the place of the supernatural. Historical documents included with this fully-annotated Broadview edition help contextualize the novel's debates and reveal its cultural and literary significance as a supreme instance of early detective fiction. Also included is the Conan Doyle short story The Adventure of the Speckled Band. [via]

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  • Les Liaisons Dangereuses
    by Choderlos De Laclos, Alfred MacAdam, Ernest Christopher Dowson
    ISBN 1593082401 (1-59308-240-1)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Les Liaisons Dangereuses, by Peirre Choderlos de Laclos, 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:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    Love . . . sex . . . seduction. Of the three, only the last matters. Love is a meaningless word, and sex an ephemeral pleasure, but seduction is an amusing game in which victory means power and the ability to humiliate ones enemies and revel with ones friends. So it is for the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil, two supremely bored aristocrats during the final years before the French Revolution. Together they concoct a wildly wicked wager: If Valmont can successfully seduce the virtuous wife of a government official, Madame de Tourvel, then Madame Merteuil will sleep with him again. But Madame Merteuil also wants Valmont to conquer the young and innocent former convent schoolgirl, Cécile Volanges. Can he do both?

    When Les Liaisons Dangereuses was first published in 1782, it both scandalized and titillated the aristocracy it was aimed against, who publicly denounced it and privately devoured it. Today we still recognize its relevance, for what could be more contemporary than its appalling image of everyday evil — small, selfish, manipulative, and mean.
     
    Alfred Mac Adam, Professor at Barnard College–Columbia University, teaches Latin American and comparative literature. He is a translator of Latin American fiction and writes extensively on art.
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  • The Master And Margarita
    by Mikhail Bulgakov, Michael Karpelson
    ISBN 1411683056 (1-4116-8305-6)
    Softcover, Lulu.Com

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    Moscow, 1929: a city that has lost its way amid corruption and fear, inhabited by people who have abandoned their morals and forsaken spirituality. But when a mysterious stranger arrives in town with a bizarre entourage that includes a giant talking cat and a fanged assassin, all hell breaks loose. Among those caught up in the strange and inexplicable events that transpire in the capital are the Master, a writer whose life has been destroyed by Soviet repression, and his beloved Margarita. Their adventures reveal a story that began two thousand years ago in ancient Jerusalem - and its resolution will decide their fate. Translated by Michael Karpelson. [via]

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  • The Metamorphosis and Other Stories
    by Franz Kafka, Donna Freed, Jason Baker
    ISBN 1593080298 (1-59308-029-8)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    The Metamorphosis and Other Stories, by Franz Kafka, 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 printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     
    Virtually unknown during his lifetime, Franz Kafka is now one of the worlds most widely read and discussed authors. His nightmarish novels and short stories have come to symbolize modern mans anxiety and alienation in a bizarre, hostile, and dehumanized world. This vision is most fully realized in Kafkas masterpiece, The Metamorphosis, a story that is both harrowing and amusing, and a landmark of modern literature.

    Bringing together some of Kafkas finest work, this collection demonstrates the richness and variety of the authors artistry. The Judgment, which Kafka considered to be his decisive breakthrough, and The Stoker, which became the first chapter of his novel Amerika, are here included. These two, along with The Metamorphosis, form a suite of stories Kafka referred to as The Sons, and they collectively present a devastating portrait of the modern family.



    Also included are In the Penal Colony, a story of a torture machine and its operators and victims, and A Hunger Artist, about the absurdity of an artist trying to communicate with a misunderstanding public. Kafkas lucid, succinct writing chronicles the labyrinthine complexities, the futility-laden horror, and the stifling oppressiveness that permeate his vision of modern life.

    Jason Baker is a writer of short stories living in Brooklyn, New York.

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  • Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
    by Joseph Conrad
    ISBN 1593081936 (1-59308-193-6)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Nostromo, by Joseph Conrad, 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:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     

    One of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, Joseph Conrads Nostromo is an immensely exciting tale of love, revolution, and politics set in the mythical South American country of Costaguana during the 1890s.

