Other books that might interest you

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  Fireside Reading of The Call of...

  Jack London

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  Experiencing a story read out loud is one of the oldest forms of entertainment there is. Fireside Reading is a way to slow down, reconnect with the timeless wisdom of great books and rediscover the simple pleasure of being read to. Join Gildart Jackson in front of a cozy fire as he reads The Call of the Wild by Jack London to you and your family from beginning to end.

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  The Great Gatsby

  F Scott itzgerald

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  Awful, rich people- and the folks who want to be just like them. 
   
  Drawing freely from the real people and actual events of its setting in 1920s Long Island (with literary license, of course), The Great Gatsby looks at the acquisition of the American Dream of wealth, power, and prestige, and what the costs are to those who realize that dream. And if that sounds a bit too highbrow for you, there are speakeasies, a broken nose, wild parties, and a bit of rough and tumble as well. 
   
  The Great Gatsby has made its way into the canon of required reading for many American high schools for its richness of symbolism, its mystery, and its beautiful prose. 

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  Lecture to Art Students...

  Oscar Wilde

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  Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 - 30 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s.
  LECTURE TO ART STUDENTS: Delivered to the Art students of the Royal Academy at their Club in Golden Square, Westminster, on June 30, 1883. The text is taken from the original manuscript. In the lecture which it is my privilege to deliver before you to-night I do not desire to give you any abstract definition of beauty at all.

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  A Model Crime - From their pens...

  William Pett Ridge

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  William Pett Ridge was born at Chartham, near Canterbury, Kent, on 22nd April 1859.  
  His family’s resources were certainly limited. His father was a railway porter, and the young Pett Ridge, after schooling in Marden, Kent became a clerk in a railway clearing-house. The hours were long and arduous, but self-improvement was Pett Ridge’s goal.  After working from nine until seven o’clock he would attend evening classes at Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institute and then to follow his passion; the ambition to write.  He was heavily influenced by Dickens and several critics thought he had the capability to be his successor.  
  From 1891 many of his humourous sketches were published in the St James's Gazette, the Idler, Windsor Magazine and other literary periodicals of the day. 
  Pett Ridge published his first novel in 1895, A Clever Wife. By the advent of his fifth novel, Mord Em'ly, a mere three years later in 1898, his success was obvious.  His writing was written from the perspective of those born with no privilege and relied on his great talent to find humour and sympathy in his portrayal of working class life. 
  Today Pett Ridge and other East End novelists including Arthur Nevinson, Arthur Morrison and Edwin Pugh are being grouped together as the Cockney Novelists.   
  In 1924, Pugh set out his recollections of Pett Ridge from the 1890s: “I see him most clearly, as he was in those days, through a blue haze of tobacco smoke. We used sometimes to travel together from Waterloo to Worcester Park on our way to spend a Saturday afternoon and evening with H. G. Wells. Pett Ridge does not know it, but it was through watching him fill his pipe, as he sat opposite me in a stuffy little railway compartment, that I completed my own education as a smoker... Pett Ridge had a small, dark, rather spiky moustache in those days, and thick, dark, sleek hair which is perhaps not quite so thick or dark, though hardly less sleek nowadays than it was then”. 
  With his success, on the back of his prolific output and commercial success, Pett Ridge gave generously of both time and money to charity. In 1907 he founded the Babies Home at Hoxton.  This was one of several organisations that he supported that had the welfare of children as their mission.  
  His circle considered Pett Ridge to be one of life's natural bachelors. In 1909 they were rather surprised therefore when he married Olga Hentschel.  
  As the 1920’s arrived Pett Ridge added to his popularity with the movies. Four of his books were adapted into films.  
  Pett Ridge now found the peak of his fame had passed. Although he still managed to produce a book a year he was falling out of fashion and favour with the reading public and his popularity declined rapidly.  His canon runs to over sixty novels and short-story collections as well as many pieces for magazines and periodicals. 
  William Pett Ridge died, on 29th September 1930, at his home, Ampthill, Willow Grove, Chislehurst, at the age of 71. 
  He was cremated at West Norwood on 2nd October 1930.

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  Legend of Sleepy Hollow The -...

  Washington Irving, Classic...

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  In the quiet Dutch settlement of Sleepy Hollow, nestled in the Hudson Valley, schoolteacher Ichabod Crane finds himself entangled in local superstition and romantic rivalry. He competes for the affection of the beautiful Katrina Van Tassel, only to be confronted by the eerie legend of the Headless Horseman—a ghostly figure said to haunt the region in search of his lost head.Blending gothic horror with subtle humor and folklore, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is one of America's earliest and most enduring ghost stories. Irving masterfully captures the mood of early American superstition and rural life, creating a tale that is both haunting and strangely charming.

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  The Big Four

  Agatha Christie

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  Detective Hercules Poirot is put to the test in this fast-moving tale of skulduggery and intrigue. He needs all his skills to not only solve murder but to survive as well! Accompanied and supported by the inimitable Captain Hastings, Poirot once again shows why he is considered the greatest detective in the world!

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