Boasting a cast of extraordinary and eccentric personalities, including the heroine Do�a Rita, this is a story of adventure on the high seas, of the revelation of love, of the crushing weight of loss, and of freedom found in the recklessness of unadorned sincerity.During the Carlist war of the early 1870s, a young sailor, the unnamed protagonist, joins the champions of Don Carlos de Bourbon, pretender to the throne of Spain. The Carlists use the eager youth's intense attraction to the sea to persuade him to run perilous enterprises for their cause, ventures he later learns have been financed by the beautiful mistress and heiress of a rich man's fortune. When he falls in love with her, he finds himself moved absolutely by this discovery, despite the fact that she is unable to return his love fully. In the end he is left alone with his first love, the sea, his brief time with the mysterious Do�a Rita marking a tumultuous awakening to a life of passion, the desolation that hides in its shadow, and the possibility of rebirth in its wake.Although not as well known as his earlier novels Lord Jim and Nostromo, The Arrow of Gold was critically acclaimed when it first appeared in 1919 and is still considered to be among the best of Conrad's later works.

    Set in Bombay during the 1930s, it looks at the lives of ex-pats and Indian royals--and the Indians who work for them.

    The short stories included in this selection are representative not only of Tagore's range, but they also enable us to revise the conventional view of Tagore as a short story writer. Writing them at a time when the form was not yet popular, Tagore eschewed the romantic strain prevalent in his day. His stories are fables of modern man, where fairy tale meets hard ground, where myths are reworked, and the religion of man triumphs over the religion of rituals and convention, where the love of a woman infuses the universe with humanity. He writes with concern about such issues as the Hindu revivalism in the late nineteenth century and the bondage of women. The rhythms of daily life, his rural encounters and childhood reminiscences, unfold in his tales, as does a sense of history, the reality of the political situation and its impact on individual lives. Tagore wishes to see the world of humanity not only reflected in his own life but also actualized in Bengali literature. His profound sensibility led him beyond the merely regional, his humanity stretching across east and west, fulfilling the purpose of his Jibandebata, his life's deity, Edited by Sukanta Chaudhuri, a well-known scholar and translator, this is an authoritative and readable translation of Tagore's short stories. An essential Tagore for the collector, it is one that will find its place on every discerning reader's shelf.

    

    McCutcheon's Graustark no doubt borders Hope's Ruritania and Avram Davidson's more recent Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania. It was a place where an American adventurer could find himself or herself adrift, but rapidly caught up in intrigues, captures and escapes, and the perilously-hinged destiny of (at the very least) a royal throne or two. _Graustark_ is one entry in this best-selling series, which also includes _The Prince of Graustark_, Truxton King, and _Beverly of Graustark_.

    Each volume helps the reader to encounter the original more fully by placing it in historical context, focusing on the important aspects of the text and posing key questions.

    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.

    Though brought together in a friendship that neither jealousy nor violence could shatter, the Hazards and the Mains are torn apart by the storm of events that has divided the nation. "Superb! You will gain a firsthand knowledge of life at West Point in the early 1800s...a peek at the Texas frontier, a vacation in a posh cottage at Newport...experience the savagery of war in Mexico, suffer the suspense of both the Charleston Battery and beleaguered Fort Sumter before the mortar fire that launched a war. It has been a long time since I enjoyed a book so much." (The Asheville Citizen-Times)

    In the opening chapter Sarah is taken to Britain’s *Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace where she catches a glimpse of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Throughout the novel Spring gives his readers the opportunity to share Sarah’s perspective on English history which for Sarah from age 3 on is somehow magically, metaphorically, reflected on the glass windows of the Crystal Palace. As a matter of fact, we learn in the author’s foreword that the title of this book comes from an old music hall song with the words, “You could see the Crystal Palace if it wasn’t for the houses in between.”

    The major theme is the dictatorship of the state and discrimination suffered by the immigrant Nepalese. Thule and Satar, the major characters represent thousands of poor, innocent and illiterate Nepali youths who flee their homes every year with the dream of better quality of life but their dreams get shattered in the hands of frauds and tyrants in the alien land. Various well known authors and critics like Parijat and Michael Hutt have spent words to praise the magic the twenty one year old author cast on the audience in those days and even now.For Parijat, Muglãn is “the second novel I have read in a single breath, within a decade. Unless the language, style, presentation is good, it becomes difficult to read any literature”. Muglan, however, is criticized for being too pessimistic in tone and exaggerating the then existing circumstances. Muglan has been rendered into English from Nepali by Lekhnath Sharma Pathak.

    Her theme is one welling from the heart-springs of American life - the story of the Interstate, a railroad founded in the latter days of Jackson's presidency, which grew through one hundred stormy, changeful years of our history into a vast enterprise; and the story of the extraordinary family with whom its fortunes were intertwined, the deWitts. It is 1866. In the small Pennsylvania city of Portersville, headquarters of the Interstate, old Aaron deWitt watches enigmatically as his two sons struggle for control of the railroad he founded.

    Each casebook reprints documents relating to a work's historical context and reception, presents the best critical studies, and, when possible, features an interview with the author. Accessible and informative to scholars, students, and nonspecialist readers alike, the books in this series provide a wide range of critical and informative commentaries on major texts. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude is arguably the most important novel in twentieth-century Latin American literature. This Casebook features ten critical articles on Garcia Marquez's great work. Carefully selected from the most important work on the novel over the past three decades, they include pieces by Carlos Fuentes, Iris Zavala, James Higgins, Jean Franco, Michael Wood, and Gene H. Bell-Villada. Among the intriguing aspects of the work discussed are its mythic dimension, its "magical" side, its representations of women, its relationship with past chronicles of exploration and discovery, its portrayals of Western power and imperialism, its astounding diffusion throughout the globe and the media, and its simple truth-telling, its fidelity to the tangled history of Latin America. The book incorporates several theoretical approaches--historical, feminist, postcolonial; the first English translation of Fuentes's renowned, oft-cited, eight page meditation on the work; a general introduction; and a 1982 interview with Garcia Marquez.

    Jabez's rise to commercial success mirrors the rise of the city at the heart of the industrial revolution. Mrs George Linnaeus Banks (nee Isabella Varley) weaves a web of historical fact and fiction in a fast-paced story built around the rivalry between the Jabez and his nemesis Laurence Aspinall, and the fate of Augusta Ashton, who is loved by both but loves only one. An entertaining fictional journey through the early 19th century history of the city of Manchester, the book also has serious points to make about women's choices and domestic violence. (Summary by Phil Benson)

     At the beginning of the first novel, French Legionnaires find one of their fortresses manned by dead men. Who could have done it? A flashback unravels the mystery of the three English Geste brothers. A classic, rip-roaring tale of adventure... This volume also contains 36 short stories of the Foreign Legion, grouped in four well known collection (now in one volume!): STEPSONS OF FRANCE Ten Little Legionaries A la Ninon de L'Enclos An Officer and--a Liar The Deserter Five Minutes "Here are Ladies" The MacSnorrt "Belzébuth" The Quest Moonshine The Coward of the Legion Mahdev Rao The Merry Liars GOOD GESTES What's in a Name A Gentleman of Colour David and His Incredible Jonathan The McSnorrt Reminiscent Buried Treasure If Wishes were Horses The Devil and Digby Geste The Mule Presentiments Dreams Come True PORT O' MISSING MEN The Return of Odo Klemens The Betrayal of Odo Klemens The Life of Odo Klemens Moon-rise Moon-shadows Moon-set FLAWED BLADES No. 187017 Bombs Mastic--and Drastic The Death Post E Tenebris Nemesis The Hunting of Henri