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Quote: Ostensibly a love story, the novel really revolves around a highly mythologized version of the Johnson County War in 1890's Wyoming ... The novel takes the side of the large ranchers, and depicts the lynchings as frontier justice, meted out by the protagonist, who is a member of a natural aristocracy among men. (from Wikipedia)...

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Notes from Underground is an 1864 novella by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Notes is considered by many to be the first existentialist novel. It presents itself as an excerpt from the rambling memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator (generally referred to by critics as the Underground Man) who is a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg. The first part of the story is told in monologue form, or the underground man's diary, and attacks emerging Western philosophy, especially Nikolay Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done?. The second part of the book is called Àpropos of the Wet Snow, and describes certain events that, it seems, are destroying and sometimes renewing the underground man, who acts as a first person, unreliable narrator....

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In a world where a gentleman’s life is defined more “by being, rather than by doing,” a family’s reputation can be compromised if it is not guarded carefully, and the sole heir of the Amberson family is proving himself to be a difficult person. Expected by the family to carry on its proud traditions, George Amberson Minafer is trusted implicitly. But though rich relatives provide the elegant suits, the handsome young man who wears them is filled with little but appearances. And this happens in spite of, or perhaps, because of, his mother’s selfless love that places him above her own happiness. As George’s uncle perceptively remarks, “life and money both behave like loose quicksilver in a nest of cracks.” With the new automobile industry transforming fortunes and coal heat transforming city air into sooty clouds, anything that stands still is apt to be run over, or at least begrimed. What is magnificent about the Ambersons is their faithful reliance on old money and old ways in a world changing rapidly around them. Or perhaps it is the magnificence of the train-wreck created when George’s relatives, with the best intentions, shield h...

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Henry James considered The Ambassadors his best, or perhaps his best-wrought, novel. It plays on the great Jamesian theme of the American abroad, who finds himself in an older, and some would say richer, culture that that of the United States, with its attractions and dangers. Here the protagonist is Lambert Strether, a man in his fifties, editor of a small literary magazine in Woollett, Massachusetts, who arrives in Europe on a mission undertaken at the urging of his patron, Mrs. Newsome, to bring back her son Chadwick. That young man appears to be enjoying his time in Paris rather more than seems good for him, at least to those older and wiser. The novel, however, is perhaps really about Strether's education in this new land, and one of his teachers is the city of Paris -- a real Paris, not an idealized one, but from which Strether has much to learn. Chad Newsome, of course is there too, and so are a scattering of other Americans, his old friend Waymarsh and his new acquaintance Maria Gostrey among them. Had Strether his life to live over again, knowing what he has now learned,. how different would it be? and what are the lessons ...

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The Fortunes of Philippa is based on the author's mother, Angelica Brazil, who had grown up in Rio de Janeiro and attended an English boarding school at the age of 10, finding the English culture, school life and climate confronting....

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All the excitement, danger, heartbreaks and triumphs of this well known story, but without the big words. Lucy Aikin, an accomplished writer and writing as Mary Godolphin, accomplishes this with apparent ease in this little book. The story of a plucky family ship wrecked on a desolate island, saving what they can from the ship, is well known. The entire family, under the leadership of an intrepid father and mother works together to not only survive in this island, but actually prosper. This work would seem an excellent one for non-English native readers to try their skill at. (Summary by Phil Chenevert )...

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Parnassus on Wheels is about a fictional traveling book-selling business. The original owner of the business, Roger Mifflin, sells it to 39-year-old Helen McGill, who is tired of taking care of her ailing older brother, Andrew. (summary from wikipedia)...

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Fiction

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Kate Orme, shocked by the discovery of her fiance's complicity in a tragedy, and by society's willingness to overlook such transgressions, nevertheless marries him. Years later, her son faces a moral crisis similar to the one that showed her his father's moral weakness. (Introduction by Christine Dufour)...

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Fiction

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In this collection of Russian stories, editor and compiler Thomas Seltzer selects from a range of the best examples of 19th and early 20th century Russian literature. As a survey of famous authors at the height of the powers, as well as some writers who have been unjustly neglected, this anthology is indispensable. (Summary by Nullifidian) Everything is subordinated to two main requirements--humanitarian ideals and fidelity to life. This is the secret of the marvellous simplicity of Russian literary art.--THOMAS SELTZER....

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Fiction

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The first of only three novels by English author Howard Overing Sturgis, the son of wealthy American expatriates and a close friend of Henry James, Tim portrays a sensitive young boy’s affection for an older boy. (Introduction by Dorlene Kaplan)...

