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Gentleman thief A.J. Raffles burgles his way through a series of homes in late Victorian England. A Thief in the Night is a short story collection and Hornung's third book in the Raffles series. (Summary by Cathy Barratt)...

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Adventure, Fiction

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The Mysteries of Paris (French: Les Mystères de Paris) is a novel by Eugène Sue which was published serially in Journal des débats from June 19, 1842 until October 15, 1843. Les Mystères de Paris singlehandedly increased the circulation of Journal des débats. There has been lots of talk on the origins of the French novel of the 19th century: Stendhal, Balzac, Dumas, Gautier, Sand or Hugo. One often forgets Eugène Sue. Still, The Mysteries of Paris occupies a unique space in the birth of this literary genre: it entranced thousands of readers for more than a year (even illiterates who had episodes read to them) and was also a major work in the formation of a certain form of social consciousness. One often hears that the 1848 revolution was partly born in the pages of the Mysteries of Paris or, more appropriately, that the Mysteries of Paris helped create a climate which allowed the 1848 revolution to occur.The hero of the novel is the mysterious and distinguished Rodolphe, who is really the Grand Duke of Gérolstein (a fictional country) but is disguised as a Parisian worker. Rodolphe can speak in argot, is extremely strong and a good ...

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Mystery, Fantasy, Adventure

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A man who has been condemned to death writes down his cogitations, feelings and fears while he is waiting for his execution. He does not betray his name to the reader or what he has done. He describes his life in prison, everything from what his cell looks like to the personality of the prison priest....

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Fiction

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The Fair Rewards by Thomas Beer . . . is a really distiguished novel. The writing is far above the average: it has style and sophistication and personality, intermingled with a truly vivid show of imagination. It even borders on brilliancy, but it is a hard, cold, cynical sort of brilliancy that chills. It almost hurts . . . The title itself is indicative of cynicism. It is derived from Shakespeare's quotation, These be the fair rewards of those that love, and it is an ironical reference, for Mark Walling, the blind, simple, loving idolater, in return for his great and unselfish devotion to Margot, reaps selfishness and ingratitude and lack of consideration. Hand in hand with the progress of Mark from country yokel to a stage producer goes the history of the American theatre. Intermingled with the imaginary characters are Clyde Fitch, Anna Held, Mr. Frohman and several other flesh-and-blood personages that strengthen the realism. (New York Times review, June 4, 1922)...

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Fiction

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This is the final volume in the trilogy following the smart, stylish, divorced and independent businesswoman Emma McChesney in her career from stenographer, then drummer (traveling salesman) to owner of her own company. (The first was Roast Beef, Medium and the second Personality Plus both in the catalog). Edna Ferber first gained success with these stories and later went on to write Show Boat, Giant and other well known books. First published in 1915, Emma's son, Jock, has moved to Chicago with his new wife. Emma decides to sell in South America and proves she has not lost her magic touch. Emma gets involved in romance, saving a business and many other things. Emma symbolizes the ideal woman at the dawn of the twentieth century: sharp, capable, charming, and progressive. ( Summary by Phil Chenevert)...

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Fiction

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I consider the story as a whole to he good, though I am not aware that the public ever corroborated that verdict. - the author The Claverings is the best wrought of the novels designed for The Cornhill, and as surely conceived as any book he ever wrote. - Sadleir. It is a novel of atmosphere, and the atmosphere is of that sort very dangerous for the English novelist, the atmosphere captured so supremely well by Thackeray the green-lighted, close-scented gambling rooms, the shabby adventures of half-deserted spas, the shelving beaches of foreign watering-places, concealed accents, stolen passports, impoverished counts and impertinent ladies' maids.... Trollope's most serious attempt to escape from his own personality. - Walpole (Summary by )...

