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  The Beautiful and Damned

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

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  The Beautiful and Damned is a 1922 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in New York City, the novel's plot follows a young artist Anthony Patch and his flapper wife Gloria Gilbert who become "wrecked on the shoals of dissipation" while excessively partying at the dawn of the hedonistic Jazz Age. As Fitzgerald's second novel, the work focuses upon the swinish behavior and glittering excesses of the American social elite in the heyday of New York's café society.
  Fitzgerald modeled the characters of Anthony Patch on himself and Gloria Gilbert on his newlywed spouse Zelda Fitzgerald. The novel draws circumstantially upon the early years of Fitzgeralds' tempestuous marriage following the unexpected success of the author's first novel This Side of Paradise. At the time of their wedding in 1920, Fitzgerald claimed neither he nor Zelda loved each other, and the early years of their marriage in New York City were more akin to a friendship.
  Having reflected upon the criticisms of his debut novel This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald sought to improve upon the form and construction of his prose in The Beautiful and Damned and to venture into a new genre of fiction altogether. Consequently, he revised his second novel based on editorial suggestions from his friend Edmund Wilson and his editor Max Perkins. When reviewing the manuscript, Perkins commended the conspicuous evolution of Fitzgerald's literary craftsmanship.
  Metropolitan Magazine serialized the manuscript in late 1921, and Charles Scribner's Sons published the book in March 1922. Scribner's prepared an initial print run of 20,000 copies. It sold well enough to warrant additional print runs reaching 50,000 copies. Despite the considerable sales, many critics typically consider the work to be among Fitzgerald's weaker novels. During the final decade of his life, Fitzgerald remarked upon the novel's lack of quality in a letter to his wife: "I wish The Beautiful and Damned had been a maturely written book because it was all true. We ruined ourselves - I have never honestly thought that we ruined each other."

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  Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz...

  L. Frank Baum

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  A California earthquake sends Dorothy Gale and her new friends--Zeb the farm boy, Jim the cab-horse, and Eureka the mischievous kitten--tumbling through a crack in the ground. Deep beneath the earth, Dorothy is reunited with her old friend the Wizard of Oz and his troupe of nine tiny piglets.Together, Dorothy, the Wizard, and their friends travel through many fantastic lands, where they encounter the Mangaboos, people growing like vegetables in the ground; cross the Valley of Voe, where dama-fruit has turned everyone invisible; and are captured by mysterious flying Gargoyles. At last, the intrepid travelers reach Oz, where they have many unforgettable encounters with such favorites as the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry TiGerman, Princess Ozma and the wooden Sawhorse.

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  Les Misérables: Volume 2:...

  Victor Hugo

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  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 6: LE PETIT-PICPUS: Nothing, half a century ago, more resembled every other carriage gate than the carriage gate of Number 62 Rue Petit-Picpus. This entrance, which usually stood ajar in the most inviting fashion, permitted a view of two things, neither of which have anything very funereal about them, a courtyard surrounded by walls hung with vines, and the face of a lounging porter.

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  Persuasion

  Jane Austen

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  Jane Austens last ever published work, Persuasion is a tale reconnection, romance and the virtues of maturity. When mature and sensible Anne Elliot's spendthrift father: The Baronet Walter Elliot of Kellynch Hall is forced to rent the property and relocate to Bath due to his arrears, Anne is surprised that the tenant is married to the sister of Captain Frederick Wentworth, a man whom she had been persuaded to break off her engagement with eight years ago. Inevitably this brings the man she had thought forever lost to her back into her personal circle, can she reclaim a love she thinks lost? Will she even try? 
   Narrated by Michael Ward.

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  Cain - From their pens to your...

  Alexander Kuprin

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  Alexander Kuprin was born in Narovchat, Penza in Russia on 7th September 1870. 
  At 3 his Father died and he and mother moved to Moscow. By 10 he was enrolled at the Second Moscow Military High School and there his interest in literature began. The Alexander Military Academy followed and two years later he was a sub-lieutenant and posted to an Infantry Regiment for a further four years. 
  Despite his duties he was a now a keen writer and published his first short story at this time. His military duties also garnered him experiences for his breakthrough work ‘The Duel’.  Leaving the military he left for Kiev to work for local newspapers.  He continued to publish both stories and novels and by 1901 he was in St Petersburg becoming part of a group that included Chekhov, Ivan Bunin, Maxim Gorky and Leonid Andreyev.  
  In the years that followed further controversial works and acclaim followed.  His comments on the regime meant he was also put under secret police surveillance.   
  As World War I erupted, Kuprin opened a military hospital but was then given command of an infantry company in Finland. He was soon discharged on grounds of ill health.  
  The October Revolution saw him praise Lenin, but he warned that the Bolsheviks threatened Russian culture and might cause further widespread suffering to the peasants.  As Civil War raged he took his family to Helsinki and then on to Paris. 
  Exile saw his talents decline further and his succumbing to alcoholism. He became lonely and withdrawn. The family's poverty increased his malaise.   
  In May 1937, the Kuprin’s returned to Moscow.  He now saw his work published but wrote almost nothing new.  In 1938 his health rapidly deteriorated.  Already suffering from a kidney problems and sclerosis, he had now developed cancer of the oesophagus.  
  Alexander Kuprin died on 25th August 1938.

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  Babbitt

  Sinclair Lewis

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  Babbitt is a satirical novel about American culture and society that critiques the vacuity of middle class life and the social pressure toward conformity. The controversy provoked by Babbitt was influential in the decision to award the Nobel Prize in Literature to Lewis in 1930.

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