Joseph Andrews


Henry Fielding - 1742
    Along the way, they meet with a series of adventures in which, through their own innocence and honesty, they expose the hypocrisy and affectation of others.

A Tale of a Tub


Jonathan Swift - 1704
    It is arguably his most difficult satire, and perhaps his most masterly. The Tale is a prose parody which is divided into sections of "digression" and a "tale" of three brothers, each representing one of the main branches of western Christianity. Composed between 1694 and 1697, it was eventually published in 1704.'A Tale' was long regarded as a satire on religion itself, and has famously been attacked for that, starting with William Wotton. The "tale" presents a consistent satire of religious excess, while the digressions are a series of parodies of contemporary writing in literature, politics, theology, Biblical exegesis, and medicine. The overarching parody is of enthusiasm, pride, and credulity. At the time it was written, politics and religion were still linked very closely in England, and the religious and political aspects of the satire can often hardly be separated. "The work made Swift notorious, and was widely misunderstood, especially by Queen Anne herself who mistook its purpose for profanity." "It effectively disbarred its author from proper preferment within the church," but is considered one of Swift's best allegories, even by himself. It was enormously popular, but Swift believed it damaged his prospect of advancement in the Church of England.This edition has been formatted for your Kindle, with an active table of contents. It has also been illustrated and annotated, with an overview, cultural setting, background, nature of the satire, background, publication, history, authorship debate, biographical and bibliographical information.

London Irish


Zane Radcliffe - 2002
    One of them has to get out. For good...It is the summer of 1999. Bic (half-Irish, half-Scots) is eking out a living selling crêpes to the hordes descending on Greenwich market. With one severed ear, two bizarre deaths and the arrest of his dog for civil disobedience, Bic's year hasn't exactly been going to plan.But when raven-haired Roisin takes the stall opposite his, things seem to be looking up - if Bic can just get past her over-protective brothers. That is, until Bic wakes up the-morning-after-the-night-before, in his clothes, in Edinburgh, to find he's the UK's Most Wanted Man - on the run and with fourteen murders to his name... 'Very fresh, very funny' COLIN BATEMAN'A huge and exciting plot...I loved the twist at the end' Goodreads'Great story and full of humour' Goodreads

Don Quixote, U.S.A.


Richard Powell - 1966
    He has, however, been a disappointment to his family in several ways: In appearance he is insignificant looking both in face and figure; he went to the University of Florida instead of Harvard where his forbears had been mainstays of the varsity crew for generations, and he studied agriculture instead of pointing himself toward a career in banking, bonds, or law. To say the least he is not apparently the stuff from which heroes are fashioned.As an agricultural expert specializing in fruit farming, Arthur becomes a Peace Corps volunteer and is assigned to the Republic of San Marco in the Caribbean. This weak-chinned Don Quixote soon acquires his Sancho Panza in the person of a rascally eleven-year-old boy, Pepe, who makes a bargain to be paid 400 pesos each time he saves Arthur's life. (The payments mount alarmingly!)The island's dictator thinks he can use Arthur to obtain military supplies with which to wipe out the band of guerillas in the hills who oppose his corrupt dictatorship. Failing in this the dictator decides to murder Goodpasture and cause an international incident by blaming it on the guerillas. This, he reasons, will bring the U.S. in to help stamp out the rebels.This plan also backfires (with Pepe's help, of course) and Goodpasture is taken prisoner and when they see he is a harmless eccentric he is appointed chief cook for the guerillas. From then on Arthur's life becomes a series of misadventures through which he moves serenely and from which he generally emerges unscathed (again with Pepe's assistance) until he surprisingly finds himself the guerillas' leader.Following one of the funniest bloodless revolutions imaginable Arthur Peabody Goodpasture ends up as Arthur el Gavilan, the new dictator of San Marco. "His strength was as the strength of ten because his heart was pure."

The Fratricides


Nikos Kazantzakis - 1963
    Castello, a village in Epirus is not spared all the death and destruction which culminated during the Holy Week.

Saint Joan


George Bernard Shaw - 1923
    With SAINT JOAN (1923) Shaw reached the height of his fame and Joan is one of his finest creations; forceful, vital, and rebelling against the values that surround her. The play distils Shaw's views on the subjects of politics, religion and creative evolution.

The Divine Comedy by Dante, Illustrated, Purgatory, Volume 1


Dante Alighieri - 2004
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Don Juan


Lord Byron - 1819
    The manner is what Goethe called 'a cultured comic language'-a genre which he regarded as not possible in Geman and which he felt Byron managed superbly.

