Derues

Alexandre Dumas

Sinossi

One September afternoon in 1751, towards half-past five, about a score of small boys, chattering, pushing, and tumbling over one another like a covey of partridges, issued from one of the religious schools of Chartres. The joy of the little troop just escaped from a long and wearisome captivity was doubly great: a slight accident to one of the teachers had caused the class to be dismissed half an hour earlier than usual, and in consequence of the extra work thrown on the teaching staff the brother whose duty it was to see all the scholars safe home was compelled to omit that part of his daily task. Therefore not only thirty or forty minutes were stolen from work, but there was also unexpected, uncontrolled liberty, free from the surveillance of that black-cassocked overseer who kept order in their ranks. Thirty minutes! at that age it is a century, of laughter and prospective games! Each had promised solemnly, under pain of severe punishment, to return straight to his paternal nest without delay, but the air was so fresh and pure, the country smiled all around! The school, or preferably the cage, which had just opened, lay at the extreme edge of one of the suburbs, and it only required a few steps to slip under a cluster of trees by a sparkling brook beyond which rose undulating ground, breaking the monotony of a vast and fertile plain.

Disponibile da: 12/01/2021.

Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

Crome Yellow

Aldous Huxley

Crome Yellow, first novel by Aldous Huxley, published in 1921. The book is a social satire of the British literati in the period following World War I. The book revolves around the hapless love affair of Denis Stone, a sensitive poet, and Anne Wimbush. Anne’s uncle, Henry Wimbush, hosts a party at his country estate, Crome, that brings together a humorous coterie of characters. Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books—both novels and non-fiction works—as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems. Born into the prominent Huxley family, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with an undergraduate degree in English literature

Mostra libro

As You Like It

William Shakespeare

As You Like It is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare.With its explorations of sexual ambivalence, As You Like It speaks directly to the twenty-first century. Rosalind's authority in the play grows from new ideas about women and reveals that Shakespeare's heroine reinvents herself for every age. But the play is also deeply rooted in Elizabethan culture, and through it Shakespeare addresses some of the hotly debated issues of the period. The play features one of Shakespeare's most famous and oft-quoted lines, "All the world's a stage", and has been adapted many times for radio, film, and musical theatre.

Mostra libro

The Death of Ivan Ilyitch

Leo Tolstoy

One of the world's masterpieces on the subject of death. The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his dying much of a thought. But one day, death comes to him in the shape of sudden illness, and to his shocked agony and surprise, he is now forced to deal with his own mortality. This novella by Tolstoy plunges us into the darkness of death but also raises us up into the light of life and spiritual transcendence: "He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. 'Where is it? What death?' There was no fear because there was no death. In place of death there was light." This work, along with the novel Anna Karenina, is an enduring testament to the genius of Tolstoy and an essential jewel in the vast crown of classic Russian literary masterpieces!

Mostra libro

Count Magnus

M. R. James

Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936), who wrote as M. R. James, was an English author, medieval scholar, and provost of King's College, Cambridge, and of Eton College. He is best known for his outstanding ghost stories. James reinvented the ghost story for the modern audience by moving away from Gothic elements and using realistic contemporary settings. His protagonists and plots often reflected his own antiquarian interests. Accordingly he is known as the originator of the "antiquarian ghost story". 


"Count Magnus" is the story of an amateur scholar travelling in a remote part of Sweden, whose researches lead him to the mausoleum where the infamous Count Magnus is interred. As he researches the history of the long dead count, and learns more about his ill deeds and the mysterious "black pilgimage" from which he returned with something or someone evil...strange and horrifying events begin to overtake him.

Mostra libro

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Washington Irving

Washington Irving’s classic ghost story brilliantly performed. The superstitious Ichabod Crane, schoolmaster of Tarrytown, joins in rivalry for the hand of the delectable Katrina Van Tassel, the country bell. But will the powers that lurk in the dark hollow allow him to pursue his quarry unhindered? Or does the infamously renowned Galloping Hessian of the Hollow have another judgment to lay upon Ichabod? 
A humorous tale of the downfalls of superstition and the fabrications of an overactive imagination. In The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Irving paints his narrative landscape with a poetic eloquence that made the story his most beloved for over a century. Join the author now, and take a tremulous stroll through the haunted shadows of Sleepy Hollow.

Mostra libro

The Early Stories of Philip K Dick

Philip K. Dick

Every legend has a beginning. Dreamscape Media presents a collection of thirteen early short stories penned by Philip K. Dick. Exploring themes of authoritarianism, alternate universes, and altered consciousness, the stories (including The Variable Man, Second Variety, and The Defenders) first appeared in American science fiction magazines of the 1950s and earned him the respect of such peers as Robert Heinlein and Ursula LeGuin, as well as the adulation of a voracious readership.

Mostra libro