127 books
Under the Greenwood Tree is the story of the romantic entanglement between church musician, Dick Dewey, and the attractive new school mistress, Fancy Day. A pleasant romantic tale set in the Victorian era, Under the Greenwood Tree is one of Thomas Hardy's most gentle and pastoral novels.
Phileas Fogg, a very punctual man had broken into an argument while conversing about the recent bank robbery. To keep his word of proving that he would travel around the world in 80 days and win the bet, he sets on a long trip, where he is joined by a few other people on the way. A wonderful adventure is about to begin!
Vigorous, self-reliant, amazingly resourceful, and moral, Natty Bumppo is the prototype of the Western hero. A faultless arbiter of wilderness justice, he hates middle-class hypocrisy. But he finds his love divided between the woman he has pledged to protect on a treacherous journey and the untouched forest that sustains him in his beliefs. A fast-paced narrative full of adventure and majestic descriptions of early frontier life, Indian raiders, and defenseless outposts, The Pathfinder set the standard for epic action literature.
Young American Isabel Archer charms European society, but falls prey to the machinations of a calculating older woman.
Inspired by an image of Christ's suffering, Fyodor Dostoyevsky set out to portray "a truly beautiful soul" colliding with the brutal reality of contemporary society. Returning to St. Petersburg from a Swiss sanatorium, the gentle and naive Prince Myshkin—known as "the idiot"—pays a visit to his distant relative General Yepanchin and proceeds to charm the General and his circle. But after becoming infatuated with the beautiful Nastasya Filippovna, Myshkin finds himself caught up in a love triangle and drawn into a web of blackmail, betrayal, and, ultimately, murder. This new translation by David McDuff is sensitive to the shifting registers of the original Russian, capturing the nervous, elliptic flow of the narrative for a new generation of readers.
To the Right Honourable and Mighty Lord, THOMAS EARLE OF SUSSEX, Viscount Fitzwalter, Lord of Egremont and of Burnell, Knight of the most noble Order of the Garter, Iustice of the forrests and Chases from Trent Southward; Captain of the Gentleman Pensioners of the House of the QUEENE our Soveraigne Lady.
In her most exuberant, most fanciful novel, Woolf has created a character liberated from the restraints of time and sex. Born in the Elizabethan Age to wealth and position, Orlando is a young nobleman at the beginning of the story-and a modern woman three centuries later.
Nero's insanity threatens the woman of one man's dreams and all of Roman Christianity. As princess of a now vanquished kingdom, the lovely Lygia lives a hostage in first-century Rome. As an arrogant nobleman accustomed to getting his way, Vinicius decides he will have this strikingly beautiful young woman. But the princess's deep Christian faith rattles the pagan Vinicius -- who first tries to take her by force, then determines to woo her to himself. As Vinicius pursues Lygia, her behavior and that of Rome's entire Christian community -- their love, compassion, and forgiveness -- begin to stir his cold, selfish heart. Soon, Emperor Nero steps up his persecution of the Christians, inventing hideous ways of eliminating these people who dare to reject his claims of deity. When the emperor's murderous plans ensnare Lygia, Vinicius must declare his allegiance -- to Nero, or to the one true God. Rich in historical detail, Quo Vadis is a deeply moving story of Christian faith amidst one of the darkest times in history. This classic novel, presented in unabridged form, will challenge you to live in the light of God's truth regardless of your circumstances. - Back cover.
In a sleepy little New England village stands a dark, weather-beaten, many-gabled house. This brooding mansion is haunted by a centuries-old curse that casts the shadow of ancestral sin upon the last four members of the distinctive Pyncheon family. Mysterious deaths threaten the living. Musty documents nestle behind hidden panels carrying the secret of the family's salvation -- or its downfall. Hawthorne called The House of the Seven Gables "a romance," and freely bestowed upon it many fascinating gothic touches. A brilliant intertwining of the popular, the symbolic, and the historical, the novel is a powerful exploration of personal and national guilt, a work that Henry James declared "the closest approach we are likely to have to the Great American Novel."
A history of New York : from the beginning of the world to the end of the Dutch dynasty ; containing, among many surprising and curious matters, the unutterable ponderings of Walter the Doubter, the disastrous projects of William the Testy, and the chivalric achievements of Peter the Headstrong ; the three Dutch governors of New Amsterdam ; being the only authentic history of the times that ever hath been or ever will be published.
The father of the historical novel, Sir Walter Scott invented a literary form that has remained popular for over one hundred and fifty years. Infusing his works with romance, action, and suspense, he brought long-gone eras back to life with splendor and spectacle.Set in England just after the Third Crusade, Ivanhoe is the tale of Wilfrid, a young Saxon knight, and his love for the royal princess Rowena. With his father against their union, Wilfrid embarks on a series of adventures to prove his worth, finding himself in conflict against the Normans and the Templars, and allied with such larger-than-life figures as Robin Hood and Richard the Lion Hearted. A timeless story of courage, chivalry, and courtly love, Ivanhoe is a grand epic, and its place in classical literature is assured.
