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  Les Misérables: Volume 1:...

  Victor Hugo

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  Victor-Marie Hugo (26 February 1802 - 22 May 1885) was a French poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote abundantly in an exceptional variety of genres: lyrics, satires, epics, philosophical poems, epigrams, novels, history, critical essays, political speeches, funeral orations, diaries, and letters public and private, as well as dramas in verse and prose.
  BOOK 2: THE FALL: Early in the month of October, 1815, about an hour before sunset, a man who was travelling on foot entered the little town of D The few inhabitants who were at their windows or on their thresholds at the moment stared at this traveller with a sort of uneasiness.

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  Northanger Abbey

  Jane Austen

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  "Northanger Abbey" is one of Jane Austen's earlier works, published posthumously in 1818. The novel is a coming-of-age story that follows the naive and imaginative Catherine Morland during her adventures in Bath and, later, at the eponymous Northanger Abbey. While the book embraces elements of the Gothic novel—a popular genre of its time—it also satirizes the genre's excesses and the naivety of its young heroine. Themes of social class, wealth, and morality are explored against a backdrop of Regency England manners and mores.

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  Tar - A Midwest Childhood

  Sherwood Anderson

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  This autobiographical novel by the writer of Winesburg, Ohio recounts a young boy’s childhood in the latenineteenth-century rural Midwest.Sherwood Anderson established his reputation as a great American writer with his sensitive portrayals of Midwestern life at the turn of the twentieth century. First published in 1926, Tar: A Midwest Childhood, is Anderson’s reflection on the Ohio small town of his youth and the experiences that informed and inspired his most beloved works. In a series of revealing episodes, Anderson describes the developing consciousness of Edgar Moorehead from earliest childhood to adolescence. When his father arrived in Ohio from North Carolina, neighbors derisively called him a Tar-heel. Inheriting this nickname, Tar grows up as one of many children to his stoic, hard-working mother and his gregarious but unreliable father.

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  These Old Shades

  Georgette Heyer

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  The Georgian romance that launched the career of the New York Times–bestselling author is “the sort of tale which leaves us breathless with delight.” —Boston Evening Transcript   When the Duke of Avon encounters a mistreated young boy on the streets of Paris, he employs the lad as his page. As the duke’s closest friends ponder his actions, the precocious Léon soon becomes the talk of the aristocracy.   Léon cannot believe his good fortune after being saved from a brutal beating by his older brother. He follows the duke around like a loyal puppy, a constant source of amusement for the duke, who is seen by himself—and by society—as a devious scoundrel, well deserving of his nickname, Satanas.   But when Avon uncovers Léon’s biggest secret—that the boy is in fact a girl named Léonie—he acts honorably, taking her to his sister in London to learn the ways of the fairer sex, before he can adopt her. For Avon can’t believe his luck. A trump card has fallen into his hands. If Léonie is who the duke suspects she is, she’ll be the perfect weapon to use against his greatest nemesis. He embarks on his quest for revenge, never foreseeing just how Léonie’s transformation will change the game . . .   “Wonderful characters, elegant, witty writing, perfect period detail, and rapturously romantic.” —Katie Fforde   “A world of high romance, of adventure, of passions that shimmer just beneath the surface.” —Stephanie Laurens, #1 New York Times–bestselling author   “You’re in for a treat.” —Nora Roberts, #1 New York Times–bestselling authorThe Georgian romance that launched the career of the New York Times–bestselling author is “the sort of tale which leaves us breathless with delight.” —Boston Evening Transcript   When the Duke of Avon encounters a mistreated young boy on the streets of Paris, he employs the lad as his page. As the duke’s closest friends ponder his actions, the precocious Léon soon becomes the talk of the aristocracy.   Léon cannot believe his good fortune after being saved from a brutal beating by his older brother. He follows the duke around like a loyal puppy, a constant source of amusement for the duke, who is seen by himself—and by society—as a devious scoundrel, well deserving of his nickname, Satanas.   But when Avon uncovers Léon’s biggest secret—that the boy is in fact a girl named Léonie—he acts honorably, taking her to his sister in London to learn the ways of the fairer sex, before he can adopt her. For Avon can’t believe his luck. A trump card has fallen into his hands. If Léonie is who the duke suspects she is, she’ll be the perfect weapon to use against his greatest nemesis. He embarks on his quest for revenge, never foreseeing just how Léonie’s transformation will change the game . . .   “Wonderful characters, elegant, witty writing, perfect period detail, and rapturously romantic.” —Katie Fforde   “A world of high romance, of adventure, of passions that shimmer just beneath the surface.” —Stephanie Laurens, #1 New York Times–bestselling author   “You’re in for a treat.” —Nora Roberts, #1 New York Times–bestselling author