    Ten years after his father is murdered by a brutal dictator, Englishman Charles Gould arrives in Costaguana to reopen the family silver mine. But instead of ushering in a shining era of prosperity and progress, the return of the silver engenders a new cycle of violence as Costaguana erupts in civil war, initiated by rival warlords determined to seize the mine and its riches. In desperation, Gould turns to the only man who can save the mines treasure—Nostromo, the incorruptible head of the local dockworkers, who protects the silver from rebel forces by taking it out to sea. But disaster strikes, burdening Nostromo with a terrible secret that forever alters the fate of everyone involved with the mine.

    A stunning monument to futility, Nostromo reveals how honor, idealism, and loyalty are inadequate defenses against the inexorable assault of corruption and evil.

    Brent Edwards is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Rutgers University.  He is author of The Practice of Diaspora (Harvard University Press, 2003) and co-editor of Uptown Conservation: The New Jazz Studies (Columbia University Press, 2004).

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  • Notes from the Underground
    by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
    ISBN 1421806231 (1-4218-0623-1)
    Hardcover, 1st World Library

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    Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - I am a sick man. ... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don't consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though. Of course, I can't explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "pay out" the doctors by not consulting them; I know better than anyone that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don't consult a doctor it is from spite. My liver is bad, well - let it get worse! I have been going on like that for a long time - twenty years. Now I am forty. I used to be in the government service, but am no longer. I was a spiteful official. I was rude and took pleasure in being so. I did not take bribes, you see, so I was bound to find a recompense in that, at least. (A poor jest, but I will not scratch it out. I wrote it thinking it would sound very witty; but now that I have seen myself that I only wanted to show off in a despicable way, I will not scratch it out on purpose!) [via]

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  • Notes from Underground
    by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
    ISBN 1420926896 (1-4209-2689-6)
    Softcover, Digireads.Com

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    Dostoevsky's NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND is a psychological study of the deepest darkest skeletons in the closet of the human mind. The first novel from Dostoevsky's mature "second period" works, divided in two parts, presents an unnamed protagonist, a twisted angry student, and his worldview. It is one proud man's cry for help and perverse rejection of the world around him. [via]

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  • O Pioneers!
    by Willa Cather
    ISBN 1593082053 (1-59308-205-3)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    O Pioneers!, by Willa Cather, 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:

    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    "The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman," writes Willa Cather in O Pioneers! The country is America; the woman is Alexandra Bergson, a fiercely independent young Swedish immigrant girl who inherits her fathers farm in Nebraska. A model of emotional strength, courage, and resolve, Alexandra fights long and hard to transform her fathers patch of raw, wind-blasted prairie into a highly profitable business.

    A gripping saga of love, murder, greed, failure, and triumph, O Pioneers! vividly portrays the hardships of prairie life. Above all, it champions the belief that hard work is the surest road to personal fulfillment. Described upon publication in The New York Times as “American in the best sense of the word, O Pioneers! celebrates the men and women who struggled to build a nation that is both compelling and contradictory.

    Chris Kraus is the author of Aliens & Anorexia, I Love Dick, and the forthcoming novel, Torpor. She is co-editor of Hatred of Capitalism: A Semiotexte Reader, and edits Semiotexte Native Agents, a series of mostly female underground fiction.

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  • Of Human Bondage
    by W. Somerset Maugham
    ISBN 1414226500 (1-4142-2650-0)
    Softcover, IndyPublish.com

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    Of Human Bondage, by W. Somerset Maugham, 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:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
    One of the most widely read novels of the twentieth century, W. Somerset Maughams masterpiece Of Human Bondage gives a harrowing depiction of unrequited love. Philip Carey, a sensitive orphan born with a clubfoot, finds himself in desperate need of passion and inspiration. He abandons his studies to travel, first to Heidelberg, and then to Paris, where he nurses ambitions of becoming a great artist. Philips youthful idealism erodes, however, as he comes face-to-face with his own mediocrity and lack of impact on the world. After returning to London to study medicine, he becomes wildly infatuated with Mildred, a vulgar, tawdry waitress, and begins a doomed love affair that will change the course of his life.
     
