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  Sparkling Cyanide - B2

  Agatha Christie

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  Collins brings the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, to English language learners. 
  Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language. Now Collins has adapted her famous detective novels for English language learners. These carefully abridged versions are shorter with the language targeted at learners of English. 
  Six people sit down for dinner at a table laid for seven. No one can forget the night exactly a year ago that Rosemary Barton died at this same table surrounded by the same people, her beautiful face turned blue with cyanide poison. 
  Rosemary had always been memorable – and people had strong reactions to her. Did one of the six people at dinner feel strongly enough about her to kill her?

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  Family Reunion - And Other Stories

  Berry Fleming

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  Bob Otis, an unmarketable author who is just starting his own publishing company in order to get his latest novels in print, is abruptly sidetracked when a relative, so distant that Otis doesn’t even place him, phones from Chicago with a request: his father, who has just died, wishes to be buried in the family plot in a small town in Georgia.   This call leads to another wonderful comedy of manners as Otis, whose Southern sense of obligations won’t permit him to totally avoid this undertaking, is reluctantly sucked into a family reunion at the burial site: a burial attended by a cast of wonderfully eccentric characters who also have no knowledge of the deceased.   This novella is a direct descendant of Fleming’s earlier comic novels: Colonel Effingham’s Raid, Lucinderella, and Captain Bennett’s Folly. Indeed, many of the zany, colorful, and irreverent characters of Lucinderella and Captain Bennett make their reappearances here, as does his fictional town of Fredericksville.   In many ways, this novel is reminiscent of Federico Fellini’s film classic 8 1/2, where the Italian director is surrounded by the characters in his life and in his films. Fleming (who was also forced to self-publish his books during his decades of anonymity) brings to life his roots and his creations with a fine mixture of satire, reflection, and nostalgia.   In addition to Family Reunion are some fine examples of the author’s gift for short fiction: pieces that touch the heart, the funny bone, and the imagination.

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  Moby-Dick

  Herman Melville

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  "Moby-Dick; or, The Whale" is a novel by American writer Herman Melville, published in 1851 during the period of the American Renaissance. Sailor Ishmael tells the story of the obsessive quest of Ahab, captain of the whaler Pequod, for revenge on Moby Dick, the white whale which on an earlier voyage destroyed his ship and severed his leg at the knee. The novel was a commercial failure and out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891, but during the 20th century its reputation as a Great American Novel was established.
   
  William Faulkner confessed he wished he had written it himself, and D. H. Lawrence called it "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world," and "the greatest book of the sea ever written." "Call me Ishmael" is among world literature's most famous opening sentences. The product of a year and a half of writing, the book draws on Melville's experience at sea, on his reading in whaling literature, and on literary inspirations such as Shakespeare and the Bible.
   
  The detailed and realistic descriptions of whale hunting and of extracting whale oil, as well as life aboard ship among a culturally diverse crew, are mixed with exploration of class and social status, good and evil, and the existence of God. In addition to narrative prose, Melville uses styles and literary devices ranging from songs, poetry, and catalogs to Shakespearean stage directions, soliloquies, and asides.

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  Freeman's: Love

  John Freeman

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  New work from Tommy Orange, Anne Carson, Louise Erdrich, and others propels this tribute to love from Freeman’s, “a powerful force in the literary world” (Los Angeles Times). 
   
  In a time of contentiousness and flagrant abuse, it often feels as if our world is run on hate. Invective. Cruelty and sadism. But is it possible the greatest and most powerful force is love? In the newest issue of this acclaimed series, Freeman’s: Love asks this question, bringing together literary heavyweights like Tommy Orange, Anne Carson, Louise Erdrich, and Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk alongside emerging writers such as Gunnhild Øyehaug and Semezdin Mehmedinovic. 
   
  Mehmedinovic contributes a breathtaking book-length essay on the aftermath of his wife’s stroke, describing how the two reassembled their lives outside their home country of Bosnia. Richard Russo’s charming and painful “Good People” introduces us to two sets of married professors who have been together for decades, and for whom love still exists, but between the wrong pair. Haruki Murakami tells the tale of a one-night stand that feels like a dying sun. 
   
  Together, the pieces comprise a stunning exploration of the complexities of love, tracing it from its earliest stirrings, to the forbidden places where it emerges against reason, to loss so deep it changes the color of perception. In a time when we need it the most, this issue promises what only love can bring: a solace of complexity and warmth. 
   
  “The anthology packs an emotional wallop from the start.” —Shelf Awareness

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  Appointment With Death

  Agatha Christie

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  Collins brings the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, to English language learners. 
  Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language. Now Collins has adapted her famous detective novels for English language learners. These carefully abridged versions are shorter with the language targeted at learners of English. 
  Mrs Boynton, a cruel and hated woman, is found dead in the ancient city of Petra. Was it just a weak heart and too much sun that killed her, or has one of Mrs Boynton’s many victims found revenge? 
  By chance, the great detective Hercule Poirot has some useful information, but is it enough to find the killer? He has 24 hours to solve the case.

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  The Temple

  H. P. Lovecraft

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  A German U-boat embarks on a horrifying journey after one of its crew claims a strange souvenir in this tale by the author of “The Call of Cthulhu”.During World War I, a German U-boat sinks a British freighter. Karl Heinrich, Graf von Altberg-Ehrenstein, a lieutenant-commander in the Imperial German Navy, orders the ship to fire on the British survivors and their lifeboats before submerging. After the U-boat surfaces again, a dead sailor is found clinging to the deck with a mysterious ivory talisman in his pocket. Heinrich’s second-in-command pockets the charm just before the body is thrown overboard. And thus begins the ship’s journey into madness . . .

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