Verlag: Bu Classics Books
A mysterious benefactor lifts an orphan from poverty, setting him on a path of snobbery and unrequited love for a cold-hearted beauty. But the source of his fortune holds a dark secret that shatters his illusions of gentility. A masterclass in character study, exploring the true cost of ambition and the definition of a gentleman.
Spanning four decades in the mid-nineteenth century, the interconnected novellas of Old New York lay out in vivid detail the complex and inscrutable codes, customs, and taboos of New York society in one of Wharton's sharpest dissections of American aristocracy. False Dawn (1840s): Lewis Raycie, the idealistic son of a wealthy New York family, is sent to Europe to acquire art that will elevate the family's cultural standing. But when he returns, his family is horrified because he has purchased works by then‑unknown painters – which will one day be priceless—rather than the "approved" Old Masters his father expects. The Old Maid (1850s): A heartbreaking story about the devastating cost of maintaining social respectability, The Old Maid is the best known of the stories in this collection. Charlotte Lovell, a quiet, dutiful woman, has an illegitimate daughter, Tina, fathered by a man who died before they could marry. To protect Tina's future, Charlotte allows her glamorous (married) cousin Delia to raise the child as her own. As Tina grows up, Charlotte becomes the "old maid" who hovers on the margins of the household, loving her daughter but unable to claim her. The Spark (1860s): Hayley Delane was a schoolboy when the Civil War started. He ran off to join the war, was wounded at Bull Run, and spent a long time recovering in a hospital camp in Washington. There he met a mysterious stranger—a poet—whom Hayley has never forgotten. New Year's Day (1870s): A scandal erupts when Lizzie Hazeldean is seen leaving a hotel with a man who is not her husband. Society assumes the worst and ostracises her, but the relationship is not at all what it seems in this story that exposes how easily gossip becomes "truth" in a society eager to condemn women. Born into an old, wealthy, New York family, Edith Wharton (1862–1937) was an American novelist, short‑story writer, and cultural critic best known for her sharp, elegant portrayals of New York's Gilded Age elite. She spent much of her adult life in Europe and eventually settled in France, where she supported refugees during World War I and earned several French honours for her humanitarian work. Wharton published more than forty books, including The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome andThe Age of Innocence (for which she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction). Her work explores themes of social constraint, desire, class, and the quiet tragedies of lives shaped by rigid expectations. She continued writing until her death in 1937, leaving behind a body of work that remains a cornerstone of American literatureZum Buch
Alfred McLelland Burrage was born in Hillingdon, Middlesex on 1st July, 1889. His father and uncle were both writers, primarily of boy’s fiction, and by age 16 AM Burrage had joined them. The young man had ambitions to write for the adult market too. The money was better and so was his writing. From 1890 to 1914, prior to the mainstream appeal of cinema and radio the printed word, mainly in magazines, was the foremost mass entertainment. AM Burrage quickly became a master of the market publishing his stories regularly across a number of publications. By the start of the Great War Burrage was well established but in 1916 he was conscripted to fight on the Western Front. He continued to write during these years documenting his experiences in the classic book War is War by Ex-Private X. For the remainder of his life Burrage was rarely printed in book form but continued to write and be published on a prodigious scale in magazines and newspapers. In this volume we concentrate on his supernatural stories which are, by common consent, some of the best ever written. Succinct yet full of character each reveals a twist and a flavour that is unsettling…..sometimes menacing….always disturbing.Zum Buch
