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  Ivan Turgenev - A Short Story...

  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 proper 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 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 Russian intellectuals Turgenev left 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 became more 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. 
   
  1 - Ivan Turgenev - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 
  2 - A Strange Story by Ivan Turgenev 
  3 - Mumu by Ivan Turgenev 
  4 - The District Doctor by Ivan Turgenev 
  5 - The Jew by Ivan Turgenev 
  6 - The Rendezvous by Ivan Turgenev 
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  1 - Leonid Andreyev - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 
  2 - Silence by Leonid Nikolaevich Andreyev 
  3 - Lazarus by Leonid Andreyev 
  4 - The City by Leonid Andreyev 
  5 - The Friend by Leonoid Andreyev 
  6 - The Lie by Leonid Andreyev 
  7 - The Marseillaise by Leonid Andreyev

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  The India Novels Volume One -...

  Rumer Godden

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  Three unforgettable novels from a New York Times–bestselling author—including Black Narcissus, which “bears comparison with A Passage to India” (Arthur Koestler).   With Black Narcissus, her novel of five nuns in a remote Himalayan convent struggling against nature—both physical and human—Rumer Godden established her impeccable literary reputation. TheNew York Times wrote of her work: “Her craftsmanship is always sure; her understanding of character is compassionate and profound; her prose is pure, delicate, and gently witty.” Having spent her formative years in colonial India, she would continue to return to that setting for inspiration in several subsequent novels, each of them “beautifully and simply wrought by a woman of depth and sensitivity” (Los Angeles Times).  Black Narcissus: Led by Sister Clodagh, the youngest Mother Superior in the history of their order, the European Sisters of the Servants of Mary take up residence in an abandoned palace in the foothills of the Himalayas, where an Indian general once housed his harem. The sisters hope to establish a school and clinic to combat superstition, ignorance, and disease. But the isolation and mountain altitude, the ghosts and lurid history, and one young nun’s unhealthy obsession with their royal benefactor’s agent, Mr. Dean, threaten to undermine the best intentions of the purest hearts. Black Narcissus was made into an Academy Award–winning film starring Deborah Kerr and directed by Michael Powell.   “A very remarkable novel.” —The Observer  Breakfast with the Nikolides: As the Nazi juggernaut rolls through occupied France, Louise Poole is forced to flee Paris with her two daughters and return to East Bengal and the husband she left. Despite Louise’s hatred of rural India, eleven-year-old Emily is intrigued by her exotic new home, left free to explore—and enjoy the hospitality of her glamorous neighbors, the Nikolides. But as the cracks in her parents’ marriage become more obvious, an act of thoughtless cruelty ultimately shatters the tenuous bonds of family, violently disrupting the lives of the Pooles and the community.   “A fascinating book . . . It is absorbing and as original . . . as Black Narcissus.” —Kirkus Reviews  The River: The Second World War seems very far away for eleven-year-old Harriet, the daughter of a British businessman, and her home in Bengal, India, along the Ganges River—until the arrival of a handsome wounded soldier. Harriet is entranced by their new neighbor, Captain John, but unprepared for the rush of unfamiliar emotions he stirs up in her: longing, jealousy, and infatuation. Inspired by the author’s personal experiences growing up in India, The River is an evocative and bittersweet coming of age story. The River was made into a film directed by Jean Renoir.   “So intense, so quietly demanding of attention, that at the time there will be nothing in your thoughts but a small girl in India, and the people and places that were her world.” —Saturday Review

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  The Man-Eater

  Edgar Rice Burroughs

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  Africa: The land of savagery and splendor. Where a marriage between an adventurer and a missionary's daughter is cut short by invading locals. A wife, forced to flee with her newborn daughter to the only family left. Young Virginia grows up until her grandfather's untimely death. An outcast nephew appears to contest the estate of the dead relative which forces an adventure into the heart of Central Africa in the hopes to find evidence of the marriage in the ruins of the mission. The nephew chasing after, to murder all who attempt to defy his inheritanc

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  Facts Concerning the Late Arthur...

  H.P. Lovecraft

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  "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" is a short story in the horror fiction genre, written by American author H. P. Lovecraft in 1920. The themes of the story are tainted ancestry, knowledge that it would be best to remain unaware of, and a reality which human understanding finds intolerable.The story begins by describing the ancestors of Sir Arthur Jermyn, a British nobleman. His great-great-great-grandfather, Sir Wade Jermyn, had been an early explorer of the Congo region, whose books on a mysterious white civilization there had been ridiculed. He had been confined to an asylum in 1765. Lovecraft describes how the Jermyn family has a peculiar physical appearance that began to appear in the children of Wade Jermyn and his mysterious and reclusive wife, who Wade claimed was Portuguese.

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  Treasure Island (Unabridged)

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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  "For sheer storytelling delight and pure adventure, Treasure Island has never been surpassed. From the moment young Jim Hawkins first encounters the sinister Blind Pew at the Admiral Benbow Inn until the climactic battle for treasure on a tropic isle, the novel creates scenes and characters that have fired the imaginations of generations of readers. Written by a superb prose stylist, a master of both action and atmosphere, the story centers upon the conflict between good and evil - but in this case a particularly engaging form of evil. It is the villainy of that most ambiguous rogue Long John Silver that sets the tempo of this tale of treachery, greed, and daring. Designed to forever kindle a dream of high romance and distant horizons, Treasure Island is, in the words of G. K. Chesterton, 'the realization of an ideal, that which is promised in its provocative and beckoning map; a vision not only of white skeletons but also green palm trees and sapphire seas.' G. S. Fraser terms it 'an utterly original book' and goes on to write: 'There will always be a place for stories like Treasure Island that can keep boys and old men happy.'

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  From Beyond

  H.P. Lovecraft

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  The story is told from the first person perspective of an unnamed narrator and details his experiences with a scientist named Crawford Tillinghast.  
    
   Tillinghast creates an electronic device that emits a resonance wave, which stimulates an affected person’s pineal gland, thereby allowing them to perceive planes of existence outside the scope of accepted reality.

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