Publisher: Re-Image Publishing
Effi Briest, the classic German realist novel, follows a young woman through her life and marriage. She is an innocent when she is married to the social climbing Instetten, and longs for wordly things. When she is left alone by her husband, who is pursuing his political career, she succumbs to the flattery of another man. Her adultery has wide and tragic consequences on the rest of her life.
The Professor Challenger Collection includes the two most important full-length novels featuring Professor Challenger.George Edward Challenger is a fictional character in a series of fantasy and science fiction stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Unlike Conan Doyle's self-controlled, analytical character, Sherlock Holmes, Professor Challenger is an aggressive, hot-tempered, dominating figure. Like Sherlock Holmes, Professor Challenger was based on real persons - in this case, an explorer named Percy Fawcett, who was Conan Doyle's friend, and a professor of physiology named William Rutherford, who had lectured at the University of Edinburgh while Conan Doyle studied medicine there.The Lost World is a science fiction novel by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle, published in 1912, concerning an expedition to a plateau in the Amazon basin of South America where prehistoric animals still survive. It was originally published serially in the Strand Magazine and illustrated by New-Zealand-born artist Harry Rountree during the months of April-November 1912. The character of Professor Challenger was introduced in this book. The novel also describes a war between indigenous people and a vicious tribe of ape-like creatures.The Poison Belt is a science fiction novel by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle, the second book about Professor Challenger. Written in 1913, much of it takes place in a single room in Challenger's house in Sussex. This would be the last story written about Challenger until the 1920s, by which time Doyle's spiritualist beliefs had begun to influence his writing.Show book
"The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual" is a short story by Arthur Conan Doyle, featuring his fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. The story was originally published in Strand Magazine in 1893, and was collected later in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Unlike the majority of Holmes stories, the main narrator is not Doctor Watson, but Sherlock Holmes himself. With Watson providing an introduction, the story within a story is a classic example of a frame tale. It is one of the earliest recorded cases investigated by Holmes, and establishes his problem solving skills. In the story, Holmes recounts to Watson the events arising after a visit from a university acquaintance, Reginald Musgrave. Musgrave visits Holmes after the disappearance of two of his domestic staff, Rachel Howells, a maid, and Richard Brunton, the longtime butler. The pair vanished after Musgrave had dismissed Brunton for secretly reading a family document, the Musgrave Ritual. The Ritual, which dates from the 17th century, is a riddle set in question/response form. It reads:...Show book
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow on 11th November, 1821 to distinguished multi-ethnic parents from a Lithuanian background. His childhood years were at the family home in hospital grounds which also contained an orphanage, an insane asylum and a cemetery for criminals. The young Fyodor often disobeyed his father by talking to the ill in the hospital gardens. His health was compromised at age 9 when he experienced his first epileptic fit. By the time he was a teenager both parents had died and he was now enrolled in a military academy where he graduated and eventually became a Lieutenant in 1842. He left military service the next year. In 1846 he published his first novel ‘Poor Cow’ to great literary acclaim. His next was unable to emulate that success but his short stories helped provide an income. Life as an author was definitely difficult. As he began his next work he was arrested and incarcerated for treason and participation in the political and literary Petrashevsky Circle. Although the case was weak and unjustified he was sentenced to 4 years of hard labour followed by 5 years of military service in a Siberian regiment. Despite the undoubted hardships and setbacks in his life, and whether they helped or hindered his writing, his talents produced many exceptional works of literature including ‘Crime and Punishment’, ‘The Idiot’ and ‘The Brothers Karamazov’. Dostoevsky’s ability to get under the skin of his characters and show the inner workings of their mind was hugely influential and ahead of its time. Interwoven with this was the influence of the broader social, spiritual and political forces at work in a person's psyche. Fyodor Dostoevsky struggled financially and remained in poor health for much of his adult life. He died from a lung haemorrhage on 9th February, 1881. ‘The Dream of a Ridiculous Man’ is one of his many classic short stories that turn a splinter of the ordinary into the spiralling descent of chaos.Show book
Wuthering Heights is a wild, passionate story of the intense and almost demonic love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a foundling adopted by Catherine's father. After Mr Earnshaw's death, Heathcliff is bullied and humiliated by Catherine's brother Hindley and wrongly believing that his love for Catherine is not reciprocated, leaves Wuthering Heights, only to return years later as a wealthy and polished man. He proceeds to exact a terrible revenge for his former miseries. The action of the story is chaotic and unremittingly violent, but the accomplished handling of a complex structure, the evocative descriptions of the lonely moorland setting and the poetic grandeur of vision combine to make this unique novel a masterpiece of English literature.Show book
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. Cap'n Bill and Trot had previously appeared in two other novels by Baum, The Sea Fairies and Sky Island. Based in part upon the 1914 silent film, His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz. This was allegedly L. Frank Baum's personal favourite Oz bookShow book
In the third volume of the celebrated novel, a writer comes into his own and learns the way of the world in Paris. Continuing the nameless narrator’s voyage through his memories after Within a Budding Grove, The Guermantes Way finds him and his family entering Parisian high society. They have moved into a stately old town house owned by the Duke and Duchess de Guermantes in the Fauborg Saint-Germain district of Paris. Daily sightings of the duchess do nothing but fan the flames of the narrator’s infatuation with her. So, of course, he falls in love once more. He also continues his journey as a writer, visiting aristocratic and literary salons where, beneath a thin veneer of manners, a battle for political, sexual, and social supremacy rages on . . . Originally published in two volumes in 1920 and 1921, The Guermantes Way explores the customs of Parisian society in Belle Époque France. Praise for Marcel Proust “Whatever your preference, Proust is a pleasure no serious reader should miss.” —Kirkus Reviews “Reading Proust . . . it’s a whole world not just a book. Everyone wants to live more than one life and Proust is like ‘here’s another one you can live.’” —Francine Prose, New York Times–bestselling author of Mister Monkey “I can think of only one other writer capable of such breadth and humanity: Shakespeare.” —André Aciman, New York Times–bestselling author of Find Me “When I want to restore my faith in literature, I read Proust. . . . Reading Proust is like watching a galaxy being put together, one particle at a time.” —Aleksandar Hemon, author of The Making of Zombie WarsShow book