Howards End is a novel by E. M. Forster about social conventions, codes of conduct and relationships in turn-of-the-century England. A strong-willed and intelligent woman refuses to allow the pretensions of her husband's smug English family to ruin her life. Howards End is considered by some to be Forster's masterpiece
The Deerslayer is the last book in Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales pentalogy, but acts as a prequel to the other novels. It begins with the rapid civilizing of New York, in which surrounds the following books take place. It introduces the hero of the Tales, Natty Bumppo, and his philosophy that every living thing should follow its own nature. He is contrasted to other, less conscientious, frontiersmen.
An enduring adventure yarn set in pre colonial Africa, culminating in the discovery of a lost civilization ruled by a beautiful eternally youthful queen. "She is generally considered to be one of the classics of imaginative literature and with 83 million copies sold by 1965, it is one of the best-selling books of all time." See more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She_(novel)
In this story of the trials of the peasant Jean Valjean--a man unjustly imprisoned, baffled by destiny, and hounded by his nemesis, the magnificently realized, ambiguously malevolent police detective Javert--Hugo achieves the sort of rare imaginative resonance that allows a work of art to transcend its genre.
<p><i>Shirley</i>, published in 1849, was <a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/charlotte-bronte">Charlotte Brontë’s</a> second novel after <i><a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/charlotte-bronte/jane-eyre">Jane Eyre</a></i>. Published under her pseudonym of “Currer Bell,” it differs in several respects from that earlier work. It is written in the third person with an omniscient narrator, rather than the first-person of <i>Jane Eyre</i>, and incorporates the themes of industrial change and the plight of unemployed workers. It also features strong pleas for the recognition of women’s intellect and right to their independence of thought and action.</p> <p>Set in the West Riding of Yorkshire during the Napoleonic period of the early 19th Century, the novel describes the confrontations between textile manufacturers and organized groups of workers protesting the introduction of mechanical looms. Three characters stand out: Robert Moore, a mill-owner determined to introduce modern methods despite sometimes violent opposition; his young cousin Caroline Helstone, who falls deeply in love with Robert; and Shirley Keeldar, a rich heiress who comes to live in the estate of Fieldhead, on whose land Robert’s mill stands. Robert’s business is in trouble, not so much because of the protests of the workers but because of a government decree which prevents him selling his finished cloth overseas during the duration of the war with Napoleon. He receives a loan from Miss Keeldar, and her interest in him seems to be becoming a romantic one, much to the distress of Caroline, who pines away for lack of any sign of affection from Robert.</p> <p>Shirley Keeldar is a remarkable female character for the time: strong, very independent-minded, dismissive of much of the standard rules of society, and determined to decide on her own future. Interestingly, up to this point, the name “Shirley” was almost entirely a male name; Shirley’s parents had hoped for a boy. Such was the success of Brontë’s novel, however, that it became increasingly popular as a female name and is now almost exclusively so.</p> <p>Although never as popular or successful as the more classically romantic <i>Jane Eyre</i>, <i>Shirley</i> is nevertheless now highly regarded by critics.</p>
The adventure of Wisteria lodge.--The adventure of the cardboard box.--The adventure of the red circle.--The adventure of the Bruce-Partington plans.--The adventure of the dying detective.--The disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax.--The adventure of the devil's foot.--His last bow.
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, though written in 1884, is still considered useful in thinking about multiple dimensions. It is also seen as a satirical depiction of Victorian society and its hierarchies. A square, who is a resident of the two-dimensional Flatland, dreams of the one-dimensional Lineland. He attempts to convince the monarch of Lineland of the possibility of another dimension, but the monarch cannot see outside the line. The square is then visited himself by a Sphere from three-dimensional Spaceland, who must show the square Spaceland before he can conceive it. As more dimensions enter the scene, the story's discussion of fixed thought and the kind of inhuman action which accompanies it intensifies.
The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905) is a play and adventure novel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy set during the Reign of Terror following the start of the French Revolution.
Written over a seven-year period, from 1914 to 1921, this book has survived bowdlerization, legal action and controversy. The novel deals with the events of one day in Dublin, 16th June 1904, now known as "Bloomsday". The principal characters are Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom and his wife Molly. Ulysses has been labelled dirty, blasphemous and unreadable. In a famous 1933 court decision, Judge John M. Woolsey declared it an emetic book-although he found it not quite obscene enough to disallow its importation into the United States-and Virginia Woolf was moved to decry James Joyce's "cloacal obsession". None of these descriptions, however, do the slightest justice to the novel. To this day it remains the modernist masterpiece, in which the author takes both Celtic lyricism and vulgarity to splendid extremes. It is funny, sorrowful, and even (in its own way) suspenseful. And despite the exegetical industry that has sprung up in the last 75 years, Ulysses is also a compulsively readable book.
![Cover of His Last Bow [8 stories]](/static/images/covers/8243267_sm.jpg)
