Publisher: Charles River Editors
Louisa May Alcott was an American writer best known for coming of age novels featuring young women. Alcott also served as a nurse at a Union hospital during the Civil War and wrote about her experiences there. This edition of Jack and Jill includes a table of contents.
A. J. Alan's curious story of a recurring dream. Possibly one of the strangest and creepiest tales ever told.Show book
““What is a ‘Bummel’?” said George. “How would you translate it?” “A ‘Bummel’,” I explained, “I should describe as a journey, long or short, without an end; the only thing regulating it being the necessity of getting back within a given time to the point from which one started.”” Written in 1900, Jerome. K. Jerome’s sequel to his successful “Three Men in a Boat” (1889) retains his same three men; Harris, George, and himself. They are now older, if not always wiser, and decide to embark on a bicycle tour of the Black Forest and its surrounding areas. Perhaps it is something of the late Victorian Gentleman’s attitude to “foreign parts” that give this sequel a somewhat less frivolous tone than the generally jolly one of three men boating on the familiar Thames. Indeed, the description of the popular practise of German Student duelling (“The Mensur”) is decidedly graphic. Yet despite a less cohesive narrative there are still many equally funny incidents, told with Jerome’s characteristic self-deprecating style. Not least, dear Uncle Podger makes a welcome return as he tries his futile best to leave the house on time for work. Head Stories Audio presents "Three Men on the Bummel" by Jerome. K. Jerome. Narrated by Simon Hester. With original music.Show book
Bram (Abraham) Stoker (1847-1912) was born in Dublin. As a sickly child, he spent much of his childhood bedridden, amused by his mother's stories of horror, folklore and real life, including grisly tales of the 1832 cholera epidemic in Sligo. Gradually his health improved, and from the age of seven he went to school, followed by university at Trinity College Dublin. He became famous as a writer of horror and supernatural fiction, including his 1897 best seller Dracula.'Dracula's Guest' was written as an action-packed chapter in Dracula, but it was never included in the final manuscript. It was published in 1914 as a standalone tale after Stoker's death.Show book
Oliver Twist, subtitled The Parish Boy's Progress, is the second novel by English author Charles Dickens, published by Richard Bentley in 1838. The story is about an orphan, Oliver Twist, who endures a miserable existence in a workhouse and then is placed with an undertaker. He escapes and travels to London where he meets the Artful Dodger, leader of a gang of juvenile pickpockets. Naïvely unaware of their unlawful activities, Oliver is led to the lair of their elderly criminal trainer Fagin. Oliver Twist is notable for Dickens's unromantic portrayal of criminals and their sordid lives. The book exposed the cruel treatment of the many orphans in London during the Dickensian era. The book's subtitle, The Parish Boy's Progress, alludes to Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and also to a pair of popular 18th-century caricature series by William Hogarth, A Rake's Progress and A Harlot's Progress. An early example of the social novel, the book calls the public's attention to various contemporary evils, including child labour, the recruitment of children as criminals, and the presence of street children. Dickens mocks the hypocrisies of his time by surrounding the novel's serious themes with sarcasm and dark humour. The novel may have been inspired by the story of Robert Blincoe, an orphan whose account of hardships as a child labourer in a cotton mill was widely read in the 1830s. It is likely that Dickens's own early youth as a child labourer contributed to the story's development.Show book
Joseph Smith Fletcher (1863-1935) was a British journalist and author. He wrote more than 230 books on a wide variety of subjects, both fiction and nonfiction. He was one of the leading writers of detective fiction in the Victorian golden age of the short story.'Mr. Leggatt Leaves His Card' tells the story of a robbery. The famous and invaluable Hislip Chalice is stolen from the safe of the parish church at Meddersley, and the Reverend Francis Leggatt, Vicar of Meddersley, sets quickly out to solve the mystery before the ecclesiastical authorities get wind of it.Show book
The protagonist Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, king of the Danes, whose great hall, Heorot, is plagued by the monster Grendel. Beowulf kills Grendel with his bare hands, then kills Grendel's mother with a giant's sword that he found in her lair. Later in his life, Beowulf becomes king of the Geats, and finds his realm terrorized by a dragon, some of whose treasure had been stolen from his hoard in a burial mound.Show book
