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  The Mystery of Edwin Drood

  Charles Dickens

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  The Mystery of Edwin Drood is the final novel by Charles Dickens, originally published in 1870.Though the novel is named after the character Edwin Drood, it focuses more on Drood's uncle, John Jasper, a precentor, choirmaster and opium addict, who is lusting after his pupil, Rosa Bud. Miss Bud, Edwin Drood's fiancée, has also caught the eye of the high-spirited and hot-tempered Neville Landless. Landless and Edwin Drood take an instant dislike to each other. Later Drood disappears under mysterious circumstances. The story is set in Cloisterham, a lightly disguised Rochester.Upon the death of Dickens on 9 June 1870, the novel was left unfinished, only six of a planned twelve instalments having been written. He left no detailed plan for the remaining instalments or solution to the novel's mystery, and many later adaptations and continuations by other writers have attempted to complete the story.

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  The Difference

  Ellen Glasgow

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  Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow was born on 22nd April 1873 in Richmond, Virginia. 
   
  She published her first novel ‘The Descendant’ anonymously in 1897 at age 24.  
   
  As a ‘Southern’ writer much of her work integrates themes of class and gender struggles, many of them based on her own experiences and relationships.  She wrote realistically of the changing contemporary South; very different from the then idealistic escapist fare after Reconstruction. 
   
  As the women's suffrage movement developed at the turn of the century Glasgow was very active, but later felt it had come at the wrong time for her, accordingly her enthusiasm waned although her later books did have heroines who displayed their ambitions in the social and political struggle. 
   
  In 1923 came her short story collection ‘The Shadowy Third & Other Stories’ which included ‘The Difference’, a classic tale of a marriage hitting a problem and the moral and realistic reaction to that. 
   
  Further works followed and, in 1941, she published ‘In This Our Life’.  This bold and progressive book on African-Americans, followed the central characters and portrayed the blatant injustices they faced in society.  It won the Pulitzer Prize the following year. 
   
  Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow died in her sleep at home on 21st November 1945. She was 72.

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  At Christmas Time and Other Stories

  Anton Chekhov

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  This collection of short stories by Anton Chekhov are all set at Christmastime. Rather than depicting a sentimental image of Christmas, Chekhov paints a picture of the harsh reality faced by many of the poorer members of society during a bitter Russian winter, while still injecting elements of pathos and humour. This collection includes "At Christmas Time (Parts 1 & 2)", "Vanka" and "The Shoemaker and the Devil".

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  Eugenie Grandet

  Honoré de Balzac

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  Eugénie Grandet is Balzac's first great novel and one of the series Comédie Humaine. At the beginning of the story the heroine lives an unfulfilled life in rural France, her nature crushed by a domineering and miserly father.Gallant cousin Charles arrives and acts as a catalyst on Eugénie’s   personality and emotions. Will her love survive the strong self opinion of the young man and the selfishness of her father or is Eugénie’s   reward destined to be in heaven?

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  The Scarlet Letter

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

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  Nathaniel Hawthorne’s masterpiece: A searing portrait of sin and redemption in Puritan New England When Hester Prynne, a young Puritan woman in seventeenth-century Boston, becomes pregnant out of wedlock, the unforgiving society in which she lives judges her harshly. Sentenced to wear a scarlet A emblazoned on her dress, Hester raises her daughter, Pearl, on the outskirts of town—an exile meant to cause her shame for the remainder of her life. In refusing to name Pearl’s father, Hester seeks to protect the minister Arthur Dimmesdale from sharing her fate. As the years pass, Dimmesdale grows weaker, eroded by his guilt, while Hester finds renewal in a defiant reclamation of her strength and identity. Their diverging paths lead to a searing final scene that stands among the most powerful in American literature. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

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  First and Last Things (Unabridged)

  H. G. Wells

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  First and Last Things is a 1908 work of philosophy by H. G. Wells setting forth his beliefs in four "books" entitled "Metaphysics," "Of Belief," "Of General Conduct," and "Some Personal Things." Parts of the book were published in the Independent Magazine in July and August 1908. Wells revised the book extensively in 1917, in response to his religious conversion, but later published a further revision in 1929 that restored much of the book to its earlier form. Its main intellectual influences are Darwinism and certain German thinkers Wells had read, such as August Weismann. The pragmatism of William James, who had become a friend of Wells, was also an influence.

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