Book picks similar to
Love's Cross-Currents by Algernon Charles Swinburne
classics
not
original-editions
read-in-english
Paradise
Abdulrazak Gurnah - 1994
It presents a major African voice to American readers - a voice that prompted Peter Tinniswood to write in the London Times, reviewing Gurnah's previous novel, "Mr. Gurnah is a very fine writer. I am certain he will become a great one." Paradise is Abdulrazak Gurnah's great novel. At twelve, Yusuf, the protagonist of this twentieth-century odyssey, is sold by his father in repayment of a debt. From the simple life of rural Africa, Yusuf is thrown into the complexities of precolonial urban East Africa - a fascinating world in which Muslim black Africans, Christian missionaries, and Indians from the subcontinent coexist in a fragile, subtle social hierarchy. Through the eyes of Yusuf, Gurnah depicts communities at war, trading safaris gone awry, and the universal trials of adolescence. Then, just as Yusuf begins to comprehend the choices required of him, he and everyone around him must adjust to the new reality of European colonialism. The result is a page-turning saga that covers the same territory as the novels of Isak Dinesen and William Boyd, but does so from a perspective never before available on that seldom-chronicled part of the world.
Doctor Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party
Graham Greene - 1980
When the notorious toothpaste millionaire decides to hold his own deadly version of the Book of Revelations, Greene opens up a powerful vision of the limitless greed of the rich; black comedy and painful satire combine in a totally compelling novel.(Source: back cover)
The Shunned House
H.P. Lovecraft - 1937
We boys used to overrun the place, and I can still recall my youthful terror not only at the morbid strangeness of this sinister vegetation, but at the eldritch atmosphere and odor of the dilapidated house, whose unlocked front door was often entered in quest of shudders.
The Overcoat
Nikolai Gogol - 1842
The Overcoat which is generally acknowledged as the finest of Gogol's memorable Saint Petersburg stories, is a tale of the absurd and misplaced obsessions.
The Shattered Girl
Leigh Christopher - 2017
Destroyed. Beyond broken.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀After a lifetime of unbearable pain, all Tia wants is revenge—vengeance for all that was stripped from her. She’s been fed lies all her life, and it’s time to reveal all the truths hidden in the fragments of her mind. Her plan is in motion, and she knows where her target is, and what she has to do. But the darkness is the only thing stopping her, forcing her to question her own sanity. She can’t lose sight of her goal when it's in reaching distance. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Revenge is the only thing getting Braxton through the days, and nights. That is, until Tia knocks him off course and everything changes. His path becomes hers, and hers becomes his. But when secrets so damning are revealed they change the course of his plan.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Can he learn to trust this shattered girl?⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Can the pieces of a broken mind ever be repaired?
Lois the Witch
Elizabeth Gaskell - 1861
Recently orphaned, Lois is forced to leave the English parsonage that had been her home and sail to America. A God-fearing and honest girl, she has little to concern her in this new life. Yet as she joins her distant family, she finds jealousy and dissension are rife, and her cousins quick to point the finger at the “imposter.” With the whole of Salem gripped by a fear of the supernatural, it seems her new home is where she is in most danger. Lonely and afraid, the words of an old curse return to haunt her. Collaborator and friend of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell is a leading figure in Victorian literature.
She Will Soar: Bright, Brave Poems About Freedom by Women
Ana Sampson - 2020
From the ancient world right up to the present day, it includes poems on wanderlust, travel, daydreams, flights of fancy, escaping into books, tranquillity, courage, hope and resilience. From frustrated housewives to passionate activists, from servants and suffragettes to some of today’s most gifted writers, here is a bold choir of voices demanding independence and celebrating their hard-won power.Immerse yourself in poems by Carol Ann Duffy, Christina Rossetti, Stevie Smith, Sarah Crossan, Emily Dickinson, Salena Godden, Mary Jean Chan, Charly Cox, Nikita Gill, Fiona Benson, Hollie McNish and Grace Nichols to name but a few
Cain's Book
Alexander Trocchi - 1960
Joe’s world is the half-world of drugs and addicts—the world of furtive fixes in sordid Harlem apartments, of police pursuits down deserted subway stations. Junk for Necchi, however, is a tool, freely chosen and fully justified; he is Cain, the malcontent, the profligate, the rebel who lives by no one’s rules but his own. Like DeQuincey and Baudelaire before him, Trocchi’s muse was drugs. But unlike his literary predecessors, in his roman a clef, Trocchi never romanticizes the source of his inspiration. If the experience of heroin, of the “fix,” is central to Cain’s Book, both its destructive force and the possibilities for creativity it creates are recognized and accepted without apology.
The Best of Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore - 2004
Kabuliwala2. The Parrot's Training3. The Rat's Feast4. Atonement5. The Nuisance6. Wish Fulfilment7. The Runaway8. Shiburam9. The Scientist10. The Invention of Shoes11. A 'Good' Man12. Return of the Little Master
A Zoo in My Luggage
Gerald Durrell - 1960
A Zoo in My Luggage begins with an account of Durrell’s third trip to the British Cameroons in West Africa, during which he and his wife capture animals to start their own zoo. Returning to England with a few additions to their family—Cholmondeley the chimpanzee, Bug-eye the bush baby, and others—they have nowhere to put them as they haven’t yet secured a place for their zoo. Durrell’s account of how he manages his menagerie in all sorts of places throughout England while finding a permanent home for the animals provides as much adventure as capturing them. For animal lovers of all ages, A Zoo in My Luggage is the romping true story of the boy who grew up to make a Noah’s Ark of his own.
Unshed Tears
Edith Hofmann - 2012
It has only very recently been published. Although it has been written as a novel, it details events, which were all too tragically true.Edith Hofmann is a survivor of the Holocaust, born in Prague in 1927 as Edith Birkin. In 1941, along with her parents, she was deported to the Lodz Ghetto, where within a year both her parents had died. At 15 she was left to fend forherself.The Lodz Ghetto was the second-largest ghetto to Warsaw, and was established for Jews and Gypsies in German-occupied Poland. Situated in the town of Lodz in Poland and originally intended as a temporary gathering point for Jews, the ghetto was transformed into a major industrial centre, providing much needed supplies for Nazi Germany and especially for the German Army.Because of its remarkable productivity, the ghetto managed to survive until August 1944, when the remaining population, including Edith, was transported to Auschwitz and Chelmno extermination camp in cattle trucks. It was the last ghetto in Poland to be liquidated due to the advancing Russian army. Edith was only 17, and one of the lucky ones.For the majority, it was their final journey. A small group of them were selected for work. With her hair shaved off and deprived of all her possessions, she travelled to Kristianstadt, a labour camp in Silesia, to work in an underground munitions factory.
The Law of Life: a Jamestown classic adapted from Jack London
Walter Pauk - 1976