Nicholas Nickleby,a gentleman's son fallen upon hard times,must set out to make his way in the world.Along the way various older,money-grubbing villains attempt to injure him.Eventually,with the assistance of kind patrons,he and his family achieve economic security and a happy home.Sounds rather trite,doesn't it? Not with characters written by Dickens(Hard Times,Audio Reviews,LJ 5/1/98).Schoolmaster Squeers would make a fine poster boy for child abusers.Ralph Nickleby's initial desire to injure Nicholas gradually develops into a full-blown obsession.Then there are the kind Cheeryble brothers,the gentle,much-abused Smike,and a host of other friends who provide comic relief.Martin Jarvis does an outstanding job of reading this book.His ingenues sound young(a frequent problem area for male readers)while his villains are deliciously evil.The only problems are with the abridgment.In several places,choppy editing has left brief,disconnected scenes and/or character cameos without relevance to the abridged tale.Still
A new collection from David Sedaris is cause for jubilation. His recent move to Paris has inspired hilarious pieces, including Me Talk Pretty One Day, about his attempts to learn French. His family is another inspiration. You Cant Kill the Rooster is a portrait of his brother who talks incessant hip-hop slang to his bewildered father. And no one hones a finer fury in response to such modern annoyances as restaurant meals presented in ludicrous towers and cashiers with 6-inch fingernails. Compared by The New Yorker to Twain and Hawthorne, Sedaris has become one of our best-loved authors. Sedaris is an amazing reader whose appearances draw hundreds, and his performancesincluding a jaw-dropping impression of Billie Holiday singing I wish I were an Oscar Meyer weinerare unforgettable. Sedariss essays on living in Paris are some of the funniest hes ever written. At last, someone even meaner than the French! The sort of blithely sophisticated, loopy humour that might have resulted if Dorothy Parker and James Thurbe
Gaskell's last novel,widely considered her masterpiece,follows the fortunes of two families in nineteenth century rural England.At its core are family relationships-father,daughter and step-mother,father and sons,father and step-daughter-all tested and strained by the romantic entanglements that ensue. Despite its underlying seriousness.the prevailing tone is one of comdy.Gaskell vividly portrays the world of the late 1820's and the forces of change within it ,and her vision is always humane and progressive. The story is full of acute observation and sympathetic character-study:the feudal squire clinging to old values,his naturalist son welcoming the new world of science,the local doctor and his scheming second wife,the two girls brought together by their parents'marriage……
The classic story of kindness, love, honor and poverty is not as depressing as some of Hugo's other works. Its historical sweep, during the brewing of the French Revolution, is large, and its emotional sweep even larger. British actor Michael York throws his considerable histrionic skills into the task--each character is carefully articulated, both by tone and pacing. Having played classic French characters before--notably D'Artagnan in The Three Musketeers and its sequel--York knows how to manipulate scene and feeling in this type of ambiance, and he performs effortlessly and superbly. D.W. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book De*ion "Moves like a roller coaster without brakes...Koontz is America'sNo.1 author of thrillers. One of his finest novels." -------Denver Pos We have your wife. You can get her back for two millioncash. On an ordinary afternoon, an ordinary man, a gardener of modestmeans, gets a phone call out of his worst nightmare. the caller isdead serious. He doesn't care that Mitch can't raise that kind ofmoney. He's confident that Mitch will find a way, If he loves hiswife enough... Mitch does love her enough. He loves her more than life itself.He's got sixty hours to prove it. He has to find the two million bythen. But he'll pay a lot more. He'll pay anything. From its tense opening to its shattering climax, The Husband is athriller that will hold you in its relentless grip for every twist,every shock, every revelation. This is a Dean Koontz novel, afterall. And there's no other experience quite like it. Book Dimension length: (cm)17.4 width:(cm)10.6
With an Introduction and Notes by Adam Roberts Royal Holloway, University of London Homer's great epic describes the many adventures of Odysseus, Greek warrior, as he strives over many years to return to his home island of Ithaca after the Trojan War. His colourful adventures, his endurance, his love for his wife and son have the same power to move and inspire readers today as they did in Archaic Greece, 2800 years ago. This poem has been translated many times over the years, but Chapman's sinewy, gorgeous rendering (1616) stands in a class of its own. Chapman believed himself inspired by the spirit of Homer himself, and matches the breadth and power of the original with a complex and stunning idiom of his own. John Keats expressed his admiration for the resulting work in the famous sonnet, 'On first looking into Chapman's Homer': 'Much have I travelled in the realms of gold...'
The Owl and the Pussy-Cat, Calico Pie and The Pobble Who Has No Toes, together with Edward Lear's crazy limericks, have entertained adults and children alike for over 100 years. This edition, illustrated by the author, contains all the verse and stories of The Book of Nonsense, More Nonsense, Nonsense Songs, Nonsense Stories and Nonsense Alphabets and Nonsense Cookery. It has a biographical Preface by Lear himself, and concludes with some delightful 'heraldic' sketches of his cat, Foss. 作者简介： Edward Lear (1812-1888) Born in London, Edward Lear was the youngest of twenty-one children. He made his reputation as a water-colorist, and invented himself as an Old Man with a Beard.
