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Description Early in his literary career Oscar Wilde published two collections of children’s stories and fairy tales. This edition contains the stories from both The Happy Prince and Other Tales, published in 1888, and A House of Pomegranates, published in 1891. The two books present two slightly different sensibilities, and though stories like “The Happy Prince” and “The Selfish Giant” have grown into timeless children’s classics, the darker tales told in A House of Pomegranates remain less
Description Yama (The Pit) recounts the lives of a group of prostitutes living and working in Anna Markovna’s brothel in the town of K⸺. The women, subject to effective slavery through the removal of their papers and onerous debts, act out a scene of easy affability every evening for the part ignorant, part monstrous clients, while keeping secret their own pasts and wished-for futures. The book was Kuprin’s attempt to denormalize the cultural ambiguity of the legal brothels of the time. His
Description The posh, English daughter of an Australian pastoralist is sent to Kuryong station to learn the ropes. At the same time, a search is underway across the desolate innards of regional New South Wales for the lost son of a wealthy uncle. These stories collide to give a humorous take on the values of family, marriage and hard work, set in the beautiful backdrop of the Australian Outback. This was Banjo Paterson’s first novel after a string of widely celebrated poems written in the late
Description McTeague is an enormously strong but dim-witted former miner now working as a dentist in San Francisco towards the end of the nineteenth century. He falls in love with Trina, one of his patients, and shortly after their engagement she wins a large sum in a lottery. All is well until McTeague is betrayed and they fall into a life of increasing poverty and degradation. This novel is often presented as an example of American naturalism where the behavior and experience of characters
Description Edith Nesbit was a popular children’s author of the late Victorian and early Edwardian eras in Britain. Though she was writing more than a century ago, her books nevertheless remain popular and are generally still in print. The House of Arden was published in 1908. Like her other, perhaps better known tales, such as Five Children and It , the story takes quite ordinary children of the time and plunges them into fantastical adventures. In this book, two children, with the interesting
Description In the Scarlet Pimpernel’s fourth outing, he and his league want to free the orphaned Dauphin of France from his captors. But someone else has the same idea, although for very different, and selfish, reasons. In addition to trying to outflank his rival, the Pimpernel also has to deal with a member of his inner circle whose romance has caused him to disobey orders and put the entire plan in jeopardy. Completing his mission while once again escaping the clutches of his arch-enemy
Description A young woman in 17th century Holland inadvertently overhears the details of a plot to kill a political figure. The principal figures in the plot, one of whom is her brother and another her former lover, hire an insolent English mercenary to kidnap her to get her out of the way until their deeds are done. From there very little goes according to plan. For her fifth novel in the series, Baroness Orczy uses Franz Hals’ famous painting titled The Laughing Cavalier to build an elaborate
Description The Land That Time Forgot opens with the discovery near Greenland of a floating thermos flask containing a manuscript by castaway Tyler Bowen, Jr. The document recounts a series of adventures that starts with a sea battle against a German U-boat and ends on a mysterious island populated by hostile prehistoric animals and people. The second part of the book, “The People That Time Forgot,” continues the story with the tale of Tom Billings, who has been sent on a mission to rescue
Description In the third installment of her Scarlet Pimpernel stories, Baroness Orczy brings back Chauvelin, the French official unable to catch the Pimpernel in the first novel. This time he is more determined, more ruthless, and more devious. He plans to capture both the Pimpernel and his wife, threatening an entire town in the process. He has thought of every possibility, closed every loophole, anticipated every move of his arch-rival. It appears that at last the Pimpernel might have met his
Description The young Vicomte de Marny rashly challenges a French official to a duel, and dies as a result. The Vicomte’s father, the ancient Duc de Marny, insists that his daughter, Juliette, swear an oath before God to seek revenge on the man who killed her brother. Years later, as the French Revolution rages, Juliette insinuates herself into the official’s household, and quickly discovers a way to anonymously accuse him before the National Convention. It will take all of the Scarlet