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Library you deserve: English books and articles for study and pleasure.
Walden and On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.
Macbeth
by William Shakespeare
An account of a regicide and its aftermath.
The Castaways of the Flag
by Jules Verne
With the restoration of Fritz Zermatt and his wife Jenny, his brother Frank and the other Castaways of the Flag to their anxious and sorely tried relatives in New Switzerland, the story of The Swiss Family Robinson is brought to its proper end. Thereafter, the interest of their domestic life is merged in that of the growth of a young colony. Romance is merged in history and the romancer’s work is finished. Jules Verne has here set the coping stone on the structure begun by Rudolph Wyss, and in The Swiss Family Robinson, Their Island Home and The Castaways of the Flag we have, not a story and two sequels, but a complete trilogy.
Emma
Jane Austen
The main character, Emma Woodhouse, is described in the opening paragraph as ''handsome, clever, and rich'' but is also rather spoiled. As a result of the recent marriage of her former governess, Emma prides herself on her ability to matchmake, and proceeds to take under her wing an illegitimate orphan, Harriet Smith, whom she hopes to marry off to the vicar, Mr Elton. So confident is she that she persuades Harriet to reject a proposal from a young farmer who is a much more suitable partner for the girl.
Post Haste
by R. M. Ballantyne
This tale is founded chiefly on facts furnished by the Postmaster-General’s Annual Reports, and gathered, during personal intercourse and investigation, at the General Post-Office of London and its Branches. It is intended to illustrate–not by any means to exhaust–the subject of postal work, communication, and incident throughout the Kingdom.
Ralestone Luck
by Andre Norton
Rupurt Raleston and his siblings, Richanda and Valerius, return to their ancestral home, Pirate’s Haven. It is the only thing they have left and they believe that there are hidden treasures that will save them from destitution. Amongst these treasures is rumoured to include an ancestral sword, The Luck, which will return them to their previous glory. But as they get closer to finding this hidden treasure, another man has come to claim the ancestral home. A man who says that he is the rightful heir from another branch of the family. Rupurt, Richanda and Valerius must now find proof of their ownership or lose everything – Pirate’s Haven…and any chance they may have for the future.
Martin Rattler
A Boy's Adventures in the Forests of Brazil
Martin Rattler was a very bad boy. At least his aunt, Mrs. Dorothy Grumbit, said so; and certainly she ought to have known, if anybody should, for Martin lived with her, and was, as she herself expressed it, “the bane of her existence; the very torment of her life.” No doubt of it whatever, according to Aunt Dorothy Grumbit’s showing, Martin Rattler was “a remarkably bad boy…”
The Apple Cart
A Political Extravaganza
by George Bernard Shaw
The Apple Cart is Shaw’s comedic play in which the King defeats an attempt by his popularly elected Prime Minister to deprive him of the right to influence public opinion through the press: in short, to reduce him to a cipher.
The Phantom City
by Lester Dent
Arabian thieves led by the diabolically clever Molallet set one fiendish trap after another for Doc Savage and his mighty five. Only “Doc”, with his superhuman mental and physical powers, could have withstood this incredible ordeal of endurance which led from the cavern of the crying rock through the pitiless desert of Rub’ Al Khali and its Phantom City to a fight to the death against the last of a savage prehistoric race of white-haired beasts.
The Red Pony
by John Steinbeck
Raised on a ranch in northern California, Jody is well-schooled in the hard work and demands of a rancher’s life. He is used to the way of horses, too; but nothing has prepared him for the special connection he will forge with Gabilan, a hot-tempered pony his father gives him. With Billy Buck, the hired hand, Jody tends and trains his horse, restlessly anticipating the moment he will sit high upon Gabilan’s saddle. But when Gabilan falls ill, Jody discovers there are still lessons he must learn about the ways of nature and, particularly, the ways of man.