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Fiction

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Miriam Henderson is one of what novelist Dolf Wyllarde (in her great work, The Pathway of the Pioneer ) termed nous autres, i.e., young gentlewomen who must venture forth and earn their living after their fathers have been financially ruined. Also, she has read Villette; she thus applies for and is offered a job teaching conversational English at a girls' school, albeit in Germany rather than France. Pointed Roofs describes her year abroad, as she endeavors to make her way in the hotbed of seething female personalities that populate the school, overseen by her employer, the formidable Fraulein. Richardson is adroit at conveying nuances of human perception through acutely observed physical and emotional detail. She was unfortunately labeled the inventor of stream of consciousness, and her later novels suffered when she started believing her own press; but her early ones (the first half-dozen are pre-1923) are free from stylistic excess, and are poignant -- or in this case -- pointed explorations of the workings of the human mind. (Introduction by Grant Hurlock)...

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Fiction

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Published in 1901, The Sacred Fount delves into the interior observations and obsessions of one Englishman during a weekend gathering in the country. Regarding himself as a master of human psychology, the narrator watches the goings-on of the other guests and weaves theories about the interpersonal implications of what he witnesses, leaving the not infrequently perplexed reader the task of sorting out whether his conclusions are facts or fancies. (Introduction by S. Kovalchik)...

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Fiction, Literature

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What Is Man?, published by Mark Twain in 1906, is a dialogue between a young man and an older man jaded to the world. It involves ideas of destiny and free will, as well as of psychological egoism. The Old Man asserted that the human being is merely a machine, and nothing more. The Young Man objects, and asks him to go into particulars and furnish his reasons for his position. This collection of short stories covers a wide range of Twain's interests: the serious, the political and the ironically humorous. (Summary by Wikipedia and John Greenman)...

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Essay/Short nonfiction, Fiction, Satire

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Jane Austen demonstrated her mastery of the epistolary novel genre in Lady Susan, which she wrote in 1795 but never published. Although the primary focus of this short novel is the selfish behavior of Lady Susan as she engages in affairs and searches for suitable husbands for herself and her young daughter, the actual action shares its importance with Austen’s manipulation of her characters' behavior by means of their reactions to the letters that they receive. The heroine adds additional interest by altering the tone of her own letters based on the recipient of the letter. Thus, the character of Lady Susan is developed through many branches as Austen suggests complications of identity and the way in which that identity is based on interaction rather than on solitary constructions of personality. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

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Epistolary fiction, Fiction, Literature

Description Details
It is the noon hour at a museum in New York City. The date: May 23, 1913. The weekday, attendance is light; the attendees are scattered between two floors. Suddenly a cry rings out from the second floor. Scrambling to Section II, the museum director discovers a teenage girl dead with an arrow through her heart. An older woman hovers over her whispering incoherent phrases in the girl's ear and offering incomprehensible answers to the director's questions. She is the only witness to the crime, or accident, as the case may be. How will the feeble, 83 year-old Mr. Gryce unravel this mystery when this witness is apparently insane? Anna Katharine Green was noted for her scientific approach to the murder mystery. In The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow she breaks more ground with her in-depth study of the psychological interplay between the murderer, the victim and the witnesses. Although more quietly paced, this mystery presents many elements of a current psychological thriller: blind ambition, narcissism, obsession and betrayal. Green adds a peculiar twist with the fact that two heartbroken relatives of the victim sacrifice virtually everythin...

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Fiction, Mystery

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A story of psychological horror, The Return explores ideas of identity, love, and alienation. Arthur grapples with the reactions of his family and community, and his own sanity, when he experiences a sudden and mysterious transformation. ( Summary by Corinna Schultz )...

