Publisher: Charles River Editors
H.C. McNeile was a British soldier and writer best known for writing the Bulldog Drummond stories. This edition of The Man in Ratcatcher and Other Stories includes a table of contents.
William Collins Books and Decca Records are proud to present ARGO Classics, a historic catalogue of classic fiction read by some of the world’s most renowned voices. Originally released as vinyl records, these expertly abridged and remastered stories are now available to download for the first time. During a long hot summer, a young boy’s taste for excitement lands him in and out of trouble. Bing Crosby narrates the coming-of-age tale that made Mark Twain one of America’s best loved novelist with all of Tom’s mischief and fun. Tom catches criminals, gets the girl and carries out hijinks, all with his best friend Huckleberry Finn at his side. Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a literary bestseller that perfectly blends action and satire. This short, Sunday Times bestselling book is a top choice for readers seeking an exciting and thought-provoking read. For fans of Jules Verne (Around the World in Eighty Days), Herman Melville (Bartleby, the Scrivener), Jack London (The Call of the Wild), William Golding (The Spire), and Jonathan Swift (Gulliver’s Travels).Show book
In this delightful comedy, Fanny—the quietly observant narrator of Nancy Mitford's two most famous novels—finally takes center stage.Fanny Wincham—last seen as a young woman in The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate—has lived contentedly for years as housewife to an absent-minded Oxford don, Alfred. But her life changes overnight when her beloved Alfred is appointed English Ambassador to Paris.Soon she finds herself mixing with royalty and Rothschilds while battling her hysterical predecessor, Lady Leone, who refuses to leave the premises. When Fanny’s tender-hearted secretary begins filling the embassy with rescued animals and her teenage sons run away from Eton and show up with a rock star in tow, things get entirely out of hand. Gleefully sending up the antics of mid-century high society, Don’t Tell Alfred is classic Mitford.Show book
Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835-1915) was a British Victorian era novelist famous for her sensationalist writing. "Good Lady Ducayne" is a sensational tale of a young woman, Bella Rolleston, who secures a job as a paid companion to a very elderly and wealthy aristocratic lady who offers her a handsome salary, a winter travelling on the Italian Riviera and the Italian Lakes and very little to do. It all seems too good to be true. And when Bella learns that the old lady's previous two companions died under mysterious circumstances and she herself is becoming paler and sicker...it does seem as though something sinister is afoot.Show book
"With the Main Guard" is an short story by Rudyard Kipling: First published in The Week's News of Allahabad on August 4th 1888, issued in Soldiers Three (Indian Railway Library No. 1) the same year, and collected in Soldiers Three and other Stories in 1899.It is a stifling June night in Fort Amara at Lahore, and the men are doing all they can to fight off heat exhaustion or worse. Mulvaney gets them through the terrible hours until dawn by telling a tale of a bloody fight by the Black Tyrone and the 'Ould Regiment' against an army of Pathans on the Frontier. But he asks the narrator at the end "...can thim that helps others help thimselves ?" , a question that Kipling, the great teller of tales, must have sometimes asked himself.Show book
'The Border Line' is unusual in that Lawrence dabbles in the supernatural (as he was to do again in 'The Rocking-Horse Winner' two years later) and that this is less a story in the traditional sense and more an exploration of the mind of a particular woman, based on his own wife, Frieda. Katherine, in the story, realises that her real love was her first husband whom she should, according to Lawrence, have submitted to to gain real happiness. As Lawrence says in the story, thinking of his German wife perhaps, 'Beyond all race is the problem of man and woman'.Show book
The Scarlet Letter — published first in 1850, was in its time considered as an innovative and at the same time scandalous novel, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. This novel was strongly disapproved by the fellow countrymen of the author and banned by the Russian tsars.Now The Scarlet Letter is included in the school curriculum. The Scarlet Letter tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through an affair and struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. For the Puritan Boston in the 17th century New England, this is a terrible violation of morality. Hester is therefore paraded through the town, holding her baby and wearing the red letter “A” that marks an adulteress. But she continues to fight for what and whom she loves.The Scarlet Letter is the first novel of Nathaniel Hawthorne and the first work, in which the Old World has opened towards a new American literature. The novel was made into a film seven times in the United States, as well as in Spain, France and South Korea.Show book
