The Leatherstocking Tales, Vol. 2: The Pathfinder / The Deerslayer


James Fenimore Cooper - 1985
    During the Seven Years War, just after the events narrated in The Last of the Mohicans, Natty brings the daughter of a British sergeant to her father’s station on the Great Lakes, where the French and their Indian allies are plotting a treacherous ambush. Here, for the first time, he falls in love with a woman, before Cooper manages bring off Leatherstocking’s most poignant, and perhaps his most revealing, escape.The Deerslayer (1842) brings the saga full circle and follows the young Natty on his first warpath. Instinctively gifted in the arts of the forest, pious in his respect for the unspoiled wilderness on which he loves to gaze, honorable to friend and foe alike, stoic under torture, and cool under fire, the young Leatherstocking emerges as Cooper’s noblest figure of the American frontier. Enacting a rite of passage both for its hero and for the culture he comes to represent, this last book in the series glows with a timelessness that readers everywhere will find enchanting.

Soldier in the Rain


William Goldman - 1961
    

Somewhere a Band is Playing


Ray Bradbury - 2007
    THE BOOK INCLUDES THE FINAL MANUSCRIPT AS WELL AS EARLY DRAFTS.

The Guns of August / The Proud Tower


Barbara W. Tuchman - 1962
    Tuchman distilled the complex interplay of personalities and events into gripping narratives that combine lucid scholarship with elegant literary art. A shrewd portraitist, she laid bare the all-too-human failures of leaders caught in the pull of historical currents and often tragically blinded by biases of culture and temperament.Nowhere are her talents more brilliantly on display than in her Pulitzer Prize–winning bestseller The Guns of August (1962), a riveting account of the outbreak of World War I and the weeks of fighting leading up to the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914. Tuchman dramatizes the diplomatic debacles that precipitated the war and the intransigence of the German and French armies as they dogmatically adhered to their battle plans, with disastrous consequences. Interwoven with her vivid re-creation of the German march through Belgium into France and the fierce fighting on the Eastern Front are astute characterizations of the conflict’s key military and political leaders, among them French General Joseph Joffre, German Kaiser Wilhelm II, and British First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill. The Guns of August can also be read as a cautionary study in the perils of brinksmanship, and Tuchman’s searching observations about the irrational escalation of conflict among states made a deep impression on President John F. Kennedy, who famously drew on the book for insight during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In a deluxe reader’s edition for the first time in more than a generation, The Guns of August is presented here with ten fully restored color maps and sixteen pages of photographs.Some of Tuchman’s finest writing graces her next book, The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890–1914 (1966). She brings to life the disparate worlds of the self-satisfied English aristocracy and the miserable poor whose conditions gave rise to international anarchism; revisits the national madness of the Dreyfus Affair in France; considers the naiveté and cynicism of the varied participants in the international peace conferences at The Hague; mounts a dazzling foray into cultural criticism with a meditation on the operas of Richard Strauss; and creates unforgettable portraits of such political titans as Thomas B. Reed, longtime Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and French Socialist leader Jean Jaurès. Honoring the historian’s ideal to envision life “as it really was,” Tuchman paints a fin-de-siècle world “bursting with new tensions and accumulated energies.” The present volume reproduces the original endpaper illustrations from the first edition of The Proud Tower, plus a thirty-two page insert of illustrations. And as a special coda, it presents “How We Entered World War I,” a 1967 essay that appeared in The New York Times Magazine in which Tuchman explores the genesis of U.S. involvement in the Great War.

The World's Greatest Books, Volume 1: Fiction


Arthur MeeHonoré de Balzac - 1910
    About, EdmondKing of the MountainsAinsworth, HarrisonTower of LondonAndersen, HansImprovisatoreApuleiusThe Golden AssArabian NightsAucassin and NicoletteAuerbach, BertholdOn the HeightAusten, JaneSense and SensibilityPride and PrejudiceNorthanger AbbeyMansfield ParkEmmaPersuasionBalzac, Honoré de Eugénie GrandetOld GoriotMagic SkinQuest of the AbsoluteBeckford, WilliamHistory of the Caliph VathekBehn, AphraOroonokoBergerac, Cyrano deVoyage to the MoonBjornson, BjornstjerneArneIn God's WayBlack, WilliamDaughter of HethBlackmore, R.D.Lorna DooneBoccaccioDecameron

Dangerous Parking


Stuart Browne - 2000
    A filmmaker and now a dry alcoholic, he's lived life to the full - sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Here, struggling to survive cancer, Noah evaluates his chequered past life, and as a picture builds of a brave and foolish man, gradually it becomes clear that he's a modern-day hero.