    First published in 1915, the semi-autobiographical Of Human Bondage combines the values left over from the Victorian era with the prevailing irony and despair of the early twentieth century. Unsentimental yet bursting with deep feeling, Of Human Bondage remains Maughams most complete statement of the importance of physical and spiritual liberty, a theme that resounds more loudly than ever today.
     
    Carin Companick is a freelance writer and a specialist in the field of language proficiency assessment. She studied English literature at Haverford College and completed her graduate work in Victorian and modern literature at Columbia University. She lives and works in Princeton, New Jersey.
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  • Pamela or Virtue Rewarded
    by Samuel Richardson
    ISBN 141426612X (1-4142-6612-X)
    Hardcover, Indypublish.Com

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    Book summary:

    This book is a facsimile reprint and may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. [via]

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  • The Pearl
    by John Steinbeck
    ISBN 1555049133 (1-55504-913-3)
    Softcover, Chivers North Amer

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    Make this your next book club selection and everyone saves.
    Get 15% off when you order 5 or more of this title for your book club.
    Simply enter the coupon code STEINBECKPEARL at checkout.
    This offer does not apply to eBook purchases. This offer applies to only one downloadable audio per purchase.

    In this short book illuminated by a deep understanding and love of humanity, John Steinbeck retells an old Mexican folk tale: the story of the great pearl, how it was found, and how it was lost. For the diver Kino, finding a magnificent pearl means the promise of a better life for his impoverished family. His dream blinds him to the greed and suspicions the pearl arouses in him and his neighbors, and even his loving wife cannot temper his obsession or stem the events leading to the tragedy.

    For Steinbeck, Kino and his wife illustrate the fall from innocence of people who believe that wealth erases all problems. Originally published in 1947, The Pearl shows why Steinbecks style has made him one of the most beloved American writers: it is a simple story of simple people, recounted with the warmth and sincerity and unrivaled craftsmanship Steinbeck brings to his writing. It is tragedy in the great tradition, beautifully conveying not despair but hope for mankind.

    The Great Books Foundation Discussion Guide for The Pearl is available at www.greatbooks.org.

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  • Peter Pan
    by J. M. Barrie, Amy Billone
    ISBN 1593082134 (1-59308-213-4)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Book summary:

    Recounts the adventures of Peter Pan, the boy who would not grow up. [via]

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  • The Phantom of the Opera
    by Gaston Leroux, Isabel Roche
    ISBN 1593082495 (1-59308-249-5)
    Softcover, Fine Communications

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    Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - The Opera ghost really existed. He was not, as was long believed, a creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the managers, or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of the ballet, their mothers, the box-keepers, the cloak-room attendants or the concierge. Yes, he existed in flesh and blood, although he assumed the complete appearance of a real phantom; that is to say, of a spectral shade. When I began to ransack the archives of the National Academy of Music I was at once struck by the surprising coincidences between the phenomena ascribed to the "ghost" and the most extraordinary and fantastic tragedy that ever excited the Paris upper classes; and I soon conceived the idea that this tragedy might reasonably be explained by the phenomena in question. The events do not date more than thirty years back; and it would not be difficult to find at the present day, in the foyer of the ballet, old men of the highest respectability, men upon whose word one could absolutely rely, who would remember as though they happened yesterday the mysterious and dramatic conditions that attended the kidnapping of Christine Daae, the disappearance of the Vicomte de Chagny and the death of his elder brother, Count Philippe, whose body was found on the bank of the lake that exists in the lower cellars of the Opera on the Rue-Scribe side. But none of those witnesses had until that day thought that there was any reason for connecting the more or less legendary figure of the Opera ghost with that terrible story. [via]

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  • The Pilgrim's Progress
    by John Bunyan
    ISBN 156563134X (1-56563-134-X)
    Hardcover, Hendrickson Pub