Eight Cousins
The Aunt-Hill
by Louisa May Alcott
Life with seven boy cousins isn’t quite what Rose expected. Left an orphan after her father’s death, Rose Campbell is sent to live at the “Aunt Hill” with her six aunts and seven rowdy boy cousins. For someone who is used to a girl’s boarding school, it all seems pretty overwhelming. Her guardian, Uncle Alec, makes her eat healthy things like oatmeal, and even tries to get her to give up her pretty dresses for drab, sensible clothes. Will Rose ever get used to her uncle’s crazy notions and all her noisy relatives?
In Our Time
by Ernest Hemingway
A strikingly original collection of short stories and accompanying vignettes that marked Ernest Hemingway’s American debut. When published, it was praised by Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos, and F. Scott Fitzgerald for its simple and precise use of language to convey a wide range of complex emotions, and it earned Hemingway a place beside Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein among the most promising American writers of that period. In Our Time contains several early Hemingway classics, including the famous Nick Adams stories Indian Camp, The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife, The Three Day Blow, and The Battler, and introduces readers to the hallmarks of the Hemingway style: a lean, tough prose – enlivened by an car for the colloquial and an eye for the realistic that suggests, through the simplest of statements, a sense of moral value and a clarity of heart. Now recognized as one of the most original short story collections in twentieth-century literature, In Our Time provides a key to Hemingway’s later works.
Major Barbara
by George Bernard Shaw
When a Salvation Army officer learns that her father, a wealthy armaments manufacturer, has donated lots of money to her organization, she resigns in disgust but eventually sees the truth of her father’s reasoning that social iniquity derives from poverty; it is only through accumulating wealth and power that people can help each other.
A Tale of Three Lions
by H. Rider Haggard
In this thrilling tale of danger and adventure, young Harry joins his father, the famous Alan Quatermain, on a hunt for lions deep in Africa.
Green Hills of Africa
by Ernest Hemingway
His second major venture into nonfiction (after Death in the Afternoon), Green Hills of Africa is Ernest Hemingway’s lyrical journal of a month on safari in the great game country of East Africa, where he and his wife Pauline journeyed in December of 1933. Hemingway’s well-known interest in - and fascination with - big game hunting is magnificently captured in this evocative account of his trip. In examining the poetic grace of the chase, and the ferocity of the kill, Hemingway also looks inward, seeking to explain the lure of the hunt and the primal undercurrent that comes alive on the plains of Africa. Yet Green Hills of Africa is also an impassioned portrait of the glory of the African landscape, and of the beauty of a wilderness that was, even then, being threatened by the incursions of man.
Siddhartha
An Indian Tale
by Hermann Hesse
In the novel, Siddhartha, a young man, leaves his family for a contemplative life, then, restless, discards it for one of the flesh. He conceives a son, but bored and sickened by lust and greed, moves on again. Near despair, Siddhartha comes to a river where he hears a unique sound. This sound signals the true beginning of his life – the beginning of suffering, rejection, peace, and, finally, wisdom.
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Of Mice and Men
by John Steinbeck
An intimate portrait of two men who cherish the slim bond between them and the dream they share in a world marred by petty tyranny, misunderstanding, jealousy, and callousness. Clinging to each other in their loneliness and alienation, George and his simple-minded friend Lennie dream, as drifters will, of a place to call their own—a couple of acres and a few pigs, chickens, and rabbits back in Hill Country where land is cheap. But after they come to work on a ranch in the fertile Salinas Valley of California, their hopes, like “the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men,“begin to go awry. Of Mice and Men also represents an experiment in form, as Steinbeck described his work, “a kind of playable novel, written in novel form but so scened and set that it can be played as it stands.” A rarity in American letters, it achieved remarkable success as a novel, a Broadway play, and three acclaimed films. Steinbeck’s tale of commitment, loneliness, hope, and loss remains one of America’s most widely read and beloved novels.
The Art of War
by Sun Zi
Translated from the Chinese with Introduction and Critical Notes by Lionel Giles, M.A.