Mining crimes of the past and politics, Truman ( Murder at thePentagon ) scants the basic plotting requirements of her 11thCapital Crimes case, which is marred by superfluous unsolvedmurders and an unconvincing conclusion. When the body of PaulineJuris, personal secretary of wealthy developer Wendell Tierney, isfound in the Potomac River, Tierney calls former attorney, now lawprofessor, Mackenzie Smith for advice. Mac, whose beloved wifeAnnabel wants him to stop dabbling in detection, agrees to seeWendell, but he refuses to ferret out the police line on the case,even though a former student of his heads the investigation team.Tierney, becoming chief suspect when love letters, purportedly fromhim, are found in the dead woman's apartment, again begs for Mac'shelp. Both Mac and Annabel are drawn into the case, which takes onanother twist when the suspect's adopted son, Sun Ben Cheong, isarrested for money laundering. Truman plumps up Mac's low-keysleuthing with the goings on of the fictitious Scarlet Sin
Welcome to New York City's Upper East Side, where Gossip Girl and her friends are the biggest stars ...whether or not the cameras are rolling. Lights, camera, scandal! Hollywood is invading New York and Serena is set for her big screen debut. She's already having an off-screen romance with her onscreen lover, Thaddeus. What will that mean for Hamptons-bound Nate? And if Nate is free, what about Blair? Sure, she's off to London to spend time with her royal boytoy, but Nate will always be Prince Charming in her eyes...
The Red Badge of Courage is one of the greatest war novels of all time. It reports on the American Civil War through the eyes of Henry Fleming, an ordinary farm boy turned soldier. It evokes the chaos and the dull clatter of war: the acrid smoke, the incessant rumours of coming battles, the filth and cold, the numbimg monotony, the unworldly wailing of the dying. Like an impressionist painter, Crane also captures the strange beauty of war: the brilliant red flags against a blue sky, steel bayonets flashing in the morning sun as soldiers step off into battle. In the midst of this chaotic outer world, he creates an intricate inner world as he takes us inside the head of Henry Fleming.
Set in an apocalyptic future ending in the year 2100, Shelley's 1826 novel concerns a plague that destroys almost all of humankind. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Jude the Obscure created storms of scandal and protest for the author upon its publication. Hardy, disgusted and disappointed, devoted the remainder of his life to poetry and never wrote another novel. Today, the material is far less shocking. Jude Fawley, a poor stone carver with aspirations toward an academic career, is thwarted at every turn and is finally forced to give up his dreams of a university education. He is tricked into an unwise marriage, and when his wife deserts him, he begins a relationship with a free-spirited cousin. With this begins the descent into bleak tragedy as the couple alternately defy and succumb to the pressures of a deeply disapproving society. Hardy's characters have a fascinating ambiguity: they are victimized by a stern moral code, but they are also selfish and weak-willed creatures who bring on much of their own difficulties through their own vacillations and submissions to impulse. The abridgment speeds Jude's fall to considerable dramatic effect, but it also deletes the au
Starred Review.It's wondrous to listen to a fine reading of a long-loved novel.Leishman makes masterly use of volume,timbre and resonance to distinguish between characters and draw us into the emotional swings and vibrations of the internal musings of each.She creates not a new but a more nuanced reading,following the interwoven streams of consciousness in a British English that lends authenticity to each voice.Leishman swims smoothly through Woolf's sentences that ebb and flow with numerous parenthetical thoughts and fresh images.These passages are interspersed with quick,sharp,simple sentences that gain strength in contrast.Leishman also draws our attention to Woolf's poetic prose: her rhythms and images,her use of hard consonants in monosyllabic words in counterpoint to long,soft,dreamy words and phrases.To The Lighthouse plays back and forth between telescopic and microscopic views of nature and human nature.Mrs.Ramsey is both trapped in and pleased in her roles as wife,mother and hostess.The introspectiv
Since its publication in 1946, George Orwell's fable of aworkers' revolution gone wrong has rivaled Hemingway's The Old Manand the Sea as the Shortest Serious Novel It's OK to Write a BookReport About. (The latter is three pages longer and less fun toread.) Fueled by Orwell's intense disillusionment with SovietCommunism, Animal Farm is a nearly perfect piece of writing, bothan engaging story and an allegory that actually works. When thedowntrodden beasts of Manor Farm oust their drunken human masterand take over management of the land, all are awash in collectivistzeal. Everyone willingly works overtime, productivity soars, andfor one brief, glorious season, every belly is full. The animals'Seven Commandment credo is painted in big white letters on thebarn. All animals are equal. No animal shall drink alcohol, wearclothes, sleep in a bed, or kill a fellow four-footed creature.Those that go upon four legs or wings are friends and thetwo-legged are, by definition, the enemy. Too soon, however, thepigs, who hav
Every so often a character so captures the hearts andimaginations of readers that he seems to take on a life of his ownlong after the final page is turned. For such a character, one bookis not enough--readers must know what happens next. Now Dean Koontzreturns with the novel his fans have been demanding. With theemotional power and sheer storytelling artistry that are histrademarks, Koontz takes up once more the story of a unique younghero and an eccentric little town in a tale that is equal partssuspense and terror, adventure and mystery--and altogetherirresistibly odd. We're all a little odd beneath the surface. He'sthe most unlikely hero you'll ever meet--an ordinary guy with amodest job you might never look at twice. But there's so much moreto any of us than meets the eye--and that goes triple for OddThomas. For Odd lives always between two worlds in the small deserttown of Pico Mundo, where the heroic and the harrowing are everydayevents. Odd never asked to communicate with the dead--it'ssomething
The wild rush of action in this classic frontier adventure story has made The Last of the Mohicans the most popular of James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales. Deep in the forests of upper New York State, the brave woodsman Hawkeye (Natty Bumppo) and his loyal Mohican friends Chingachgook and Uncas become embroiled in the bloody battles of the French and Indian War. The abduction of the beautiful Munro sisters by hostile savages, the treachery of the renegade brave Magua, the ambush of innocent settlers, and the thrilling events that lead to the final tragic confrontation between rival war parties create an unforgettable, spine-tingling picture of life on the frontier. And as the idyllic wilderness gives way to the forces of civilization, the novel presents a moving portrayal of a vanishing race and the end of its way of life in the great American forests.
