The Gods Will Have Blood


Anatole France - 1912
    Gamelin's ideals lead him to the most monstrous mass murder of his countrymen, and the links between Gamelin and his family, his mistress and the humanist Brotteaux are catastrophically severed. This book recreates the violence and devastation of the Terror with breathtaking power, and weaves into it a tale which grips, convinces and profoundly moves. The perfection of Anatole France's prose style, with its myriad subtle ironies, is here translated by Frederick Davies with admirable skill and sensitivity. That The Gods Will Have Blood is Anatole France's masterpiece is beyond doubt. It is also one of the most brilliantly polished novels in French literature.Anatole France was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921.

Rich Man, Poor Man / Beggarman, Thief


Irwin Shaw - 2013
    

The Informer


Liam O'Flaherty - 1925
    It tells of Gypo Nolan, who informs on a wanted comrade. The source of the Academy Award-winning film directed by John Ford. Preface by Denis Donoghue.

The Best of Sholem Aleichem


Sholom Aleichem - 1980
    

Baa Baa, Black Sheep and The Gardener


Rudyard Kipling - 1995
    Kipling was born in India in 1865 but in 1871 he was sent to England to live with a foster family - an unhappy experience which is chronicled in 'Baa Baa, Black Sheep'.

Gardener to the King


Frédéric Richaud - 1999
    August 1674. Louis XIV, one of Europe's most powerful sovereigns, celebrates his armies' victory over Holland. In Versailles, the favourite of the royal residences, his kitchen gardener, Jean Baptiste de la Quintinie, labours to make the espaliers and vegetable plots that feed the court nothing less than a work of art. Revered for his skill, and envied for his freedom, this brilliant, unworldly man stands apart from the diplomats, flatterers and self-servers that surround the monarch. But is his understanding of the soil and those who live by it enough to protect him as the Sun King's reign spirals into a regime of fear?

Countdown to Go Set a Watchman: A Celebration of To Kill a Mockingbird, Sampler


Harper Lee - 2015
    

An Outpost of Progress


Joseph Conrad - 1896
    There they take part in ivory trading, hoping to financially benefit the company as well as themselves. With no specific tasks or important things to be done, they both become increasingly isolated and demoralized as the time goes by. At one point in the story, the native Makola, serving as Kayerts's and Carlier's bookkeeper, initiates an exchange of slaves for ivory. Initially Kayerts and Carlier are stunned and scandalized by the idea, yet eventually they accept the deal and aid Makola for his huge profit. Both men are continuously plagued by diseases and grow very weak physically towards the end of the story. Finally, a seemingly trivial matter - sugar - sparks an irrational, uncontrolled and violent conflict between them, and ends tragically as Kayerts accidentally shoots and kills Carlier. At the end of the story, just when the company steamboat approaches the station two months later than it should have, Kayerts hangs himself out of desperation.

The Pavilion on the Links


Robert Louis Stevenson - 1880
    Northmour has brought the corrupt banker Huddlestone, and his beautiful daughter whom Northmour is pursuing, to seek concealment in an isolated pavilion by the sea.

Sunflower


Gyula Krúdy - 1918
    Krúdy conjures up a world that is entirely his own—dreamy, macabre, comic, and erotic—where urbane sophistication can erupt without warning into passion and even madness.In Sunflower young Eveline leaves the city and returns to her country estate to escape the memory of her desperate love for the unscrupulous charmer Kálmán. There she encounters the melancholy Álmos-Dreamer, who is languishing for love of her, and is visited by the bizarre and beautiful Miss Maszkerádi, a woman who is a force of nature. The plot twists and turns; elemental myth mingles with sheer farce: Krúdy brilliantly illuminates the shifting contours and acid colors of the landscape of desire.John Bátki’s outstanding translation of Sunflower is the perfect introduction to the world of Gyula Krúdy, a genius as singular as Robert Walser, Bruno Schulz, or Joseph Roth.

Egy magyar nábob


Mór Jókai - 1853
    He originally studied law and became an advocate in what is now Budapest. Encouraged by the reception of his first play, The Jewish Boy, he turned to writing, producing Working Days, and becoming editor of Életképek, the leading Hungarian literary journal. Following a revolution and the deposition of the Hapsburg dynasty, he became a political suspect. He spent the next fourteen years reviving the Magyar language, producing thirty romances and numerous other works. After the re-establishment of the Hungarian Constitution, he sat in parliament for twenty years, founded and edited the government organ Hon, and was later elevated to the upper house by the king. A Hungarian Nabob, considered by Jokai to be his best work, is a richly colored picture of aristocratic life, full of vivid, bustling scenes, various native characters, and humorous and dramatic incidents. The Nabob figure is a Hungarian potentate of vast estates, who lives amidst a crowd of retainers, wassailing companions, women, gamblers, fools, and gypsies. The plot relates to the intrigues of his dissolute heir, and his marriage with a young girl which serves to baffle them.

Disputed Passage


Lloyd C. Douglas - 1939
     The weather was unseasonably sultry, and the air in Dr Milton (Tubby) Forrester's lecture-arena lay as inert and stale as the cadavers in the grim old anatomical laboratory adjoining. But if the atmosphere of the dingy little theatre was not refreshingly tonic it was emotionally tense. Whatever it lacked in sweetness it made up in stress; for Anatomy, under the brilliant but irascible Forrester, was reputed to be the stiffest course in the entire four-year curriculum.

The Clothes On Their Backs


Linda Grant - 2008
    She loses herself in books and reinvents herself according to her favorite characters, but it is through clothes that she ultimately defines herself. Against her father’s wishes, she forges a relationship with her estranged uncle, a notorious criminal, who, in his old age, wants to share his life story. As he reveals the truth about her family’s past, Vivien, having endured unbearable loss, learns how to be comfortable in her own skin and how to be alive in the world. Linda Grant is a spectacularly humanizing writer whose morally complex characters explore the line between selfishness and self-preservation. In vivid and supple prose, Grant has created a powerful story of family, love, and the hold the past has on the present.

Tortilla Flat / Of Mice and Men


John Steinbeck - 1995
    

Satantango


László Krasznahorkai - 1985
    Schemes, crimes, infidelities, hopes of escape, and above all trust and its constant betrayal are Krasznahorkai’s meat. “At the center of Satantango,” George Szirtes has said, “is the eponymous drunken dance, referred to here sometimes as a tango and sometimes as a csardas. It takes place at the local inn where everyone is drunk. . . . Their world is rough and ready, lost somewhere between the comic and the tragic, in one small insignificant corner of the cosmos. Theirs is the dance of death.” “You know,” Mrs. Schmidt, a pivotal character, tipsily confides, “dance is my one weakness.”