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    John Bunyan's A Pilgrim's Progress is a quest story filled with drama, excitement, and adventure. On his journey of a lifetime to the City of Gold, a young man named Christian meets an extraordinary cast of characters, including the terrible giant, Despair, and the monster, Apollyon. Together with Hopeful, his steadfast companion, Christian survives snipers and mantraps, the Great Bog, Vanity Fair, Lucre Hill, and Castle Doubting. But will he find the courage to cross the final river to the City of Gold and his salvation?
    This remarkable retelling of the classic novel, by the award-winning children's author Geraldine McCaughrean, brings Bunyan's story to life for a generation of young readers as McCaughrean neatly draws the drama out, gradually allowing the reader to conclude that Christian is not so different from latter day heroes after all. The engaging contemporary illustrations by Jason Cockcroft bring an added poignancy to the story of a youth with a mission in life. This volume is an ideal gift and a great introduction to the full work.
    WINNER OF THE BLUE PETER BOOK AWARD

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  • Larsen, Dan: The Pilgrim's Progress
    The Pilgrim's Progress
    by Dan Larsen, John Bynyan
    ISBN 1557481695 (1-55748-169-5)
    Softcover, Barbour Pub Inc

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  • The Pilgrim's Progress
    by David Hawkes, John Bunyan
    ISBN 1593082541 (1-59308-254-1)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    The Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan, 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:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     

    Faith, Hope, Mercy, Envy, Ignorance, Guilt: These are not abstract concepts, but the names of vividly imagined, sharply drawn human characters encountered by Christian, the hero of The Pilgrims Progress. In John Bunyans seventeenth-century allegory of the souls search for salvation, each step along the way becomes a dramatic rendering of an inner state of the human psyche. As Christian journeys from “the wilderness of this world to the glory of the Celestial City, he confronts a seemingly endless array of temptations, threats, and dangers, including the nearly irresistible allure of material splendor at Vanity Fair; the crushing psychological burden of depression and despair in the Slough of Despond; and the fear and uncertainty that eats away at faith in Doubting Castle.

    This edition includes both the first and second parts of The Pilgrims Progress, which collectively reflect the feverish intensity of Bunyans religious beliefs. What remains significant is Bunyans ability to transform this intensity into an allegory that speaks to people of all faiths and all eras.

    David Hawkes is Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University. His books include Idols of the Marketplace (2001) and Ideology (second edition 2003), and he has contributed articles to The Nation, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Journal of the History of Ideas.

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  • Bunyan, John: Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come
    Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come
    by John Bunyan
    ISBN 1418110345 (1-4181-1034-5)
    Hardcover, Scholarly Pub Office Univ of

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  • Room of Ones' Own
    by Virginia Woolf
    ISBN 1568493665 (1-56849-366-5)
    Hardcover, Buccaneer Books

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    "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
     
    First published in 1929, Virginia Woolf's pioneering work on women in literature is an accessible yet fiercely astute essay. It is a crystallization of the intelligent analysis behind her novels, and confirms her as a writer not only of style, but of undeniable substance. Ranging from discussing Austen's pandering to a male writing style, to imagining the dreadful fate of Shakespeare's talented, intelligent sister, Woolf makes the topic an enjoyable journey through her imagination, filling in for the undocumented in female history, and exploring the loss to the literary landscape in her own entertaining, convincing prose. The recording also includes a booklet with further information, including a contribution by Ali Smith, author of The Accidental. Unabridged.
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  • The Scarlet Pimpernel
    by Orczy
    ISBN 1576469239 (1-57646-923-9)
    Softcover, Quiet Vision Pub

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    The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Baroness Orczy, 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:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    In the year 1792, Sir Percy and Lady Marguerite Blakeney are the darlings of British society—he is known as one of the wealthiest men in England and a dimwit;she is French, a stunning former actress, and “the cleverest woman in Europe—and they find themselves at the center of a deadly political intrigue. The Reign of Terror controls France, and every day aristocrats in Paris fall victim to Madame la Guillotine. Only one man can rescue them—the Scarlet Pimpernel—a master of disguises who leaves a calling card bearing only a signature red flower. As the fascinating connection between the Blakeneys and this mysterious hero is revealed, they are forced to choose between love and loyalty in order to avoid the French agent Chauvelin, who relentlessly hunts the Scarlet Pimpernel.

