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  Lost Treasure

  Caradoc Evans

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  David Caradoc Evans (1878-1945) was a Welsh story writer, novelist, and playwright. Evans was brought up in a Welsh-speaking community in Cardiganshire, and although he learned English at school and always wrote in English, his work is soaked in Welsh syntax and vocabulary. Evans left school at 14 and worked throughout Wales in a series of menial jobs before moving to London, where he worked as a draper's apprentice.It was this background which influenced Lost Treasure, which tells the story of Hugh, a miserly Welsh draper in London who scrimps and saves until he has ten sovereigns. This he changes for a ten-pound note, which he gives to his wife, Millie, for safekeeping. Millie hides it somewhere quite safe...so safe indeed that she forgets where she has put it. The news of the loss of the ten-pound note sends Hugh, his career, his social life, and Millie's destiny into a tailspin and changes their destiny forever.

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  Swiss Family Robinson

  Johan David Wyss

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  First published in 1812, The Swiss Family Robinson may sometimes seem old-fashioned to modern readers, especially the family’s attitude toward wildlife (if it moves, shoot it). However, it’s a truly exciting adventure and a timeless story of warm and loving family life. As the narrator says: “It was written... for the instruction and amusement of my children. Children are, on the whole, very much alike everywhere, and you four lads fairly represent multitudes... It will make me happy to think that my simple narrative may lead some of these to observe how blessed are the results of patient continuance in well-doing, what benefits arise from the thoughtful application of knowledge and science, and how good and pleasant a thing it is when brethren dwell together in unity, under the eye of parental love.” Written by Swiss pastor Johann David Wyss and edited by his son Johann Rudolf Wyss (this edition lists J.R. as the author), the novel was intended to teach his four sons about family values, good husbandry, the uses of the natural world, and self-reliance. It’s fun to think of the long-ago author reading his own books of natural history and creating this novel to share his interests with his boys. 
   
  Wyss was a Swiss author, best remembered for The Swiss Family Robinson. He was born and died in Bern. It is said that he was inspired by Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, but wanted to write a story from which his own children would learn, as the father in the story taught important lessons to his children. The Swiss Family Robinson was first published in German in 1812, then translated into English two years later. It has since become one of the most popular books of all time.

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  The Short Stories of Oscar Wilde

  Oscar Wilde

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  Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on the 16th October 1854 in Dublin, Ireland.  The son of Dublin intellectuals Oscar proved himself an outstanding classicist at Trinity College and then at Oxford.  
   
  Wilde then moved to London and its fashionable cultural and social circles.  With his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the most well-known personalities of his day. 
   
  His only novel, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ was published in 1890 and he then moved on to writing for the stage with ‘Salome’ in 1891.  His society comedies were enormous hits and turned him into one of the most successful writers of late Victorian London. 
   
  Whilst his masterpiece, ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’, was on stage in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, prosecuted for libel.  The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency. He was convicted and imprisoned for two years hard labour. It was to break him. 
   
  On release he left for France. There he wrote his last work, ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ in 1898.  He died destitute in Paris at the age of forty-six sipping champagne a friend had brought with the line ‘Alas I am dying beyond my means’.

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  The Scarlet Pimpernel

  Baroness Orczy

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  Paris, 1792 and the French Revolution. The guillotine claims lives each day. But working in ever-changing disguise is the Scarlet Pimpernel and his band of meddlesome Englishmen.

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  House of Di Sorno The: A...

  H. G. Wells

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  "The House of Di Sorno: A Manuscript Found in a Box" by H. G. Wells is a short essay. H. G. Wells once different, humorous social satire and ironic.And the box, Euphemia's. Brutally raided it was by an insensate husband, eager for a tie and too unreasonably impatient to wait an hour or so until she could get home and find it for him.

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  The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

  Washington Irving

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  Sleepy Hollow is a strange little place...some say bewitched. Some talk of its haunted valleys and streams, the ghostly woman in white, eerie midnight shrieks and howls, but most of all they talk of the Headless Horseman. A huge, shadowy soldier who rides headless through the night, terrifying unlucky travellers.Schoolteacher Ichabod Crane is fascinated by these stories....Until late one night, walking home through Wiley's swamp, he finds that maybe they're not just stories.

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