The Piano Man Level 1 Oxford Bookworms Library

Vicary, Tim

A level 1 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Written for Learners of English by Tim Vicary. A woman finds a man on a beach. He is very cold, his clothes are wet, and he cannot speak. The woman phones for help, and an ambulance comes and takes the man to hospital. In hospital they ask the man questions, but he does not answer. He still cannot speak - or does not want to speak. Who is he, this strange man from the sea? What is his name? Where did he come from? And why do they call him the Piano Man?

The Piazza Tales

Herman Melville

Melville has a fairly wide range of styles and approaches. Piazza is a Tolkien excursion into a fairyland, but she asks where the real fairyland is actually located. Piazza, a descriptive and sensitively told pastoral story.

The Pickwick Papers

The Pickwick Papers - a novel by Charles Dickens, an English writer who is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era.   The novel's protagonist Samuel Pickwick, Esquire is a kind and wealthy old gentleman, the founder and perpetual president of the Pickwick Club. He suggests that he and three other "Pickwickians" should make journeys to places remote from London and report on their findings to the other members of the club. Their travels throughout the English countryside by coach provide the chief subject matter of the novel.  

The Pickwick Papers

This novel demonstrates Dickens experimenting with building his own voice. The Pickwick Papers is a series of linear adventures, unlike the convoluted plots of Dickenss later novels. In other words, we follow our heroes from one stop to the next and meet interesting characters, rather than unraveling a mystery. The novel is a late example of the picaresque, a style of story in which we follow a rough, but still likable, hero through his adventures.The Pickwick Club sends Mr. Pickwick and a group of friends to travel across England and to report back on the interesting things they find. In the course of their travels, they repeatedly encounter the friendly but disreputable Mr. Jingle, who becomes a continual source of trouble for all who know him. Pickwick himself is the victim of a number of misunderstandings that bring him both embarrassment and problems with the law.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde

Possessing eternal youth and beauty produces exactly the same effect as sentencing a man to life without the possibility of parole. Both have nothing to lose and morals disappear before the desire for immediate self-gratification in all things. And so it is with Dorian Gray. Its a moral story so eventually his evil catches up with him and he dies, as does the criminal. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde is a fascinating novel in which a beautiful young man, under the poisonous influence of an older dandy, makes a bargain with the devil, according to which he stays young and charming while his portrait becomes a reflection of his conscience. Wildes novel is about youth and beauty versus experience; morality and the triumph of the senses over reason; sin and accountability; society, its hypocrisy and the depths of the human condition.

The Picture of Dorian Gray - With Audio Level 3 Oxford Bookworms Library

A level 3 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. This version includes an audio book: listen to the story as you read. Retold for Learners of English by Jill Nevile. 'When we are happy, we are always good', says Lord Henry, 'but when we are good, we are not always happy.' Lord Henry's lazy, clever words lead the young Dorian Gray into a world where it is better to be beautiful than to be good; a world where anything can be forgiven - even murder - if it can make people laugh at a dinner party.

The Picture of Dorian Gray Level 3 Oxford Bookworms Library

A level 3 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Retold for Learners of English by Jill Nevile 'When we are happy, we are always good', says Lord Henry, 'but when we are good, we are not always happy.' Lord Henry's lazy, clever words lead the young Dorian Gray into a world where it is better to be beautiful than to be good; a world where anything can be forgiven - even murder - if it can make people laugh at a dinner party.

The Pigeon House

Valentine Williams

The novel begins in Paris on the wedding night of Sally and Rex Garrett. A former member of the French Foreign Legion Rex mysteriously disappears on the night of his wedding. At The Pigeon House, a lonely inn, a band of conspirators await the arrival of a deserter from the Foreign Legion, who is their key man in their plan to start an uprising in French Morocco. The conspirators have also driven the bridegrooms closest friend into exile and a shameful death, which means he must hunt them down and destroy them. Williams spy story, The Pigeon Man (1927), presents us with a character whose motivations are as obscure as any in modernist literature. Why is the hero doing what he is doing? Why, for that matter, are the other characters? George Valentine Williams never says explicitly, leaving readers to puzzle this out for themselves.

The Pike Bearfield Stories

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard turned to writing comic and dialect Western tales only late in his career, but he found an immediate and continuously successful market for them, and they are in many respects his most accomplished and polished works. The Pike Bearfield Stories is a collection of stories in the western genre, featuring Pike Bearfield the character who lead well-intentioned lives of perpetual confusion, mischance, and outright catastrophe. It includes: While the Smoke Rolled, A Gent from the Pecos Shave That Hawg! , Gents on the Lynch, The riot at Bucksnort. They are reminiscent of traditional southwestern tall tales, told in dialect, featuring larger-than-life characters, swift action, broad satire, and wry humor. All stories are fast-paced with simple yet effective plots that have a few surprises thrown in for good measure.

