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  Hunchback of Notre-Dame The...

  Victor Hugo

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  Book 9: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame or Notre-Dame de Paris is a French Gothic novel by Victor Hugo, published in 1831. - The story is set in Paris in 1482 during the reign of Louis XI. The gypsy Esmeralda (born as Agnes) captures the hearts of many men, including those of Captain Phoebus and Pierre Gringoire, but especially Quasimodo and his guardian Archdeacon Claude Frollo. Frollo is torn between his obsessive lust for Esmeralda and the rules of Notre Dame Cathedral. He orders Quasimodo to kidnap her, but Quasimodo is captured by Phoebus and his guards, who save Esmeralda. Gringoire, who attempted to help Esmeralda but was knocked out by Quasimodo, is about to be hanged by beggars when Esmeralda saves him by agreeing to marry him for four years.

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  The Jew - Turgenev's...

  Ivan Turgenev

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  Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was born on 9th November 1818 in Oryol, Russia to parents from the nobility.  He and his two brothers were raised by their mother on the family estate.  Surrounded by foreign governesses he became fluent in French, German, and English.  Their father spent little time with them and this undoubtedly had an effect on him and his brothers.  When he was nine the family moved to Moscow to give their children a better education. 
   
  Turgenev studied for a year at the University of Moscow and then at the University of St Petersburg to study Classics, Russian literature, and philology.  During that time his father died from kidney stone disease.  In 1838 Turgenev studied philosophy and history at the University of Berlin for 3 years before returning to St Petersburg for his master's. 
   
  He started his career with the Russian Civil Service and it was only in 1852, after several earlier publications, that he made his name with his short story collection, ‘A Sportsman's Sketches’, based on his observations of peasant life and nature. 
    
  That same year he wrote an obituary for Nikolai Gogol: "Gogol is dead!... What Russian heart is not shaken by those three words?... He is gone, that man whom we now have the right (the bitter right, given to us by death) to call great."  The St Petersburg censor banned publication but the Moscow censor allowed it.  He was dismissed but Turgenev was held responsible and imprisoned for a month, and then exiled to his country estate.  
   
  Along with many other intellectuals Turgenev left Russia and settled in Paris in 1854.  During this period he wrote his finest stories and four novels.  
   
  Alexander II ascended the Russian throne in 1855, and the political climate relaxed.  Turgenev returned home.  
   
  ‘Fathers and Sons’, Turgenev's most famous and enduring novel, appeared in 1862. Its leading character is considered the first ‘Bolshevik’ in Russian literature. But the hostile reaction prompted Turgenev's decision to again leave Russia.  
   
  His health declined during his later years.  In January 1883, an aggressive malignant tumor was removed but by then it had metastasized in his upper spinal cord, causing him intense pain in his final few months of life.  
   
  Ivan Turgenev died on 3rd September 1883 of a spinal abscess, a complication of the metastatic liposarcoma, in his house near Paris.  He was buried in St Petersburg.  
   
  In ‘The Jew’ Turgenev explores a subject that is often treated abrasively by Russian authors.  In this heartbreaking tale an officer is begged by a Jew to help him.  He is even prepared to offer, with tragic consequences, a young girl as part of the bargain.

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  Evil Clergyman The (Unabridged)

  H. P. Lovecraft

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  "The Evil Clergyman" is an excerpt from a letter written by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft in 1933. After his death, it was published in the April 1939 issue of Weird Tales as a short story. The story was later adapted into the unreleased 1987 anthology film Pulse Pounders. The letter, to his friend Bernard Austin Dwyer, recounted a dream that Lovecraft had had. Although Lovecraft frequently based stories on his dreams, An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia notes that " is difficult to say how HPL would have developed this conventional supernatural scenario.

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  Vision of Judgment A (Unabridged)

  H. G. Wells

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  "Written in the late 19th century by H. G. Wells and first published in The Butterfly (September 1899), (and collected in The Obliterated Man and Other Stories, (Dec 1925)) A Vision of Judgment is a short story in 9 sections. It portrays a Last Judgment in which God and the archangel Gabriel laugh at sinners and saints alike, embarrassing them until they flee "up the sleeve of God." After every human soul has taken shelter there, all of humanity, "enlightened" and "in new clean bodies," is given a second chance.

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  Nostromo

  Joseph Conrad

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  "Nostromo" is a novel by Joseph Conrad, published in 1904. It is considered one of Conrad's most significant works and a masterpiece of modernist literature. The novel is set in the fictional South American country of Costaguana, where political turmoil and the quest for wealth intersect. The story revolves around the enigmatic figure of Nostromo, an Italian expatriate and trusted longshoreman in the port of Sulaco. Conrad explores themes of greed, imperialism, and the corrupting influence of power while offering a complex narrative that weaves together the lives of various characters.

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  Lair of the White Worm The...

  Bram Stoker

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  The Lair of the White Worm is a horror novel by the Irish writer Bram Stoker. It was first published by Rider and Son of London in 1911 - the year before Stoker's death - with colour illustrations by Pamela Colman Smith. The story is based on the legend of the Lambton Worm. It has also been issued as The Garden of Evil.

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