Publisher: ReadOn
"Medusa's Coil" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop. It was first published in Weird Tales magazine in January 1939, two years after Lovecraft's death. The story concerns the son of an American plantation owner who brings back from Paris a new wife. It mixes elements of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos with the ancient Greek myth of Medusa, but it has also been noted for its racist aspects.
Charles Dickens was a writer and social critic who created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity.THE CITY OF THE ABSENT: When I think I deserve particularly well of myself, and have earned the right to enjoy a little treat, I stroll from Covent-garden into the City of London, after business-hours there, on a Saturday, or better yet on a Sunday, and roam about its deserted nooks and corners.Show book
"The thought . . . called up the flavors of an elaborate and bold cuisine, bent on making the flavors' highest notes vibrate, juxtaposing them in modulations, in chords, and especially in dissonances that would assert themselves as an incomparable experience." - From Under the Jaguar Sun These intoxicating stories delve down to the core of our senses of taste, hearing, and smell. Amid the flavors of Mexico's fiery chiles and spices, a couple on holiday discovers dark truths about the maturing of desire in the title story, "Under the Jaguar Sun." In "A King Listens," a gripping portrait of a frenzied mind, the menacing echoes in a huge palace spur a tyrant's thoughts to the heights of paranoid intensity. "The Name, the Nose" drives to a startling conclusion as men across time and space pursue the women whose aromas have enchanted them. Mordant and deliciously offbeat, this trio of tales is a treat from a master of short fiction.Show book
How can we look afresh at Shakespeare as a writer of sonnets? What new light might they shed on his career, personality, and sexuality? Shakespeare wrote sonnets for at least thirty years, not only for himself, for professional reasons, and for those he loved, but also in his plays, as prologues, as epilogues, and as part of their poetic texture. This ground-breaking book assembles all of Shakespeare's sonnets in their probable order of composition. An inspiring introduction debunks long-established biographical myths about Shakespeare's sonnets and proposes new insights about how and why he wrote them. This volume will be treasured by students, scholars, and every Shakespeare enthusiast.Show book
In this classic collection of stories drawn from his own experiences, author Jack London looks back on his days as a teenager aboard the fishing boats of San Francisco Bay. In the early 1900s, men of all stripes descended on these waters to plunder its rich oyster beds. To stop the run on the waters, a patrol was established. London began his youthful adventures on the wrong side of the law, as an oyster pirate. But conscience and common sense got the better of him, and he became a member of the Fish Patrol. The decision satisfied even his legendary appetite for excitement. Placing us smack in the middle of San Francisco at the height of its most reckless days, Tales of the Fish Patrol is vintage Jack London, tales of adventure from a world-class raconteur.Show book
The Sorrows of Werther (German: Die Leiden des jungen Werthers) is a loosely autobiographical epistolary novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, first published in 1774. A revised edition followed in 1787. It was one of the most important novels in the Sturm und Drang period in German literature, and influenced the later Romantic movement. Goethe, aged 24 at the time, finished Werther in five-and-a-half weeks of intensive writing in January-March 1774. The book's publication instantly placed the author among the foremost international literary celebrities, and was among the best known of his works.Most of The Sorrows of Young Werther is presented as a collection of letters written by Werther, a young artist of a sensitive and passionate temperament, to his friend Wilhelm. These give an intimate account of his stay in the fictional village of Wahlheim (based on Garbenheim, near Wetzlar), whose peasants have enchanted him with their simple ways. There he meets Charlotte, a beautiful young girl who takes care of her siblings after the death of their mother. Werther falls in love with Charlotte despite knowing beforehand that she is engaged to a man named Albert, eleven years her senior.Show book
One of Kafka's best-known works, The Metamorphosis was first published in 1915. It is often cited as one of the seminal works of fiction of the 20th century and is still widely studied in high schools, colleges, and universities across the world. This striking novella tells the story of salesman Gregor Samsa who wakes one morning to find himself mysteriously transformed into a huge insect. Gregor subsequently struggles, unsuccessfully, to adjust to his new condition. The cause of Gregor's sudden and inexplicable transformation is never revealed, and Kafka himself never gave an explanation. The bulk of the story deals with Gregor's attempts to adjust to his new condition as he deals with being burdensome to his family, which is repulsed by the strange, giant, and verminous creature Gregor has become. Literary critics and readers alike have generally interpreted The Metamorphosis to be a parable about the individual’s sense of finding himself victimized by large impersonal forces in society which are beyond one's grasp or ability to deal with. Horror, humor, and the surrealism of dreams are all present from the first sentence and stand to this day in this illuminating evocation of the condition of the modern, alienated anti-hero. Written by Franza Kafka; English translation read by Jason RosetteShow book