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Fiction, Horror/Ghost stories

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The fathers and children of the novel refers to the growing divide between the two generations of Russians, and the character Yevgeny Bazarov has been referred to as the first Bolshevik, for his nihilism and rejection of the old order. Turgenev wrote Fathers and Sons as a response to the growing cultural schism that he saw between liberals of the 1830s/1840s and the growing nihilist movement. Both the nihilists (the sons) and the 1830s liberals sought Western-based social change in Russia. Additionally, these two modes of thought were contrasted with the conservative Slavophiles, who believed that Russia's path lay in its traditional spirituality. Fathers and Sons might be regarded as the first wholly modern novel in Russian Literature (Gogol's Dead Souls, another main contender, is sometimes referred to as a poem or epic in prose as in the style of Dante's Divine Comedy). The novel introduces a dual character study, as seen with the gradual breakdown of Bazarov's and Arkady's nihilistic opposition to emotional display, especially in the case of Bazarov's love for Madame Odintsova and Fenichka. This prominent theme of character dual...

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Fiction, Literature

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Our Mutual Friend (written in the years 1864–65) is the last novel completed by Charles Dickens and is one of his most sophisticated works, combining psychological insight with social analysis. It centres on, in the words of critic J. Hillis Miller, money, money, money, and what money can make of life but is also about human values. In the opening chapters a body is found in the Thames and identified as John Harmon, a young man recently returned to London to receive his inheritance. Were he alive, his father's will would require him to marry Bella Wilfer, a beautiful, mercenary girl whom he had never met. Instead, the money passes to the working-class Boffins, and the effects spread into various corners of London society. (Wikipedia)...

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Fiction, Literature

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The Golden Bowl is a 1904 novel by Henry James. Set in England, this complex, intense study of marriage and adultery completes what some critics have called the major phase of James' career. The Golden Bowl explores the tangle of interrelationships between a father and daughter and their respective spouses. The novel focuses deeply and almost exclusively on the consciousness of the central characters, with sometimes obsessive detail but also with powerful insight....

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Fiction, Literature

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Apart from Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - the pieces which made both Irving and The Sketch Book famous - other tales include Roscoe, The Broken Heart, The Art of Book-making, A Royal Poet, The Spectre Bridegroom, Westminster Abbey, Little Britain, and John Bull. His stories were highly influenced by German folktales, with The Legend of Sleepy Hollow being inspired by a folktale recorded by Karl Musäus. Stories range from the maudlin (such as The Wife and The Widow and Her Son) to the picaresque (Little Britain) and the comical (The Mutability of Literature), but the common thread running through The Sketch Book — and a key part of its attraction to readers — is the personality of Irving's pseudonymous narrator, Geoffrey Crayon. Erudite, charming, and never one to make himself more interesting than his tales, Crayon holds The Sketch Book together through the sheer power of his personality - and Irving would, for the rest of his life, seamlessly enmesh Crayon's persona with his own public reputation....

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Short stories, Fiction

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This is one of the Victorian “Sensationist” Mary Elizabeth Braddon's many novels (best known among them: “Lady Audley’s Secret”). It is extremely well written, fluid, humorous and, in places, self-mocking: one of the main characters is a Sensation Author. The motifs of the-woman-with-a-secret, adultery, and death are classic “sensationist” material. Yet this is also a self-consciously serious work of literature, taking on various social themes of the day. Specifically, Braddon presents the psychological struggle and cognitive dissonance which are the inevitable plight of the married middle-class woman with a strong sense of self, who is essentially constrained to live the life of her husband. In this, it echoes Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary.” The heroine, Isabel Sleaford, was driven early in her childhood to bury herself in, and develop her sense of self through, romantic novels and poetry. She is thus ill-adapted to the conventional, provincial structures and strictures laid upon her when she marries the very good and adoring, but also boring and unimaginative, Dr. George Gilbert. Isabel forms friendships with men (including her husban...

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Fiction, Historical Fiction, Romance

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Lucy Maud Montgomery's classic children's novel, Anne of Green Gables tells the story of a red headed orphan girl with a personality you can't help but love. Despite her tragical past, Anne's optimism and imagination have helped her to always see the best in things. Anne's life changes considerably when she is accidentally adopted by the Cuthberts, a brother and sister who thought they were getting a boy to help out on the farm. The Cuthberts decide Anne will have to be sent back to the orphange but before they know it, she has begun to work her way into their hearts. (Summary by Annie Coleman)...

