Other books that might interest you

• 

  Anna Karenina (Part 6)

  Leo Tolstoy

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Part 6: Dolly, her children, and her mother, the Princess Shcherbatskaya, spend the summer with Kostya and Kitty. The couple's life is simple and unaffected, although Kostya is uneasy at the "invasion" of so many Shcherbatskys. He becomes extremely jealous when one of the visitors, Veslovsky, flirts openly with the pregnant Kitty. Kostya tries to overcome his jealousy, and briefly succeeds during a hunt with Veslovsky and Oblonsky, but eventually succumbs to his feelings and asks Veslovsky to leave. Veslovsky immediately goes to stay with Anna and Vronsky at their nearby estate.
  Anna Karenina is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, first published in book form in 1878. Many writers consider Anna Karenina the greatest work of literature ever, and Tolstoy himself called it his first true novel. It was initially released in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 in the periodical The Russian Messenger.

  Show book

• 

  Olalla - From their pens to your...

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Occasionally an author appears who, in a short career, emblazons a legacy so bright and so distinct, as well as popular that it is difficult to believe it is the output of only one man. Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was such a talent. 
  Stevenson was born on 13th November 1850 in Edinburgh.  Despite a late start to reading and writing he was a voracious story-teller, regularly performing yarns for all those around him.  His health though was poorly, he suffered lifelong bronchial problems and was incapacitated by this and other ailments throughout his life. 
  In Grez, France in September 1876 he met the American, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne. She was married with children but distress and anger at her husband's infidelities led to several separations. By the time she met Stevenson she was already a promising short-story writer. 
  In 1880 she was at last free to re marry and life, despite his health issues, was good.  In the ensuing years travel and exploration would be their calling and the source of his literary inspiration. 
  Classics flowed; in 1881 ‘The Body Snatcher’.  In 1883 ‘Treasure Island’, followed 3 years later by ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’.  
  In 1890, they settled on an estate in Samoa for what would be a last great burst of writing that coincided with his political awakening as the islands moved toward inter-clan warfare as greedy outside powers stoked tensions.    
  Over the course of his prolific career Stevenson had not only given his audience many classic novels but beautiful poetry such as ‘A Child’s Garden of Verses’ and many short stories as with his dark classic of Christmas Day ‘Markheim’ (1884). 
  Robert Louis Stevenson died at his island home at Valima in Samoa on 3rd December 1894.  He was 44.

  Show book

• 

  Marguerite Verne - Or Scenes...

  Rebecca Agatha Armour

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Saint John, New Brunswick: shipping money, a merchant's daughters, a fortune-hunter and a courtship conducted under the eyes of a small colonial city that misses nothing. Armour taught school in Fredericton and wrote some of the first novels to take New Brunswick seriously as a place where things happen. Read for a Canadian provincial society that almost no fiction of the period recorded at all.

  Show book

• 

  This Side Of Paradise

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  This Side of Paradise chronicles the coming of age of Amory Blaine, born to a wealthy midwestern family. It begins with Amory as a spoiled youth, doted on by his eccentric mother Beatrice. It follows him as he attends preparatory school and Princeton, and then briefly attempts but quickly abandons at a career in advertising. His service in World War I is mentioned but mostly glossed over. Covered in much more detail are his various romances: youthful dalliances, a correspondence-based relationship that ends as soon as the couple spends time together in person, a deep love with the debutante sister of one of his close friends, and an intense summer fling. The book shows Amory's attempts to define himself as a person and find his place in a world rapidly changing through World War, the "Jazz Age," and Prohibition. It provides the reader with a good picture of what life was like for a privileged young man of the era. F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side of Paradise was published in 1920 when he was 23 years old, and was widely praised by critics. The semi-autobiographical work launched his career as one of America's most well-known writers. As a direct result of the publishing of the novel, Zelda Sayre (the inspiration for the character of the debutante Rosalind Connage) agreed to marry Fitzgerald. The couple became an icon of the excesses of the Jazz Age. F. Scott Fitzgerald (died 1940) was an influential writer of the modernist period. Their work has endured across generations and continues to be read and studied worldwide. As a work of classic literary fiction, This Side Of Paradise exemplifies the narrative craft and social insight that defined great storytelling of its era. Literary fiction of this period was characterized by careful attention to character psychology, social milieu, and the moral questions that animated public discourse.

  Show book

• 

  Chimney Smoke

  Christopher Morley

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Before time as we know it began, gods and goddesses lived in the city of Asgard. Odin All Father crossed the Rainbow Bridge to walk among men in Midgard. Thor defended Asgard with his mighty hammer. Mischievous Loki was constantly getting into trouble with the other gods, and dragons and giants walked free. This collection of Norse sagas retold by author Padraic Colum gives us a sense of that magical time when the world was filled with powers and wonders we can hardly imagine.

  Show book

• 

  Briar Rose

  Jacob Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Briar Rose is the original Grimm telling of what later generations would soften into Sleeping Beauty—a fairy tale not of romance, but of fate, time, and enchantment that cannot be undone. 
  When a long-awaited princess is born, she is blessed by twelve fairies with every good gift imaginable. But an uninvited thirteenth fairy delivers a curse: on her fifteenth birthday, the princess will prick her finger on a spindle and fall dead. The spell is weakened, not broken—death becomes a hundred-year sleep, and an entire kingdom is drawn into stillness with her. 
  What follows is not a tale of rescue, but of suspension. Fires go cold mid-flame. Courtiers freeze in motion. Vines and thorns rise year after year, sealing the palace away from the world. Princes come and perish. Time itself seems to wait. 
  Only when the century has fully passed does the story allow movement again—awakening not just a sleeping girl, but a world held captive by inevitability. 
  Narrated with quiet gravity by Joanna Agee, this production restores Briar Rose to its original tone: somber, enchanted, and faintly dangerous. This is the Grimm fairy tale as it was first told—beautiful, unsettling, and bound by fate.

  Show book