Persuasion, Jane Austen

'Everything was dead, everything unreal; the dark mob was made up of stiff lay-figures'

Publikuar fillimisht më 1928, Orlando është romani biografik subversiv i Virginia Woolf përmes të cilit, personazhi kryesor kapërcen shekuj dhe kontinente si dhe identietin gjinor ndërsa lexuesi ndjek aventurat e dashurisë ndërsa ai ndryshon nga një lord në oborrin e mbretëreshës Elisabet në një zonjë në Londrën e viteve 1920.

In 1845 Henry David Thoreau hiked into the Walden Woods and built a small hut, where he lived alone for the next two years. Thoreau wanted to prove that man could live entirely free from the society, and his experiment tested the limits of self-reliance while also immersing him in the lush of natural beauty of New England. The writings that resulted from...

Hunters, wives, old men of wisdom, waiters, fighters, women loved, women lost: they are all here, living on the raw edge, making love, facing the inevitable reality of death.

When the couple drift to Spain to the dazzle of the fiesta and the heady atmosphere of the Bullfight, their affair is strained by new passions, new jealousies, and Jake must finally learn that he will never possess the woman that he loves.

When Richard seizes land that rightfully belongs to his cousin Henry Bolingbroke, Bolingbroke retaliates by invading England while Richard is at war in Ireland. More popular with the commoners, Henry is eventually crowned King Henry IV.

Many of these stories, like his great novels, reveal his special sympathy for the solitary and dispossessed, explore the same complex psychological issues and subtly combine rich characterization and philosophical meditations on the (often) dark areas of the human psyche, all conveyed in an idiosyncratic blend of deadly seriousness and wild humour. 

Set in fictitious Coketown, England during the Industrial Revolution of the 1850s, Dickens wished to expose the enormous gulf between the rich and poor through his writing. In Hard Times, the social and moral purpose of his work is at its most evident.

The Shirley of the title is a woman of independent means; her friend Caroline is not. Both struggle with what a woman's role is and can be. Their male counterparts - Louis, the powerless tutor, and Robert, his cloth-manufacturing brother - also stand at odds to society's expectations. 

The characters they meet are absurd and yet strangely familiar. Short, fast-paced, funny, The Torrents of Spring throws light on Hemingway's later work - and is a delight to read. Here we can see the developing talent of one of the great novelists of the twentieth century.

When a sudden collision rips a hole in the ship’s hull, the ferry sinks like a stone, throwing the literary critic into the icy harbor. Rescued by the Ghost, a seal-hunting vessel, van Weyden counts his blessings. Little does he know he’s boarded a ship bound straight for hell.

 Through drink, Bukowski is able to be alone, to be with people, to be a poet, a lover, and a friend—though often at great cost. As Bukowski writes in a poem simply titled “Drinking,”: “for me/it was or/is/a manner of/dying/with boots on/and gun/smoking and a/symphony music background.”

Nicky Belane, private detective and career alcoholic, is a troubled man. He is plagued not just by broads, booze, lack of cash and a raging ego, but also by the surreal jobs he's been hired to do. Not only has been hired to track down French classical author Celine - who's meant to be dead - but he's also supposed to find the elusive Red Sparrow - which...

Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi River, was host to riverboat travelers from around the world, providing a vigorous and variable atmosphere for the young Samuel Clemens to absorb. Clemens became a riverboat pilot and even chose his pen name—Mark Twain—from a term boatmen would call out signifying water depth at two fathoms, meaning safe...

A celebration of Christmas, a tale of redemption and a critique on Victorian society, Dickens' atmospheric novella follows the miserly, penny-pinching Ebenezer Scrooge who views Christmas as 'humbug'.

'She was bored and fought against her boredom, which only bored her still more.'