Choices were made without thinking. Young lives came together and would never be the same again. Years on, as Ursula confronts decisions that are not so easy to make, revelations collide with memories of Candelo - and some breathtaking secrets come to light.

    This anthology has two main objectives: to introduce students to a wide range of poetry in English from the last 400 years, and to provide them with guidance on how to approach poetry examinations. The poems are divided into six collections, not by theme or by historical period, but as satisfying small anthologies of twenty-two poems each. Clear guidance is given on what is expected in an essay for a poetry examination, and actual answers are reproduced which help the student analyse what kind of response gets good marks and why.

    

    These poems explore a more emotional side of Charles Bukowski.

    Overhearing a conversation at his club one day, he becomes interested in a discussion regarding a man named Gastrell. Gastrell is somewhat of a mystery to the club members in spite of his renting a house from one of them. Berrington’s interest in Gastrell intensifies as his fiancé, Dulcie Challoner, befriends a wealthy widow, Mrs. Connie Stapleton who evidently has some type of relationship with Gastrell. As the plot progresses, Berrington finds himself involved with sensational robberies, brutal murders, coded messages, and even mind control! As in many Le Queux books, there are twists and turns as new characters and locations are introduced. When you are sure you know the ending, something new occurs and you wonder how it will affect the conclusion of the book.Excerpt:"I confess I'd like to know somethin' more about him." "Where did you run across him first?" "I didn't run across him; he ran across me, and in rather a curious way. We live in Linden Gardens now, you know. Several of the houses there are almost exactly alike, and about a month ago, at a dinner party we were givin', a young man was shown in. His name was unknown to me, so I supposed that he must be some friend of my wife's. Then I saw that he was a stranger to her too, and then all at once he became very confused, inquired if he were in Sir Harry Dawson's house - Sir Harry lives in the house next to ours - and, findin' he was not, apologized profusely for his mistake, and left hurriedly."

    The Place: Nebraska.The time: the 1870's, when every day on the prairie brought its threat -of hostile Indians, of prairie fires, of blizzards, and the overwhelming threat of accident or illness to the little homesteading family, Will and Abbie Deal and their babies.Hope, faith, and hard work finally make real for the Deals and their neighbors the dreams of productive farms and prosperous towns, of schools and hospitals, of well-paved roads to bring them close to the rest of the century.And old Abbie Deal can look back with pride and wonder to her own part in the miracle.

    This work, overlooked or trivialized by critics over theyears, today is considered a revolutionary narrtive because in it the writer experiments with techniques that pre-announce the XX Century Vanguard writiers, and even contemporary post-modernism texts. This is a novel built upon symbols, impresionist and expresionist prose, full of visionary enunciations that depict the present and future of an off-balance world; and the fragile and inconstant experiences of our daily life. Marti, according to his own confession, wrote the novel originally under the title of Amistad Funesta (Regrettable Friendship) in seven days for a New York magazine. He was forced to follow the guidelines set by the magazine's director: there had to be lots of love; a death; many young women, no sinful passion; and nothing that parents and clergymen would reject. And it had to be Hispanic American. The Cuban confessed he disliked the narrative genre. But years afterwards he changed his mind and thought about a modified version of his novel, with a different title because he realized, after reading Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona, that novels could be a powerful social and political vehicle. In Lucia Jerez many critics have preferred to see a fundamentally aesthetic creation, the fruit of the end of the XIX Century Modernist stylistic innovations. But today (re)reading, "under the surface" of the text, as Marti preferred, one can discover a contemporary narrative that explores the disconnections and annomalies of modern life. Inthe preliminary study to this text Prof. Ivan A. Schulman examines Jose Marti's stance with regard to novelistic narratives, explores Lucia Jerez's structure and style, and adds notes that contribute to a novel, in-depth comprehension of Marti's text."

    The mighty warrior Beowulf travels from his home to the great mead-hall of Hrothgar, king of the Danes, to face the marauding swamp-fiend Grendel, who is terrorizing Hrothgars kingdom and slaying his people. Beowulf and Grendel meet unarmed in the night-darkened hall, to battle to the death.

    He had built an empire out of a worthless scrap of farmland, rising from the wrong side of the tracks to move gracefully within the inner circles of the very rich: the American dream came true for him; now it was turning into a nightmare..: one night he tried to kill himself in his car; suddenly he was forced to come to terms with what he'd been and what he'd become: drama of a man's struggle for power.

    Lloyd, who lives with Mae, spends his time caring a little too much for the farm animals; he scorns to learn from a book, and treats Mae with angry disrespect. When Lloyd becomes ill, Mae goes searching for a diagnosis, and brings their simple, yet eloquent, neighbor Henry home with her, in order to help her read the difficult medical language. The ensuing love / hate triangle that brews between the three creates a toxic environment, and Mae, whose love and respect for Henry turn to impatience and resentment after an accident renders him helpless, determines that to escape the ill-luck of her life, she must escape the men who depend upon her.

    Remarkably, his driver left him off at his home an hour later where he consumed a scotch and several sandwiches. Something is obviously amiss. Add an allegedly forged will, the hint of an old family scandal, and a former secretary of the murdered man whose motives are none too clear, and the mystery only deepens. J. S. Fletcher has put together an intriguing puzzle with plenty of twists and turns in . . . The Herapath Property!

    A student in Dublin and an aspiring writer, at night she performs spoken word with her best friend Bobbi, who used to be her girlfriend. When they are interviewed and then befriended by Melissa, a well-known journalist who is married to Nick, an actor, they enter a world of beautiful houses, raucous dinner parties and holidays in Provence, beginning a complex ménage-à-quatre. Normal People: Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in the west of Ireland, but the similarities end there. In school, Connell is popular and well-liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation - awkward but electrifying - something life-changing begins.Normal People is a story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find they can't.

    Twenty years on, their enigmatic personalities are embalmed in the memories of the boys who worshipped them and who now recall their shared adolescence: the brassiere draped over a crucifix belonging to the promiscuous Lux; the sisters' breathtaking appearance on the night of the dance; and the sultry, sleepy street across which they watched a family disintegrate and fragile lives disappear.

    This unique anthology, with fourteen superb examples of her fiction, journalism, folklore, and autobiography, rightfully establishes her as the intellectual and spiritual leader of the next generation of black writers. The original commentary by Alice Walker and Mary Helen Washington, two African-American writers in the forefront of the Hurston revival, provide illuminating insights into Hurston—the writer, and the person—as well as into American social and cultural history.

    You want a story and I will tell you one...Afghanistan, 1952. Abdullah and his sister Pari live with their father and stepmother in the small village of Shadbagh. Their father, Saboor, is constantly in search of work and they struggle together through poverty and brutal winters. To Abdullah, Pari - as beautiful and sweet-natured as the fairy for which she was named - is everything. More like a parent than a brother, Abdullah will do anything for her, even trading his only pair of shoes for a feather for her treasured collection. Each night they sleep together in their cot, their heads touching, their limbs tangled. One day the siblings journey across the desert to Kabul with their father. Pari and Abdullah have no sense of the fate that awaits them there, for the event which unfolds will tear their lives apart; sometimes a finger must be cut to save the hand. Crossing generations and continents, moving from Kabul, to Paris, to San Francisco, to the Greek island of Tinos, with profound wisdom, depth, insight and compassion, Khaled Hosseini writes about the bonds that define us and shape our lives, the ways in which we help our loved ones in need, how the choices we make resonate through history and how we are often surprised by the people closest to us.