Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  Tess Of The D'ubervilles

  Thomas Hardy

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  "Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented" is a novel by Thomas Hardy, first published in 1891. The novel explores the life of Tess Durbeyfield, a young woman from a rural working-class family who is sent to claim kinship with the wealthy d'Urberville family. Tess's life is forever changed by this connection, leading to a series of tragic events. Hardy's work critiques the social mores of Victorian England, particularly concerning the themes of gender, religion, morality, and the injustices of the class system. Tess's story is one of innocence beset by societal and personal misfortune, and the novel is considered one of Hardy's masterpieces and a landmark in literary realism.

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  The Fettered King

  Griff Hosker

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  King Henry III rules England but it is an England controlled by barons who wish to usurp his crown. When a new Pope demands unpaid monies owed to him then Sir Henry Samuel is dispatched to Rome to buy time for the beleaguered king. Once in France then treachery abounds. The dangers of sailing in a sea controlled by Moorish pirates adds to the problems Sir Henry and his new squire face. Back in England the king faces threats from all quarters and soon the knights of Cleveland are once more placed in danger.

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  Train Dreams - A Novella

  Denis Johnson

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  A New York Times Notable Book for 2011One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the YearOne of NPR's 10 Best Novels of 2011From the National Book Award-winning author Denis Johnson (Tree of Smoke) comes Train Dreams, an epic in miniature, and one of Johnson's most evocative works of fiction.Suffused with the history and landscapes of the American West—its otherworldly flora and fauna, its rugged loggers and bridge builders—this extraordinary novella poignantly captures the disappearance of a distinctly American way of life.It tells the story of Robert Grainer, a day laborer in the American West at the start of the twentieth century—an ordinary man in extraordinary times. Buffeted by the loss of his family, Grainer struggles to make sense of this strange new world. As his story unfolds, we witness both his shocking personal defeats and the radical changes that transform America in his lifetime.

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  Tuscan Warlord - Sir John...

  Griff Hosker

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  Sir John Hawkwood has almost all that he needs. He is the most respected and feared mercenary leader in Italy but he is surrounded by those who would do him and his family harm. He faces betrayal from friend and foe alike. His constants are his company and the leaders who fight for him. Treading a tightrope between warring factions that include the Pope and the Lord of Milan, Sir John Hawkwood decides to make the White Company into a warband and he becomes a warlord.

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  Rabies - A tale of disease from...

  Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

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  Vicente Blasco Ibáñez was born in Valencia, Spain on 29th January 1867.  
   
  At university, he studied law and graduated in 1888 but never felt the urgency to practice - he was more interested in politics, journalism, literature and women.   
   
  Politically he was a militant Republican partisan and, in his youth, founded a newspaper, El Pueblo (The People). The newspaper was taken to court many times and he made many enemies. In one incident he was shot and almost killed. In 1896, Ibáñez was arrested and sentenced to a few months in prison. 
   
  Despite this colourful background he found time to write novels. His first published work was ‘La Araña Negra’ (The Black Spider) in 1892, a work that he later repudiated although at the time it was a useful vehicle for him to express his anti-clerical views. 
   
  In 1894, he published ‘Arroz y Tartana’ (Airs and Graces), about a late 19th Century widow in Valencia trying to keep up appearances in order to marry her daughters well.   
   
  Ibáñez’s next sequence of books studied rural life in the farmlands of Valencia and failed to gain much of an audience.   
   
  His writing now took on a new direction with its now familiar sensational and melodramatic themes in 1908 with ‘Sangre y Arena’ (Blood and Sand), which follows the career of Juan Gallardo from his poor beginnings as a child in Seville, to his rise to becoming a famous matador in Madrid 
   
  However, his greatest success was ‘Los Cuatro Jinetes del Apocalipsis (The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) in 1916, which tells a tangled tale of the French and German sons-in-law of an Argentinian land-owner who find themselves fighting on opposite sides in the First World War.  It was a literary and commercial sensation and became the best-selling book of 1919.  It also propelled Rudolph Valentino to stardom in the 1921 film. 
   
  Ironically his fame in the English-speaking world has come not as a novelist but as the stories behind some of Hollywood’s greatest silent movies. 
   
  Vicente Blasco Ibáñez died in Menton, France on January 28th, 1928, the day before his 61st birthday.

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  American Whoreson

  Robert H. Cherny

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  American Whoreson. At 47k words, it reads quickly and is suitable for teens and older. While it contains no sex and only minimal violence, it does have politically sensitive subject matter. Therefore, it is not suitable for Trumpists or Evangelicals. 
  America in the late 1800s was a place where a young man with drive and intelligence could rise above class to attain power and wealth. Even someone born near the bottom of society’s social ladder could climb past those born higher on the ladder to achieve greatness. Armed only with his intelligence, aggressive personality, and fists, the bastard son of a whore grows up in a town dominated by cotton mills to find his place in America’s westward-looking Manifest Destiny. 
  The bastard son of a whore working in a small town dominated by cotton mills, Tobias is tossed out on his own at the age of twelve when his mother is shot by rival clients who also die in the exchange. Even though he witnesses her death, he is too occupied with his survival to spend much time grieving. The death of one of the men responsible for his mother’s death creates a job opening for Tobias at the mill, and Tobias jumps into the opportunity to secure his future, at least for now. 
  Two years later, Tobias escapes the mill as it burns down. He rides a short train of boxcars full of finished fabric away from the burning mill to safety. A locomotive collects the boxcars and deposits them in a railyard near the port of Norfolk. He escapes the yard and takes refuge in an abandoned boxcar. While there, he comforts a pregnant negro girl about to give birth and helps inter her body when she dies in childbirth. 
  He is transferred as a civilian contractor assigned to the Quartermaster Corps at Fort Meade, near Sturgis, South Dakota. While there, he witnesses what happens to people who stand in the way of America’s Manifest Destiny.

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