Palliser Novels


Anthony Trollope - 1880
    "Who will even know that they should be so read?" he complained. Solving this problem in particularly splendid fashion, Oxford is now reissuing the Palliser Novels in an elegantly crafted hard-bound set--with acid-free papers and durable binding--that include the wealth of illustrations that first appeared in the Oxford Illustrated Trollope years ago. Now, a whole new generation of readers can enjoy one of nineteenth-century literature's greatest achievements. While the novels center around the stately politician Plantagenet Palliser, the interest is less in politics than in the lively social scene Trollope creates against a Parliamentary backdrop. His keen eye for the subtleties of character and "great apprehension of the real" impressed contemporary writers from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Henry James, and in the Palliser Novels we find him at his very best. Between the covers of these books we meet a wonderfully rich variety of men and women, among them Alice Vavasor, whose waverings between suitors--and the resulting mess--prompted Trollope to ask Can Your Forgive Her?; the handsome Irish MP Phineas Finn, who grows to maturity as the novels progress; the beautiful enchantress Lizzie Eustace, whose scandalous diamonds are the talk of London high society; Ferdinand Lopez, the unctuous social climber; the elegant and witty Lady Glencora, Plantagenet's wife; and Palliser himself--first as a cabinet aspirant, later as Prime Minister--who is the connecting thread that holds the series together. Along the way we are also introduced to a host of amusing and sharply-drawn characters of less social status who, much like the bumpkins of Shakespeare, offer a distorting yet insightful fun-house mirror to the main action. Nowhere else did Trollope bring to life in such compelling fashion the teeming world of Victorian society and politics, and nowhere else did he create more memorable and living characters than those who populate these six volumes. As a group the Palliser Novels provide us with the most extensive and telling expose of British life during the period of its greatest prestige.

The Poor Mouth: A Bad Story about the Hard Life


Flann O'Brien - 1941
    Potatoes constitute the basis of his family's daily fare, and they share both bed and board with the sheep and pigs. A scathing satire on narratives of Gaelic Ireland, this work brought down on the author's head the full wrath of those who saw themselves as the custodians of Irish language and tradition when it was first published in Gaelic in 1941.

Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories


Roald DahlJonas Lie - 1983
    For this superbly disquieting collection, he selected fourteen of his favorite tales by such authors as E.F. Benson, Rosemary Timperley, and Edith WhartonIncludes:"W.S." L.P. Hartley"Harry" Rosemary Timperley"The Corner Shop" Cynthia Asquith"In the Tube" E.F. Benson"Christmas Meeting" Rosemary Timperley"Elias and the Draug" Jonas Lie"Playmates" A.M. Burrage"Ringing the Changes" Robert Aickman"The Telephone" Mary Treadgold"The Ghost of a Hand" J. Sheridan Le Fanu"The Sweeper" A.M. Burrage"Afterward" Edith Wharton"On the Brighton Road" Richard Middleton"The Upper Berth" F. Marion Crawford

Atop an Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings


Jack Kerouac - 1999
    Atop an Underwood brings together more than sixty previously unpublished works that Kerouac wrote before he was twenty-two, ranging from stories and poems to plays and parts of novels, including an excerpt from his 1943 merchant marine novel, The Sea Is My Brother. These writings reveal what Kerouac was thinking, doing, and dreaming during his formative years, and reflect his primary literary influences. Readers will also find in these works the source of Kerouac's spontaneous prose style. Uncovering a fascinating missing link in Kerouac's development as a writer, Atop an Underwood is essential reading for Kerouac fans, scholars, and critics.

Sonnets from the Portuguese and Other Poems


Elizabeth Barrett Browning - 1954
    The marriage of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett has been well named "the most perfect example of wedded happiness in the history of literature - perfect in the inner life and perfect in its poetical expression."

La's Orchestra Saves the World


Alexander McCall Smith - 2008
    But patriotism trumps passion, leaving La to worry if her life will always be "a play in which I have no real part." In McCall-Smith's quintessentially English world, perserverance, pots of tea and the power of music will show the way.(Ellen Shapiro for People magazine)

The Best of Saki


Saki - 1916
    A collection of eight cases, contains examples -The Bruce Partington Plans-The Dying Detective, Wisteria Lodge & The devils Foot

The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 2: The Romantic Period through the Twentieth Century


M.H. AbramsKatharine Eisaman Maus - 1962
    Under the direction of Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor, the editors have reconsidered all aspects of the anthology to make it an even better teaching tool.

