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  A Child's Revenge

  Paul Bourget

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  Paul Bourget's haunting and highly disturbing story of a childhood experience in the Franco-Prussian war. A young boy's home is occupied by Austrian officers, who feast on their best food, guzzle their champagne and smash their belongings, while threatening worse reprisals if they do not bring coffee, which is impossible to get during this period. When the boy's sick father tries to intervene, he is violently ill treated. The child decides to take his own revenge.

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  Call of Cthulhu The (Unabridged)

  H. P. Lovecraft

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  "The Call of Cthulhu" is one of H. P. Lovecraft's best-known short stories. Written in the summer of 1926, it was first published in Weird Tales, February 1928. It is the only story written by Lovecraft in which the extraterrestrial entity Cthulhu himself makes a major appearance. It is written in a documentary style, with three independent narratives linked together by the device of a narrator discovering notes left by a deceased relative. The narrator pieces together the whole truth and disturbing significance of the information he possesses, illustrating the story's first line: "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity; and it was not meant that we should voyage far."

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  The Scarlet Letter

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

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  Nathaniel Hawthorne’s masterpiece: A searing portrait of sin and redemption in Puritan New England When Hester Prynne, a young Puritan woman in seventeenth-century Boston, becomes pregnant out of wedlock, the unforgiving society in which she lives judges her harshly. Sentenced to wear a scarlet A emblazoned on her dress, Hester raises her daughter, Pearl, on the outskirts of town—an exile meant to cause her shame for the remainder of her life. In refusing to name Pearl’s father, Hester seeks to protect the minister Arthur Dimmesdale from sharing her fate. As the years pass, Dimmesdale grows weaker, eroded by his guilt, while Hester finds renewal in a defiant reclamation of her strength and identity. Their diverging paths lead to a searing final scene that stands among the most powerful in American literature. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

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  The Alligator and the Jackal

  Mary Frere

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  Mary Eliza Isabella Frere (1845–1911) was an English author of the first English-language field-collected book of Indian folk tales. 
  "The Alligator and the Jackal" is the story of a jackal who narrowly escapes being eaten by an alligator on the banks of a river. Following this incident, the alligator is determined to catch the cunning jackal. The Jackal is equally determined not to be eaten. A series of close escapes escalates the feud until the dramatic finale.

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  The Path to the Spiders' Nests

  Italo Calvino

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  Italo Calvino was only 23 when he first published this bold and imaginative novel. It tells the story of Pin, a cobbler's apprentice in a town on the Ligurian coast during World War II. He lives with his sister, a prostitute, and spends as much time as he can at a seedy bar where he amuses the adult patrons. 
  After a mishap with a Nazi soldier, Pin becomes involved with a band of partisans. Calvino's portrayal of these characters, seen through the eyes of a child, is not only a revealing commentary on the Italian resistance but an insightful coming-of-age story. 
  Updated to include changes from Calvino's definitive Italian edition, previously censored passages, and his newly translated, unabridged preface—in which Calvino brilliantly critiques and places into historical context his own youthful work—The Path to the Spiders' Nests is animated by the formidable imagination that has made Italo Calvino one of the most respected writers of our time.

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  Scarecrow of Oz The [The Wizard...

  L. Frank Baum

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  Cap'n Bill and Trot journey to Oz and, with the help of the Scarecrow, the former ruler of Oz, overthrow the villainous King Krewl of Jinxland. This was allegedly L. Frank Baum's personal favourite Oz book.

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