    First published in 1905, The Scarlet Pimpernel is the best-known novel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, a prolific author of popular fiction and plays. The novel pioneered the tale of the masked avenger and paved the way for such future enigmatic swashbucklers as Zorro, Superman, and the Lone Ranger. Repeatedly adapted for stage and screen—most recently as a successful Broadway musical—The Scarlet Pimpernel is a relevant and enormously entertaining tale of survival and pluck during times of widespread fear, hypocrisy, and corruption.

    Includes 8 pieces of original art.

    Sarah Juliette Sasson is a lecturer in the Department of French and Romance Philology at Columbia University and is the managing editor of the Romanic Review, a journal devoted to romance literatures. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Columbia. She specializes in nineteenth-century literature and particularly in the novel. She has published essays on Honoré de Balzac, Heinrich Heine, and on social mobility in nineteenth-century literature. Currently, she is working on a book on Balzac.
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  • Sentimental Education
    by Gustave Flaubert, Claudie Bernard, Kathleen Rustum
    ISBN 1593083068 (1-59308-306-8)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Sentimental Education, by Gustave Flaubert, 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:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     

    Considered one of the greatest French novels of the nineteenth century, Sentimental Education blends brilliantly realized details of a tumultuous time and place with the intimate story of a lifelong romantic obsession, one that closely mirrors the central passion of Flauberts own life.

     

    Set amid the violent social upheaval of the Revolution of 1848, the novel tells of young Frédéric Moreaus idealistic attraction to a married woman some years his senior. Smitten by his first sight of Madame Arnoux, Frédéric idolizes her for many years, despite her refusal to encourage him and his own indecision. He befriends her husband, an art dealer, in order to be near her, and soon finds himself drawn first into Jacques Arnouxs heady social circle and then into his disastrous financial speculations.

     

    As a young teenager, Flaubert himself became romantically obsessed with a married woman with whom he kept in touch for the rest of his life, and many of the characters in Sentimental Education, including Madame Arnoux, are based on friends and acquaintances of the great French author. In this vivid novel, all are beset by financial difficulties, ideological conflicts, and friendship betrayed as their lives are changed forever by the revolution.

    Claudie Bernard is Professor of French literature at New York University, and the author of Le Chouan Romanesque, Balzac, Barbey dAurevilly, Hugo, Le Passé recomposé, le roman historique français au dix-neuvième siècle, and of many essays on nineteenth-century French literature and the history of ideas.

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  • Sherlock Holmes: A Baker Street Dozen
    by Arthur Conan Doyle
    ISBN 1555045383 (1-55504-538-3)
    Hardcover, Chivers North Amer

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    We owe 1902's The Hound of the Baskervilles to Arthur Conan Doyle's good friend Fletcher "Bobbles" Robinson, who took him to visit some scary English moors and prehistoric ruins, and told him marvelous local legends about escaped prisoners and a 17th-century aristocrat who fell afoul of the family dog. Doyle transmogrified the legend: generations ago, a hound of hell tore out the throat of devilish Hugo Baskerville on the moonlit moor. Poor, accursed Baskerville Hall now has another mysterious death: that of Sir Charles Baskerville. Could the culprit somehow be mixed up with secretive servant Barrymore, history-obsessed Dr. Frankland, butterfly-chasing Stapleton, or Selden, the Notting Hill murderer at large? Someone's been signaling with candles from the mansion's windows. Nor can supernatural forces be ruled out. Can Dr. Watson--left alone by Sherlock Holmes to sleuth in fear for much of the novel--save the next Baskerville, Sir Henry, from the hound's fangs?

