Publisher: Project Gutenberg
The Gambler is a short novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky about a young tutor in the employment of a formerly wealthy Russian general. The novella reflects Dostoevsky's own addiction to roulette.
When Cedric Charlton - an unsuspecting tax inspector - arrives at the door of the Pop Larkin farm, he soon forgets the purpose of his visit... The fun-loving Ma and Pop Larkin distract him at every turn with strawberries, cream, alcohol, and their attractive young daughter, Mariette. Well known by the popular TV series starring David Jason and Catherine Zeta-Jones, The Darling Buds of May is the quintessential feel-good, country romp. It will have you falling wholeheartedly in love with the Larkin family and their carefree way of life. So grab a bowl of ice cream, pull out a deck chair and share in the 'perficktion' of country life. ©1958 H. E. Bates (P)2015 Naxos AudioBooksShow book
Peter Christen Asbjørnsen (1812 - 1885) was a Norwegian writer, scholar and collector of traditional folk tales.The Lads who met the Trolls in the Hedale Wood is one such folk story. Two teenage lads are stranded in the Hedale Wood overnight. Before long they hear heavy footsteps and sniffing. Three enormous trolls are on the scent of human flesh...how can they manage to escape?Show book
The long-awaited second volume of Vladimir Odoyevsky's excellent prose is here at last, delivering more titillating gossip, astute society remarks, a touch of mysticism, a healthy dose of the ridiculous, and much more.Show book
First published in 1853 amidst rumors that Thomas Jefferson fathered children with one of his slaves, Clotel is a fictional chronicle of one such child. After Jefferson's death, his mistress and her two daughters are auctioned. One daughter, Clotel, is purchased by a white man from Virginia who impregnates her. Despite the promise of marriage, Clotel is instead sold to another man and separated from her daughter. After escaping from the slave dealer, Clotel returnss to Virginia to reunite with her daughter - now a slave in her father's house.Show book
A sparkling romantic comedy that vividly evokes the lost glamour of aristocratic life in England between the wars.Polly Hampton has long been groomed for the perfect marriage by her mother, the fearsome and ambitious Lady Montdore. But Polly, with her stunning good looks and impeccable connections, is bored by the monotony of her glittering debut season in London. Having just come from India, where her father served as Viceroy, she claims to have hoped that society in a colder climate would be less obsessed with love affairs.The apparently aloof and indifferent Polly has a long-held secret, however, one that leads to the shattering of her mother’s dreams and her own disinheritance. When an elderly duke begins pursuing the disgraced Polly and a callow potential heir curries favor with her parents, nothing goes as expected, but in the end all find happiness in their own unconventional ways.Show book
Edgar Allan Poe will always be associated with the macabre and mysterious. In this selection of 11 of his short stories Poe's unique voice can be heard in all its Gothic splendour. "The Fall of the House of Usher" a death obsessed man, in his desperate attempt to save his sister from premature burial, seals his own fate. "The Masque of the Red Death" A nobleman uses his wealth to protect himself from the Red Death only to find it stalks his palace of pleasure and privilege as a guest. " The Premature Burial" Fearful that his cataleptic illness may lead to premature interment, the narrator becomes obsessed with avoiding such an horrific end. "The Tell-Tale Heart" A murderer's frenzied guilt over his deadly deed manifests itself in a bizarre incriminating manner. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" A macabre and violent double murder in Paris attracts the attention of Dupin, an amateur detective whose powers of deduction foreshadow the techniques of Sherlock Holmes nearly 50 years later. "The Oblong Box" While on a sea voyage the narrator mistakes his old friend's mysterious reticence regarding his cargo of an "Oblong Box" for rudeness, with tragic consequences. "The Oval Portrait" While convalescing in an old castle, a man becomes intrigued by a portrait of a young woman and soon learns of its sad history. "The Black Cat" A Man spirals down into an existence of increasing drunkenness and violence. Those he once loved are dragged down with him, but one is bent on revenge. "The Raven" A short poem in which a Raven enters a lovelorn man's room only to be the unexpected prophet of the poet's bleak and lonely future. "The Sphinx" The oppressive atmosphere of a Cholera epidemic causes the writer to overestimate the evidence of his own eyes. "The Pit and the Pendulum" A claustrophobic masterpiece, describing the experience of a man undergoing the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition.Show book
