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  A Rough Shaking

  George MacDonald

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  The 19th-century Scottish author delivers a novel of a homeless orphan who finds peace in the company of animals and his own innate goodness.  One of George MacDonald’s realistic novels, A Rough Shaking takes its title from a devastating earthquake that hit along the Italian coast in February of 1887. Though not written in the classic mold of a children’s story, like MacDonald’s Ranald Bannerman’s Boyhood and Gutta Percha Willie, it tells the story of Clare Skymer’s growing up. Orphaned by an earthquake and though seemingly unaware of God, he is a child imbued with goodness and with an unusual empathy for animals. As he wanders the world and is faced with decisions that test his selflessness and compassion, he matures into a man of character and grace. As MacDonald writes, “His soul was in a better home than a sky full of angels, a home better than the dome itself of all the angels, for his home was his father’s heart.”

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  Note on Realism A (Unabridged)

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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  Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. Born and educated in Edinburgh, Stevenson suffered from serious bronchial trouble for much of his life, but continued to write prolifically and travel widely in defiance of his poor health. As a young man, he mixed in London literary circles, receiving encouragement from Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse, Leslie Stephen and W. E. Henley, the last of whom may have provided the model for Long John Silver in Treasure Island.A NOTE ON REALISM: Style is the invariable mark of any master; and for the student who does not aspire so high as to be numbered with the giants, it is still the one quality in which he may improve himself at will. Passion, wisdom, creative force, the power of mystery or colour, are allotted in the hour of birth, and can be neither learned nor simulated.

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  The Scarlet Letter

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

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  Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic American story of Hester Prynne, accused of adultery, ostracized by her Puritan community, and abandoned by both her lover and her husband 
   
  The story opens in Puritan Boston, a settlement only fifteen or twenty years old. A young woman stands on a scaffold clasping a three-month-old baby. As a married woman with a missing husband and a new baby, Hester Prynne could have been sentenced to death for the crime of adultery. Instead she is condemned to always wear the letter A as a badge of her shame. As she stands there, she sees her long-missing husband, who has been held captive by Indians. While the town chorus is murmuring against her and her old and unattractive husband stares silently at her, the young and handsome clergyman publicly demands the name of her partner in crime-while desperately praying that she won't reveal him. 
   
  The Scarlet Letter rightfully deserves its stature as the first great novel written by an American, the novel that announced American literature equal to any in the world. 
  This novel is part of Brilliance Audio's extensive Classic Collection, bringing you timeless masterpieces that you and your family are sure to love.

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  Under the Witches' Moon

  Nathan Gallizier

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  The scene is Rome, 935 A.D. Thirty-year-old Tristan, dressed as a pilgrim, overhears a conversation between Basil, the Grand Chamberlain, and Il Gobbo, his assistant. After the two have left, Tristan continues to observe the revelry on the Eve of St. John. Suddenly a chariot containing a beautiful woman stops before him. They exchange words. He kisses her hand. Then she moves on, leaving him to ponder her beauty as he returns to the inn where he is staying. That night he has an enchanting and haunting dream of him together with another woman.Morning makes more sense of the dream. He was in love with Hellayne, who sent him away to Rome so that he could do penance for the sin of love. This explains why he is now in Rome. The next morning, as he walks into the heart of Rome, what he observes is a city torn between the debauchery of a fallen classical greatness and the promise of a new Christian awakening.This is the backdrop against which a city struggles to realize its greatness and a man struggles to realize his love for woman and for God. (Bill Boerst)

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  Adventure of Wisteria Lodge The...

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

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  "The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge" is one of the fifty-six Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle. One of eight stories in the volume His Last Bow, it is a lengthy, two-part story consisting of "The Singular Experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles" and "The Tiger of San Pedro", which on original publication in The Strand bore the collective title of "A Reminiscence of Mr. Sherlock Holmes".Holmes is visited by a perturbed proper English gentleman, John Scott Eccles, who wishes to discuss something "grotesque". No sooner has he arrived at 221B Baker Street than Inspector Gregson also shows up, along with Inspector Baynes of the Surrey Constabulary. They wish a statement from Eccles about the murder near Esher last night. A note in the dead man's pocket indicates that Eccles said that he would be at the victim's house that night.

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  The Complete Tales & Novels of...

  Edgar Allan Poe

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  The Complete Tales & Novels of Edgar Allan Poe includes the 66 tales and 2 full-length novels of Edgar Allan Poe.Edgar Allan Poe (born Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 - October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature as a whole, and he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story. He is also generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. Poe was the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.Included in this collection:1. Metzengerstein (1832)2. The Duc de L'Omelette (1832)3. A Tale of Jerusalem (1832)4. Loss of Breath (1832)5. Bon-Bon (1832)6. MS. Found in a Bottle (1833)7. The Assignation (1834)8. Berenice (1835)9. Morella (1835)10. Lionizing (1835)11. The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall (1835)12. King Pest (1835)13. Shadow (1835)14. Four Beasts in One (1836)15. Mystification (1837)16. Silence (1838)17. Ligeia (1838)18. How to Write a Blackwood Article (1838)19. A Predicament (1838)20. The Devil in the Belfry (1839)21. The Man That Was Used Up (1839)22. The Fall of the House of Usher (1839)23. William Wilson (1839)24. The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion (1839)25. Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling (1840)26. The Business Man (1840)27. The Man of the Crowd (1840)28. The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841)29. A Descent into the Maelström (1841)30. The Island of the Fay (1841)31. The Colloquy of Monos and Una (1841)32. Never Bet the Devil Your Head (1841)33. Eleonora (1841)34. Three Sundays in a Week (1841)35. The Oval Portrait (1842)36. The Masque of the Red Death (1842)37. The Landscape Garden (1842)38. The Mystery of Marie Rogêt (1842/43)39. The Pit and the Pendulum (1842/43)40. The Tell-Tale Heart (1843)41. The Gold-Bug (1843)42. The Black Cat (1843)43. Diddling (1843)44. The Spectacles (1844)45. A Tale of the Ragged Mountains (1844)46. The Premature Burial (1844)47. Mesmeric Revelation (1844)48. The Oblong Box (1844)49. The Angel of the Odd (1844)50. Thou Art the Man (1844)51. The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq. (1844)52. The Purloined Letter (1844/45)53. The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade (1845)54. Some Words with a Mummy (1845)55. The Power of Words (1845)56. The Imp of the Perverse (1845)57. The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether (1845)58. The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (1845)59. The Sphinx (1846)60. The Cask of Amontillado (1846)61. The Domain of Arnheim (1847)62. Mellonta Tauta (1849)63. Hop-Frog (1849)64. Von Kempelen and His Discovery (1849)65. X-ing a Paragrab (1849)66. Landor's Cottage (1849)67. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1837)68. The Journal of Julius Rodman (1840)

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