    Many Holmes fans prefer Doyle's complete short stories, but their clockwork logic doesn't match the author's boast about this novel: it's "a real Creeper!" What distinguishes this particular Hound is its fulfillment of Doyle's great debt to Edgar Allan Poe--it's full of ancient woe, low moans, a Grimpen Mire that sucks ponies to Dostoyevskian deaths, and locals digging up Neolithic skulls without next-of-kins' consent. "The longer one stays here the more does the spirit of the moor sink into one's soul," Watson realizes. "Rank reeds and lush, slimy water-plants sent an odour of decay ... while a false step plunged us more than once thigh-deep into the dark, quivering mire, which shook for yards in soft undulations around our feet ... it was as if some malignant hand was tugging us down into those obscene depths." Read on--but, reader, watch your step! --Tim Appelo [via]

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  • Trollope, Anthony: The Small House at Allington
    The Small House at Allington
    by Anthony Trollope
    ISBN 1406790036 (1-4067-9003-6)
    Softcover, Read Books

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  • The Sound and the Fury: A Rock's Backpages Reader, 40 Years of Classic Rock Journalism
    by Barney Hoskins
    ISBN 1582342822 (1-58234-282-2)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    Book summary:

    Longtime music writer and editor Barney Hoskyns decided to build an archive of articles by his favorite rock writers - like Al Aronowitz, Jon Savage, Greil Marcus, Will Self, Lenny Kaye, Mary Harron, and Nick Hornby. Thus was born the website Rock's Backpages (www.rocksbackpages.com), home to thousands of brilliant reviews and rants, interviews and overviews, that helped define music journalism over the last four decades. The Sound and the Fury is the best of this remarkable collection. With contemporary and retrospective articles on the Beatles, Otis Redding, David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, Joni Mitchell, ABBA, Madonna, Ice Cube, Nirvana, Morrissey, and many, many more.
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  • Swann's Way
    by Marcel Proust
    ISBN 1414243677 (1-4142-4367-7)
    Softcover, Indypublish.Com

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    ReadHowYouWant publishes a wide variety of best selling books in Large and Super Large fonts in partnership with leading publishers. EasyRead books are available in 11pt and 13pt. type. EasyRead Large books are available in 16pt, 16pt Bold, and 18pt Bold type. EasyRead Super Large books are available in 20pt. Bold and 24pt. Bold Type. You choose the format that is right for you.

    The initial part of the story focuses on the romantic life of a middle aged man named Swann. Proust has used poetic style of words to describe the nature and environment of France. His sentence structure is impressive and filled with searing, insightful, and humorous criticisms of French society.

    To find more titles in your format, Search in Books using EasyRead and the size of the font that makes reading easier and more enjoyable for you.

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  • Swann's Way Of Remembrance Of Things Past
    by Marcel Proust
    ISBN 1414243669 (1-4142-4366-9)
    Hardcover, Indypublish.Com

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    Swann's Way begins with one of the most famous incidents in all of literature -- the taste of a madeleine and tea that reawakens the elusive childhood memories of the narrator, Marcel. An image of Charles Swann, a wealthy and fashionable neighbor, precipitates Marcel's recollection of Swann's marriage to Odette de Crecy, a beautiful, manipulative woman far beneath him in social standing, and of the jealousy, aroused by Odette's many affairs with both men and women, that eventually destroys Swarm. Marcel recounts, too, his own initiation into the aesthetic pleasures and sexual intrigues of belle-epoque Paris. The themes introduced in Swann's Way -- the destructive force of obsessive love, the allure and the consequences of transgressive sex, and the selective eye that shapes memories -- form the threads that unite all the volumes of Remembrance of Things Past. [via]

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  • Therese Raquin
    by Emile Zola
    ISBN 1419189530 (1-4191-8953-0)
    Softcover, Kessinger Pub Co

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    At last he was rid of his crime. He had killed Camille. It was a matter that was settled, and would be spoken of no more. He was now going to lead a tranquil existence, until he could take possession of Therese. The thought of the murder had at times half choked him, but now that it was accomplished, he felt a weight removed from his chest, and breathed at ease, cured of the suffering that hesitation and fear had given him. [via]

