Frederick Davidson
1) Germinal
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Rougon-Macquart volume 13
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English
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Originally published in serial form in 1884 to 1885, "Germinal" is Émile Zola's realistic depiction of the coalminers' strike in northern France in the 1860s. In this faithful translation from the original French by Havelock Ellis, the story centers on Étienne Lantier, a young migrant worker who arrives at the coalmining town of Montsou in search of work. Set against a backdrop of extreme poverty and oppression, "Germinal" is the story of the idealistic...
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English
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What is free will? Is redemption possible? Can logic help us answer moral questions? Renowned Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky tackles all of these topics and many more in this remarkable novel, widely regarded as one of the classic masterpieces of literature. Follow the Karamazov family through the travails that transpire after the murder of their father, and expand your intellectual horizons with a work that celebrated thinkers such as Einstein,
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English
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Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) is a novel by English author E.M. Forster. The work was Forster's first novel, and its success helped launch his lengthy and critically acclaimed career as a writer of literary fiction. Where Angels Fear to Tread, the title is drawn from Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism (1711), is a moving meditation on class, gender, social convention, and the grieving process.
Following the death of her husband, a widow named...
4) Don Juan
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English
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First published in 1819, "Don Juan" is often acknowledged as one of Lord Byron's greatest poetic works. An epic poem, comprised of seventeen cantos that Byron continued to work on and expand until his death, "Don Juan" follows the adventures of the famous Spanish libertine and reflects upon many of the romantic and personal experiences that are universal to all mankind. From a forbidden love affair in Spain, to exile in Italy, from being shipwrecked...
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English
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Originally published in Polish in 1896 by Nobel Prize-winning author Henryk Sienkiewicz, "Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero" is the story of a love that develops in Rome between a young Christian woman, Lygia, and Marcus Vinicius, a Roman patrician, during the reign of Nero in 64 AD. The title "Quo Vadis" is translated from Latin as "Where are you going?" The quote is a reference to the New Testament verse John 13:36, which states "Simon...
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English
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Two decades have passed since the famous swordsmen triumphed over Cardinal Richelieu and Milady in The Three Musketeers. Time has weakened their resolve, and dispersed their loyalties. But treasons and strategems still cry out for justice: civil war endangers the throne of France, while in England, Cromwell threatens to send Charles I to the scaffold. Dumas brings his immortal quartet out of retirement to cross swords with time, the malevolence of...
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English
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First published in 1925, "Carry On, Jeeves" is P. G. Wodehouse's third collection of Jeeves and Bertie Wooster stories. All of the stories included in this volume first appeared in periodicals like the "Saturday Evening Post" including some that are reworked versions of stories that appeared in the 1919 collection "My Man Jeeves". In this volume, readers will find some of Wodehouse's most famous tales of the hapless and wealthy Bertie, his equally...
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English
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Andrew Lang (1844-1912) was a prolific Scots man of letters, a poet, novelist, literary critic and contributor to anthropology. He now is best known as the collector of folk and fairy tales. He was educated at the Edinburgh Academy, St Andrews University and at Balliol College, Oxford. As a journalist, poet, critic and historian, he soon made a reputation as one of the ablest and most versatile writers of the day. Lang was one of the founders of the...
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English
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Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's brutally honest account of his experience as a militiaman during the Spanish Civil War.
In the last days of 1936, Spain was five months into a bitter civil war, in which volunteers from many countries were helping the elected government of the Spanish Republic battle a military coup led by General Francisco Franco and backed by Hitler and Mussolini. Some foreigners flocking to Spain had come for another reason:...
10) His Last Bow
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English
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Arthur Conan Doyle's His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes(1917) is an outstanding collection of some of the later stories and most dramatic exploits of Detective Holmes and Dr. Watson. These stories were composed between 1908 and 1917, with the exception of the infamous tale "The Cardboard Box", which was written in 1893. Six of these adventures were initially published The Strand magazine, and the final titular story was published...
11) Rob Roy
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English
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Sir Walter Scott was the first English-language author in literary history to have international success during his actual lifetime. His works were, celebrated in North America, Australia, and Europe. Born in Edinburgh, Scott lived a rather sequestered childhood, stricken with polio and sent to live on his grandparents farm. There, his Aunt Jenny not only taught him to read, but influenced his writing forever; shaping the characteristic speech patterns...
12) Catriona
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English
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Uncovering a governmental conspiracy to frame a friend for murder puts David Balfour on the run and striving to protect the woman he's come to love.
Released with the title David Balfour when originally released in the United States, Catriona is Robert Louis Stevenson's follow-up to Kidnapped. David Balfour, hero of both books, is made a target by his willingness to testify in favor of a friend falsely accused of murder. His stubborn sense of justice...
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Not George Washington is a semi-autobiographical novel by P. G. Wodehouse, written in collaboration with Herbert Westbrook. It was first published in the U.K. in 1907. The book is a humorous, fictionalized account of Wodehouse's early years as a journalist (Wodehouse edited the By The Way column for the defunct UK newspaper The Globe from 1904 to 1909). The tale is told from several viewpoints, and the character representing Wodehouse is named James...
14) Ninety-Three
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English
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Ninety-Three (1874) is the final novel of Victor Hugo. As a work of historical fiction, the story is set during the period of conflict between the newly formed French Republic and the Royalists who sought to reverse the gains of the revolution. Praised for its morality and honest depiction of the horrors of war, Ninety-Three influenced such wide-ranging political thinkers as Joseph Stalin and Ayn Rand. "The soldiers forced cautiously. Everything was...
15) Penguin Island
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English
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When a bumbling holy man mistakenly baptizes a colony of penguins, God endows the animals with souls and their formerly peaceful community declines into a maelstrom of violence and sin. This witty allegory lampoons French history from ancient to modern times, taking satirical swipes at socialists, royalists, industrialists, militarists, and even the Dreyfus affair, and concluding with a remarkably prescient view of the future. Indeed, more than a...
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English
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“Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him.”
The Way of All Flesh is a novel by English author Samuel Butler, published in 1903, a year after his death. A semi-autobiographical work, it is a brilliant, subversive critique of Victorian-era social hypocrisy.
Telling...
18) The Aeneid
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English
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"For two thousand years, the epic tale of Aeneas' dramatic flight from Troy, his doomed love affair with Dido, his descent into the underworld, and the bloody story behind the founding of Rome has electrified audiences around the world. The Aeneid established many of the fundamental themes of Western life and literature, affirmed our best and worst intentions, and forced us to face our deepest contradictions"--Back cover.
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English
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Trent's Last Case (1913) is a detective novel by E.C. Bentley. Adapted three times for the cinema-including a 1952 feature film starring Michael Wilding, Orson Welles, and Margaret Lockwood-Trent's Last Case, which was titled The Woman in Black in the U.S., earned the acclaim of such writers as Dorothy L. Sayers, and was followed by a sequel and a collection of short stories involving its main character.
When Sigsbee Manderson, a prominent American...
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Jeeves and Wooster volume 3
Language
English
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"Mr Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in." -Evelyn Waugh
"Wodehouse is one of the funniest and most productive men who ever wrote in English. He is far from being a mere jokesmith: he is an authentic craftsman, a wit and humorist of the first water, the inventor of a prose style which is a...