Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  Persuasion - Audiobook

  Jane Austen, Classic Audiobooks,...

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  Jane Austen's Persuasion is a poignant and mature novel about second chances and enduring love. It follows Anne Elliot, a quiet and intelligent woman who, years earlier, was persuaded to break off her engagement with the man she truly loved—Captain Frederick Wentworth. When he returns into her life as a successful naval officer, Anne must navigate a web of social expectations, personal regrets, and family pressures to find her own happiness.Set in the genteel world of early 19th-century England, Persuasion explores themes of duty, regret, and the quiet strength of a woman learning to trust her own heart. It is Austen's final completed novel and often considered her most introspective and emotionally nuanced work.

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  Juvenilia – Volume I

  Jane Austen

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  "I have a great mind to go to Italy and be a nun, but I don't think I should like it."
  
  Long before she created Elizabeth Bennet or Emma Woodhouse, a teenage Jane Austen was already skewering the tropes of 18th-century literature. Juvenilia – Volume I is a riotous collection of "scraps" and "sketches" that displays none of the refined restraint of her later novels. Instead, readers are treated to dark humor, absurd plots, and characters who drink too much, marry too often, and faint with alarming frequency. From the chaotic social blunders of "Frederic and Elfrida" to the wild escapades of "Henry and Eliza," this volume offers a rare, unvarnished look at the birth of a satirist who would go on to change the world of fiction.
  
  The Roots of Satire: In these early pages, Austen mocks the "Sirs" and "Madams" of the sentimental novels she grew up reading. She takes the dramatic clichés of her time—vows of eternal friendship, tragic coincidences, and fainting fits—and pushes them to a level of hilarious absurdity. It is a masterclass in parody that shows a young girl already in full command of her wit.
  
  A Window into the Austen Household: These stories were meant to be read aloud to the Austen family at Steventon Rectory. They reflect the lively, intellectual, and often irreverent atmosphere in which Jane was raised. Many stories are dedicated to her siblings or cousins, making the volume an intimate piece of literary history that bridges the gap between a private family hobby and public masterpiece.
  
  Dark Comedy and High Energy: Readers expecting the polite drawing rooms of Mansfield Park will be surprised by the energy here. In "Jack and Alice," for example, we find a world of "red-faced" drinking and physical comedy. This volume proves that Austen was always a rebel at heart, using her pen to puncture the pomposity of the world around her from the very start.
  
  Discover the girl behind the genius. Purchase "Juvenilia – Volume I" today.

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  Emma

  Jane Austen

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  Emma, by Jane Austen, is a novel about youthful hubris and the perils of misconstrued romance. The story takes place in the fictional village of Highbury and the surrounding estates of Hartfield, Randalls, and Donwell Abbey and involves the relationships among individuals in those locations consisting of "3 or 4 families in a country village". The novel was first published in December 1815 while the author was alive, with its title page listing a publication date of 1816. As in her other novels, Austen explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian–Regency England; she also creates a lively comedy of manners among her characters and depicts issues of marriage, gender, age, and social status.
  Before she began the novel, Austen wrote, "I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like." In the first sentence, she introduces the title character as "Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich." Emma is spoiled, headstrong, and self-satisfied; she greatly overestimates her own matchmaking abilities; she is blind to the dangers of meddling in other people's lives; and her imagination and perceptions often lead her astray.
  Emma, written after Austen's move to Chawton, was the last novel to be completed and published during her life, as Persuasion, the last novel Austen wrote, was published posthumously.
  This novel has been adapted for several films, many television programmes, and a long list of stage plays. It is also the inspiration for several novels.

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  A Piece of Steak - American...

  Jack London

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  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 
   
  In ‘A piece of Steak’ an ageing prizefighter seeks one last win. Not for glory, or to revisit fame, but simply to put food on the table and keep his family together.  But to do that he must beat a highly rated up and coming adversary.

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  The Resident Patient

  Arthur Conan Doyle

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  The Adventure of the Resident Patient, one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 12 stories in the cycle collected as The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Doyle ranked "The Adventure of the Resident Patient" eighteenth in a list of his nineteen favourite Sherlock Holmes stories....A little digging at police headquarters brings up the rest of the truth. All four of the men were once members of a criminal gang that robbed banks. Blessington's real name was Sutton, and the other three, two of whom played the Russians, were Biddle, Hayward, and Moffat. After robbing the Worthington Bank of £7,000 in 1875, Blessington (or Sutton) had turned informer, and as a result, another gang member, Cartwright, had been hanged for murdering the caretaker, and the other three had each been given 15 years in prison. Blessington's "paranoia" was indeed a very real fear, caused by news of their early release, not by some burglary, as he claimed. The murderers chose hanging as their form of execution to avenge Cartwright...Famous works of the author Arthur Conan Doyle: A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of the Four, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, The Valley of Fear, His Last Bow, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, Stories of Sherlock Holmes, The Lost World.

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  Middlemarch

  George Eliot

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  "Middlemarch" is a novel by George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, published in 1871-72. Widely regarded as one of the greatest novels in the English language, it is an intricate portrait of a provincial town and its inhabitants. The narrative explores the lives, ambitions, and relationships of several characters, with the central story revolving around Dorothea Brooke and her marriage to the older, pedantic scholar, Mr. Casaubon. Eliot uses the microcosm of Middlemarch society to provide astute commentary on politics, women's rights, marriage, idealism, self-interest, and the constraints of societal expectations.

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