Simon Vance
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The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1908) is a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux. Originally serialized in L'Illustration from September to November 1907, The Mystery of the Yellow Room marked the first appearance of popular character Joseph Rouletabille, a reporter and part-time sleuth who features in several of Leroux's novels. Originally a journalist, Leroux turned to fiction after reading the works of Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allan Poe. Often...
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The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903) is a novel by Irish author Bram Stoker. Written during a period of increased interest in Egyptology across Europe, The Jewel of Seven Stars helped to establish the Irish master of Gothic horror's reputation as a leading writer of the early twentieth-century.
In the middle of the night, a young lawyer is roused from sleep by Margaret Trelawny. At her urgent request, he accompanies her to the house of her father, Abel...
3) Swann's way
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The first volume of Proust's seven-part novel "In Search of Lost Time," also known as "A Remembrance of Things Past," "Swann's Way" is the auspicious beginning of Proust's most prominent work. A mature, unnamed man recalls the details of his commonplace, idyllic existence as a sensitive and intuitive boy in Combray. For a time, the story is narrated through his younger mind in beautiful, almost dream-like prose. In a subsequent section of the volume,...
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First published serially between January and December of 1878 in the sensationalistic monthly London magazine "Belgravia", Thomas Hardy's "The Return of the Native" is the author's sixth published novel. Set in Egdon Heath, an area of Thomas Hardy's fictionalized Wessex known for the thorny evergreen shrubs, called furze or gorse, which are cut there by its residents for fuel. When the story begins, on Guy Fawkes Night, we find Diggory Venn, a merchant...
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"The Mayor of Casterbridge" is an 1886 novel by the legendary English writer Thomas Hardy. One of Hardy's "Wessex" novel (a fictional region of Britain that Hardy invented), the book is generally acknowledged as one of the author's masterpieces.
The story, set in the town of Casterbridge, concerns a married young farmer named Michael Henchard who, one drunken night, auctions off his wife Susan and baby daughter Elizabeth-Jane to a passing sailor,...
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When Gertrude Coppard, a refined young woman, meets Walter Morel, a rough coalminer, at a Christmas party dance, they feel immediately drawn to each other. After a short romance defined by physical attraction, the couple decide to marry. However, Gertrude soon realizes the financial difficulties of trying to survive off of Walter's measly salary. These troubles quickly cause the two to fight and grow apart. Walter begins to drink the little money...
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The Man in the Iron Mask is the name given to an unidentified prisoner who was arrested in 1669 or 1670 and subsequently held in a number of French prisons, including the Bastille and the Fortress of Pignerol (modern Pinerolo, Italy). Recent research suggests that his name might have been "Eustache Dauger", but this still has not been completely proven. He was held in the custody of the same jailer, Bénigne Dauvergne de Saint-Mars, for a period of...
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Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 2.4 - AR Pts: 1
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English
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"As much a love letter to the cathedral as it is the story of two doomed lovers." -Smithsonian Magazine
Written in 1831, The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo is a beloved French gothic novel which centers around the wondrous Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France. Set during the reign of King Louis XI, we are introduced to the gypsy dancer Esmerelda. A beautiful girl, both inside and out, Esmerelda captures the hearts of everyone around her,...
10) Bleak House
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English
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Bleak House is one of Charles Dickens's major novels.
The novel has many characters and several sub-plots, and the story is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. At the centre of Bleak House is the long-running legal case, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which came about because someone wrote several conflicting wills. This legal case is used by Dickens to satirise the English judicial system, and he makes...