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Children

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The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a novella by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, first published in 1886. London lawyer Utterson is driven to investigate Edward Hyde, the unlikely protégé of his friend Dr Henry Jekyll, suspecting the relationship to be founded on blackmail. The truth is worse than he could have imagined. Jekyll’s ‘full statement of the case’, the final chapter of the book, explores the idea of dual personality that led him to his experiments, and his inexorable and finally fatal descent into evil. (Summary by David Barnes)...

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Horror/Ghost stories

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Bors felt as if he'd been hit over the head. This was ridiculous! He'd planned and carried out the destruction of that warship because the information of its existence and location was verified by a magnetometer. But, if he'd known how the information had been obtained--if he'd known it had been guessed at by a discharged spaceport employee, and a paranoid personality, and a man who used a hazel twig or something similar--if he'd known that , he'd never have dreamed of accepting it. He'd have dismissed it flatly! (Summary from the Gutenberg text)...

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Science fiction

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Hunger (Norwegian: Sult) is a novel by the Norwegian author Knut Hamsun and was published in its final form in 1890. The novel has been hailed as the literary opening of the 20th century and an outstanding example of modern, psychology-driven literature. It hails the irrationality of the human mind in an intriguing and sometimes humorous novel. Written after Hamsun's return from an ill-fated tour of America, Hunger is loosely based on the author's own impoverished life before his breakthrough in 1890. Set in late 19th century Kristiania, the novel recounts the adventures of a starving young man whose sense of reality is giving way to a delusionary existence on the darker side of a modern metropolis. While he vainly tries to maintain an outer shell of respectability, his mental and physical decay are recounted in detail. His ordeal, enhanced by his inability or unwillingness to pursue a professional career, which he deems unfit for someone of his abilities, is pictured in a series of encounters which Hamsun himself described as 'a series of analyses.' In many ways, the protagonist of the novel displays traits reminiscent of Raskolnik...

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Literature

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Dave ran a lumber mill in western Canada. There are some workers within his organization who he trusts implicitly, some who he doesn't trust at all, and some who he is unsure about. But Dave is basically a trusting soul. Most of the folks in Malkern liked him, as he had been a major factor in shaping the village and in providing employment for a lot of the folks who lived in the area. Dave was not a pleasant site to look at; ungainly, not very attractive, yet he had a heart that was the antithesis of his lack of physical attractiveness. Dave was a good friend to Betty, who had promised her hand in marriage to Jim Truscott, who was on leave from Malkern searching for gold in the Yukon territory to secure a future for himself and his bride-to-be. Truscott had asked Dave to watch over Betty during his absence, but when he returned from his fortune seeking expedition in the Yukon, Truscott was a changed man. He didn't seem the same personable Jim Truscott that Betty had promised herself to, and Dave was a bit suspicious of his personality alterations as well. Now, Betty had to decide whether to hold herself to her promise, and Dave had ...

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Westerns

Description Details
The Terran colony on the planet Darkover faces imminent destruction by a plague of the deadly Trailmen's Fever. The only hope is to develop a serum in time, but this requires the cooperation of the elusive native Trailmen, the brilliant parasitologist Dr. Jay Allison, and his split personality. (Introduction by Mark Nelson)...

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Science fiction

Description Details
Onions wrote several collections of ghost stories, of which the best known is Widdershins (1911). It includes the novella The Beckoning Fair One, widely regarded as one of the best in the genre of horror fiction, especially psychological horror. On the surface, this is a conventional haunted house story: an unsuccessful writer moves into rooms in an otherwise empty house, in the hope that isolation will help his failing creativity. His sensitivity and imagination are enhanced by his seclusion, but his art, his only friend and his sanity are all destroyed in the process. The story can be read as narrating the gradual possession of the protagonist by a mysterious and possessive feminine spirit, or as a realistic description of a psychotic outbreak culminating in catatonia and murder, told from the sufferer's point of view. The precise description of the slow disintegration of the protagonist's mind is terrifying in either case. Another theme, shared with others of Onions' stories, is a connection between creativity and insanity; in this view, the artist is in danger of withdrawing from the world altogether and losing himself in his cr...

