Other books that might interest you

• 

  Medea - (National Theatre of...

  Euripides

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  'She's chucked out like an old coat that nae langer fits him…'
  Medea and Jason, clinging together as refugees in Corinth, have struggled to bring up their beloved offspring in this alien and unsympathetic society. Now Jason has a plan to better integrate himself. Unfortunately, this involves abandoning his wife, the mother of his children…
  Spurned, destitute, desperate, Medea exacts her terrible retribution.
  Liz Lochhead's Scots-inflected version of Euripides' classic revenge tragedy was first performed by Theatre Babel in 2000 and won the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award. It was revived by the National Theatre of Scotland as part of the 2022 Edinburgh International Festival, with Adura Onashile as Medea, directed by Michael Boyd.

  Show book

• 

  A Thousand Deaths - From their...

  Jack London

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  John Griffith Chaney was born on January 12th, 1876 in San Francisco.   
  His father, William Chaney, was living with Flora Wellman when she became pregnant.  Chaney insisted she have an abortion.  Flora's response was to turn a gun on herself.  Although her wounds were not severe the trauma made her temporarily deranged. 
  In late 1876 his mother married John London and the young child was brought to live with them as they moved around the Bay area, eventually settling in Oakland where now, calling himself Jack, he completed grade school. 
  Jack worked hard at several jobs, sometimes 12-18 hours a day, but his dream was university.  He studied hard and borrowed the money to enrol in the summer of 1896 at the University of California in Berkeley. 
  In 1897, at 21, Jack searched out newspaper accounts of his mother's suicide attempt and for the name of his biological father. He wrote to Chaney, then living in Chicago, who claimed he could not be Jack’s father because he was impotent and casually asserted that London's mother had relations with other men.  Jack, devastated by the response, quit Berkeley and went to the Klondike. Other accounts suggest that his dire finances presented Jack with the excuse he needed to leave. 
  In the Klondike Jack began to gather material for his writing but also accumulated many health problems, including scurvy, which together with hip and leg problems he would carry for the rest of his life. 
  During the late 1890's Jack was regularly publishing short stories and by the turn of the century full blown novels. 
  By 1904 Jack had married, fathered two children and was now in the process of divorcing.  A stint as a reporter on the Russo-Japanese war of 1904 was equal amounts trouble and experience. But that experience was always put to good use in a continuing and remarkable output of work. 
  In 1905 he married Charmian Kittredge who at last was a soul and companion who brought him some semblance of peace despite his advancing alcoholism and his incurable wanderlust. 
  Twelve years later Jack had amassed both wealth and a literary reputation through such classics as ‘The Call of the Wild’, ‘White Fang’ and many others. He had a reputation as a social activist and was a tireless friend of the workers.   
  Jack London died suffering from dysentery, late-stage alcoholism and uremia, aged only 40, on November 22nd 1916 at his property in Glen Elen in California.

  Show book

• 

  The Velveteen Rabbit

  Margery Williams

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The Velveteen Rabbit (or How Toys Become Real) is a British children's book written by Margery Williams (also known as Margery Williams Bianco) and illustrated by William Nicholson. It chronicles the story of a stuffed rabbit's desire to become real through the love of his owner. The story was first published in Harper's Bazaar in 1921 featuring illustrations from Williams' daughter Pamela Bianco. It was published as a book in 1922 and has been republished many times since.
  The Velveteen Rabbit was Williams' first children's book. It has been awarded the IRA/CBC Children's Choice award. Based on a 2007 online poll, the National Education Association voted the book #28 on the "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children".

  Show book

• 

  Anne's House of Dreams (Unabridged)

  L. M. Montgomery

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Anne's own true love, Gilbert Blythe, is finally a doctor, and in the sunshine of the old orchard, among their dearest friends, they are about to speak their vows. Soon the happy couple will be bound for a new life together and their own dream house, on the misty purple shores of Four Winds Harbor. A new life means fresh problems to solve, fresh surprises. Anne and Gilbert will make new friends and meet their neighbors: Captain Jim, the lighthouse attendant, with his sad stories of the sea; Miss Cornelia Bryant, the lady who speaks from the heart-and speaks her mind; and the tragically beautiful Leslie Moore, into whose dark life Anne shines a brilliant light.

  Show book

• 

  Lazy Tour of Two Idle...

  Charles Dickens

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  In autumn 1857, Charles Dickens embarked on a sightseeing trip to Cumberland with his friend, the rising star of literature Wilkie Collins. Writing together, they reported their adventures for Dickens' periodical Household Words, producing a showcase of both long-cherished and entirely novel sides of these well-loved men of letters. Boasting two ghost stories from undisputed masters of the genre, it also uniquely demonstrates their glee in caricaturing themselves and one another-Collins assumes the identity of Thomas Idle (a born-and-bred idler) and Dickens that of Francis Goodchild (laboriously idle). Through their fictional counterparts, the men relentlessly satirize Dickens' maniacal energy and Collins' idleness. The result is an exuberant diary of a journey and a rare insight into one of literature's most famed and intriguing friendships.

  Show book

• 

  The Portrait of a Lady

  Henry James

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Isabel Archer is a young American orphan who receives an inheritance from an uncle. Taken under her aunt's wings, she meets Madame Merle, her aunt's worldly friend, who instills in Isabel a sense of European sophistication, a trait that comes to overpower her own common sense. Isabel marries widower Gilbert Osmond, who projects refined tastes and intellectual detachment. Isabel is utterly captivated by Osmond's languid charm, and he is thrilled to have his superior prize. But in the end, the young woman discovers that her husband and Madame Merle are both exemplars of an appalling, complex depravity that has become the central issue in her life.

  Show book