The Half Brother


Lars Saabye Christensen - 2001
    This Nordic Prize-winning novel, a truly gripping epic, relates the lives of four generations of a unique and strange family with touching intimacy and surreal comedy.Traces four generations of a family marked by the untimely birth of Fred, a misfit and boxer conceived during a devastating rape who forges an unusual friendship with his younger half-brother, Barnum.

Finna


Nino Cipri - 2020
    Multi-dimensional swashbuckling would be hard enough, but our two unfortunate souls broke up a week ago.Can friendship blossom from the ashes of a relationship? In infinite dimensions, all things are possible.

The Lady on the Road: An Urban Legend Short Story


Nick Herntier - 2019
    After leaving her friend's house, she decides she's going to prove to her brother that "The Lady on the Road " urban legend is just that...

Mad Monkton And Other Stories


Wilkie Collins - 1855
    This engaging collection spanning thirty years displays his characteristic powers with twelve short stories from a number of genres. He explores the uncanny peculiarities of everyday life, as well as its underside, offers haunting ghost stories, and makes an important contribution to the newly emerging form of the detective novel.

Franz Kafka's The Castle (Dramatization)


David Fishelson - 2003
    Note - This is not the novel by Franz Kafka! For the novel see The Castle

The Last Séance: Tales of the Supernatural


Agatha Christie - 2019
    Fantastic psychic visions, specters looming in the shadows, encounters with deities, a man who switches bodies with a cat—be sure to keep the light on whilst reading these tales. The Last Séance gathers twenty stories, some featuring Christie’s beloved detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, in one haunting compendium that explores all things occult and paranormal, and is an essential omnibus for Christie fans.

The Diaries of Adam and Eve


Mark Twain - 1906
    I do not go out in the fog myself," notes Adam in his diary, adding, "The new creature does. It goes out in all weathers. And talks. It used to be so pleasant and quiet here." Adam has a lot to learn about Eve, and even more from her, as she names the animals, discovers fire, and introduces all manner of innovations to their garden home. Mark Twain's "translation" of the diaries of the first man and woman offers a humorous "he said/she said" narrative of biblical events. The great American storyteller found comfort and inspiration in the company of women, and his irreverent look at conventional religion is also a thoughtful -- and humorous -- argument for gender equality.

To Be Read at Dusk


Charles Dickens - 1852
    Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.

The Safety of Objects


A.M. Homes - 1990
    M. Homes as one of the most provocative and daring writers of her generation. Here you'll find the cult classic A Real Doll, the tale of a teenage boy's erotic obsession with his sister's favorite doll; Adults Alone, which first introduced Paul and Elaine, the crack-smoking yuppie couple whose marriage careens out of control in Homes's novel Music for Torching; and Looking for Johnny, in which a kidnapped boy, having failed his abductor's expectations, is returned home. Brilliantly conceived, sharply etched, and exceptionally satisfying, these stories explore the American dream in ways you're not likely soon to forget. Working in Kodacolor hues, Homes offers an uncanny picture of a surreal suburbia-outrageous and utterly believable.

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana


Umberto Eco - 2004
    In an effort to retrieve his past, he withdraws to the family home somewhere in the hills between Milan and Turin. There, in the sprawling attic, he searches through boxes of old newspapers, comics, records, photo albums, and adolescent diaries. And so Yambo relives the story of his generation: Mussolini, Catholic education and guilt, Josephine Baker, Flash Gordon, Fred Astaire. His memories run wild, and the life racing before his eyes takes the form of a graphic novel. Yambo struggles through the frames to capture one simple, innocent image: that of his first love. A fascinating, abundant novel-wide-ranging, nostalgic, funny, full of heart-from the incomparable Eco.

The Pendragon Legend


Antal Szerb - 1934
    Invited to the family seat--Pendragon Castle in North Wales--Batky receives a mysterious phone call warning him not to go; but he does and finds himself in a bizarre world of mysticism, romance, animal experimentation, and planned murder. His quest to solve the central mystery takes him down strange byways--old libraries and warehouse cellars, Welsh mountains, and underground tombs.

Naked Lunch


William S. Burroughs - 1959
    Burroughs stated that the chapters are intended to be read in any order. The reader follows the narration of junkie William Lee, who takes on various aliases, from the U.S. to Mexico, eventually to Tangier and the dreamlike Interzone.The vignettes are drawn from Burroughs' own experiences in these places and his addiction to drugs (heroin, morphine, and while in Tangier, majoun [a strong hashish confection] as well as a German opioid, brand name Eukodol, of which he wrote frequently).[source wiki}

The Angelic Avengers


Pierre Andrézel - 1944
    Bound together by poverty, grief and their shared years at school, they set out to make a future for themselves in new surroundings. They are adopted by the austere, puritanical Reverend Pennhallow and his wife, and in their large, gloomy house they become immersed in study. But, after a chain of disturbing events, it does not take long before they realize that the cleric and his wife are not all they seem to be ...

Independent People


Halldór Laxness - 1934
    Although it is set in the early twentieth century, it recalls both Iceland's medieval epics and such classics as Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter. And if Bjartur of Summerhouses, the book's protagonist, is an ordinary sheep farmer, his flinty determination to achieve independence is genuinely heroic and, at the same time, terrifying and bleakly comic.Having spent eighteen years in humiliating servitude, Bjartur wants nothing more than to raise his flocks unbeholden to any man. But Bjartur's spirited daughter wants to live unbeholden to him. What ensues is a battle of wills that is by turns harsh and touching, elemental in its emotional intensity and intimate in its homely detail. Vast in scope and deeply rewarding, Independent People is simply a masterpiece

The Complete Fairy Tales


Hans Christian Andersen - 1872
    Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, Andersen is best remembered for his fairy tales, a literary genre he so mastered that he himself has become as mythical as the tales he wrote. Andersen's popularity is not limited to children; his stories - called eventyrs, or "fantastic tales" - express themes that transcend age and nationality.During his lifetime he was acclaimed for having delighted children worldwide and was feted by royalty. Andersen's fairy tales, which have been translated into more than 125 languages, have become culturally embedded in the West's collective consciousness, readily accessible to children, but presenting lessons of virtue and resilience in the face of adversity for mature listeners/readers as well. They have inspired motion pictures, plays, ballets, and animated films.