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English novelist, historian and science writer Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) abandoned teaching and launched his literary career with a series of highly successful science-fiction novels. The Time Machine was the first of a number of these imaginative literary inventions. First published in 1895, the novel follows the adventures of a hypothetical Time Traveller who journeys into the future to find that humanity has evolved into two races: the peaceful...
2) Kim
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Kim, the poor orphaned son of an Irish soldier stationed in Lahore, straddles both worlds. Neither wholly British nor completely Indian, the young boy searches for his identity in the country where he was born; but at the same time, he struggles to create an identity for himself. Cunning and street wise, Kim is mature beyond his thirteen years and learns to move chameleon-like between the two cultures, becoming the disciple of a Tibetan monk while...
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In The Island of Dr. Moreau a shipwrecked gentleman named Edward Prendick, stranded on a Pacific island lorded over by the notorious Dr. Moreau, confronts dark secrets, strange creatures, and a reason to run for his life. While this riveting tale was intended to be a commentary on evolution, divine creation, and the tension between human nature and culture, modern readers familiar with genetic engineering will marvel at Wells's prediction of the...
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Called out by the magic of warm spring sunshine, shy, timid Mole has left his underground home and become friends with the adventurous Water Rat. Together the two companions explore Rat's beloved river, brave the terrors of the Wild Wood, and - most difficult of all - try to rescue foolish Mr. Toad from the constant stream of troubles invited by his reckless, bragging ways. Since its publication in 1908, The Wind in the Willows has been a classic...
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Phineas Redux Anthony Trollope - When Phineas's wife dies, he becomes discontented with his life as a minor government functionary and longs to return to his exciting former career of politics in London. His luck is as strong as ever; his party is seeking to return to power with fresh blood, and with its support, he is once again elected to Parliament.
However, he makes a bitter enemy within his own party, Mr. Bonteen. When Bonteen is murdered, there...
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The sixth and final novel in Trollope's "Palliser" series, this 1879 work begins after the unexpected death of Plantagenet Palliser's beloved wife, Lady Glencora. Though wracked by grief over his loss, this Duke of Omnium and former Prime Minister must now become more involved in the lives of his three grown children. He soon discovers that this will be quite the challenge, for his son and heir Lord Silverbridge has been sent down from Oxford, his...
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In this classic novel, Ken Kesey’s hero is Randle Patrick McMurphy, a boisterous, brawling, fun-loving rebel who swaggers into the world of a mental hospital and takes over. A lusty, life-affirming fighter, McMurphy rallies the other patients around him by challenging the dictatorship of Nurse Ratched. He promotes gambling in the ward, smuggles in wine and women, and openly defies the rules at every turn. But this defiance, which starts as a sport,...
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Chance (1914) was the first of Conrad's novels to bring him popular success and it holds a unique place among his works. It tells the story of Flora de Barral, a vulnerable and abandoned young girl who is "like a beggar, without a right to anything but compassion." After her bankrupt father is imprisoned, she learns the harsh fact that a woman in her position "has no resources but in herself." Her only means of action is to be what she is. Flora's...
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A forerunner of psychological fiction, and considered a landmark work for its innovative use of narrative devices, Tristram Shandy was both celebrated and vilified when first published in 1759. While the narrative's endless digressions drew criticism, the novel's bawdy humor made it a cause for celebration in eighteenth-century London. Originally released in nine separate volumes, it is literature's famed "cock and bull" story, reveling in parody...
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Mr Peacocke, a Classical scholar, has come to Broughtonshire with his beautiful American wife to live as a schoolmaster. But when the blackmailing brother of her first husband - a reprobate from Louisiana - appears at the school gates, a dreadful secret is revealed and the county is scandalized. Ostracised by the community, the pair seem trapped in a hopeless situation - until the combative but warm-hearted headmaster of the school, Dr Wortle, offers...
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The story is subtitled "Landlords and Tenants" and does not betray its implied promise. The ennobled O'Kellys under the leadership of Lord Ballindine are distantly related to the Kellys, consisting of the mother, who keeps a small town inn and her son and daughters. Both fall in love and run into troubles pressing their suits: Lord Ballindine is rejected by Fanny Wyndham's guardian, Lord Cashel, for being a spendthrift (and that while Cashel's son...
14) Justine
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This “very remarkable novel”—first in the acclaimed Alexandria Quartet—tells a haunting story of love, desire, and deception in the Egyptian city pre-WWII (New York Herald Tribune Book Review).
Set in Alexandria, Egypt, in the years between World Wars I and II, Justine is the first installment in the distinguished Alexandria Quartet. Here Lawrence Durrell crafts an exquisite and...
Set in Alexandria, Egypt, in the years between World Wars I and II, Justine is the first installment in the distinguished Alexandria Quartet. Here Lawrence Durrell crafts an exquisite and...
15) The seven seas
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The 'Seven Seas' is a bitter, disillusioned series of poems centered on Britain's role in colonialism and Empire building. With reverberating lyrics and powerful imagery, Kipling writes of the ruthless means that were often employed to add nations to the glorious Empire, and the subsequent effects upon these colonized nations. Though disturbing and unsettling in theme, Kipling's lyrical dexterity makes these poems strangely compelling reading.
17) Brave new world
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Towering classic of dystopian satire, BRAVE NEW WORLD is a brilliant and terrifying vision of a soulless society--and of one man who discovers the human costs of mindless conformity. Hundreds of years in the future, the World Controllers have created an ideal civilization. Its members, shaped by genetic engineering and behavioral conditioning, are productive and content in roles they have been assigned at conception. Government-sanctioned drugs and...
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First published in 1917, "Growth of the Soil" is the epic and seminal work by Knut Hamsun, the Nobel Prize-winning Norwegian writer. Originally published in Norwegian and subsequently translated into numerous languages and read around the world, "Growth of the Soil" has been lauded as one of the twentieth-century's most important and ground-breaking novels. Hamsun was a pioneer in a new more realistic style of literature and was one of the first to...
19) Siddhartha
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The story begins as Siddhartha, the son of a Brahmin, leaves his home to join the ascetics with his companion Govinda. The two set out in the search of enlightenment.
Siddhartha goes from asceticism, to a very worldly life as a trader with a lover, and back to asceticism as he attempts to achieve this goal.
The story takes place in ancient India
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This charming comedy has delighted audiences for over two centuries. First performed in 1773, it concerns Kate Hardcastle, a young lady who poses as a serving girl to win the heart of a young gentleman too shy to court ladies of his own class. A number of delightful deceits and hilarious turns of plot must be played out before the mating strategies of both Kate Hardcastle and her friend Constance Neville conclude happily. Along the way, there is an...
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