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Ledscha, living in ancient Egypt, has lost her betrothed and all hope of love. But the gods see otherwise. She now loves a Greek sculptor, who only wanted her for a model, but even that will not happen. She has been replaced by another woman for the statue of Arachne. Who do the gods see her with? Is it the Greek, or someone else? This work is the last written and published in German by Georg Ebers before he died in 1898. He wrote many novels set it ancient Egypt, which sparked the general interest in and popularity of Egyptology that still thrives today. This book was translated into English also in 1898. (Summary by Ann Boulais)...

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This is a collection of short (15 minute or less readings) fiction or non-fiction works in English suitable for a coffee break at work or a short commuter ride. The theme for this collection is HodgePodge: humor, romance, science, long poems, biography, inspirational -- you name it, as long as it's public domain and between 3 and 15 minutes long.(Summary by BellonaTimes)...

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Set during WWI in England, The Red Planet is a rich tale about the life in a little English town from the point of view of Major Duncan Meredyth, a disabled veteran of the Boer Wars. As he struggles to keep his life and the lives of those he cares for in harmony, he must also shelter a dark secret regarding one of the village's favorite sons. The Red Planet was the third bestselling novel in the United States for 1917. (Summary by Miss Stav)...

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This year is the 200th anniversary of Dickens' birth. This is the fourth volume; the first volume of short works - fiction, essays, poetry and speeches, previously unrecorded for , was catalogued by Dickens' birthday on February 7th 2012. Further volumes will follow during the anniversary year. (Summary by Ruth Golding)...

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The Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, is a work of enormous proportions. Setting out with the simple goal of offering American households a mass of good reading, the editors drew from literature of all times and all kinds what they considered the best pieces of human writing, and compiled an ambitious collection of 45 volumes (with a 46th being an index-guide). Besides the selection and translation of a huge number of poems, letters, short stories and sections of books, the collection offers, before each chapter, a short essay about the author or subject in question. In many cases, chapters contemplate not one author, but certain groups of works, organized by nationality, subject or period; there is, thus, a chapter on Accadian-Babylonian literature, one on the Holy Grail, and one on Chansons, for example. The result is a collection that holds the interest, for the variety of subjects and forms, but also as a means of first contact with such famous and important authors that many people have heard of, but never read, such as Abelard, Dante or Lord Byron. According to the editor Charles Dudley Warner, this c...

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Ada Cambridge (November 21, 1844 - July 19, 1926), later known as Ada Cross, was an English born Australian writer. While she gained recognition as Australia’s first woman poet of note, her longer term reputation rests on her novels. Overall she wrote more than twenty-five works of fiction, three volumes of poetry and two autobiographical works.[1] Many of her novels were serialised in Australian newspapers, and were never published in book form. The story pans over three - four decades revolving the four Pennycuick sisters....

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L'Ingénu is a satirical novella by the French writer Voltaire, published in 1767. It tells the story of a Huron Indian transported to the sophistication of eighteenth century Paris, and satirizes religious doctrine, as well as the folly and injustices of French society(Summary from Wikipedia)....

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Fiction

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Levity is not a word often applied to Henry James, but this story has about it an attractively lighthearted quality. It tells of Peter Baron, a poor, young struggling writer of adequate, if not transcendent, talent, who lives in a dreary London boarding house inhabited also by a mysteriously clairvoyant and beautiful young widow, with her small boy. When Baron buys himself a second-hand writing desk to stimulate the creative juices, he finds carefully hidden within it a cache of letters that appear to compromise a recently deceased statesman. The discovery and his struggle to handle the questions they pose ultimately change his life. Along the way he also discovers, as a fringe benefit, a talent for what Americans (though probably not Jamesians) call Tin Pan Alley. (Summary by Nicholas Clifford)...

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Fiction

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A tragic love triangle between a beautiful English girl, an English gentleman, and a half-English, half-Egyptian plays out among the ruins and under the desert stars of 1920s era Egypt. The saga ends, as all love triangles must, in tragedy upon the desert sands. (Summary by Sibella Denton)...

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Fiction

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The Metamorphosis (in German, Die Verwandlung, The Transformation) is a novella by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915, and arguably the most famous of his works along with the longer works The Trial and The Castle. The story begins with a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking to find himself transformed into a giant monstrous vermin. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

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Fiction

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Aphra Behn was the first woman writer in England to make a living by her pen, and her novel Oroonoko was the first work published in English to express sympathy for African slaves. Perhaps based partly on Behn's own experiences living in Surinam, the novel tells the tragic story of a noble slave, Oroonoko, and his love Imoinda. The work was an instant success and was adapted for the stage in 1695 (and more recently by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1999). Behn's work paved the way for women writers who came after her, as Virginia Woolf noted in a Room of One's Own (1928): All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, ... for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds. (Summary by Elizabeth Klett)...

