Publisher: Reading Essentials
The cross-channel steamer Chichester stops half way to France. A motionless yacht lies in her path. When a party clambers aboard they find a trail of blood and two dead men. Chief Constable Turnbill has to call on Inspector French for help in solving the mystery of the Nymph.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born in Campden Hill, Kensington on May 29th 1874. Originally after attending St Pauls School he went to Slade to learn the art of illustration. In 1896 he joined a small London publisher and began his journalistic career as a freelance art and literary critic and going on to writing weekly columns in the Daily News and the Illustrated London News. In 1901 he married Frances Blogg, to whom he remained married for the rest of his life. For many he is known as a very fine novelist and the creator of the Father Brown Detective stories which were much influenced by his own beliefs. A large man – 6’ 4” and 21st in weight he was apt to be forgetful in that delightful way that the British sometimes are – a telegram home to his wife saying he was in one place but where should he actually be…….? He was prolific in many other areas; he wrote plays, short stories, essays, loved to debate and wrote hundreds of poems. G K Chesterton died of congestive heart failure on 14th June, 1936 and is buried in Beaconsfield just outside of London.Show book
According to an LA Times, May 14, 2014 article, the following entry came from a notebook of a gold seeking prospector, Samuel Clemens, in 1864. "Coleman with his jumping frog---bet stranger $50...... ---stranger had no frog & C got him one---in the meantime stranger filled C's frog full of shot and he couldn't jump---the stranger's frog won." Little did Clemens know that this would be the source for his short story that would launch his career as one of America's greatest authors. The story was first published in the New York weekly, The Saturday Press, which gained Twain national attention.Show book
Victor-Marie Hugo (26 February 1802 - 22 May 1885) was a French poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote abundantly in an exceptional variety of genres: lyrics, satires, epics, philosophical poems, epigrams, novels, history, critical essays, political speeches, funeral orations, diaries, and letters public and private, as well as dramas in verse and prose.BOOK 2: THE FALL: Early in the month of October, 1815, about an hour before sunset, a man who was travelling on foot entered the little town of D The few inhabitants who were at their windows or on their thresholds at the moment stared at this traveller with a sort of uneasiness.Show book
Originally published in 1885, What I Believe is part of series of books by novelist Leo Tolstoy that outline his personal interpretation of Christian theology. After a midlife crisis at age 50, he began to believe in the moral teachings of Christianity, while rejecting mysticism and organized religion. He believed that pacifism and poverty were the paths to enlightenment. His precepts of nonviolence even influenced Mohandas Gandhi. Students of religion, political science, and literature alike will gain new understanding from the ideas presented in this book. Students of literature will get to understand more deeply one of the greatest novelist in history, while those interested in religion and politics can see how Tolstoy's philosophy came to influence the world at large.Show book
Jane Eyre is the tale of a young governess who becomes entangled with the powerful Mr Rochester, finding mystery and uneasiness in his house. ‘Young Adult Classics’ is a new series from Naxos AudioBooks which aims to bring key works of literature to a young audience in abridged form. Lively, accessible readings with music is the key.Show book
The Call of the Wild is a novel by Jack London published in 1903. The story is set in the Yukon during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush—a period in which strong sled dogs were in high demand. The novel's central character is a dog named Buck, a domesticated dog living at a ranch in the Santa Clara Valley of California as the story opens. Stolen from his home and sold into service as sled dog in Alaska, he reverts to a wild state. Buck is forced to fight in order to dominate other dogs in a harsh climate. Eventually he sheds the veneer of civilization, relying on primordial instincts and learned experience to emerge as a leader in the wild. The terrible, never relenting work of pulling sleds in sub-freezing temperatures combined with little food and rest quickly killed any dog not extremely tough. It almost kills Buck but his fierce determination to survive finally brings him through.London lived for most of a year in the Yukon collecting material for the book.Show book
