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Radio Dialogs II by Arno Schmidt


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Grimm's Fairy Tales


Jacob Grimm - 1909
    By 1807 there was a growing interest in German folk tales. The Grimm brothers were academics who invited friends to their home and asked them to relate stories they had heard. They soon published their first collection of tales and from there several more volumes followed.This compilation of fairy tales which includes the complete canon of over 200 tales has become a beloved set of classical stories the world over. Included in this collection are Hansel and Gretel, Briar Rose, The Fisherman and His Wife, Rapunzel, The Frog Prince, Little Red Riding Hood, Rumpelstiltskin, Tom Thumb, and many more. These stories are a delight to read and will rekindle up many childhood memories as they are reread. Presented here in this edition is the faithful translation of Margaret Hunt.

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

Love, Pain & The Whole Damn Thing


Doris Dörrie - 1987
    Men and films, and the dreams that films embody, form the background to the stories.

The Wall


Marlen Haushofer - 1963
    Assuming her isolation to be the result of a military experiment gone awry, she begins the terrifying work of survival and self-renewal. This novel is at once a simple and moving tale and a disturbing meditation on humanity.

Accident: A Day's News


Christa Wolf - 1987
    In the space of a single day, in a potent, lyrical stream of thought, the narrator confronts both mortality and life and above all, the import of each moment lived-open, as Wolf reveals, to infinite analysis.

In Free Fall


Juli Zeh - 2007
    One man dies, two physicists fight, and a senior constable falls in love. In the end, everything is different…yet exactly the same.”A rising star who has garnered some of Europe’s most important literary prizes, Juli Zeh has established herself as the new master of the philosophical thriller. With In Free Fall, she now takes us on a fast-paced ride through deadly rivalry and love’s infinite configurations.Against the backdrop of Germany and Switzerland, two physicists begin a dangerous dance of distrust. Friends since their university days, when they were aspiring Nobel Prize candidates, they now interact in an atmosphere of tension, stoked by Oskar’s belief that Sebastian fell into mediocrity by marrying. When Sebastian’s son, Liam, is apparently kidnapped, their fragile friendship is further tested. Entrusted with uncovering the truth, Detective Superintendent Schilf discerns a web of blackmail, while at the same time the reality of his personal life falls into doubt. Unfolding in a series of razor-sharp scenes, In Free Fall is a riveting novel of ideas from a major new literary voice.

Auto-da-Fé


Elias Canetti - 1935
    With masterly precision, Canetti reveals Kien's character, displaying the flawed personal relationships which ultimately lead to his destruction.Manipulated by his illiterate and grasping housekeeper, Therese, who has tricked him into marriage, and Benedikt Pfaff, a brutish concierge, Kien is forced out of his apartment - which houses his great library and one true passion - and into the underworld of the city. In this purgatory he is guided by a chess-playing dwarf of evil propensities, until he is eventually restored to his home. But on his return he is visited by his brother, an eminent psychiatrist who, by an error of diagnosis, precipitates the final crisis..."Auto-da-Fé" was first published in Germany in 1935 as "Die Blendung" ("The Blinding" or "Bedazzlement") and later in Britain in 1947, where the publisher noted Canetti as a 'writer of strongly individual genius, which may prove influential', an observation borne out when the author was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981. "Auto-da-Fé" still towers as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, and Canetti's incisive vision of an insular man battling agianst the outside world is as fresh and rewarding today as when first it appeared in print.

This Little Art


Kate Briggs - 2018
    Taking her own experience of translating Roland Barthes’s lecture notes as a starting point, the author threads various stories together to give us this portrait of translation as a compelling, complex and intensely relational activity. She recounts the story of Helen Lowe-Porter’s translations of Thomas Mann, and their posthumous vilification. She writes about the loving relationship between André Gide and his translator Dorothy Bussy. She recalls how Robinson Crusoe laboriously made a table, for him for the first time, on an undeserted island. With This Little Art, a beautifully layered account of a subjective translating experience, Kate Briggs emerges as a truly remarkable writer: distinctive, wise, frank, funny and utterly original.

Lost In Time


Bridgitte Lesley - 2014
    . . Things really start heating up when Belinda is asked to remove a mirror from her shop window. Only to have it come crashing down soon after and shattering in to pieces. Would it mean seven years of bad luck? The moment Harrison walks in to the store and sets eyes on Belinda he is hooked. It was his lucky day. His decision is made. She would soon be his wife, the future Mrs. Scott. Their romance blossoms from a friendship in to a meaningful relationship. After a business trip Harrison cannot wait to get home. But the strangest twist of words changes everything. On the very same day that Harrison proposes to Belinda. Belinda is not about to apologize. She is old fashioned . . . in so many ways!

