The Brontës: Three Great Novels: Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall


Charlotte Brontë - 1982
    Charlotte Bront�'s Jane Eyre met immediate success when it was first published in 1847 and remains a much-loved classic. Considered by the public to be rough and strange when it was originally published, Emily Bront�'s only novel Wuthering Heights has become one the most popular of all English novels. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bront�'s second novel, was a dramatic and courageous challenge to the conventions supposedly upheld by Victorian society. It has since become a classic, compelling in its imaginative power, the realism and range of its dialogue, and its psychological insight into the characters involved in a marital battle.

Fighting Spirit: A Championship Season at Notre Dame


Lou Holtz - 1989
    Holtz brought the Fighting Irish back from a five-year slump in 1987. Illustrated.

Brewer's Rogues, Villains & Eccentrics: An A-Z of Roguish Britons Through the Ages


William Donaldson - 2002
    Here are assassins and arsonists, hangmen and horse thieves, hell-raisers and highwaymen, not to mention an array of poisoners, quacks, and forgers. Meet Ronald Biggs, one of the participants of the Great Train Robby, and Julie Amiri, a thief who found being detained by policemen...very exciting. There's enough degradation, depravity, and dottiness to delight anyone. "A Selection of the Readers Subscription Book Club."

Selected Poetry


Alexander Pope - 1954
    An invalid from infancy, he devoted his energies towards literature and achieved remarkable success with his first published work at the age of twenty-one. A succession of brilliant poems followed, including An Essay on Criticism (1711), Windsor Forest (1715), and his masterpiece, The Rape of the Lock. A second period of great poetry was begun in 1728 with the appearance of the first Dunciad. All these works--which exhibit Pope's astonishing human insight, his wide sympathies, and powers of social observation (displayed to greatest effect in his talent for satire)--are included in this selection of his poetry. It has been compiled by the distinguished Pope scholar and editor Pat Rodgers, who also provides an indispensable introduction that offers a new interpretation of Pope's poetry, and the philosophical ideas behind it.

Family and Friends


Anita Brookner - 1985
    In an ambitious departure from her usual form, Anita Brookner expands her canvas in FAMILY AND FRIENDS to create a richly textured novel about the life of a wealthy Jewish family in London, centering upon the generation that came to maturity between the two World Wars.

The Salterton Trilogy: Tempest-Tost; Leaven of Malice; A Mixture of Frailties


Robertson Davies - 1958
    Davies was awarded the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour in 1955 for Leaven of Malice.The trilogy revolves around the residents of the imaginary town of Salterton, Ontario. Described by some reviewers as satirical, bawdily humourous, and witty.

Bid Me to Live: A Madrigal


H.D. - 1982
    documents her traumatic experiences during WWI on which she blamed a number of personal tragedies, including a stillborn child, the end of her marriage, and her pained relationship with D. H. Lawrence. This critical edition returns the novel to print for the first time in a generation. Editor Caroline Zilboorg offers invaluable background information and perspectives that facilitate a rich and rewarding reading of a complex novel. Including an introduction that recounts the autobiographical narrative on which the book is based, a biographical key to all the major characters, explanations of textual references, and photographs of all the central figures in the text, this is a powerful resource for understanding and appreciating one of the Imagist author's most accessible novels. H.D. (born Hilda Doolittle, 1886–1961) is an American writer whose work exerted enormous influence on modernist poetry and prose.

Doting


Henry Green - 1952
    Stuck in a passionless marriage, Arthur becomes infatuated with Annabel, a much younger woman. Their relationship sets into motion a series of intertwining affairs between five close friends less concerned with love than with their attempts to keep the other lovers apart.

The Portable Romantic Poets, Blake to Poe


W.H. Auden - 1950
    Auden and Norman Holmes Pearson, presents the greatest of the Romantics in all the fullness and ardor of their vision, including William Blake, Robert Burns, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Edgar Allan Poe. What emerges is a panoramic view of a generation of artists struggling to remake the world in their own image—and miraculously succeeding.

