Published in 1813, Pride and Prejudice announced the arrival of the comedy of manners, a welcome change from the stiff, moralistic novels of the past. In recounting the courtship of the witty, indpendent Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy--the handsome bachelor whose arrogant pride Elizabeth regards as a fatal flaw--Austen illuminates, with subtle humor, the prejudices of society as a whole. 作者简介: Though the domain of Jane Austen's novels was as circumscribes as her life, her caustic wit and keen observation made her the equal of the greatest novelists in any language. Born the seventh child of the rector of Steventon, Hampshire, on December 16, 1775, she was educated mainly at home. At an early age she began writing sketches and satires of popular novels for her family's entertainment. As a clergyman's daughter from a well-connected family, she had ample opportunity to study the habits of the middle class, the gentry, and the aristocracy. At twenty-one, she began a novel called "First Impressi
Book De*ion Dean Koontz’s uniquetalent for writing terrifying thrillers with a heart and soul isnowhere more evident than in this latest suspense masterpiece thatpits one man against the ultimate deadline. If there were speedlimits for the sheer pulse-racing excitement allowed in one novel,Velocity would break them all. Get ready for the ride of yourlife. From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. A diabolic killer plays a harrowing game of catand mouse with a reclusive bartender in Koontz's latest grippingsuspense thriller. Billy Wiles, a 30-something bartender and formerwriter, is content with his solitary Napa County existencelistening to "beer-based psychoanalysis" from tavern regulars;visiting his hospitalized, comatose fiancée, Barbara; and carvingwood sculptures. But the simple life gets mighty complicated whenhe finds a note with a deadly, time-sensitive ultimatum: he mustchoose between the death of a young schoolteacher or an elderlyhumanitarian in six hours. Reluctant local s
Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, research Professor of English, University of Sussex Julius Caesar is among the best of Shakespeare's historical and political plays. Dealing with events surrounding the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C., the drama vividly illustrates the ways in which power and corruption are linked. The cry 'Peace, freedom and liberty!' is used to exculpate brutal realities, while personal ambitions taint public actions. Rich in characterisation and replete with eloquent rhetoric, Julius Caesar remains engrossing and topical: a play for today.
The life and times of Everyone's favorite thief Filled with action, villains, and surprises, the legend lives on.Days of old bursting with pageantry, knights, and beautiful maidensreturn in a superb edition of this favorite classic story.
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
Wuthering Heights is a wild, passionate story of the intense and almost demonic love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a foundling adopted by Catherine's father. After Mr Earnshaw's death, Heathcliff is bullied and humiliated by Catherine's brother Hindley and wrongly believing that his love for Catherine is not reciprocated, leaves Wuthering Heights, only to return years later as a wealthy and polished man. He proceeds to exact a terrible revenge for his former miseries. The action of the story is chaotic and unremittingly violent, but the accomplished handling of a complex structure, the evocative de*ions of the lonely moorland setting and the poetic grandeur of vision combine to make this unique novel a masterpiece of English literature.
Take a journey of imagination. In this all-time favorite, Phileas Fogg and his manservant set out to win a wager by travelling around the world in 80 days. They embark on a fantastic, action-packed journey into a world filled with danger and beauty, from India to the American frontier.
In the stillness of a golden September afternoon, deep in thewilderness of the Rockies, a solitary craftsman, Grady Adams, andhis magnificent Irish wolfhound, Merlin, step from shadow intolight...and into an encounter with mystery. That night, a pair ofsingular animals will watch Grady's isolated home, waiting to maketheir approach. A few miles away, Camillia Rivers, a local veterinarian, beginsto unravel the threads of a puzzle that will bring to her door allthe forces of a government in peril. At a nearby farm, long-estranged identical twins come togetherto begin a descent into darkness...In Las Vegas, a specialist inchaos theory probes the boundaries of the unknowable...On a Seattlegolf course, two men make matter-of-fact arrangements formurder...Along a highway by the sea, a vagrant scarred by the pastbegins a trek toward his destiny. In a novel that is at once wholly of our time and timeless,fearless and funny, Dean Koontz takes readers into the momentbetween one turn of the world and the next, acros
Ebenezer Scrooge is a miserly old skinflint.He hates everyone,especially children.But at Christmas three ghosts come to visit him,scare him into mending his ways,and hefinds,as he celebrates with Bod Cratchit,TinvTim and their family,that geniality brings itsown reward. This finest of all Christmas Stories is beautifully illustrated with Arthur Rackham’s superb line drawings.
With his bestselling blend of nail-biting intensity, daringartistry, and storytelling magic, Dean Koontz returns with anemotional roller coaster of a tale filled with enough twists,turns, shocks, and surprises for ten ordinary novels. Here is thestory of five days in the life of an ordinary man born to anextraordinary legacy—a story that will challenge the way you lookat good and evil, life and death, and everything in between. Jimmy Tock comes into the world on the very night his grandfatherleaves it. As a violent storm rages outside the hospital, Rudy Tockspends long hours walking the corridors between the expectantfathers' waiting room and his dying father's bedside. It's astrange vigil made all the stranger when, at the very height of thestorm's fury, Josef Tock suddenly sits up in bed and speakscoherently for the frist and last time since his stroke. What he says before he dies is that there will be five dark days inthe life of his grandson—five dates whose terrible events Jimmywill have to prepar
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag comes thispowerful novel of passion, heartbreak, and redemption--a story thatcelebrates our capacity to love one time, for all time, even in theface of adversity and change. They say that each of us becomes anentirely new person every seven years. But Rebecca Bradshaw doesn'tfeel any different when an old lover shows up severely injured atthe hospital where she runs the physical therapy department. Sevenyears ago baseball player Jace Cooper left her without a secondthought or the chance to share the life-changing secret she sworeshe'd keep from him forever. Now he was back, wanting both her helpand a second chance. Becca hadn't changed, and she didn't believeJace had either, but as she helped him repair his broken body andhis fractured past, she would find she was wrong on both counts.The only thing that had stayed the same was the most importantthing of all--and now suddenly time was running out.