I'm Not Stiller


Max Frisch - 1954
    To prove he is who he claims to be, he confesses to three unsolved murders and recalls in great detail an adventuresome life in America and Mexico among cowboys and peasants, in back alleys and docks. He is consumed by "the morbid impulse to convince," but no one believes him. This is a harrowing account part Kafka, part Camus of the power of self-deception and the freedom that ultimately lies in self-acceptance. Simultaneously haunting and humorous, I'm Not Stiller has come to be recognized as "one of the major post-war works of fiction" and a masterpiece of German literature.

Rock Crystal


Adalbert Stifter - 1853
    This jewel-like novella by the writer that Thomas Mann praised as "one of the most extraordinary, the most enigmatic, the most secretly daring and the most strangely gripping narrators in world literature" is among the most unusual, moving, and memorable of Christmas stories. Two children—Conrad and his little sister, Sanna—set out from their village high up in the Alps to visit their grandparents in the neighboring valley. It is the day before Christmas but the weather is mild, though of course night falls early in December and the children are warned not to linger. The grandparents welcome the children with presents and pack them off with kisses. Then snow begins to fall, ever more thickly and steadily. Undaunted, the children press on, only to take a wrong turn. The snow rises higher and higher, time passes: it is deep night when the sky clears and Conrad and Sanna discover themselves out on a glacier, terrifying and beautiful, the heart of the void.

Nights of the Long Knives


Hans Hellmut Kirst - 1967
    

The Threepenny Opera


Bertolt Brecht - 1928
    Based on John Gay's eighteenth-century Beggar's Opera, the play is set in Victorian England's Soho but satirizes the bourgeois society of the Weimar Republic through its wry love story of Polly Peachum and "Mack the Knife" Macheath. With Kurt Weill's music, which was one of the earliest and most successful attempts to introduce jazz into the theater, it became a popular hit throughout the Western world.Commissioned and authorized by the Brecht estate, Arcade's definitive edition contains the acclaimed translation by Ralph Manheim and John Willett that was first staged at the York Theatre Royal and subsequently at Lincoln Center in New York. Willett and Manheim, the joint editors of Brecht's complete dramatic work in English, also provide Brecht's own notes and discarded songs, as well as extensive editorial commentary on the genesis of his play.

Jakob von Gunten


Robert Walser - 1909
    Largely self-taught and altogether indifferent to worldly success, Walser wrote a range of short stories, essays and four novels, of which Jakob von Gunten is widely recognized as the finest. It tells the story of a seventeen-year-old runaway from an old family who enrolls in a school for servants. The Institute, run by the domineering Herr Benjamenta and his beautiful but ailing sister, is a deeply mysterious place: the faculty lies asleep in a single room. The students though subject to fierce discipline, come and go at will. Jakob, an irrepressibly subversive presence, keeps a journal in which he records his quirky impressions of the school as well as his own quickly changing enthusiasms and uncertainties, deliberations and dreams. And in the end, as the Institute itself dissolves around him like a dream, he steps out boldly to explore still-unimagined worlds.

The Argentina Rhodochrosite (An Ainsley Walker Gemstone Travel Mystery)


J.A. Jernay - 2011
    [It] swept me off my feet.” (Venus de Hilo, 5-star review) “A delightful book – it will enchant you with exotic places and interesting characters.” (Linda Osborn, 5-star review) NOW A famously temperamental soccer star has just suffered a terrible loss: Someone has stolen his favorite necklace. No ordinary piece of jewelry, this rhodochrosite had belonged to his birth mother, a woman he has never met. She had ‘disappeared’ during the famous Argentine dirty war of the nineteen-seventies. This superstar really wants it back. And he refuses to play soccer again until someone finds it. It’s shaping up to be a national tragedy, until the arrival of... AINSLEY WALKER Fresh off her amethyst adventure, Ainsley immediately embarks on a journey into the brash heart of Argentinian futból culture. Running from nightclubs in historic mansions to seedy tango parlors... ...from impoverished shantytowns to the grand landscape of Patagonia ... ...Ainsley discovers glamour, danger, excitement, and the dark secrets of a country’s hidden past. From an author who worked on the foreign desk of The Washington Post... ...who explored North and South America for nearly twelve months... ...who was a finalist in a prestigious short story contest sponsored by the estate of F. Scott Fitzgerald... ...comes a travel adventure that will change the way you see your life. Length: Approximately 82,000 words. Third in the series. More praise for the Ainsley Walker Gemstone Travel Mystery series: “...an exciting new writer.” (Pamela Barrett, California, 5-star review) “I recommend this to anyone ... it is definitely worth the money.” (J Bronder, 5-star review) “I can’t wait to read others in the series!” (Autumn Timpano)