Publisher: Mustread Digital Books
"A Room with a View" is a 1908 novel by English writer E. M. Forster, about a young woman in the restrained culture of Edwardian era England. The novel is both a romance and a humorous critique of English society at the beginning of the 20th century.
"The Sign of the Four" (1890), also called "The Sign of Four," is the second novel featuring Sherlock Holmes written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle wrote four novels and 56 stories starring the fictional detective. The story is set in 1888.
"The Sign of the Four" has a complex plot involving service in East India Company, India, the Indian Rebellion of 1857, a stolen treasure, and a secret pact among four convicts ("the Four" of the title) and two corrupt prison guards. It presents the detective's drug habit and humanizes him in a way that had not been done in the preceding novel, "A Study in Scarlet" (1887). It also introduces Doctor Watson's future wife, Mary Morstan.
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Maggie: A Girl of the Streets is a ground breaking novel relating to the precarious state of women in the new industrial world at the end of the nineteenth century. One blemish on a reputation and a woman would often be banned from her house, subject to earning her living on the streets, and often dying young as Maggie does. The irony is that Maggie has two abusive parents, the father who dies early in the novel, and the mother who hurls her out, with much fussing and lamenting about "all she has done" for Maggie.Crane's irony builds from the beginning through Maggie's brother, who is upset his friend debauched Maggie and got her pregnant. The turning point is in Jimmy who starts to realize that he has done the same to other brothers' sisters. It is the early realization of this behavior that makes the most interesting psychological impact on the novel.As always, Maggie contains the beautiful word paintings of Crane. As Maggie descends towards her doom each successive bar/entertainment place Maggie is taken to becomes increasingly bawdy and unappealing. Maggie preserves what order there is in the family home, nurses her mother, but that does not protect her position in the end, when she gets hurled out. This is one of the most moving stories in American literature. If this novel doesn't break your heart a little, no novel will. In our mind, Maggie is the equal of Crane's more famous work, The Red Badge of Courage, which depicts war with a candor similar to the depiction of the tenements and people of the Bowery in New York. A must read for all students of American literature and a wonderful one for the rest of us.Show book
A rediscovered classic and international bestseller that recounts the gripping tale of a friendship destroyed at the hands of Nazi Germany In this searing novel, Kathrine Kressmann Taylor brings vividly to life the insidious spread of Nazism through a series of letters between Max, a Jewish art dealer in San Francisco, and Martin, his friend and former business partner who has returned to Germany in 1932, just as Hitler is coming to power. Originally published in Story magazine in 1938, Address Unknown became an international sensation. Credited with exposing the dangers of Nazism to American readers early on, it is also a scathing indictment of fascist movements around the world and a harrowing exposé of the power of the pen as a weapon. A powerful and eloquent tale about the consequences of a friendship—and society—poisoned by extremism, Address Unknown remains hauntingly and painfully relevant today.Show book
Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola was born in Paris on 2nd April 1840. When he was 3 the family moved to Aix-en-Provence in the southeast. At 7 his father died, leaving the family on a meagre pension. In 1858, they returned to Paris. His mother had planned a law career for Émile, but he failed his baccalauréat examination twice. He took jobs as a clerk in a shipping firm and then in the sales department for the publisher Hachette. Zola also wrote political, literary and art reviews for newspapers. As a writer Zola wrote numerous short stories, essays, plays and novels. When ‘La Confession de Claude’ was published and received the attention of the police Hachette fired him. He continued to write and after his first major novel, ‘Thérèse Raquin’ (1867), Zola started the series called ‘Les Rougon-Macquart’, a carefully planned twenty-volume history of a single family under the reign of Napoléon III. With the publication of ‘L'Assommoir’, Zola became wealthy. His subsequent works, ‘Nana’ and La Débâcle fared even better, increasing both fame and bank balance. He was now a figurehead of the literary bourgeoisie. However, despite several nominations, he was never elected to the prestigious Académie Française. The infamous Dreyfus Affair infuriated Zola who wrote in defence of Alfred Dreyfus. His plan was to be prosecuted for libel so that the truth would be exposed. It went badly wrong. Zola was convicted for criminal libel in February 1898 and removed from the Legion of Honour. The judgment was overturned but a new suit began. Zola fled to England only to return when an Amnesty was granted. Zola said of the affair, "The truth is on the march, and nothing shall stop it." Émile Zola died on 29th September 1902 of carbon monoxide poisoning caused by an improperly ventilated chimney. On 4th June 1908 Zola’s remains were transferred to the Panthéon, where he shares a crypt with Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas.Show book
The first of five novels by Buchan featuring Richard Hannay, an all-action hero with a stiff upper lip and a miraculous knack for getting himself out of sticky situations, the 39 Steps pits the adventurer against German agents in a tense backdrop of a Europe weeks away from the first world war. The story places him in a desperate game of cat and mouth that will lead Hannay from his Portland Place home to the highlands of Scotland, back to London, and to a sleepy holiday village on the coast, where all is not as it seems... Narrated by Michael Ward.Show book
One of the masterpieces of classical literature, the "Histories" describes how a small and quarrelsome band of Greek city states united to repel the might of the Persian empire. But while this epic struggle forms the core of his work, Herodotus' natural curiosity frequently gives rise to colorful digressions - a description of the natural wonders of Egypt; an account of European lake-dwellers; and far-fetched accounts of dog-headed men and gold-digging ants. With its kaleidoscopic blend of fact and legend, the "Histories" offers a compelling Greek view of the world of the fifth century BC.BOOK 5: TERPSICHORE: The Persians left behind by King Darius in Europe, who had Megabazus for their general, reduced, before any other Hellespontine state, the people of Perinthus, who had no mind to become subjects of the king.Show book
