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Classic tale of moral degradation concerns the sinister transformation of two innocent children into flagrant liars and hypocrites. The story begins when a governess arrives at an English country estate to look after Miles, aged ten, and Flora, eight. At first, everything appears normal but then events gradually begin to weave a spell of psychological terror. One night a ghost appears before the governess. It is the dead lover of Miss Jessel, the...
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Comprised of 4 full-length novels and 56 short stories featuring the world’s most famous pipe-smoking detective. Written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle between the years 1867 and 1927, the legendary Sherlock Holmes employed his mastery of deductive reasoning and expert sleuthing to solve an arraying of complex and harrowing cases. From his home – 221B Baker Street in London - the legendary Sherlock Holmes (accompanied by his loyal companion and chronicler,...
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In Paradise Lost, Milton produced a poem of epic scale, conjuring up a vast, awe-inspiring cosmos ranging across huge tracts of space and time. And yet, in putting a charismatic Satan and naked Adam and Eve at the center of this story, he also created an intensely human tragedy on the Fall of Man. Written when Milton was in his fifties blind, bitterly disappointed by the Restoration, and briefly in danger of execution, Paradise Lost's apparent ambivalence...
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The Moonstone was published in 1868 and concerns the huge yellow diamond of the title that was once stolen from an Indian shrine. Rachel Verrinder receives the stone as a gift and does not realize that it has been passed to her in a sinister form of revenge by John Herncastle who, it transpires, acquired the moonstone by means of murder and theft. The jewel also brings bad luck. The stone disappears on the very night it is given to Rachel, though,...
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"Assembling at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, a group of pilgrims begin their journey to Canterbury Cathedral. To entertain themselves on the long road, their host suggests that they regale each other with stories, with the teller of the best tale set to earn a free supper. The pilgrims correspond to all sections of medieval society, from the crusading knight to the drunken cook, and their tales span a range of genres, including the comic ribaldry and...
6) O, pioneers!
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When Alexandra Bergson, the daughter of Swedish immigrants, takes over the family farm after her father's death, she falls under the spell of the rich, forbidding Nebraska prairie. With strength and resoluteness, she turns the wild landscape into orderly fields.
7) Persuasion
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"Persuasion by Jane Austen. What does persuasion mean - a firm belief, or the action of persuading someone to think something else? Anne Elliot is one of Austen's quietest heroines, but also one of the strongest and the most open to change. She lives at the time of the Napoleonic wars, a time of accident, adventure, the making of new fortunes and alliances. A woman of no importance, she maneuvers in her restricted circumstances as her long-time love...
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Northanger Abbey is the earliest of Jane Austen's great comedies of female enlightenment and combines literary burlesque - making fun of the excesses of the Gothic novel - with larger moral, philosophical, and social issues: the folly of letting literature get in the way of life, the inexcusability of not thinking for oneself, and the painful difficulties (especially for women) involved in growing up. Lady Susan and The Watsons are early compositions...
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'There remains the greatest of all novelists-for what else can we call the author of War And Peace? [Tolstoy's] senses, his intellect, are acute, powerful, and well nourished ... Nothing seems to escape him. Nothing glances off him unrecorded ... Every twig, every feather sticks to his magnet. He notices the blue or red of a child's frock; the way a horse shifts its tail; the sound of a cough; the action of a man trying to put his hands into pockets...
10) Jane Eyre
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Jane Eyre ranks as one of the greatest and most perennially popular works of English fiction. Although the poor but plucky heroine is outwardly of plain appearance, she possesses an indomitable spirit, a sharp wit and great courage. She is forced to battle against the exigencies of a cruel guardian, a harsh employer and a rigid social order. All of which circumscribe her life and position when she becomes governess to the daughter of the mysterious,...
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When Mr. Dashwood dies, he must leave the bulk of his estate to the son by his first marriage, which leaves his second wife and three daughters (Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret) in straitened circumstances. They are taken in by a kindly cousin, but their lack of fortune affects the marriageability of both practical Elinor and romantic Marianne. When Elinor forms an attachment for the wealthy Edward Ferrars, his family disapproves and separates them....
12) Oliver Twist
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Oliver Twist is born in the harsh confines of a workhouse, his mother expiring in childbirth, his father unknown. After enduring years of brutal treatment, Oliver runs away to London, where he falls in with a band of child pickpockets led by the villainous Fagin. His foray into a life of crime soon lands him into the arms of the law, when Oliver's fortunes finally appear to turn as the robbery victim becomes his benefactor. But Fagin isn't about to...
13) Anna Karenina
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Anna Karenina is the wife of a prominant Russian government official. She leads a correct but confining upper-middle-class existence. She seems content with her life as a proper companion to her dignified, unaffectionate husband and an adoring mother to her young son, until she meets Count Vronsky, a young officer of the guards. He pursues her and she falls madly in love with him. Her husband refuses to divorce her, so she gives up everything, including...
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"A swashbuckling epic of chivalry, honor, and derring-do, it is set in France during the 1620s and richly populated with romantic heroes, unattainable heroines, kings, queens, cavaliers, and criminals in a whirl of adventure, espionage, conspiracy, murder, vengeance, love, scandal, and suspense. Dumas transforms major and minor historical figures into larger-than-life characters: the brave d'Artagnan, an impetuous young man in pursuit of glory; the...
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The adventures and pranks of a mischievous boy growing up in a Mississippi River town on the early nineteenth century. Here is one of the great American novels, illustrated by one of this country's most distinguished artists. Readers will enjoy the antics of that irrepressible boy-hero, Tom, who lies to his Aunt Polly and still is forgiven, wins the heart of Becky Thatcher by getting whipped at school, gets out of whitewashing a fence by tricking...
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The adventures of a boy and a runaway slave as they travel down the Mississippi River on a raft. Originally intended as a sequel to his immensely popular Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn stands on its own as one of America's most important and beloved literary classics. For generations, young and old alike have delighted in the unforgettable adventures of runaways Huck Finn and Jim, a slave. In vivid, often gripping...
17) Emma
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Emma's opening sentence, which describes the titular heroine's many advantages, is loaded with foreboding. Discomfort and vexation lie on the horizon, triggered by her penchant for matchmaking. Emma's latest scheme involves finding a suitable husband for ingenue Harriet Smith, and to that end she persuades the latter to reject good-natured farmer Robert Martin, despite a mutual attraction. Harriet must set her sights higher, she exhorts, fixing on...
18) Dracula
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As fledgling English lawyer Jonathan Harker treks into the Carpathian Mountains to complete a real estate transaction, frightened peasants warn him of horrible dangers that await him. Harker, terrified by eerie events along the way, finally meets his client, Count Dracula, a tall, gaunt old man with a surprisingly powerful handshake. Harker soon realises that he is a prisoner in Draculas sumptuously furnished castle a castle strangely devoid of mirrors....
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"Few have failed to be charmed by the witty and independent spirit of Elizabeth Bennet in [this] Austen's beloved classic. When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; he is indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that Darcy has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister Jane, she is determined to...
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The Count of Monte Cristo (Paris, 1844-45), by French novelist and playwright Alexandre Dumas, is one of the most popular novels ever written. This book presents a tale of love and revenge in the post-Napoleonic era. Edmond Dantes, a nineteen-year-old sailor from Marseilles, is soon to be captain of his own ship and to marry his beloved, the beautiful Mercedes. But spiteful enemies provoke his arrest on his wedding day, and he is condemned to...