Translator Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
Publisher: Good Press
Eight different types of grasshopper are described in this etymology book. Fabre was a true enthusiast of wildlife, particularly that of insects; but his books are more than textbooks. He imbues his subjects with lives and real purpose so that the creatures become like characters in a story.
A framing story is told in the first person by Darrell Standing, a university professor serving life imprisonment in San Quentin State Prison for murder. Prison officials try to break his spirit by means of a torture device called "the jacket," a canvas jacket which can be tightly laced so as to compress the whole body, inducing angina. Standing discovers how to withstand the torture by entering a kind of trance state, in which he walks among the stars and experiences portions of past lives.Show book
Mackenzie Menter performs Charlotte Perkins Gilman's famous 1892 tale of a woman's decent into madness.The unnamed narrator secretly keeps a journal and chronicles her decent into madness while subjected to her doctor-husband's severe postpartum rest cure. She begins to see that a woman is trapped in the suffocating wallpaper that envelops her room, and she becomes determined—at all costs—to free her.Rediscovered and celebrated by feminists and humanists in the 1970s, its powerful atmosphere of mystery and underlying message retains its strength to this day. Original Music and Sound Design by Jennifer Rouse.Show book
"New Atlantis" is an incomplete utopian novel by Sir Francis Bacon. Bacon portrayed a vision of the future of human discovery and knowledge, expressing his aspirations and ideals for humankind. The novel depicts the creation of a utopian land where "generosity and enlightenment, dignity and splendour, piety and public spirit" are the commonly held qualities of the inhabitants of the mythical Bensalem.Show book
Dostoyevsky was never shy to play with the issues of human mind in his work. A funny man's dream is one of his shorter pieces that, nevertheless, lacks none of the profundity or the mind-bending power of his larger works.Show book
When the elderly widow Cipriana is visited by a strange and scary fire spirit, he tells her that he will help her to make her fortune. The weird elf tells her that he is responsible for fires all over the world and he tells her of a major fire that will break out in the city of Murcia in two weeks time. He advises Cipriana to go to the authorities there and predict the fire. Of course, she will not be believed at first...but when her predictions come true, she will be in great demand and will be well rewarded.Things do not go quite according to plan. Cipriana is suspected of belonging to a gang of arsonists and is thrown into jail. When the fire breaks out, she is released and rewarded...but increasingly, people suspect her of being a witch. As she flees from town to town, always predicting fires as she goes, she finds herself increasingly in danger of being burnt at the stake.Show book
Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 - 13 August 1946) was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, history, satire, biography and autobiography. His work also included two books on recreational war games. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and is often called the "father of science fiction", along with Jules Verne and the publisher Hugo Gernsback.MY FIRST FLIGHT: (EASTBOURNE, August 5, 1912-three years later.) Hitherto my only flights have been flights of imagination but this morning I flew. I spent about ten or fifteen minutes in the air; we went out to sea, soared up, came back over the land, circled higher, planed steeply down to the water, and I landed with the conviction that I had had only the foretaste of a great store of hitherto unsuspected pleasures.Show book