Since his first appearance in Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes has been one of the most beloved fictional characters ever created. Now, in two paperback volumes, Bantam Classics presents all fifty-six short stories and four novels featuring Conan Doyle’s classic hero—a truly complete collection of Sherlock Holmes’s adventures in crime! Volume I includes the early novel A Study in Scarlet, which introduced the eccentric genius of Sherlock Holmes to the world. This baffling murder mystery, with the cryptic word Rache written in blood, first brought Holmes together with Dr. John Watson. Next, The Sign of Four presents Holmes’s famous “seven percent solution” and the strange puzzle of Mary Morstan in the quintessential locked-room mystery. Also included are Holmes’s feats of extraordinary deception in such famous cases as the chilling “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” the baffling riddle of “The Musgrave Ritual,” and the ingeniously plot
Macbeth is one of Shakespeares greatest tragedies: a drama of crime and punishment, of temptation, guilt, remorse and retribution. The portrayals of Macbeth himself and his wife are memorably persuasive in the rendition of the psychology of ambition,rationalised treachery and eventual disillusionment. Repeatedly the rich and often sinuously complex verse gives general resonance to the particular situation, so that some of the speechesprovide enduring epitomes of states of being which many of us,intermittently, may experience. Inner division, pangs of conscience, the sense of being ambushed by events, and desperatedefiance: they are there; but so too is a vitality of expression and enactment which offsets the plays sombre atmosphere.
When 5,000-year-old human bones are found at a constructionsite in the Blue Ridge Mountain town of Woodsboro, the news drawsarchaeologist Callie Dunbrook out of her sabbatical and into awhirlwind of adventure, danger, and romance.
Tom Jones isn't a bad guy, but boys just want to have fun. Nearly two and a half centuries after its publication, the adventures of the rambunctious and randy Tom Jones still makes for great reading. I'm not in the habit of using words like bawdy or rollicking, but if you look them up in the dictionary, you should see a picture of this book. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Hawthorne's classic treatise on morality, judgment, and exile in Puritan America. EACH ENRICHED CLASSIC EDITION INCLUDES: A concise introduction that gives readers important background information A chronology of the author's life and work A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context An outline of key themes and plot points to help readers form their own interpretations Detailed explanatory notes Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience Enriched Classics offer readers affordable editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and insightful commentary. The scholarship provided in Enriched Classics enables readers to appreciate, understand, and enjoy the world's finest books to their full potential. SERIES E
Prince Myshkin returns to Russia from an asylum inSwitzerland. As he becomes embroiled in the franticamatory and financiaI intrigues which centre arounda cast of brilliantly realised characters and whichultimately lead to tragedy, he emerges as a uniquecombination of the Christian ideal of perfection andDostoevsky's own views, afflictions and manners.ttis serene selflessness is contrasted with the worldlyqualities of every other character in the novel.Dostoevsky supplies a harsh indJctment of the Russianruling class of his day who have created a world whichcannot accommodate the goodness of this idiot.
Lawrence's finest, most mature novel initially met with disgust and incomprehension. In the love affairs of two sisters, Ursula with Rupert, and Gudrun with Gerald,critics could only see a sorry tale of sexual depravity and philosophical obscurity. Women in Love is, however, a profound response to a whole cultural crisis. The 'progress' of the modern industrialised world had led to the carnage of the First World War. What, then, did it mean to call ourselves 'human'? On what grounds could we place ourselves above and beyond the animal world? What are the definitive forms of our relationships - love, marriage,family, friendship - really worth? And how might they be otherwise? Without directly referring to the war, Women in Love explores these questions with restless energy. As a sequel to The Rainbow, the novel develops experimental techniques which made Lawrence one of the most important writers of the Modernist movement.