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Fiction

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Starting with a summary of the 1922 novel The Head of the House of Coombe, which followed the relationships between a group of pre-WWI English nobles and commoners, this sequel, called Robin, completes the story of Robin, Lord Coombe, Donal and Feather. (Introduction by Linda Andrus)...

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Fiction

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The setting is a small English village in the 19th century. When her niece shows up on her doorstep unexpectedly, a quiet spinster finds her life turned upside down. (Summary by Linda Andrus)...

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Fiction

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Selma Lagerlöf was born in Vaermland, Sweden, in 1858 and enjoyed a long and very successful career as a writer, receiving the Nobel-Prize in Literature in 1909. She died in Vaermland in 1940. The Emperor of Portugallia was first Published 1914 in Sweden, and 1916 in English, translated by Velma Swanston Howard. The Story i set in Vaermland around 1860 or 1870. In the centre is Jan of Ruffluck Croft. He loves his daughter more than anything, but when she moves to Stockholm and never sends a word home about her doings, he sinks into a dream-world where she is a noble Empress of Portugallia. And he believes himself to be Emperor too. His whole world and all his thoughts are dominated by the thoughts of her return and what will happen then. In the role of Emperor in the poor forest country where he lives he can question the social hierarchies around him, and dressed in his Royal regalia he sits in the frontbench in the Church, and he takes the place of honour at Parties etc. After 15 years his daughter returns home and is shocked to see what a mad clown her father has become and .... ( Summary by Lars Rolander )...

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The hero, Etienne Gerard, is a Hussar in the French Army during the Napoleonic Wars. Gerard's most notable attribute is his vanity - he is utterly convinced that he is the bravest soldier, greatest swordsman, accomplished horseman and gallant lover in all France. Gerard is not entirely wrong since he displays notable bravery on many occasions, but his self-satisfaction undercuts this quite often. Obsessed with honour and glory, he is always ready with a stirring speech or a gallant remark to a lady....

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The Fortunes of Philippa is based on the author's mother, Angelica Brazil, who had grown up in Rio de Janeiro and attended an English boarding school at the age of 10, finding the English culture, school life and climate confronting....

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Uri Nissan Gnessin was born in Starodub, where his father was a rabbi. He left home at an early age, and moving from one yeshiva to the another, he developed a life-long friendship with a fellow Hebrew modernist author, Yosef Haim Brenner. His first published text was in 1904. In 1906 he co-founded the Hebrew language publishing house Nisyonot (Attempts), and after moving to London in 1907, he co-edited (with Brenner) Ha'Meorer, a Hebrew periodical. Following that he moved to Palestine but returned to Russia in 1908. Later he settled in Warsaw, where he died in 1913 of a heart attack. Gnessin wrote in a unique style of prose that was notable for its expressionistic language. Several Israeli literary scholars, such as Dan Miron and Gershon Shaked, wrote about his work, especially about the short story BaGanim (In the Gardens) which is about incest between a father and his intellectually disabled daughter. (Summary following Wikipedia)...

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Short stories

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Wladimir Dubrowskij ist der Sohn eines Kleinadligen, dessen väterlicher Besitz durch seinen frühreren Freund und Nachbarn Kirila Petrowitsch Trojekurow durch Tücke in Beschlag genommen wird. Aus Rache beginnt Dubrowskij ein Dasein als Räuber, wobei er nur Reiche überfällt und die armen verschont. Jedoch verliebt er sich in Trojekurows Tochter, schleicht sich waghalsig in dessen Gut ein, und wird letzten Endes entdeckt. (Summary by Herr Klugbeisser) Vladimir Dubrovsky is the son of a nobleman whose father's property is seized by his neighbour, Kirila Petrovitch Troekurov. Seeking revenge, Dubrovsky starts a a bandit's life, assaulting only the rich, but sparing the poor. However, he falls in love with Troekurov's daughter, daringly sneaks into his house, but is discovered at the end of the day. Read in German by Herr Klugbeisser....

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Fiction

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The first of only three novels by English author Howard Overing Sturgis, the son of wealthy American expatriates and a close friend of Henry James, Tim portrays a sensitive young boy’s affection for an older boy. (Introduction by Dorlene Kaplan)...

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Fiction