Other books that might interest you

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  The Key to Success

  Russell H. Conwell

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  this audiobook is sent out to induce people to look at their own eyes, to pick up the gold in their laps, to study anatomy under the tutorship of their own hearts. One could accumulate great wisdom and secure fortunes by studying his own finger-nails. This lesson seems the very easiest to learn, and for that reason is the most difficult. The lecture, "The Silver Crown," which the author has been giving in various forms for fifty years, is herein printed from a stenographic report of one address on this general subject. It will not be found all together, as a lecture, for this book is an attempt to give further suggestion on the many different ways in which the subject has been treated, just as the lecture has varied in its illustrations from time to time. The lecture was addressed to the ear. This truth, which amplifies the lecture, is addressed to the eye.

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  The Cloak

  Nikolai Gogol

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  Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) was a preeminent Ukrainian-born story writer. He is particularly famous for those stories which veer in the direction of surrealism and the grotesque.The Cloak is one such tale. Akaky Akakiyevich is a reclusive and widely ridiculed lower official whose job is to copy letters. He lives a hand-to-mouth existence with his elderly landlady and has little money. But the harsh weather in St. Petersburg necessitates the purchase of a new cloak. His existing cloak, threadbare and filthy, is the butt of jokes among his comrades, and the tailor refuses to patch it up any further.Akaky Akakiyevich has somehow to scrape together the money for a new one. As he begins to save for it, the cloak begins to take on a much greater significance in his life. He dreams of it, visualises it, plans it with the tailor and scrimps and saves until the glorious day when he is able to actually commission its manufacture.The cloak is his pride and joy...but disaster waits around the corner. And in true Gogol style, the story takes a weird twist.

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  A Strange Story - Turgenev...

  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 this tale a young girl, Sophia, endures difficult circumstances before several years later becoming the companion of a devout, but pitifully poor, vagrant holy man wandering the countryside.

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  The First Shot

  J. Bell

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  Aboard the Norwegian whaling ship Thorgrim, the Captain announces to the Mate, Sigurd, that he will allow him to take the second shot at the next whale they hunt and if there is a third whale, he will be permitted to take the first shot. Sigurd, ambitious for promotion to gunner on the whaling ship, is delighted and can scarcely contain his impatience and excitement. But as they approach a pod of feeding "finhval" the captain changes his mind and throws the ship into an extraordinary whale hunt which shocks every member of the crew to the very core.

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  Pride & Prejudice

  Jane Austen

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  Pride and Prejudice is a masterpiece of wit and perception, ridiculing the superficial manners of Jane Austen’s time. But it is more than just social satire.  Notice, in particular, how the author’s close attention to detail makes the events and characters so true to life. Above all, enjoy the story – its sheer narrative force and humour – and enter a world of snobbery, romance and uncertainty, in which people behave casually, indifferently or even cruelly – in short just like people behave everywhere in the world today.

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  House of the Dead The (Unabridged)

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

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  The House of the Dead is a novel published in 1861 by Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky, which portrays the life of convicts in a Siberian prison camp. Dostoyevsky himself spent four years in exile in such a camp following his conviction for involvement in the Petrashevsky Circle. This experience allowed him to describe with great authenticity the conditions of prison life and the characters of the convicts. The narrator, Aleksandr Petrovich Goryanchikov, has been sentenced to penalty deportation to Siberia and ten years of hard labour. Life in prison is particularly hard for Aleksandr Petrovich, since he is a "gentleman" and suffers the malice of the other prisoners, nearly all of whom belong to the peasantry. Gradually Goryanchikov overcomes his revulsion at his situation and his fellow convicts, undergoing a spiritual re-awakening that culminates with his release from the camp. It is a work of great humanity; Dostoyevsky portrays the inmates of the prison with sympathy for their plight, and also expresses admiration for their energy, ingenuity and talent. He concludes that the existence of the prison, with its absurd practices and savage corporal punishments is a tragic fact, both for the prisoners and for Russia itself.

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