The History of Pendennis: His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy


William Makepeace Thackeray - 1850
    But here Thackeray plunders his own past to create the character of Pendennis and the world in which he lives: from miserable schoolboy to striving journalist, from carefree Oxbridge to the high (and low) life of London. The result is a superbly panoramic blend of people, action and background. The true ebb and flow of life is caught and the credibility of Pen, his worldly uncle, the Major, and many of the other characters, extends far beyond the pages of the novel. Held together by Thackeray's flowing, confident prose, with its conversational ease of tone, Pendennis is as rich a portrait of England in the 1830s and 40s as it is a thorough and thoroughly entertaining self-portrait.

A Winter Sleep


Greg F. Gifune - 2018
    Gifune. In a haunted hotel on the outskirts of a forgotten town, a bizarre group of tenants guard a horrible secret. A troubled man on the run, with nothing left to lose, drives aimlessly along dark highways in search of redemption. A little boy, brutally attacked and left for dead, realizes the strange power his agony has granted him. An enigmatic homeless man with nightmares he can no longer control, lost in a violent dreamscape only he understands, watches and waits. As a snowstorm traps them all within the walls of the old hotel, where madness and depravity run wild, from the shadows, a new reign of lesser gods begins, and an aberrant evil fights for survival amidst the cold terror of a desolate winter, and the bloody dreams of the hopeless and the damned. Cover art by Wendy Saber Core.

Troilus and Criseyde


Geoffrey Chaucer
    Written in the 1380s, it presents Troilus, son of Priam and younger brother of Hector as a Trojan warrior of renown who sees, and falls deeply in love with the beautiful Cressida. Cressida is the daughter of Calchas, a Trojan priest and seer who, having divined the eventual fall of Troy, has deserted to Agamemnon’s camp, leaving his daughter in the besieged city, With the help of Pander, friend to Troilus and uncle to Cressida, the young couple meet and merge – but with unhappy consequences. Chaucer’s long poem is cast in seven-line rhymed stanzas, and is eased out of Middle English to be presented here in a lively modern verse translation by George Philip Krapp, who has retained not only the structure, but its spirit. Emotions run high, the love is intense, the story unfolds with a dramatic urgency that draws the listener ever onwards; yet Chaucer is Chaucer, and there are times when a deft line, a light insinuation, suggests the smile, the benevolence and the immediacy of the author of The Canterbury Tales. Troilus and Cressida, though often overshadowed by the Tales and time (and even Shakespeare who took up the story) is a monument in its own right in the canon of English literature. Once read it will never be forgotten.

The Following of the Star


Florence Louisa Barclay - 1911
    A romance based on the gifts of the three wise men 'Gold, Frankinsense & Myrrh

The Dark Philosophers


Gwyn Thomas - 1972
    In the title story the grimly humorous philosophers gather in an Italian café in the Terraces to tell the dark tale of revenge that they engineer.

Robinson Crusoé, Volume 1


Daniel Defoe - 1719
    After a fierce storm at sea, Robinson Crusoe is marooned on an uncharted island, with only a few bits of his wrecked ship's flotsam and jetsam to sustain him. For more than two decades, he faces the wrath of nature and the struggle to stay alive with little more than his wits to save him. Then, following an encounter with cannibals, a tribesman named Friday becomes Crusoe's only ally. As their relationship develops, the line between servant and friend begins to blur, and the possibility of freedom for them both at last looms on the horizon. This collectible edition of a beloved adventure includes a soft-touch cover, gold foiling, and luminous illustrations from N.C. Wyeth, whose oil paintings perfectly depict the roiling seas, baking sun, and vast expanse of open space.

The Upside of Hunger: A True Tale


Roxi Harms - 2018
    the magnificently told story of a man who triumphed over the limitations of history to become his greatest self." The life he was born into was too small for Adam Baumann. But getting out in the midst of a world at war was dangerous.Born in an isolated village in eastern Hungary between the great wars, Adam yearned for more. More excitement, more freedom, more knowledge of the world... and often more food. Locked up for theft at age nine, Adam's life took one tumultuous turn after another. From a twelve-year-old stable hand on a nobleman's estate, to a fifteen-year-old shivering in a foxhole on the Eastern Front, Adam's hunger for a bigger life led him into spine tingling adventures, mind-numbing horror, heart-breaking tears, and terrifying brushes with death. Awakening in a makeshift hospital with a shattered left leg, Adam was catapulted into a series of captures and narrow escapes from enemy forces as Europe reeled from the final destruction and horror of WWII.Never standing still, he journeyed through war-torn landscapes to find and reunite his family, and began to build a life from the ashes, until the results of a medical examination at an American Embassy in Germany changed the course of his future forever.