Excerpt Details
Horror/Ghost stories

Description Details
Mary Roberts Rinehart -- America's Agatha Christie, as she used to be called -- set this story in a New York suburban town, shortly after the end of the first world war. Dick Livingstone is a young, successful doctor, who in the course of events becomes engaged to Elizabeth Wheeler. But there is a mystery about his past, and he thinks himself honor-bound to unravel it before giving himself to her in marriage. In particular, a shock of undetermined origin has wiped out his memory prior to roughly the last decade. Rinehart, who presumably had been reading, or reading about, the then popular Sigmund Freud, plays on what today is called repressed memory, as she takes Dick into his past, and into the dangers that, unknown to him, lurk there. Is she correct about the behavior of memory? Who knows? After all, this is not a clinical treatise, but a work of fiction, one of the thrillers that made her such a popular writer of the earlier twentieth century.(Introduction by Nicholas Clifford)...

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Adventure, Fiction, Mystery, Romance

Description Details
Edgar Braine was consistently successful at all he set out to accomplish. He went through life with goals and worked diligently and with ethical purity in reaching those goals, from becoming editor of the local newspaper on up to his political aspirations. That was how his mother, in her waning years, had advised him to reach his goals, and Edgar was determined to honor her advice. There was one caveat in his mothers advice however, and it is for Edgar to determine exactly what she meant by it. Is success measured by the interactions between business, politics, and marriage? (Summary by Roger)...

Excerpt Details
Fiction, Psychology, Romance

Description Details
Still one of the most radical novels of the 20th Century, James Joyce's Ulysses is considered to have ushered in the era of the modern novel. Loosely based on Homer's Odyssey, the book follows Leopold Bloom and a number of other characters through an ordinary day, twenty four hours, in Dublin, on June 16, 1904. The text is dense and difficult, but perfectly suited to an oral reading, filled with language tricks, puns and jokes, stream of consciousness, and bawdiness. NOTE: Because of the nature of this project, there was a bending of usual procedures: pub-like background noise was encouraged, as well as group readings; and no editing was required, so in places there may be some accidental variation from the original text ... Listener be warned! (Summary by Hugh McGuire)...

Excerpt Details
Literature

Description Details
Pat Travis, a spacer renowned for his luck, is suddenly quite out of it. His job is to beat his competitors to sign newly-Contacted human races to commercial contracts... But what can he do when he finds he's on a planet that consults astrology for literally every major decision - and he has arrived on one of the worst-aspected days in history? Michael Shaara, later to write the Pulitzer-winning novel The Killer Angels, wrote this story for Fantastic Universe in 1956. (Summary by Mark F. Smith)...

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Science fiction

Description Details
Like many soldiers at the beginning of their military careers, Harry Penrose has romantic ideas of climbing the ranks and attaining hero status. However, while stationed at Gallipoli, the realities of war begin to take their toll on Penrose, not only physically, but also mentally where the war has become a 'battle of the mind.' This is his story as related by a fellow soldier, as well as the story of the campaign at Gallipoli which is vividly portrayed from the author's own personal experiences. During his tenure as an officer, Penrose slowly asserts himself; the war takes a toll on his personality, but he begins to live up to his early dreams of heroism. However, his creeping self-doubt grows by degrees; following Gallipoli, he is reassigned from his post as scouting officer once on the Somme, knowing he cannot face another night patrol, and earns the wrath of his commanding officer - an irascible Regular colonel - over a trivial incident. The colonel piles difficult, risky work on him - remarking to the narrator that Master Penrose can go on with [leading ration parties] until he learns to do them properly - and Penrose submits, w...