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  • The Thirty-Nine Steps: Level 4
    by John Buchan
    ISBN 1425001254 (1-4250-0125-4)
    Softcover, Read How You Want.Com

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    Richard Hannay certainly didn't go looking for the mystery. He was hardly a reader of the newspaper, let alone a fan of dime novels -- and all the same, the mystery found him. First in the form of a young American telling fantastic tales of international intrigue and murderous conspiracy. There was a cabal at work -- on a plot cleverly crafted to set the entire world at war with itself. The American meant to put a stop to it, but needed to be hidden for a week or two. Reluctantly, Hannay agreed to hide him. The next morning he found the American dead -- scewered through the heart to the floor of Hannay's own apartment. Jacketless Library hardcover. [via]

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  • This Side of Paradise
    by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sharon G. Carson
    ISBN 1593082436 (1-59308-243-6)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Fitzgerald's first novel, reprinted in the handsome Everyman's Library series of literary classic, uses numerous formal experiments to tell the story of Amory Blaine, as he grows up during the crazy years following the First World War. It also contains a new introduction by Craig Raine that describes critical and popular reception of the book when it came out in 1920. [via]

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  • Time Machine
    by H. G. Wells
    ISBN 1414211287 (1-4142-1128-7)
    Softcover, IndyPublish.com

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    Book summary:

    Wells was interested in the implications of evolutionary theory on the future of human beings at the biological, sociological, and cultural levels, and The Time Machine, short and readable, draws on many of the social and scientific debates of the time. The Broadview edition of this science fiction classic includes extensive materials on Wellss scientific and political influences. [via]

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  • Typee
    by Herman Melville
    ISBN 1419191608 (1-4191-9160-8)
    Softcover, Kessinger Pub Co

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    Sailors are the only class of men who now-a-days see anything like stirring adventure; and many things which to fire-side people appear strange and romantic, to them seem as commonplace as a jacket out at elbows. [via]

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  • Victory
    by Joseph Conrad
    ISBN 1406789135 (1-4067-8913-5)
    Softcover, Read Books

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    Book summary:

    Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Pomona Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. [via]

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  • The Way We Live Now
    by Anthony Trollope, Karen Odden
    ISBN 1593083041 (1-59308-304-1)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    The Way We Live Now, by Anthony Trollope, 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:All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences-biographical, historical, and literary-to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. Ruthless greed, relentless self-promotion, corporate swindles and scandals on a grand scale-indeed this sounds like "the way we live now." Though Anthony Trollope's title actually refers to 1870s England, his scathing satire of a money-mad culture cuts close to the contemporary bone. At its center stands Augustus Melmotte, a crooked financier whose enormous schemes ensnare an array of avaricious aristocrats, politicians, and "important people." Among them are Lady Carbury, who earns the family bread by churning out fatuous potboilers (as did Trollope's mother) and her spendthrift, ne'er-do-well son, Felix, who sets his sights on Melmotte's dangerously beautiful daughter, Marie. Meanwhile, Felix's sister, Hetta, falls for Melmotte's partner, Paul, who's encumbered with an American fiancée, herself a widow who may have shot her husband. As the frauds expand and the romantic entanglements grow ever more complex, Trollope revels in the antics of his characters while pillorying the corruption of their morally bankrupt society. Nathaniel Hawthorne said it best, praising Trollope for putting England "under a glass case, with all its inhabitants going about their daily business, and not suspecting that they were made a show of." Karen Odden received her M.A. from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and her Ph.D. [via]

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  • What Maisie Knew
    by Henry James
    ISBN 1421994240 (1-4219-9424-0)
    Softcover, Indypublish.Com

