Antoine de Saint-Exup??ry first published The Little Prince in 1943, only a year before his Lockheed P-38 vanished over the Mediterranean during a reconnaissance mission. More than a half century later, this fable of love and loneliness has lost none of its power. The narrator is a downed pilot in the Sahara Desert, frantically trying […]
A poignant tale about the life and labors of a Chinese farmer during the sweeping reign of the countrys last emperor. Pearl S. Bucks epic Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of a China that was. Though more than sixty years have passed since this remarkable novel won the Pulitzer Prize, it has retained its popularity and become […]
Witty and caustic, Candide has ranked as one of the worlds great satires since its first publication in 1759. In the story of the trials and travails of the youthful Candide, his mentor Dr. Pangloss, and a host of other characters, Voltaire mercilessly satirizes and exposes romance, science, philosophy, religion and government.
Don Quixote, errant knight and sane madman, with the company of his faithful squire and wise fool, Sancho Panza, together roam the world and haunt readers imaginations as they have for nearly four hundred years. Translated with Notes by John Rutherford Introduction by Roberto Gonz?lez Echevarr??a
All nice and warm for a July day, but received with delight nevertheless. Ted and Josie immediately dressed up, learned the war-whoop, and proceeded to astonish their friends by a series of skirmishes about the house and grounds, with tomahawks and bows and arrows, till weariness produced a lull.
The Nobel prize-winning Albert Camus, who died in 1960, could not have known how grimly current his existentialist novel of epidemic and death would remain. Set in Algeria, in northern Africa, The Plague is a powerful study of human life and its meaning in the face of a deadly virus that sweeps dispassionately through the […]
In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write “something new–something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned.” That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned, and above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgeralds finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in […]
Orphaned into the household of her Aunt Reed at Gateshead and subject to the cruel regime at Lowood charity school, Jane Eyre nonetheless emerges unbroken in spirit and integrity. She takes up the post of governess at Thornfield Hall, falls in love with Mr. Rochester, and discovers the impediment to their lawful marriage in a […]
The story starts conventionally enough with friends sharing ghost stories round the fire on Christmas Eve. One of the guests tells about a governess at a country house plagued by supernatural visitors. But in the hands of Henry James, the master of nuance, this little tale of terror is an exquisite gem of sexual and […]
Dickens considered Great Expectations one of his “little pieces,” and indeed, it is slim compared to such weighty novels as David Copperfield or Nicholas Nickleby. But what this cautionary tale of a young man raised high above his station by a mysterious benefactor lacks in length, it more than makes up for in its remarkable […]
The epic battle between man and monster reaches its greatest pitch in the famous story of Frankenstein. In trying to create life, the young student Victor Frankenstein unleashes forces beyond his control, setting into motion a long and tragic chain of events that brings Victor himself to the very brink. How he tries to destroy […]
She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older – the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning. Anne Elliot seems to have given up on present happiness and has resigned herself to living off her memories. More than seven years earlier she complied with duty: persuaded to view […]
Begun in 1811 at the height of Jane Austens writing powers and published in 1814, Mansfield Park marks a conscious break from the tone of her first three novels, Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Prejudice, the last of which Austen came to see as “rather too light.” Fanny Price is unlike any […]
The talented Alex Jennings creates an atmosphere of gripping psychological tension and brings a variety of characters to life in this new audio edition of a crime classic. When the student Raskolnikov puts his philosophical theory to the ultimate test of murder, a tragic tale of suffering and redemption unfolds in the dismal setting of […]