John Updike: The Collected Stories


John Updike - 1971
    His evocations of small-town Pennsylvania life, and of his own religious, artistic, and sexual awakening, transfixed readers of The New Yorker and of the early collections Pigeon Feathers (1962) and The Music School (1966). In these and the works that followed—the formal experiments and wickedly tart tales of suburban adultery in Museums and Women (1972) and Problems (1979), the portraits of middle-aged couples in love and at war with aging parents and rebellious children in Trust Me (1987) and The Afterlife (1994), and the fugue-like stories of memory, desire, travel, and unquenched thirst for life in Licks of Love (2000) and My Father’s Tears (2009)—Updike displayed the virtuosic command of character, dialogue, and sensual description that was his signature.   Here, in two career-spanning volumes, are 186 unforgettable stories, from "Ace in the Hole” (1953), a sketch of a Rabbit-like ex-basketball player written when Updike was a Harvard senior, to "The Full Glass” (2008), the author’s toast to the visible world, his own impending disappearance from it be damned.” Based on new archival research, each story is presented in its final definitive form and in order of composition, established here for the first time. This unprecedented collection of American masterpieces is not just the publishing event of the season, it is a national literary treasure.

First Project Gutenberg Collection of Edgar Allan Poe


Edgar Allan Poe - 2009
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Love Among the Ruins


Robert Clark - 2001
    But the day Emily receives the letter and composes a response–I know who you are. In fact, I remember you from a bunch of times–is also the day that Robert Kennedy is shot. In Minnesota, even as the tumultuous summer of 1968 has begun, first love cares little for matters of time and place. William and Emily fall hard, despite the fact that he and his family are determined to wrestle with the system while she and hers are conservative, God-fearing Catholics. Together, the young lovers grow into each other and decide to escape to the wilderness to start anew. Left behind to grapple with the shifting mores of the nation and the sundering of their families, the Lowrys and the Byrnes must search for both their children and their own lost innocence.Masterfully rendering both young love and the unrest of the 1960s Robert Clark has crafted a work that is at once intimate and grand.

The Master


Colm Tóibín - 2004
    With stunningly resonant prose, “The Master is unquestionably the work of a first-rate novelist: artful, moving, and very beautiful” (The New York Times Book Review). The emotional intensity of this portrait is riveting.

Sherlock Holmes: The Emerald Crown


Arthur Conan Doyle - 1982
    When someone tries to take the crown from Mr Holder's desk, he asks Sherlock Holmes for help. Who wants the crown and why? Only Sherlock can find the answers.

The complete novels of Jane Austen


Jane Austen - 2016
    This book contains the complete novels of Jane Austen.- Lady Susan- Sense and Sensibility- Pride and Prejudice- Mansfield Park- Emma- Persuasion- Northanger Abbey- Love And Friendship And Other Early Works

Man of Nazareth


Anthony Burgess - 1979
    It is one of a trilogy of Burgess books with biblical themes, the others being The Kingdom of the Wicked and Moses.Man of Nazareth is a fictionalized historic account recalling the story of Jesus from his birth to his death.

Anne of Green Gables Collection


L.M. Montgomery - 2009
    This Halcyon Classics ebook edition contains eleven works by Canadian writer Lucy Maud Montgomery, including 'Anne of Green Gables,' and seven of its sequels.' Includes an active table of contents for easy navigation.Anne Shirley Novels:Anne of Green GablesAnne of AvonleaAnne of the IslandAnne's House of DreamsRainbow ValleyRilla of InglesideChronicles of AvonleaFurther Chronicles of AvonleaOther Works:The Golden RoadKilmeny of the OrchardThe Story GirlThis unexpurgated edition contains the complete text, with minor errors and omissions corrected.

To Kill a Mockingbird Study Guide


Literature Made Easy - 1989
    Each book describes a classic novel and drama by explaining themes, elaborating on characters, and discussing each author's unique literary style, use of language, and point of view. Extensive illustrations and imaginative, enlightening use of graphics help to make each book in this series livelier, easier, and more fun to use than ordinary literature plot summaries. An unusual feature, "Mind Map" is a diagram that summarizes and interrelates the most important details that students need to understand about a given work. Appropriate for middle and high school students.