Set against a backdrop of real events in modern China. The displacement of 1.4 million people from the building of the Three Gorges dam is a Katrina-magnitude story that resonates with sympathetic Americans, human rights activists, sinophiles, journalists and bloggers keeping their eyes on China.A contemporary story in which the past is erased in the name of progress. Appeals to history buffs, older readers, travelers, and those concerned about ...
When her life falls apart on the eve of her 40th birthday, Kate Parker finds herself volunteering at the Lauderdale House for Exceptional Ladies. There she meets 97-year-old Cecily Finn. Cecily's tongue is as sharp as her mind, but she's fed up with pretty much everything. Having no patience with Kate's choices, Cecily prescribes her a self-help book with a difference. Food for Thought, a charming 1950s cookbook high on enthusiasm ...
Rich in the imagery of nineteenth-century England, this literary classic celebrates a return to old-fashioned Christmas festivities while examining the crisis in one man's personal life. One of the most famous characters in literary history, Ebenezer Scrooge is the «grasping old sinner» who finds redemption after witnessing scenes from his life in which his greed, self-interest, and lack of compassion are revealed.Complementing the master s ...
Referring to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, H. L. Mencken noted that his discovery of this classic American novel was «the most stupendous event of my whole life»; Ernest Hemingway declared that «all modern American literature stems from this one book,» while T. S. Eliot called Huck «one of the permanent symbolic figures of fiction, not unworthy to take a place with Ulysses, Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan, Hamlet.»The novel's preeminence der ...
One of the English language's most popular and frequently quoted books, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was the creation of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–1898), a distinguished scholar and mathematician who wrote under the pseudonym of Lewis Carroll. Intended for young readers but enjoyed equally by adults, the fantastic tale transformed children's literature, liberating it from didactic constraints.The story is deeply ...
"A strange, tragic, inspired novel . . . as poignant as anything in modern fiction." — E. M. ForsterThis acclaimed novel marked the debut of one of the twentieth century's most brilliant and important writers. In Virginia Woolf's captivating exploration of a young woman's growing self-awareness, the events of a shipboard journey to South America parallel the naive heroine's inner quest. Her experiences, from a ...
Having failed in a number of occupations as a young man, Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950) found his niche as a writer with Tarzan of the Apes, first published in 1914. Highly imaginative, exotic and suspenseful, the story tells of an infant — the son of an aristocratic English couple — abandoned when his parents die in the jungles of Africa. Rescued and reared by apes, he learns to speak their language and imitate t ...
Like his novel A Room with a View, E. M. Forster's Where Angels Fear to Tread focuses on a group of English men and women living and traveling in Italy. A young Englishman journeys to Tuscany to rescue his late brother's wife from what appears to be an unsuitable romance with an Italian of little fortune. In the events surrounding that match and its fateful consequences, Forster weaves an exciting and eventful tale that intriguingly co ...
"O delivery my heart from this fearful gloom and loneliness," prays the passionate Eustacia Vye, who detests her life amid the dreary environs of Egdon Heath. With the return of Clym Yeobright from Paris, her escape for the heath and its brooding isolation appears to be at hand. Clym finds in Eustacia the same dark mystery of his native heath, and his irresistible attraction to them both leads to a clash of idealism and re ...
