Other books that might interest you

• 

  The House of the Dead

  Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Accused of political subversion as a young man, Dostoyevsky was sentenced to four years of hard labour at a Siberian prison camp — a horrifying experience from which he developed this astounding semi-autobiographical memoir of a man condemned to ten years of servitude for murdering his wife. 
   
  A haunting and remarkable work filled with wonder and resignation, The House of the Dead ranks among the Russian novelist's greatest masterpieces. Of this powerful autobiographical novel, Tolstoy wrote, "I know no better book in all modern literature". 
   
  Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a Russian novelist and short-story writer whose psychological penetration into the darkest recesses of the human heart and his unsurpassed moments of illumination, had an immense influence on 20th-century fiction. He is commonly regarded as one of the finest novelists who ever lived, penning works including four long novels: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov. His ideas profoundly shaped literary modernism, existentialism, and various schools of psychology, theology, and literary criticism. His works are often called prophetic because he accurately predicted how Russia’s revolutionaries would behave if they came to power. In his time, he was also renowned for his activity as a journalist.   

  Show book

• 

  Midnight Cowboy - A Novel

  James Leo Herlihy

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The basis for the Oscar–winning buddy film. “There is no questioning the rampant power achieved through shriveling, shattering scenes” (Kirkus Reviews).  Midnight Cowboy is considered by many to be one of the best American novels published since World War II. The main story centers around Joe Buck, a naive but eager and ambitious young Texan, who decides to leave his dead-end job in search of a grand and glamorous life he believes he will find in New York City. But the city turns out to be a much more difficult place to negotiate than Joe could ever have imagined. He soon finds himself and his dreams compromised. Buck’s fall from innocence and his relationship with the crippled street hustler Ratso Rizzo form the novel’s emotional nucleus. This unlikely pairing of Ratso and Joe Buck is perhaps one of the most complex portraits of friendship in contemporary literature.   The focus on male friendship follows a strong path cut by Twain’s Huck and Jim, Melville’s Ishmael and Queequeg, Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby, and Kerouac’s Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty. Midnight Cowboy takes a well-deserved place among a group of distinguished American novels that write—often with unnerving candor—about those who live on the fringe of society.   “Leaves the world of innocence that is muddied by sex for a world that is innocent in the midst of sex, with a protagonist who is a sexual entrepreneur.” —The New York Review of Books

  Show book

• 

  The Sphinx without a Secret

  Oscar Wilde

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  When Lord Muchison catches sight of a mysterious and beautiful lady in a carriage on London's Bond Street, he is captivated and spends the next few days on the lookout for her again. A week later, by chance he finds himself at a dinner party where Lady Alroy is present, who he immediately recognizes as the lady from Bond Street. But her mysterious behaviour and insistence on secrecy puzzles him greatly.Their relationship develops via furtive notes and hastily arranged meetings. But as Lord Murchison prepares to propose marriage, a chance sighting of Lady Alroy entering a run-down house on the shabby Cumnor Street in a less salubrious area of London sets him on the trail of her mysterious secret....

  Show book

• 

  The Call of Cthulhu

  H.P. Lovecraft

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The Call of Cthulhu is one of H. P. Lovecraft's best-known short stories. Written in the summer of 1926, it was first published in Weird Tales, in February 1928. It is the only story written by Lovecraft in which the extraterrestrial entity Cthulhu himself makes a major appearance. 
    
   It is written in a documentary style, with three independent narratives linked together by the device of a narrator discovering notes left by a deceased relative. The narrator pieces together the whole truth and disturbing significance of the information he possesses, illustrating the story's first line: "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity; and it was not meant that we should voyage far."

  Show book

• 

  The Sea Raiders

  H. G. Wells

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  H.G. Wells has widely been considered the "Father of Science-Fiction," having invented the alien invasion genre with The War of the Worlds; the time-travel adventure with The Time Machine; and created iconic mad scientists with The Invisible Man and The Island of Dr. Moreau. The Sea Raiders tells of an unusual occurrence in which a shoal of large, aggressive cephalopods, Haploteuthis ferox  (translating as "singularly fierce squid") enter English waters and begin attacking boats and people.An Author's Republic audio production.

  Show book

• 

  Mrs Scarr

  Elinor Mordaunt

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Elinor Mordaunt (1872 - 1942) was an English author, writer and traveller. She lived extensively in Mauritius, Australia and the East Indies, which provided the inspiration and background for many of her works.Mrs. Scarr is a tense and mysterious ghost story set in Mauritius, a place where local mythology and European morals sit uneasily alongside one another. Mrs. Scarr is a beautiful woman of French origin who defies local cultural norms. She goes out alone at night and wears white rather than the traditional black. And her husband, who is a debauched sea captain, is mysteriously plagued by a single white moth wherever he goes.

  Show book