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Fiction

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If you will listen to this book, you will meet a cast of unforgettable characters, as different from one another as the sun and moon. But they have one thing in common - all of them hide many, many secrets. The plot of this book is full of twists which may leave you guessing until the end. Bridget's lively reading adds much to the joy of listening to this book. (Summary by Stav Nisser)...

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Fiction

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Pomona and Jone of Rudder Grange fame travel to England and Scotland. Along the way, Pomona tangles with wild pigs, haymaking, hotels great and small, Pullman cars, comparison-makers, and a Duchess. She makes two matches and - in her usual, unorthodox way - stag hunts and attends a knighting. Pomona is as hilarious as ever, if a bit more rounded off on the edges....

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Fiction

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A bit of a menage-a-quatre in a remote cabin in the wilderness as fugitive Hugh, his younger brother Pete, nursemaid and cook Bella, and now the newly arrived snow-blinded young Sylvie who had been snatched from near death in the snow by the heroic but moody Hugh. Because of her blindness, Sylvie is led to believe her rescuer to be a handsome and dashing hero; his younger brother to be but a young lad of 14; and Bella a matronly old maid. But Sylvie would, in time, form her own image of the clan and attempt to bring them together as they were destined to be split apart. Demonstration lies herein of the inherent ability of the blind to use their other senses to best any situation laid before them. (Introduction by Roger Melin)...

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Fiction

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In 1933, Forman Brown wrote, under the pseudonym Richard Meeker, a controversial novel called Better Angel, about a young man coming to terms with his homosexuality. This novel is regarded as the first American novel to present the 'gay' experience in a healthy light....

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Fiction

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Oswald, Dora, Dicky, Alice, H.O, and Noel fill their free time with entertainments that don't always turn out as they plan. But whether telling fortunes at a fete, unwittingly assisting an elopement, reforming their nasty cousin Archibald or even getting arrested, it is all good fun, and usually in a good cause. (from the back of the book, Puffin publication)....

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Fiction

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Listeners who like to plunge straight into a story would do well to skip the lengthy preamble. Here, Balzac the virtuoso satirist depicts the levels of Parisian society as a version of the Inferno of Dante - but perhaps keeps the reader waiting too long for the first act of his operatic extravaganza. Our beautiful, androgynous hero, Henri de Marsay, is one of the bastard offspring of a depraved Regency milord and himself practises the cynical arts of the libertine. His quarry is the exotic Paquita Valdes, she of the golden eyes. But there is a mysterious third person in this liaison... The shocking truth of their interrelationships marks this out at once as one of those French novels that Lady Bracknell would instantly ban from the house. (Summary by Martin Geeson)...

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Fiction

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More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter (1885) is a collection of linked short stories by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Vandegrift. Three gentlemen of little means and no occupation meet in the Bohemian Cigar Divan, a tobacco shop with couches to sit and smoke. They read of a reward offered for information as to the whereabouts of a man with big moustaches and a sealskin coat. They agree among themselves that they will separate and search for the man so as to claim the reward. The stories that follow concern their adventures. They meet again in the cigar divan in an epilogue to their travels. (Summary by Don W. Jenkins)...

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Fiction

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Bridges' Eros and Psyche retells the Eros (= Cupid) and Psyche myth first recorded by Lucius Apuleius in his book The Golden Ass. The poem is divided into twelve cantos - one for each of the twelve months of the year - which gives the poem a certain, almost pastoral feel. The number of stanzas in each canto equals the number of days in that month: so the first canto March has 31 stanzas, the second canto April has 30 stanzas, and so on. Each stanza is a septet (ie comprises exactly seven lines) which follow the same end-rhyming schema of a-b-a-b-c-c-b.(Summary by Godsend)...

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Fiction

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Levity is not a word often applied to Henry James, but this story has about it an attractively lighthearted quality. It tells of Peter Baron, a poor, young struggling writer of adequate, if not transcendent, talent, who lives in a dreary London boarding house inhabited also by a mysteriously clairvoyant and beautiful young widow, with her small boy. When Baron buys himself a second-hand writing desk to stimulate the creative juices, he finds carefully hidden within it a cache of letters that appear to compromise a recently deceased statesman. The discovery and his struggle to handle the questions they pose ultimately change his life. Along the way he also discovers, as a fringe benefit, a talent for what Americans (though probably not Jamesians) call Tin Pan Alley. (Summary by Nicholas Clifford)...

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Fiction