Publisher: Homer
Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.
Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) was a prolific English writer of science fiction stories and novels and is frequently credited as being the father of science fiction. "The Argonauts of the Air" is the tale of Monson, an eccentric millionnaire with a passion for engineering, who is determined to invent the world's first flying machine. As his attempts run up against endless hurdles and delays, he becomes the laughing stock of London, but this only spurs Monson on to attempt the maiden flight of his marvellous machine.Show book
At age 19 Anne Brontë left home and worked as a governess for a few years before becoming a writer. Agnes Grey was an 1847 novel based on her experience as a governess. Bronte depicts the precarious position of a governess and how that can affect a young woman. Agnes was the daughter of a minister whose family was in financial difficulty. She has only a few choices for employment. Agnes experiences the difficulty of reining in spoiled children and how wealth can corrupt morals.Show book
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born on 29th January 1860 in Taganrog, on the south coast of Russia. His family life was difficult; his father was strict and over-bearing but his mother was a passionate story-teller, a subject Chekhov warmed to. As he later said; ‘our talents we got from our father, but our soul from our mother’. At school Chekhov was distinctly average. At 16 his father mis-managed his finances and was declared bankrupt. His family fled to Moscow. Chekhov remained and eked out a living by various means, including writing and selling short sketches to newspapers, to finish his schooling. That completed and with a scholarship to Moscow University obtained he rejoined his family. He was able to help support them by selling satirical sketches and vignettes of Russian lifestyles and gradually obtained further commissions. In 1884, he qualified as a physician and, although it earned him little, he often treated the poor for free, he was fond of saying ‘Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress.’ His own health was now an issue as he began to cough up blood, a symptom of tuberculosis. Despite this his writing success enabled him to move the family into more comfortable accommodation. Chekhov wrote over 500 short stories which included many, many classics including ‘The Kiss’ and ‘The Lady with a Dog’. His collection ‘At Dusk’ won him the coveted Pushkin Prize when was only 26. He was also a major playwright beginning with the huge success of ‘Ivanov’ in 1887. In 1892 Chekhov bought a country estate north of Moscow. Here his medical skills and money helped the peasants tackle outbreaks of cholera and bouts of famine. He also built three schools, a fire station and a clinic. It left him with less time for writing but the interactions with real people gained him detailed knowledge about the peasantry and their living conditions for his stories. His most famous work, ‘The Seagull’ was received disastrously at its premiere in St Petersburg. It was later restaged in Moscow to highlight its psychological aspects and was a huge success. It led to ‘Uncle Vanya’, ‘The Three Sisters’ and ‘The Cherry Orchard’. Chekhov suffered a major lung hemorrhage in 1897 while visiting Moscow. A formal diagnosis confirmed tuberculosis and the doctors ordered changes to his lifestyle. Despite a dread of weddings the elusive literary bachelor quietly married the actress Olga Knipper, whom he had met at rehearsals for ‘The Seagull’, on 25th May 1901. By May 1904 with his tuberculosis worsening and death imminent he set off for the German town of Badenweiler writing cheerful, witty letters to his family and assuring them his health was improving. On 15th July 1904 Anton Chekhov died at Badenweiler. He was 44.Show book
"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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Stella Benson (1892-1933) was an English feminist, novelist, poet, and short story and travel writer.The Desert Islander is the story of a deserter from the French Foreign Legion who seeks help from an Englishman living in a remote part of southern China during the Chinese war. Two facts quickly become apparent about our legionnaire. First, that he has a narcissistic personality disorder which leaves him devoid of empathy and in desperate need to attention and adulation. Second that he is suffering from a gangrenous leg.The imperturbable Englishman, who is totally disinclined to pander to his visitor's over-bloated sense of self-importance, insists on setting off next morning through the fighting zone to try to bring his guest to a hospital.Show book
The premier novel of the French Revolution, by England’s greatest authorSet against the bloodthirsty backdrop of revolutionary France, this monumental saga—one of the most famous works in all of literature—is at its heart the story of a beautiful woman and the two men who compete for her love: Charles Darnay, a French aristocrat who renounces his heritage, yet stands accused of treason in the rush to the guillotine, and Sydney Carton, a disillusioned English barrister who finds his salvation in the ultimate act of sacrifice.Full of rich historical details and populated by a sprawling cast of characters, Charles Dickens’s masterwork is epic in every sense of the word. Yet its finest achievement may be the intimate moments shared by three people who have the foresight and the courage to see beyond the chaos that surrounds them. A novel whose contradictions are laid bare from the very start—“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”—A Tale of Two Cities is the stuff of life, and great art. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.Show book