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Historical Fiction

Description Details
Pollyanna tells the story of Pollyanna Whittier, a young girl who goes to live with her wealthy Aunt Polly after her father's death. Pollyanna's philosophy of life centers around what she calls The Glad Game: she always tries to find something to be glad about in every situation, and to always do without delay whatever she thinks is right. With this philosophy, and her own sunny personality, she brings so much gladness to her aunt's dispirited New England town that she transforms it into a pleasant, healthy place to live. Eventually, however, even Pollyanna's robust optimism is put to the test when she loses the use of her legs in an accident. (written by Mary Anderson)...

Excerpt Details
Children

Description Details
Thomas Bulfinch (July 15, 1796 - May 27, 1867) explains the his work is an attempt tell the stories of mythology in such a manner as to make them a source of amusement. We have endeavored to tell them correctly, according to the ancient authorities, so that when the reader finds them referred to he may not be at a loss to recognize the reference. Thus we hope to teach mythology not as a study, but as a relaxation from study; to give our work the charm of a story-book, yet by means of it to impart a knowledge of an important branch of education. The Bulfinch version of myth, presents the myths in their literary versions, without unnecessary violence, sex, psychology or ethnographic information. The Bulfinch myths are an indispensable guide to the cultural values of the American 19th century. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

Excerpt Details
Myths/Legends

Description Details
Bulfinch (July 15, 1796 - May 27, 1867) explains the his work is an attempt tell the stories of mythology in such a manner as to make them a source of amusement. We have endeavored to tell them correctly, according to the ancient authorities, so that when the reader finds them referred to he may not be at a loss to recognize the reference. Thus we hope to teach mythology not as a study, but as a relaxation from study; to give our work the charm of a story-book, yet by means of it to impart a knowledge of an important branch of education. The Bulfinch version of myth presents the myths in their literary versions, without unnecessary violence, sex, psychology or ethnographic information. The Bulfinch myths are an indispensable guide to the cultural values of the American 19th century. (Summary from Wikipedia) This is the third of Bulfinch's series of three mythologies. recordings of the first two books are at: /bulfinch-age-of-fable/ The Age of Fable /age-of-chivalry-by-bulfinch/ The Age of Chivalry...

Excerpt Details
Myths/Legends

Description Details
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929), with its famous dictum, A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. The slim book Monday or Tuesday offers an excursion into Virginia Woolf's early excursions in stream of consciousness writing she was to become famous for; including her so-termed Moments of being, in a format of a collection of short stories mainly concerned with people's thoughts as well as psychology in general, the human and particularly female condition, and aesthetics which inspired and engaged her much of the time helping other writers to find publication through her and her husband Leonard Woolf's Hogarth Press. (Summary from Wikipedia and LizMourant)...

Excerpt Details
Short stories

Description Details
Lucy Maud Montgomery’s classic children’s novel, Anne of Green Gables tells the story of a red headed orphan girl with a personality you can’t help but love. Despite her “tragical” past, Anne’s optimism and imagination have helped her to always see the best in things. Anne’s life changes considerably when she is accidentally adopted by the Cuthberts, a brother and sister who thought they were getting a boy to help out on the farm. The Cuthberts decide Anne will have to be sent back to the orphange but before they know it, she has begun to work her way into their hearts. (Summary by Annie Coleman)...

Excerpt Details
Humour, Children, Teen/Young adult

Description Details
Lucy Maud Montgomery’s classic children’s novel, Anne of Green Gables tells the story of a red headed orphan girl with a personality you can’t help but love. Despite her “tragical” past, Anne’s optimism and imagination have helped her to always see the best in things. Anne’s life changes considerably when she is accidentally adopted by the Cuthberts, a brother and sister who thought they were getting a boy to help out on the farm. The Cuthberts decide Anne will have to be sent back to the orphange but before they know it, she has begun to work her way into their hearts. (Summary by Annie Rothenberg)...

