Book picks similar to
Following Darkness by Forrest Reid
ireland
historical
guardian
university-related
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Lady of Shallot, the Lady of the Fountain, and Other Classic Poems and Tales of Camelot
Alfred Tennyson - 2011
The Arthurian tales of chivalry, romance, and tragedy have left a lasting impact on English literature. This collection contains Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (trans. 1898), The Lady of Shallot (1833), The Founding of the Round Table (trans. 1914), The Passing of Arthur (trans. 1914), The Morte D'arthur (1914), The Lady of the Fountain (trans. 1877), Arthurian Songs: 1. Avalon (1894), and Sir Galahad, a Christmas Mystery (1858).
The Marriage Bed
Regina McBride - 2004
There, she finds a foreign, civilized world -- and Manus, the architect son of a wealthy, devout family. Together Deirdre and Manus build a marriage that, like Dublin itself, is fraught with hope and threatened by legacies. When Deirdre's secret resurfaces, she is forced to confront the questions "How much of our parents do we carry? Do their sins and frailties shape who we become to our own children?"
Great Granny Webster
Caroline Blackwood - 1977
Heiress to the Guinness fortune, Blackwood was celebrated as a great beauty and dazzling raconteur long before she made her name as a strikingly original writer. This macabre, mordantly funny, partly auto-biographical novel reveals the gothic craziness behind the scenes in the great houses of the aristocracy, as witnessed through the unsparing eyes of an orphaned teenage girl. Great Granny Webster herself is a fabulous monster, the chilliest of matriarchs, presiding with steely self-regard over a landscape of ruined lives.
The Passing: Stories
Ferrol Sams - 1988
Now the stories alone are available for the first time in trade paperback.
The Vampyre
John William Polidori - 1819
A young English gentleman of means, Aubrey is immediately intrigued by Lord Ruthven, the mysterious newcomer among society’s elite. His unknown origin and curious behavior tantalizes Aubrey’s imagination. But the young man soon discovers a sinister character hidden behind his new friend’s glamorous facade. When the two are set upon by bandits while traveling together in Europe, Ruthven is fatally injured. Before drawing his last breath, he makes the odd request that Aubrey keep his death and crimes secret for a year and a day. But when Ruthven resurfaces in London—making overtures toward Aubrey’s sister—Aubrey realizes this immortal fiend is a vampyre. John William Polidori’s The Vampyre is both a classic tale of gothic horror and the progenitor of the modern romantic vampire myth that has been fodder for artists ranging from Anne Rice to Alan Ball to Francis Ford Coppola. Originally published in 1819, many decades before Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and misattributed to Polidori’s friend Lord Byron, The Vampyre has kept readers up at night for nearly two hundred years.
Under the Hawthorn Tree
Marita Conlon-McKenna - 1990
The potatoes are black and rotten, and the people have nothing to eat. Eily, Michael and Peggy are alone in their cottage. Their parents went out in search of work and food, but never returned. Now the children must fend for themselves. Desperate to avoid being sent to the workhouse, they set out on a journey to find their great-aunts. On their journey, they encounter the devastation caused by famine people scrabbling for food, abandoned children, soup kitchens, beggars, disease, wild dogs, death. Led by twelve-year-old Eily, the children use all their strength and ingenuity to survive and find their way to Castletaggart.
An Irish Country Childhood: A Bygone Age Remembered
Marrie Walsh - 1995
Her memoirs take the reader to a time and a way of life now long disappeared, exploring lives that were inticately bound with the natural world in a small, close-knit farming community that was as resourceful as it was poor. Poor in worldly wealth and tied to the land but rich in love, kindness and good spirit, the people brought to life in this book are an inspiring reminder of a way of life lost in the past.
December Girl
Nicola Cassidy - 2017
At every stage of her life, she has faced troubles.As a young woman, her family are evicted from their home at Christmas. Molly swears vengeance on the jealous neighbour and land agent responsible, Flann Montgomery.Then in 1896, her baby son is taken from his pram. While Molly searches the streets for little Oliver, the police are called but her baby is gone.Why does trouble seem to follow Molly? And will she ever find out what happened to her child?December Girl is a tale of family bonds, love, revenge and murder.
The Uninvited
Dorothy Macardle - 1942
They are drawn to the suspiciously inexpensive Cliff End, feared amongst locals as a place of disturbance and ill omen. Gradually, the Fitzgeralds learn of the mysterious deaths of Mary Meredith and another strange young woman. Together, they must unravel the mystery of Cliff End's uncanny past - and keep the troubled young Stella, who was raised in the house as a baby, from returning to the nursery where something waits to tuck her in at night... The second in Tramp's Recovered Voices series, this strange, bone-chilling story was first published in 1942, and was adapted for the screen as one of Hollywood's most successful ghost stories, The Uninvited, in 1944.
Castle Rackrent and Ennui
Maria Edgeworth - 1809
Thady will defend his masters to the end, but eventually his naivety and blind loyalty cause him to ignore the warning signs as the family's excesses lead them to ruin. This volume also includes Ennui, the entertaining 'confessions' of the Earl of Glenthorn, a bored, spoiled aristocrat. Desperate to be free from 'the demon of ennui', Glenthorn's quest for happiness takes him through violence and revolution, and leads to intriguing twists of fate. Both novels offer a darkly comic and satirical exposé of the Irish class system, and a portrait of a nation in turmoil.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: A Critical Companion
Alexis Klimoff - 1997
Also included are fascinating primary sources and background materials, an annotated bibliography, and discussions of the work by leading scholars Robert Louis Jackson, Richard Tempest, and Dariusz Tolczyk. Combining scholarship with accessibility, this critical companion--part of the acclaimed AATSEEL series--illuminates a great work of literature and will enhance its appreciation by students and teachers.
The Last September
Elizabeth Bowen - 1929
Their niece, Lois Farquar, attempts to live her own life and gain her own freedoms from the very class that her elders are vainly defending. The Last September depicts the tensions between love and the longing for freedom, between tradition and the terrifying prospect of independence, both political and spiritual.
Men and Women and Other Poems
Robert Browning - 1855
In poems including 'Fra Lippo Lippi' and 'Bishop Blugram's Apology', Browning enters the personality and language of his characters, revelling in their unwitting self-revelation. Elsewhere Browning contemplates the relationships between love and the lyric, the poet and the painter, poetry and music.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde & The Body Snatcher
Robert Louis Stevenson - 1885
Presents two classic tales of terror, in which the protagonists put their souls in peril by their criminal activities and hope their evil deeds do not catch up to them.
Cal
Bernard MacLaverty - 1983
For Cal, some choices are devastatingly simple: he can work in an abattoir that nauseates him or join the dole queue; he can brood on his past or plan a future with Marcella.Springing out of the fear and violence of Ulster, Cal is a haunting love story that unfolds in a land where tenderness and innocence can only flicker briefly in the dark.