A Case of Identity is one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and is the third story in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.The story revolves around the case of Miss Mary Sutherland, a woman with a substantial income from the interest on a fund set up for her. She is engaged to a quiet Londoner who has recently disappeared. Sherlock Holmes' detective powers are barely challenged as this turns out to be quite an elementary case for him, much as it puzzles Watson.The fiancé, Mr. Hosmer Angel, is a peculiar character, rather quiet, and rather secretive about his life. Miss Sutherland only knows that he works in an office in Leadenhall Street, but nothing more specific than that. All his letters to her are typewritten, even the signature, and he insists that she write back to him through the local Post Office.The climax of the sad liaison comes when Mr. Angel abandons Miss Sutherland at the altar on their wedding day.Famous works of the author Arthur Conan Doyle's: "A Study in Scarlet", "Silver Blaze", "The Hound of the Baskervilles", "The Yellow Face", "A Scandal in Bohemia", "The Red-Headed League", A Case of Identity", "The Boscombe Valley Mystery", "The Five Orange Pips", "The Man with the Twisted Lip", "The Blue Carbuncle", "The Speckled Band", "The Engineer's Thumb", "The Noble Bachelor", "The Beryl Coronet", "The Copper Beeches" and many more.Zum Buch
Luigi Pirandello was born on 28th June 1867 into an upper-class family in Agrigento, in Sicily. In 1880, the family moved to Palermo and there he completed high school and thence to the University of Palermo, at that time the centre of what became the Fasci Siciliani movement. Although not an active member he had close friendships with many of its leading ideologists. Pirandello then completed his university studies in Rome and Bonn, receiving his Doctorate in March, 1891. His time in Rome had provided him with the opportunity to visit its many theatres. "Oh the dramatic theatre! I will conquer it. I cannot enter into one without experiencing a strange sensation, an excitement of the blood through all my veins..." 1894 brought marriage, at his father's suggestion, to a shy, withdrawn girl: Mara Antonietta Portulano. The marriage encouraged his studies and writings and, the following year, the first part of the ‘Dialoghi tra Il Gran Me e Il Piccolo Me’ was published. In 1903 the flooding of the sulphur mines in which his father had invested the family capital and Antonietta's dowry, brought financial catastrophe. She, on hearing the news, was mentally broken. Pirandello would now work a full day and then watch over his troubled wife at night. Somehow he found time to write ‘The Late Mattia Pascal’. It was an immediate and resounding success. In 1909, Pirandello began his collaboration with the prestigious Corriere della Sera. Whilst his fame as a writer was increasing his private life was poisoned by the suspicion and jealousy of Antonietta who now turned physically violent. His plays were now being regularly performed but, within a decade, Antonietta had to be placed into an asylum from which she never left. In 1921, in Rome his play, ‘Six Characters in Search of an Author’ debuted. It was a failure. However, when presented in Milan it was a great success, as it also was in London and New York. In 1925, Pirandello, with Mussolini’s help, assumed the artistic direction and ownership of the Teatro d'Arte di Roma. He now described himself both as ‘a Fascist because I am Italian’ and ‘I'm apolitical, I'm only a man in the world...’ However his later conflicts with fascist leaders meant he fell under close surveillance by the OVRA, the secret police. In 1934 he won the Nobel Prize but asked that the medal be melted down for Italy’s occupation of Abyssinia Campaign to which he had given his support. Pirandello's canon stretches across novels, short stories, poetry, essays and some 40 plays. His tragic farces are often cited as forerunners of the Theatre of the Absurd. Luigi Pirandello died on the 10th December 1936 at his home at Via Bosio, Rome, Italy. He was 69.Zum Buch
You can never go home again—but you can remember, dream, and search. Following the restless spirit of Eugene Gant, Thomas Wolfe crafts a vast, emotional journey through youth, ambition, travel, and longing. As Eugene moves through cities and continents, he wrestles with time, identity, love, and the ache of belonging. The novel flows with poetic intensity, capturing the hunger to live fully before life slips away. Acclaimed as "one of the great lyrical achievements of American literature," this novel blends autobiography, philosophy, and powerful emotion into a portrait of a soul in motion. Wolfe's language is rich, passionate, and unforgettable. If you love expansive storytelling, introspective journeys, and novels that feel like life itself unfolding on the page, this masterpiece will stay with you. Open the book—and follow the river of time that carries us all.Zum Buch