Tom Jones is widely regarded as one of the first and most influential English novels。 It is certainly the funniest。 Tom Jones, the hero of the book, is introduced to the reader as the ward of a liberal Somerset squire。 Tom is a generous but slightly wild and feckless country boy with a weakness for young women。 Misfortune, followed by many spirited adventures as he travels to London to seek his fortune, teach him a sort of wisdom to go with his essential good-heartedness。 This’comic,epic prose’ will make the modern reader laugh as much as it did his forebars。Its biting satire finds an echo in today’s society,for Lessntly remarded ’This country becomes every ady more likd the eighteenth century,full of htieves and adventurers,rogues and a robust,unhypocritical saveagery sede-by-side with people lecturing others on morality’。
With little more than courage and ingenuity, five Union prisoners escaped the siege of Richmond-by hot-air balloon. They have no idea if they'll ever see civilization again-especially when they're swept off by a raging storm to the shores of an uncharted island.
His love was wild... his soul untamed... his touch forbidden....From acclaimed author Susan Krinard comes the second novel in amagnificent trilogy of a powerful clan whose sensual legacy iscloaked in secrecy-and a beautiful woman kidnapped by an outlawwhose forbidden embrace could reveal her true identity.... Once aWolf In the unspoiled expanses of the American West, Toma sAlejandro Randall was called El Lobo, the desperado and sworn enemyof powerful financier Cole MacLean. Few humans knew his trueidentity: heir to a wolf bloodline that made him as much an exoticbeast as a devastatingly attractive man. It was Toma s's plan tolure Cole MacLean's elegant fiance e, Lady Rowena Forster, from herNew York mansion to the wild frontier. There he planned to seducethe golden-haired beauty as revenge for the destruction of hisfamily at MacLean's hands. But once she was in his possession, ElLobo found himself unable to resist the call of his own untamedpassion-a passion that would claim the beauty for his own. As forLad
Henry David Thoreau's masterwork, Walden, is a collection of hisreflections on life and society. His simple but profound musings-aswell as "Civil Disobedience," his protest against the government'sinterference with civil liberty-have inspired many to embrace hisphilosophy of individualism and love of nature.
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.
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
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
Jules Verne’s third great’ science fiction' novel describes the discovery and exploration of a secret tunnel which leads through a volcano to the centre of the Earth. The leader of the expedition is an archetypal comic and eccentric boffin, and together with his ward,his nephew Axel (who is in love with the ward), and an estimable Icelandic guide, the journey is made. Journey to the Centre of the Earth achieved instant and enduring popularity on publication in 1874. Together with Around the World in Eighty Days, Five Weeks in a Balloon and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, (all available as Wordsworth Classics), it established Verne as an author of high adventure who filled his stories with a wealth of technical detail, and the energy and freshness of an extraordinary,inventive imagination.
Set in the years leading up to and culminating in Napoleon's disastrous Russian invasion, this novel focuses upon an entire society torn by conflict and change. Here is humanity in all its innocence and corruption, its wisdom and folly.
Mary Lennox was horrid Selfish and spoilt, shewas sent to stay with her hunchback uncle inYorkshire. She hated it. But when she finds the way into a secretgarden and begins to tend it, a change comesover her and her life. She meets and befriends alocal boy, the talented Dickon, and comes acrossher sickly cousin Colin who had been kepthidden from her. Between them, the threechildren work astonishing magic in themselvesand those around them. The Secret Garden is one of the best-lovedstories of all time.
TAO TE CHING IS ANCIENT CHINA'S GREAT CONTRIBUTION TO THE LITERATURE OF PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, AND MYSTICISM. TAO TE CHING CONTAINS THE TIME-HONORED TEACHINGS OFTAOISM AND BRINGSA MESSAGE OF LIVING SIMPLY, FINDING CONTENTMENT WITH A MINIMUM OFCOMFORT, AND PRIZING CULTURE ABOVE ALL ELSE. THIS IS THE LAUDED TRANSLATION OF THE EIGHTY-ONE POEMS CONSTITUTING AN EASTERN CLASSIC, THE MYSTICAL AND MORALTEACHINGS OF WHICH HAVE PROFOUNDLY INFLUENCED THE SACRED SCRIPTURES OF MANY RELIGIONS--AND THE LIVES AND HAPPINESS OF COUNTLESS MEN AND WOMEN THROUGH THE CENTURIES. TRANSLATED AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BYR. B. BLAKNEY AND WITHANEWAFTERWORD BY RICHARD JOHN LYNN
Generally regarded as the pre-eminent work of Conrads shorter fiction. Heart of Darkness is a chilling tale of horror which, as the author intended. is capable of many interpretations. Set in the Congo during the period of rapid colonial expansion in the nineteenth century, the story deals with the highly disturbing effects of economic.social and political exploitation on European and African societies and the cataclysrnic behaviour this induced in some individuals. The other two stories in this book-Youth and The End of the Tether - concern the sea and those who sail upon it, a genre in which Conrad reigns supreme.