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  How the Two Ivans Quarrelled...

  Nikolai Gogol

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  Nikolai Gogol was one of the first to use the technique of the grotesque. According to Viktor Shklovsky, Gogol's strange style of writing resembles the "ostranenie" technique of defamiliarization. His early works, such as Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, were influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing, Ukrainian culture and folklore.
  HOW THE TWO IVANS QUARRELLED: A fine pelisse has Ivan Ivanovitch! splendid! And what lambskin! deuce take it, what lambskin! blue-black with silver lights. I'll forfeit, I know not what, if you find any one else owning such a one. Look at it, for heaven's sake, especially when he stands talking with any one!

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  After Twenty years - From their...

  O Henry

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  William Sydney Porter was born on 11th September 1862 in Greensboro, North Carolina. At age 3 his mother died from tuberculosis. From an early age it was clear Porter had a large appetite for reading as he absorbed the world around him. 
  He first attended at a school run by his aunt before enrolling at the Lindsey Street High School and then worked at his uncle’s drugstore and gained a pharmacists’ license in 1881.  
  A persistent cough took him to Texas in the hope that a change of climate would help his symptoms. He took on various types of work, initially from ranch hand and cook and then as varied as pharmacist, draftsman, bank teller and journalist. He also began to write, though for now, purely as a hobby. 
  He was a member of several singing and dramatic groups when he met 17 year old Athol Estes, daughter of a wealthy Austin family. Despite her mother’s objection owing to Athol’s tuberculosis, they began courting and in July 1887, they eloped and soon married. 
  Athol, impressed by his writing, encouraged him to get them published. A job as a draftsman at the Texas General Land Office paid a healthy $100 dollars per month and life was good. 
  But then life turned cruel. His son died a few hours after birth although a daughter, Margaret, came the following year.  His job had to be vacated but another was found at the First National Bank of Austin. The bank operated informally and Porter was careless in keeping the books. He lost that job but began writing for the humourous weekly The Rolling Stone and the Houston Post. Some time later the federal Bank auditors went through his former accounts and he was arrested on charges of embezzlement. 
  Porter fled the day before his trial to Honduras. Holed up for several months he began to write.  Athol had become too ill to travel to meet him and learning that her health was deteriorating he surrendered to the court in February 1897.  Bail was obtained so that he could stay with Athol during her final days.  
  Porter was sentenced to five years at the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus. His pharmacy qualifications got him the job of night druggist.  His sentence also gave him time to write and publish fourteen short stories. In December 1899 in McClure’s Magazine he published a short story as O Henry.  
  He was released two years early in July 1901, and reunited with Margaret, now 11, in Pittsburgh.  He now began his most prolific period of writing; a short story per week for the New York World, while also publishing works in other magazines.  Eventually over 600 of his short stories were published. 
  Porter was a heavy drinker and in 1908 his health, which had deteriorated for several years, took a dramatic turn for the worse, as did his writing. 
  O Henry died of cirrhosis of the liver complicated by diabetes and an enlarged heart on 5th June 1910.<

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