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    This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 edition. Excerpt: ...Mrs. Wix's, during these hours, Sir Claude was--and most of all through long pauses--the perpetual, the insurmountable theme. It all took them back to the first flush of his marriage and to the place he held in the schoolroom at that crisis of love and pain; only he had himself blown to a much bigger balloon the large consciousness he then filled out. They went through it all again, and indeed while the interval dragged by the very weight of its charm they went, in spite of defences and suspicions, through everything. Their intensified clutch of the future throbbed like a clock ticking seconds; but this was a timepiece that inevitably, as well, at the best, rang occasionally a portentous hour. Oh there were several of these, and two or three of the worst on the old city-wall where everything else so made for peace. There was nothing in the world Maisie more wanted than to be as nice to Mrs. Wix as Sir Claude had desired; but it was exactly because this fell in with her inveterate instinct of keeping the peace that the instinct itself was quickened. From the moment it was quickened, however, it found other work, and that was how, to begin with, she produced the very complication she most sought to avert. What she had essentially done, these days, had been to read the unspoken into the spoken; so that thus, with accumulations, it had become more definite to her that the unspoken was, unspeakably, the completeness of the sacrifice of Mrs. Beale. There were times when every minute that Sir Claude stayed away was like a nail in Mrs. Beale's coffin. That brought back to Maisie--it was a roundabout way--the beauty and antiquity of her connexion with the flower of the Overmores as well as that lady's own grace and charm, her peculiar prettiness and... [via]

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  • Where Angels Fear to Tread
    by E. M. Forster
    ISBN 1419193775 (1-4191-9377-5)
    Softcover, Kessinger Pub Co

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    This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. [via]

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  • Wide Sargasso Sea
    by Jean Rhys, Charlotte Bronte
    ISBN 1568497296 (1-56849-729-6)
    Hardcover, Buccaneer Books

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    In 1966 Jean Rhys reemerged after a long silence with a novel called Wide Sargasso Sea. Rhys had enjoyed minor literary success in the 1920s and '30s with a series of evocative novels featuring women protagonists adrift in Europe, verging on poverty, hoping to be saved by men. By the '40s, however, her work was out of fashion, too sad for a world at war. And Rhys herself was often too sad for the world--she was suicidal, alcoholic, troubled by a vast loneliness. She was also a great writer, despite her powerful self-destructive impulses.

    Wide Sargasso Sea is the story of Antoinette Cosway, a Creole heiress who grew up in the West Indies on a decaying plantation. When she comes of age she is married off to an Englishman, and he takes her away from the only place she has known--a house with a garden where "the paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell. Underneath the tree ferns, tall as forest tree ferns, the light was green. Orchids flourished out of reach or for some reason not to be touched."

    The novel is Rhys's answer to Jane Eyre. Charlotte Brontë's book had long haunted her, mostly for the story it did not tell--that of the madwoman in the attic, Rochester's terrible secret. Antoinette is Rhys's imagining of that locked-up woman, who in the end burns up the house and herself. Wide Sargasso Sea follows her voyage into the dark, both from her point of view and Rochester's. It is a voyage charged with soul-destroying lust. "I watched her die many times," observes the new husband. "In my way, not in hers. In sunlight, in shadow, by moonlight, by candlelight. In the long afternoons when the house was empty."

    Rhys struggled over the book, enduring rejections and revisions, wrestling to bring this ruined woman out of the ashes. The slim volume was finally published when she was 70 years old. The critical adulation that followed, she said, "has come too late." Jean Rhys died a few years later, but with Wide Sargasso Sea she left behind a great legacy, a work of strange, scary loveliness. There has not been a book like it before or since. Believe me, I've been searching. --Emily White [via]

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  • William Faulkner's the Sound and the Fury
    by William Faulkner
    ISBN 1555460429 (1-55546-042-9)
    Hardcover, Facts on File

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    Book summary:

    The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner's fourth novel, is his first attempt at a wholly self-conscious style. Faulkner's willingness to experiment affords his readers no stable perspective from which to comprehend the decline of the Compson family.

    The title, William Faulkners The Sound and the Fury, part of Chelsea House Publishers Modern Critical Interpretations series, presents the most important 20th-century criticism on William Faulkners The Sound and the Fury through extracts of critical essays by well-known literary critics. This collection of criticism also features a short biography on William Faulkner, a chronology of the authors life, and an introductory essay written by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University. [via]

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