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  Mumu - Turgenev brilliantly...

  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 Mumu, Turgenev hauntingly tells the story of a Gerasim, a six foot five deaf mute with the menial job of yard-porter who is ostracized by all those around him.  A dog, Mumu, becomes his only true and faithful friend.  One day he is given a dreadful and agonizing choice.

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  The Development

  John Barth

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  “A merry satire about the smart, moneyed, and demanding retirees living in a gated community . . . Scintillating on the surface and churning with danger below” (Booklist). From a National Book Award–winning author, this is a collection of “nine darkly comic stories set in a gated community on Maryland’s Eastern Shore” (Publishers Weekly).   Something has disturbed the comfortably aging denizens of Heron Bay Estates, a pristine retirement community in Chesapeake Bay. In the dawn of the new millennium—and the evening of their lives—these empty nesters have discovered that their tidy enclave can be surprisingly colorful, shocking, and surreal.   From the high jinks of a toga party to a baffling suicide pact, John Barth, “a comic genius of the highest order,” brings compassion to the lives of his characters with the mordant humor that has earned him a reputation as one of our most original storytellers (The New York Times Book Review).   “Disturbing, but humorous . . . Reading ‘The Development’ is a worthy investment in lofty literary real estate.” —The Seattle Times   “Perhaps the most prodigally gifted comic novelists writing in English today.” —Newsweek   “A low-key, clear-eyed, battered-but-unbowed portrait of the diminishments and minor pleasures of age. Barth’s prose still has its sinew and snap; he examines near-decrepitude with mordant, rueful wit.” —Kirkus Reviews

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  Bridging Worlds - Stories of...

  Luigi Pascal Rondanini, Pascal...

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  Traverse the psyches of figures grappling with existential questions, like the reality-doubting schizophrenic in “Shattering Reality” or the dimension-defying friendship between two boys centuries apart in “Bridging Yesteryear.” These dramatic scenarios serve not just as thought experiments but also as profiles of courage depicting outcasts struggling to reconstruct meaning amidst life’s harshest limiting walls. 
  Additionally, speculative scenarios allow us to reexamine norms from provocative angles, whether we’re rooting for discovered cryogenic humans to integrate with androids in “The Discovery” or unlocking the motivations of a vigilante psychiatrist thief in “Behind the Mask.” By becoming immersed in these atypical fictional landscapes, it’s my hope you’ll return from the journey with refreshed eyes towards the intricacies, contrasts, and profound magic still embedding the world immediately around us each new day. 
  So, without further ado, let your imagination take flight! 
  The worlds awaiting behind these pages overflow with surreal transformations, psychedelic visions, whimsical quests, and characters courageously chasing redemption who might inspire us in turn. 
  Let's reconstruct Reality with a capital “R” by first shattering limiting assumptions—then inviting you, fellow traveller, to help gather the pieces into new mosaics alive with awe and possibility! Let our shared journey begin now...

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  Thumbelina and Other Tales

  Beatrix Potter, Hans Christian...

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  Four tales from popular children storytellers

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  Dorothy and the wizard of oz

  L. Frank Baum

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  When an earthquake swallows Dorothy, her kitten Eureka and cousin Zeb, and Zeb's horse Jim, they're captured by the Mangaboos! The Wizard of Oz must save them by winning a magic contest - using only his wits and nine tiny piglets. Then: watch out for the savage Invisible Bears, who devour anyone they catch! Dorothy and her friends race across the Invisible Valley, trying to reach the spiral staircase inside Pyramid Mountain. But halfway up the mountain lives the strange Braided Man! Plus: Dorothy meets her old friends - the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, Cowardly Lion and more! And Eureka is charged with murder for eating one of the Wizard's piglets! The Wizard of Oz has a secret plan to save Eureka, but can it possibly work? Don't miss this thrilling installment in the critically acclaimed Oz adaptations!

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  How To Make Money

  B. F. Austin

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  The purpose of these lessons is to raise the mental and spiritual vibrations of the student to inspire hope, faith, courage to awaken larger thought within the mind, inspire greater plans and purposes and awaken the dormant energy in the life to fire the enthusiasm and call into active service hidden talent which the student, possibly, does not dream at his present stage of unfoldment, he possesses. In short our purpose is to awaken men from mental slumber, show the unlimited resources in human nature, the unseen yetopen doors to mental wealth first, then as a natural sequence to wealth in material conditions, and thus enlarge and ennoble the life as well as add to its material expressions.The purpose of the true teacher who is ever the true physician as well must always be the "more abundant life" of which the Nazarene spoke and taught. To disclose that life, abounding life, in all its fullness and beauty and point out the laws by which it is gained, with wealth as a natural sequence, is the purpose of the three lessons on which we are entering.

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