The Bronte Sisters - The Complete Novels + Extras


Anne Brontë - 1899
    Includes the major works of the Brontë sisters as well as the lesser known ones. Also includes the beautiful poetry collection by the Brontë sisters as well as poems and two sermons by their father Patrick Brontë. Included is an in-depth biography which give a glimpse into the life of Charlotte and her sisters. The format of this e-book is designed to be easily navigational in three ways; you can navigate by a simple click from chapter to chapter or from book to book. There is also a table of contents per book and one global table of contents.This e-book features:• Jane Eyre - by Charlotte Brontë• The Professor - by Charlotte Brontë• Villette - by Charlotte Brontë• Albion and Marina - by Charlotte Brontë • Stancliffe’s Hotel - by Charlotte Brontë • Mina Laury - by Charlotte Brontë • The Story of Willie Ellin - by Charlotte Brontë • Shirley - by Charlotte Brontë • Emma - by Charlotte Brontë (her last unfinished novel)• Wuthering Heights - by Emily Brontë • Agnes Grey - by Anne Brontë • The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - by Anne Brontë • Cottage Poems by Patrick Brontë • Poems by Currer Bell, Acton Bell and Ellis Bell (collection written under their pen names)• Charlotte Brontë and Her Circle by Clement Shorter (biography featuring correspondence by Charlotte Brontë )

The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke


Arthur C. Clarke - 2000
    Clarke is the most celebrated science fiction author alive. He is—with H. G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, and Robert A. Heinlein—one of the writers who define science fiction in our time. Now Clarke has cooperated in the preparation of a massive, definitive edition of his collected shorter works. From early work like "Rescue Party" and "The Lion of Comarre," through classics like "The Star," "Earthlight," "The Nine Billion Names of God," and "The Sentinel" (kernel of the later novel, and movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey), all the way to later work like "A Meeting with Medusa" and "The Hammer of God," this immense volume encapsulates one of the great SF careers of all time.

Sacred Hunger


Barry Unsworth - 1992
    Filled with the "sacred hunger" to expand its empire and its profits, England entered full into the slave trade and spread the trade throughout its colonies. In this Booker Prize-winning work, Barry Unsworth follows the failing fortunes of William Kemp, a merchant pinning his last chance to a slave ship; his son who needs a fortune because he is in love with an upper-class woman; and his nephew who sails on the ship as its doctor because he has lost all he has loved. The voyage meets its demise when disease spreads among the slaves and the captain's drastic response provokes a mutiny. Joining together, the sailors and the slaves set up a secret, utopian society in the wilderness of Florida, only to await the vengeance of the single-minded, young Kemp.

Reginald Perrin Omnibus


David Nobbs - 1990
    This omnibus brings together the first three Reginald Perrin novels containing a lifetime's outrageous and hilarious adventures.When we first meet Reggie, he is sick to death with selling exotic ices at Sunshine Desserts. Driven to desperation by the rat race and the unpunctuality of Britain's trains, Reggie's small eccentricites escalate to the extreme, until finally he leaves the unacceptable face of capitalism behind by driving off in a stolen motorised jelly. In his pursuit of the unconventional, he devotes himself to faking his own death, opening a shop devoted to selling completely useless goods, and setting up a commune strictly for the middle-class and middle-aged.Join Reggie, who didn't get where he is today without some help from some memorable supporting characters, in one man's quest to avoid an everyday existence.

The Best Loved Poems of the American People


Hazel Felleman - 1936
    More than 1,500,000 copies in print! Over 575  traditional favorites to be read and reread.  Categorized by theme, and indexed by author and first  line, this is a collection that will be treasured.

The Poems of Wilfred Owen


Wilfred Owen - 1918
    This is the definitive single-volume edition of Wilfred Owen’s poems, whose death in battle a few days before the Armistice was the most disastrous loss to English letters since Keats. Containing the texts of all the finished poems of Owen’s maturity and twelve important fragments and with extensive notes, it derives from Jon Stallworthy’s monumental edition of The Complete Poems and Fragments and is aimed at the student and general reader alike. ‘Others have shown the disenchantment of war, have unlegended the roselight and romance of it, but none with such compassion for the disenchanted or such sternly just and justly stern judgment on the idyllisers.’ Guardian

Gulliver's Travels and Other Writings


Jonathan Swift - 1962
    Rediscover the immortal story of Lemuel Gulliver and his fantastic voyage. Join him on his journey to the land of the six-inch-high Lilliputians...and into the royal court of the sixty-foot-tall Brobdingnagians. Ascend with him to the flying island of Laputa, whose inhabitants are endowed with uncommon intelligence, but no common sense at all. And follow him into the world of the Houyhnhnms, a race of civilized horses -- lords and masters of the brutish human Yahoos. The tale of a lifetime, "Gulliver's Travels" is filled with action, romance, danger, satirical wit, timeless wisdom, and the high drama only a classic of this caliber can convey. Set sail!