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The Castaways of the Flag
The Final Adventures of the Swiss Family Robinson
by Jules Verne
With the restoration of Fritz Zermatt and his wife Jenny, his brother Frank and the other Castaways of the Flag to their anxious and sorely tried relatives in New Switzerland, the story of The Swiss Family Robinson is brought to its proper end. Thereafter, the interest of their domestic life is merged in that of the growth of a young colony. Romance is merged in history and the romancer’s work is finished. Jules Verne has here set the coping stone on the structure begun by Rudolph Wyss, and in The Swiss Family Robinson, Their Island Home and The Castaways of the Flag we have, not a story and two sequels, but a complete trilogy.
In Our Time
by Ernest Hemingway
A strikingly original collection of short stories and accompanying vignettes that marked Ernest Hemingway’s American debut. When published, it was praised by Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos, and F. Scott Fitzgerald for its simple and precise use of language to convey a wide range of complex emotions, and it earned Hemingway a place beside Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein among the most promising American writers of that period. In Our Time contains several early Hemingway classics, including the famous Nick Adams stories Indian Camp, The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife, The Three Day Blow, and The Battler, and introduces readers to the hallmarks of the Hemingway style: a lean, tough prose – enlivened by an car for the colloquial and an eye for the realistic that suggests, through the simplest of statements, a sense of moral value and a clarity of heart. Now recognized as one of the most original short story collections in twentieth-century literature, In Our Time provides a key to Hemingway’s later works.
The Cossacks
A Tale of 1852
by Leo Tolstoy
Olenin was a youth who had never completed his university course, never served anywhere (having only a nominal post in some government office or other), who had squandered half his fortune and had reached the age of twenty-four without having done anything or even chosen a career. He was what in Moscow society is termed un jeune homme. But he did find a career – he took a post as a Cadet in the army, and ended up assigned to Transcaucasia. This is the place – here among the Tatars, the Chechens, and the Old Believers – this is the place where Olenin will find love in the arms of a beautiful Cossack girl – a young woman who is promised to a Cossack warrior.
Bethel Merriday
by Sinclair Lewis
On her sixth birthday Bethel’s mother caught her imitating the slouching, slow walk of an old woman and rebuked her for generally showing off, speaking up in Church and in this case for copying people. Bethel said, “Oh! I’m not copying her. I’m trying to be her. I can be a lot of different people.” Sinclair Lewis’s novel about the theater woos the senses with the smell of shabby costumes, cramped dressing rooms, and what makes actors and actresses do what they do, for what is often very little money.
The Dinner Club
by Sapper
A fascinating collection of tales, including stories related by members of a select club consisting of an actor, a barrister, a doctor, a soldier, a writer and an ordinary man. Each member of this club is obliged to entertain his fellows to dinner from time to time, after which he relates a story connected with his profession or trade - the only penalty is a donation to a worthy charity should he fail to keep his audience awake. Readers of these excellent stories may rest assured that there is no such danger.
The Royal Portuguese Cabinet of Reading
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The New Machiavelli
by H. G. Wells
As H. G. Wells sat down to write, he realised with almost shuddering accuracy that he had reached the exact same age as Machiavelli was when he fell from politics and wrote of the restlessness of his spirit. And it was this same restless passion that compelled H G Wells to write a similar book. Thinking further he unearthed yet more striking parallels of his life and that of Machiavelli and this served as a unique inspiration for The New Machiavelli. The result is an inspired and remarkable work of sheer creative genius.
Mystery under the Sea
by Lester Dent
The dread riddle of Taz. There was only one clue to the bloody enigma of TAZ-the illegible, dying scrawl of a horribly mutilated sailor. What was the message he had so desperately tried to deliver? Why had sizzling acid been forced into his mouth? What secret had the dead man unraveled about the flamboyant and brutal Captain Flamingo? Held captive aboard a tramp steamer, The Man of Bronze and his bold allies wrestle with the dread riddle of Taz.
Mainly on the Air
by Max Beerbohm
Collected radio talks by the celebrated English essayist and humorist Sir Max Beerbohm. Beerbohm returned to England from his home in Rapallo in Italy in about 1935 when his wife, Florence Kahn was cast in a revival of Peer Gynt on the London stage. At this time he resumed writing essays when the BBC invited him to give regular radio broadcasts.