In Hazard


Richard Hughes - 1938
    A little overloaded, perhaps—the oddly assorted cargo includes piles of old newspapers and heaps of tobacco—the ship departs for the Panama Canal from Norfolk, Virginia, on a beautiful autumn day. Before long, the weather turns unexpectedly rough—rougher in fact than even the most experienced members of the crew have ever encountered. The Archimedes, it turns out, has been swept up in the vortex of an immense hurricane, and for the next four days it will be battered and mauled by wind and waves as it is driven wildly off course. Caught in an unremitting struggle for survival, both the crew and the ship will be tested as never before.Based on detailed research into an actual event, Richard Hughes’s tale of high suspense on the high seas is an extraordinary story of men under pressure and the unexpected ways they prove their mettle—or crack. Yet the originality, art, and greatness of In Hazard stem from something else: Hughes’s eerie fascination with the hurricane itself, the inhuman force around which this wrenching tale of humanity at its limits revolves. Hughes channels the furies of sea and sky into a piece of writing that is both apocalyptic and analytic. In Hazard is an unforgettable, defining work of modern adventure.

Paradise News


David Lodge - 1991
    It's a very long way from home. Bernard Walsh is in Hawaii on family business, escorting his querulous father to the bedside of a long-forgotten aunt. His mission transports him from quiet obscurity in Rummridge, England, to a lush tropical playground, from cloistered solitude into the unfamiliar company of package tourists: honeymooners; young women looking for Mr. Nice; families nuclear and fissile. But it is the island itself that holds the most astonishing surprises, as an accidental encounter opens up to Bernard possibilities of life, and love, never dreamed of in his normally overcast habitat. Paradise News is an enchanting--and very funny--portrait of the late flowering of an honest man.

Gino's Italian Escape


Gino D'Acampo - 2013
    From much-loved pizza, pasta and antipasti dishes, to Gino's classics with a twist such as Honey & Rosemary Lamb Cutlets and Limoncello Mousse, this book is packed with mouth-watering favorites that will soon have you cooking and eating like a true Italian.Accompanying a major ITV series, Gino's Italian Escape is a celebration of the very best Italian food from one of the country's favorite exports.

That Uncertain Feeling


Kingsley Amis - 1955
    She marks an easy target...John Aneuris Lewis, an assistant librarian, who seems an uncomplicated conquest.But Lewis is both more and less than he appears. Beneath this family-man facade lurks a poet, wit and visionary...also a budding lecher, for we soon find Lewis peering down the front of the socialite's dress. No wonder he has that uncertain feeling...he's looking into a bottomless pit!"The most truthful book about modern marriage to appear in many a year." --Phillip Oakes

The Harpole Report


J.L. Carr - 1972
    L. Carr, published in 1972. The novel tells the story mostly in the form of a school log book kept by George Harpole, temporary Head Teacher of the Church of England primary school of "Tampling St. Nicholas". Like all of Carr's novels, it is grounded in personal experience. Carr was a Primary School teacher for almost 40 years, including 15 years spent as Head Teacher.

Lives of the Trees: An Uncommon History


Diana Wells - 2010
    As she investigates the names and meanings of trees, telling their legends and lore, she reminds us of just how innately bound we are to these protectors of our planet. Since the human race began, we have depended on them for food, shade, shelter and fuel, not to mention furniture, musical instruments, medicine utensils and more. Wells has a remarkable ability to dig up the curious and the captivating: At one time, a worm found in a hazelnut prognosticated ill fortune. Rowan trees were planted in churchyards to prevent the dead from rising from their graves. Greek arrows were soaked in deadly yew, and Shakespeare’s witches in Macbeth used “Gall of goat and slips of Yew” to make their lethal brew. One bristlecone pine, at about 4,700 years old, is thought to be the oldest living plant on earth. All this and more can be found in the beautifully illustrated pages (themselves born of birch bark!) of 100 Trees.