Excerpt Details
Children, Teen/Young adult, Humor, Comedy

Description Details
Rob Roy is a historical novel by Walter Scott. It is narrated by Frank Osbaldistone, the son of an English merchant who travels first to the North of England, and subsequently to the Scottish Highlands to collect a debt stolen from his father. On the way he encounters the larger-than-life title character of Rob Roy MacGregor. Though Rob Roy is not the lead character (in fact the narrative does not move to Scotland until half way through the book) his personality and actions are key to the development of the novel. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

Excerpt Details
Adventure, Historical Fiction

Description Details
Jane Austen demonstrated her mastery of the epistolary novel genre in Lady Susan, which she wrote in 1795 but never published. Although the primary focus of this short novel is the selfish behavior of Lady Susan as she engages in affairs and searches for suitable husbands for herself and her young daughter, the actual action shares its importance with Austen’s manipulation of her characters' behavior by means of their reactions to the letters that they receive. The heroine adds additional interest by altering the tone of her own letters based on the recipient of the letter. Thus, the character of Lady Susan is developed through many branches as Austen suggests complications of identity and the way in which that identity is based on interaction rather than on solitary constructions of personality. Lady Susan’s character is also built by the descriptions of the other letter-writers; but even though their opinions of this heroine coincide with the image that develops from her own letters, Austen demonstrates the subjectivity of the opinions by presenting them – primarily – in the letters of one woman to another, thereby suggesting the ...

Excerpt Details
Epistolary fiction, Romance, Satire, Teen/Young adult, Humor

Description Details
A Sicilian Romance is a Gothic novel by Ann Radcliffe. It was her second published work, and was first published anonymously in 1790. The plot concerns the turbulent history of the fallen aristocrats of the house of Mazzini, on the northern shore of Sicily, as related by a tourist who becomes intrigued by the stories of a monk he meets in the ruins of their doomed castle.The introduction to the 'Worlds Classics' edition notes that in this novel Ann Radcliffe began to forge the unique mixture of the psychology of terror and poetic description that would make her the great exemplar of the Gothic novel, and the idol of the Romantics. The novel explores the cavernous landscapes and labyrinthine passages of Sicily's castles and convents to reveal the shameful secrets of its all-powerful aristocracy (Summary from Wikipedia)...

Excerpt Details
Romance, Tragedy, Fiction, Adventure

Description Details
This is a short novel published in 1895 and based vaguely on the battle of Chancellorsville of the American Civil War. Unlike other works on the subject, Crane's novel does not concentrate on the big picture or the glory of war but on the psychology of one of its soldiers....

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction, War stories

Description Details
This bittersweet tragicomedy centers on an odd triangle of characters: Basil Ransom, a political conservative from Mississippi; Olive Chancellor, Ransom's cousin and a Boston feminist; and Verena Tarrant, a pretty, young protégée of Olive's in the feminist movement. The storyline concerns the struggle between Ransom and Olive for Verena's allegiance and affection, though the novel also includes a wide panorama of political activists, newspaper people, and quirky eccentrics.(Summary by Wikipedia)...

Excerpt Details
Psychology, Literature, Fiction

Description Details
The Brothers Karamazov (Russian: Братья Карамазовы) is the final novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky, and is generally considered the culmination of his life's work. The book portrays a parricide in which each of a murdered man's sons share a varying degree of complicity. The Brothers Karamazov is a passionate philosophical novel that explores deep into the ethical debates of God, free will, and morality. It is a spiritual drama of moral struggles concerning faith, doubt, reason, and modern Russia. Since its publication, it has been acclaimed all over the world by thinkers as diverse as Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, and Pope Benedict XVI as one of the supreme achievements in literature....

Excerpt Details
Literature, Psychology, Philosophy