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  A midsummer's Night Dream - Full...

  William Shakespeare

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  One of William Shakespeare's most beloved and whimsical comedies. This enchanting play weaves together the stories of several groups of characters as they navigate the magical and mischievous world of the fairy kingdom and the Athenian woods. The play opens in the court of Athens, where Duke Theseus is preparing for his upcoming marriage to Hippolyta, the Queen of the Amazons. The young lovers, Hermia and Lysander, are also introduced. However, Hermia's father, Egeus, insists that she marry Demetrius, whom she does not love. 
  Faced with the choice of marrying Demetrius, facing execution, or a life of chastity in a nunnery, Hermia and Lysander plan to escape to the nearby woods. They are pursued by Demetrius, who is himself pursued by Helena, Hermia's friend, who is infatuated with him. In the forest, a group of bumbling and amateurish actors led by the comical Bottom are preparing a play for the upcoming wedding of Duke Theseus and Hippolyta. Unbeknownst to them, the forest is also home to the fairy king Oberon, his queen Titania, and their mischievous servant, Puck. 
   
  Oberon and Puck, with the help of a magic flower, create a web of love and mischief in the forest. Puck mistakenly causes both Demetrius and Lysander to fall in love with Helena, leading to comical and chaotic misunderstandings. Titania, under the influence of Oberon's magic, falls in love with Bottom, who has been given the head of an ass. As the night unfolds, the characters' romantic entanglements and conflicts are resolved. Oberon releases Titania from her enchantment, and Demetrius and Lysander are restored to their proper loves. The lovers and the amateur actors return to the court, where their antics are performed as humorous entertainment. 
   
   
   

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  Lucifer - From their pens to...

  Anatole France

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  François-Anatole Thibault was born on the 16th April 1844 in Paris, France, the son of a bookseller and bibliophile. 
  He studied at the Collège Stanislas, a private Catholic school, and after graduating joined his father in the bookstore, which specialised in works on the French Revolution.  Several years later he secured a position as cataloguer at Bacheline-Deflorenne and at Lemerre before being appointed librarian for the French Senate in 1876. 
  His literary career had begun as a journalist and as a poet before publishing his novel ‘Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard’ in 1881.  Praised for its elegant prose, it won him a prestigious prize from the Académie Française, which later elected him to its storied ranks. 
  His works were profound and thoughtful and often couched in surreal and outlandish expressions; whether penguins baptized by a near-blind Abbott transformed themselves into humans or of a guardian angel who becomes an atheist, his stories turned established thought into startling literature. 
  His short stories run in the same vein.  The premise may seem plausible but his distinctive style turns them into an individual viewpoint which invokes both discussion and admiration. 
  In his private life his relationships with women were often turbulent.  A Socialist, he was a fervent supporter of the Russian Revolution and the early years of the French Communist party. 
  He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921 but the following year his entire canon of works was placed on the prohibited list of the Catholic Church, which he thought of as a credit to his name. 
  Anatole France died on the 12th October 1924 in Tours.  He was 80.

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  The Orwell Huxley Anthology -...

  George Orwell, Aldous Huxley

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  1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley are two of the most famous and influential dystopian novels ever written. Both books depict a future world in which individual freedom and privacy are subordinated to the demands of a totalitarian state, and citizens are manipulated and controlled through technology, propaganda, and social conditioning. 
   
  1984 is set in a grim, authoritarian society in which all citizens are monitored and controlled by the ruling Party. The novel's protagonist, Winston Smith, begins to question the oppressive regime and becomes involved in a dangerous and ultimately doomed rebellion. Orwell's writing in 1984 is characterized by its stark realism and its unflinching depiction of the horrors of totalitarianism. The novel remains a powerful warning about the dangers of unchecked government power and the importance of individual freedom. 
   
  Brave New World, on the other hand, is set in a more technologically advanced and ostensibly utopian society, in which citizens are conditioned from birth to be content with their predetermined place in the social hierarchy. The novel's protagonist, Bernard Marx, rebels against the conformity and emptiness of his society, but ultimately finds himself unable to escape its grip. Huxley's writing in Brave New World is characterized by its irony and satire, as well as its incisive critique of the impact of technology on human nature. 
  . The two novels have often been compared and contrasted, and both are considered to be among the most important works of literature of the 20th century. 
   
  Here is the ultimate Audiobook celebration of this great enduring artist narrated by Emmy-nominated actor and author Geoffrey Giuliano.

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  Their Silver Wedding Journey

  William Dean Howells

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  The Marches, married twenty-five years, take the European tour they could not afford as newlyweds — the ship, the Rhine, Carlsbad, a young couple in trouble whom they cannot help minding about. Howells edited The Atlantic and wrote for Harper's, and was the most powerful literary broker in America; here he does middle age exactly, and the kindness of the book is not softness.

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  A Damsel in Distress

  P. G. Wodehouse

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  An American composer in London hears a girl jump into his taxi to escape a pursuing gentleman, and by evening he has been mistaken for her suitor, insulted her brother and been invited to a castle where every servant has a bet on the outcome. Wodehouse worked on Broadway with Jerome Kern and wrote this in 1919; the servants' hall betting book is the machine that drives the whole plot, and it runs perfectly.

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  Roderick Hudson

  Henry James

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  A rich patron brings a brilliant young American sculptor to Rome to make him great, and watches him instead discover women, idleness and his own limits. James's first real novel, written at thirty-two, invents the subject he would work for forty years: the American of talent set loose in Europe with no idea what it costs.

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