9780553277 456
Adultery is not a typical Jane Austen theme, but when it disturbs the relatively peaceful household at Mansfield Park, it has quite unexpected results.
Jules Verne (1828-1905) is internationally famous as the author of a distinctive series of adventure stories describing new travel technologies which opened up the world and provided means to escape from it. The collective enthusiasm of generations of readers of his 'extraordinary voyages' was a key factor in the rise of modern science fiction. In The Mysterious Island a group of men escape imprisonment during the American Civil War by stealing a balloon. Blown across the world, they are air-wrecked on a remote desert island. In a manner reminiscent of Robinson Crusoe, the men apply their scientific knowledge and technical skill to exploit the island's bountiful resources, eventually constructing a sophisticated society in miniature. The book is also an intriguing mystery story, for the island has a secret.,
The Pickwick Papers is Dickens' first novel and widely regarded as one of the major classics of comic writing in English. Originally serialised in monthly instalments, it quickly became a huge popular success with sales reaching 40,000 by the final part.
After a decade-long absence, Mayer returns to picture books, using computer-generated graphics to illustrate an original tale set in long-ago Japan. When the emperor's daughter, Shibumi, discovers the poverty-stricken world beyond her garden walls, she longs to resolve the inequity. Tying herself to an enormous kite fashioned for her by the royal kite-maker, she takes flight, telling her father that she will not come down until the city below "is as beautiful as the palace, or the palace is as squalid as the city." Wealthy noblemen who wish to preserve the status quo mount an attack, and the kite carries off both Shibumi and the kite-maker. The bereaved emperor spends his years trying to make amends, and in the end a young samurai sets out to find the princess and restore her to her father and the transformed city. Mayer grounds his message in familiar fairy tale elements, and proceeds at a leisurely pace. His computer art approaches the brooding style of his paintings in East of the Sun & West of the Moon (a