Publisher: Charles River Editors
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was one of the most famous authors of the Victorian Era. Hardy is best known for novels such as Far from the Madding Crowd and Tess of the d’Urbervilles but he also was a very influential poet. This edition of The Well-Beloved includes a table of contents.
The Red Badge of CourageThe Red Badge of Courage was Stephen Crane's best known novel. It was one of his two great ones, the other being the under rated, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, which was also a ground breaking novel taking up the subject of women's plights in industrial society as the Red Badge takes up men's plight in wartime.The story is a cerebral one, about what the protagonist, new recruit 18 year old Yankee Henry Fleming, thinks. As in most Crane writing, most characters remain nameless such as the Tall Soldier. The story starts with all the enthusiasm of newbies going to war. Then Fleming faces the boredom of military camp and, as a writer famously said, 99% of the time boredom, 1% terror. Crane introduces us to that subject through this novel. In the first battle Henry runs; but he is covered by the confusion and gets to return and reunite with his fellows. He picks up a fake injury to justify this by being bonked on the head by another retreating soldier. In the last section, Fleming steps up as the flag carrier, fights well, and survives for another day. Another later Crane short story, The Veteran, features Fleming as an older man, so presumably he survived the Civil War. This is all left open ended as the novel only covers a few weeks time in the four year war. Listen to The Veteran to see how it all turned out and was remembered.Show book
Zuleika Dobson is a satire of undergraduate life at Oxford. It was Beerbohm's only novel, but was nonetheless very successful. This satire includes the famous line "Death cancels all engagements" and presents a corrosive view of Edwardian Oxford. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Zuleika Dobson 59th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century!Show book
One of the most celebrated and influential novels of the past two centuries tells the vivid and unforgettable coming-of-age story of the orphan Pip In the marsh country of Victorian England, young Pip lives with his sister and her husband, the kindly blacksmith Joe, eking out a hardscrabble life. Pip’s one true aspiration is to apprentice for Joe and become a blacksmith himself, a dream that sustains him and gives him hope. But though he doesn’t know it, Pip’s fates are about to turn. Alone in a graveyard one night, he encounters a grizzled and mud-smeared escaped convict. Dragging a heavy shackle from an injured leg, the man demands that Pip steal him food and help him remove the clanging iron. Cowed, Pip accommodates his commands without resistance. It isn’t until years later, after Pip has forged a tender relationship with the eccentric Mrs. Havisham, fallen into unexpected prosperity in London, and found himself gripped by love for the charming-yet-fickle Estella, that the true consequences of that night in the graveyard finally come to light. Celebrated for its vibrant characters, engrossing plot, and universal themes of ambition and hope, Great Expectations stands as a pillar of Victorian literature and a preeminent entry in the Dickensian oeuvre. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.Show book
When Madame Motamboru, widow of the assassinated President of Bakara, is framed for murder in Singapore, she requests that her old friend Virgil Tibbs take part in the investigation. Because of U.S. interests in the area, Tibbs is cleared for passage. Upon arrival, Tibbs finds that the police there are convinced of Madame Motamboru's guilt. All the evidence says that only she could have shot the man who visited her hotel suite. It's up to Tibbs to save her from hanging by uncovering the truth and outwitting the sinister organization that wants her dead. And when Tibbs gets involved in another more bizarre murder case, it will take all of his legendary intelligence and cool-headed savvy to find the answers to two deadly and, apparently, unsolvable puzzles.Show book
Johann Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853) was a German poet and writer and one of the founding fathers of the German Romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.The Scholar tells the tale of a reclusive old academic with an obsession for orderliness and absolute quiet, who also suffers from acute hypochondria. His doctor suggests that a cure might be to marry...preferably a woman who is the complete opposite of himself. He suggests Antoinette, the vivacious, party-loving daughter of the landlord downstairs. But it is Antoinette's quiet, studious sister who is secretly in love with the old scholar, and who is of course, more suited to making him happy. The question is, how destiny can conspire to effect the right match.Show book
Mark Twain's "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" was first published in the November 18,1865, edition of The New York Saturday Press, under the title "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog." The story is set in a gold-mining camp in Calaveras County, California, and has its origins in the folklore of the Gold Rush era. It was one of Twain's earliest writings, and helped establish his reputation as a humorist. He eventually included it as the title story in his first collection of tales.Show book
