Other books that might interest you

• 

  Daughters of the Vicar

  D H Lawrence

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  ‘Daughters of the Vicar’ was written by D H Lawrence in 1911. It was the eleventh of his sixty-seven short stories, all of which will be published individually in audio book format by the Blackthorn Press. Lawrence is at his best in this story, taken from the scenes of his childhood and based on characters he knew intimately. The main themes of the story are the class system which dominated society at the time and the pressures put on the young lovers who have to overcome it and the position of women in society who have nothing to offer but their bodies. For the sake of security and position one daughter makes a loveless marriage whilst the other daughter gives all that up for love.

  Show book

• 

  Great Expectations (Unabridged)

  Charles Dickens

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  In what may be Dickens's best novel, humble, orphaned Pip is apprenticed to the dirty work of the forge but dares to dream of becoming a gentleman - and one day, under sudden and enigmatic circumstances, he finds himself in possession of "great expectations." In this gripping tale of crime and guilt, revenge and reward, the compelling characters include Magwitch, the fearful and fearsome convict; Estella, whose beauty is excelled only by her haughtiness; and the embittered Miss Havisham, an eccentric jilted bride

  Show book

• 

  Sea Stories (Unabridged)

  Cyrus Townsend Brady, Frank...

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  SEA STORIES, tells the entire tale. You will find excerpts of some of the most famous nautical stories of all time. Most of us have passed through a period of life during which we have ardently longed to be, if not actually a rover, a buccaneer, or a pirate, at least and really a sailor! To run away to sea has been the misdirected ambition of many a youngster, and some lads there are who have realized their desire to their sorrow. The boy who has not cherished in his heart and exhibited in his actions at sometime or other during his youthful days, a love of ships and salt water, is fit for-well, he is fit for the shore, and that is the worst thing a sailor could say about him! The virile nations, the strong peoples, are those whose countries border on the sea. They who go down to the great deep in ships are they who master the world. On the ocean as well as on the mountain top dwells the spirit of freedom. When men have struggled with each other in the shock of war, or the emulation of peace, when they have matched skill against skill, strength to strength, courage with courage, the higher quality of manhood in each instance has been required upon the sea; for there the sharp contention has been not only between man and man but between nature and man as well. A double portion of heroic spirit is needed to meet the double demand. That is the reason we love the sea. It is this Homeric spirit of the Ocean Masters that fills the dreams of youth and stirs the memories of old age. In these dreams and memories the veriest boy catches glimpses of the perpetual Titanic struggle of, and on, the deep; dimly discerning in his youthful way, a thousand generations of heroic achievement before, and through which, he begins to be; and he realizes that the ocean affords such a field for the exhibition of every high quality that goes to make a man as may be found nowhere else.

  Show book

• 

  The Color of Money

  Walter Tevis

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  A legendary pool hustler tries to make a comeback in the novel that inspired the Martin Scorsese film: “A great read, entertainment of a high order” (Los Angeles Times).   Fast Eddie Felson was the best in the country. Then he walked out on his talent. He ran a poolroom for the next twenty years, got married, and watched pool games on television.   One evening he watches a pool player who reminds him of his old rival, Minnesota Fats, and it sparks something in him. Feeling a sudden grief at the loss of his old self and his old life, he leaves behind his business—and his marriage—and finds Fats, now retired in the Florida Keys. Now the pair is about to embark on a tour of the country together. Eddie hopes to recapture his glory days, but the journey will come with a price . . .   The author of the classic The Hustler, which also features Fast Eddie Felson, “is unequaled when it comes to creating and sustaining the tension of a high stakes game. Even readers who have never lifted a cue will be captivated” (Publishers Weekly).   “Tevis writes about pool with power and poetry and tension. From the opening scene of this fine book, the reunion between Eddie and Fats twenty years after, the staccato beat of the prose and finely drawn characters grab the reader and don’t let go. You don’t have to like pool to like this book, to appreciate its sense of living on the edge.” —The Washington Post

  Show book

• 

  Adam Bede

  George Eliot

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The fictitious landscape of Loamshire provides the setting for this country tragedy, with little peace about the intertwined lives of its inhabitants. Dinah Morris is an earnest Methodist preacher who rejects Seth Bede for a life devoted to God. Adam Bede, his brother, is also rejected, but by Hetty Sorrel, a gullible dairymaid who falls for dashing Arthur Donnithorne, the squire's heir. The passions roused in the community of Hayslope have disastrous consequences: a fight between two rivals, an illegitimate pregnancy and a woman driven to desperate deeds. In Adam Bede George Eliot gripped her readers with an imaginative and complex tale.

  Show book

• 

  The Lifted Veil

  George Eliot

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Mary Anne Evans was born on 22nd November 1819 at Nuneaton in Warwickshire, England, 
   
  As a child she was a committed reader and brimmed with intelligence. Her father felt that her lack of physical beauty might not bring her the best selection of suitors in marriage and therefore thought a good education, rarely afforded to women at the time, might be the best path for her. 
   
  From the age of five to nine, she boarded with her sister at Miss Latham's school in Attleborough, and then Mrs. Wallington's school in Nuneaton, until she was thirteen, and it was to be Miss Franklin's school in Coventry until she was sixteen.  
   
  In 1835 her mother died and she returned home to keep house for her father and her siblings, and with it the cessation of her formal education. 
   
  Over the next decade she nurtured her literary ambitions but doubts on religious faith brought tensions with her father who was not enamored at the free-willed liberals she was associating with. 
   
  Despite this her first major literary work was completing an English translation of Strauss's ‘The Life of Jesus’ in 1846. 
   
  Her father died in 1849 and Eliot was able to begin a new life.  After a few months in Geneva she moved to London to work at the Westminster Review where she published many articles and essays.  In 1851 Mary Anne or Marian, as she liked to be called, met George Henry Lewes, and in 1854 they moved in together; a somewhat scandalous situation as he was already married.    
   
  Her view on literature had taken some time to coalesce but with the publication of parts of ‘Scenes From A Clerical Life’ in 1858 she knew she wanted to be a novelist.   
   
  Under the pseudonym of George Eliot that we know so well ‘Adam Bede’ was published in 1859 followed by her other great novels; ‘Mill on the Floss’, ‘Silas Marner’ and ‘Middlemarch’.         
   
  Her talents also extended to both small canons of poetry and short stories. 
   
  ‘The Lifted Veil’ is a both a beautiful story and typical of Eliot’s formidable powers of writing. 
   
  George Eliot died on 22nd December 1880 at Chelsea in London. She was 61.  She is buried at Highgate Cemetery.

  Show book