Catalog Search Results
1) Dead Souls
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English
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First published in 1842, "Dead Souls" is the story of Chichikov, a young middle-class gentleman who comes to a small town in Russia with a dubious plan to improve his wealth and position in life. He begins by spending beyond his means on the premise that he can impress the local officials and gain standing and connections in the community. At the heart of his plan is the idea of acquiring "dead souls" or more explicitly serfs of landowners who have...
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"When it comes to walking the mean streets, Dickens could give modern genre authors the tour of their lives." -Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times
When a corpse is found in the Thames River and identified as John Harmon, many lives will be forever changed. John, who had been abroad and estranged from his miserly father for years, will no longer collect his inheritance. It will instead go to the miser's employees, Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, transforming...
3) Waverley
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Edward Waverly enjoyed a privileged upbringing, despite his family's drama. Coming of age during a political uprising, Edward's time is split between his father and his uncle, who each have opposing political views, which causes a rift in the family. His uncle is a traditional British subject that wishes to overthrow the government so that Charles Edward Stuart is restored to power, commonly known as a Jacobite. However, Edward's father is a Hanoverian,...
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An unparalleled example of Gothic romance, Radcliffe's novel portrays the multitude of misfortunes heaped upon the admirable French heroine, Emily St. Aubert. Losing first her mother, then her beloved father, the orphaned Emily must be separated from her newfound love Valancourt to live with her aunt and new guardian, Madame Cheron. Emily then faces the evil machinations of her aunt's husband, the Italian brigand Signor Montoni, who imprisons the...
5) McTeague
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First published in 1899, this graphic depiction of urban American life centers around its title character, McTeague, a dentist practicing in San Francisco at the turn of the century. While at first content with his life and friendship with an ambitious man named Marcus, McTeague eventually courts and marries Trina, a frugal young woman who wins a large sum of money in a lottery. The greed of the majority of the characters in the novel creates a chain...
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Trilogy of desire volume 1
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The Financier (1912) is a novel by Theodore Dreiser. The first installment of Dreiser's Trilogy of Desire, The Financier has endured as a classic of naturalist fiction and remains a powerful example of social critique over a century after its publication. Followed by The Titan (1914) and The Stoic (1947), The Financier captures the greed at the heart of the Gilded Age, a time when tycoons rose with total impunity to take over swaths of American industry....
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First published in 1842, "Lays of Ancient Rome" is a collection of six lays, or narrative poems, by the British historian and politician Thomas Babington Macaulay. Four of the six poems retell famous heroic episodes from early Roman history and two of the lays concern more modern, nineteenth-century events. Macaulay's work is the result of his detailed research into Roman history and his goal to create poems that resemble those that may have been...
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"The Garden Party and Other Stories" is a 1922 collection of short stories by Katherine Mansfield. Kathleen Mansfield Murry (1888—1923) was a modernist writer from New Zealand who produced poetry and short stories under the pseudonym Katherine Mansfield. She left New Zealand when she was 19 and relocated to England, where she became friends with a number of notable literary figures including D. H. Lawrence, Ottoline Morrell, and Virginia Woolf....
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The Fortune of the Rougons (1871) is a novel by French author Émile Zola. The first of twenty volumes of Zola's monumental Les Rougon-Macquart series is an epic story of family, politics, class, and history that traces the disparate paths of several French citizens raised by the same mother. Spanning the entirety of the French Second Empire, Zola provides a sweeping portrait of change that refuses to shy away from controversy and truth as it gets...
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A writer travels to a fishing village to complete her book and becomes close friends with many residents including her popular housemate, Mrs. Almira Todd. Throughout her stay, the writer is, inundated with personal stories from her colorful neighbors. In The Country of the Pointed Firs, a Boston native travels to a small Maine town called Dunnet Landing. She finds room and board with an older woman named Almira Todd, a widow and local herbalist....
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Sister Carrie (1900) is a novel by Theodore Dreiser. Controversial for its honest depiction of work, desire, and urban life, Sister Carrie has endured as a classic of naturalist fiction and remains a powerful example of social critique over a century after its publication. Despite poor reviews upon publication, the novel is now considered a landmark of American literature. Tired of the countryside, Carrie Meeber moves to Chicago to live with her older...
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Tomorrow I shall leave by the Messina boat, which calls at Paola. It is now more than a twelvemonth since I began to think of Paola, and an image of the place has grown in my mind. I picture a little marina; a yellowish little town just above; and behind, rising grandly, the long range of mountains which guard the shore of Calabria. Paola has no special interest that I know of, but it is the nearest point on the coast to Cosenza, which has interest...
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First published in 1865, Mary Mapes Dodge's "Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates" is an endearing children's story about a hard-working, honorable Dutch boy and the challenges he faces as a result of his family's poverty. Hans dreams of entering a big ice-skating race with his sister Gretel so that he may win the beautiful silver skates he desires. Yet, he is also very concerned for his father, who has been injured from a fall off of a dike and in...
14) Barry Lyndon
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Eager to leave his humble beginnings, Redmond Barry, runs multiple scams, conning his way into the military and pursuing the fortune of a young widow.
For every momentous achievement, he's riddled with a bittersweet result.
Redmond Barry is born into a poor Irish family and desires to become a man of status and means. Although ambitious, he's naturally mischievous and has no interest in doing things the right way. After falling into debt, he joins...
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The Wizard of Oz series volume 11
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The Lost Princess of Oz (1917) is the eleventh novel in L. Frank Baum's beloved Land of Oz series. According to the author, the story began with a letter from a young reader and soon took on a life of its own.
When Princess Ozma goes missing from her palace in the Emerald City, and the instruments upon which Glinda the Good Witch and the Wizard of Oz are nowhere to be found, Dorothy bravely gathers a group of trustworthy companions in order to solve...
16) Heretics
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Heretics by G. K. Chesterton
Nothing more strangely indicates an enormous and silent evil of modern society than the extraordinary use which is made nowadays of the word "orthodox." In former days the heretic was proud of not being a heretic. It was the kingdoms of the world and the police and the judges who were heretics. He was orthodox. He had no pride in having rebelled against them; they had rebelled against him. The armies with their cruel...
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"Tom Sawyer Abroad" is Mark Twain's 1894 novel featuring Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. A sequel to Twain's famous "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", this parody of a classic adventure story follows Tom, Jim and Huck as they journey by hot air balloon to Africa, where they encounter all manner of excitement and danger. A wonderful example of Twain's unforgettable work not to be missed by fans of the timeless Tom Sawyer series. Samuel Langhorne Clemens...
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Pamela Andrews is a fifteen-year-old maidservant at an estate in Bedfordshire. When Lady B, her employer, dies, her son Mr. B takes an interest in the innocent young girl, quickly turning from generosity to outright attempts at seducing her. As Pamela rejects his advances, she considers returning home to live in poverty with her parents. When he catches wind of her plan, however, Mr. B accuses Pamela of having an affair, notifying her parents and...
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"Webster's Seventh of March Speech and the Secession Movement, 1850" by Herbert Darling Foster. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for...
20) Bel Ami
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Guy de Maupassant, one of the 19th century's most admired French writers, is considered to be one of the fathers of the modern short story. Maupassant's stories are characterized by their wealth of style, clever plotting and effortless resolutions. Many of his stories are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s, describing the futility of war and the innocent civilians who, caught in the conflict, emerge from catastrophe and change. "Bel Ami",...
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