The Pilot. A Tale of the Sea

James Fenimore Cooper

In The Pilot (1824), James Fenimore Cooper invented a new literary genre: the sea novel. Bold, vigorous, original, it is a tale of high adventure that vividly captures the majesty and power of the seafaring life. Cooper drew on his direct knowledge of ships and sailors to present a truer picture of life on the sea than had ever before achieved in literature. As a boy of seventeen he had experienced the life of a common seaman, learned the craft of sailing, encountered terrifying storms, was chased by pirates, and watched the impressment of crew members by a British man-of-war.The Pilot is loosely based upon stories of John Paul Joness daring hit-and-run tactics during the Revolutionary War. The shadowy hero, modeled on Jones, leads a squadron of the infant American navy in a series of raids on the English coast, braving fierce storms and the guns of hostile warships, yet never revealing his identity. In this novel Cooper introduced the character of the old salt, the seasoned deckhand happy only aboard ship.

The Pioneers. or The Sources of the Susquehanna

James Fenimore Cooper

The fourth of the Leatherstocking novels, we find Leatherstocking (Natty Bumppo) entering the last stages of his life. He has lost a great deal of his effectiveness with his musket and now relies a great deal on his dog to help him hunting. The main focus is one two things: 1. the reinstatement of Nattys old commander in his properties and wealth in the new US while believing he is the victim of treachery by his old friend the judge in this story; and 2. Nattys struggle with and disgust about the developing societal rules that limit his freedom in hunting, trapping and fishing in the wilderness as he has his whole life. Good story on both accounts. In The Pioneers, James Fenimore Cooper thematically debates the complexity of landscape within a new American frontier. The battle between nature and civilization is a constant and competing force within the minds of the characters and in the general surroundings.

The Place of the Lion

Charles Williams

Charles Williams is able to create wonderful ghostly episodes powerful moments of disclosure. In the novel The Place of the Lion, the world of feelings is depicted as an illusion simply a reflection of the real world from which it originates. This makes some absolutely fascinating scenes, as people suddenly face a reality that they cannot understand. The book raises some interesting questions about good and evil.

The Planet of Peril

Otis Adelbert Kline is best known for his purported novelistic feud with Edgar Rice Burroughs. In 1929, long before planetary romance became a conventional genre, he wrote Planet of Peril, a novel set on the planet Venus and written in the storytelling form of Burroughs Martian novels. He followed this with two sequels. This novel is a science-fiction adventure on a world of semi-barbaric nations, ferocious beasts, gigantic reptiles, and maidens in distress. In it, Robert Grandon of Earth exchanges his body with that of a captive Prince of the planet Venus. Of course being a earthmen he doesnt stay captive very long. Battles, swordfights, monsters, whirlwind of intrigue, danger, desperation and beautiful Queens vie for your attention as this story unfolds.

The Planetary Series

If youre going to launch a series dedicated to the very best science fiction and fantasy writers of the century, it makes sense to start with Stanley G. Weinbaum. The Planetary Series includes ten stories set on worlds of Earths solar system following several centuries of human exploration and settlement. It features a host of fascinating alien creatures, including birdlike Martians (features in A Martian Odyssey and its sequel Valley of Dreams) and The Red Peri and the Venusian trioptes (in Parasite Planet, The Lotus Eaters). Written in the 1930s, the planetary stories were consistent with scientific understanding of the solar system at that time, as well as consistent with science fiction ideas of the planets, most notably a warm and wet jungle-like Venus. Even today, the collection remains a highly readable and enjoyable, a great example of early science fiction that exhibits the finest pulp virtues: fast action, colorful settings and characters, and terrific storytelling.

The Planter of Malata

Joseph Conrad

This is both mystery and romance; the latter creates one of the recurring difficulties in Conrad: it preserves the Victorian histrionic element, which sometimes may seem a little attractive. But overall, it is well read and much less burdensome than some of his novels.

The Player

Karol May

"The Player" autorstwa Karola Maya to opowieść pełna intrygi, zdrady i mrocznych tajemnic, gdzie losy bohaterów splatają się w sieci morderstw, zemsty i skrywanych namiętności. Główny wątek powieści skupia się na trudnych relacjach między członkami rodziny Meltonów. Kiedy Thomas Melton zabija swojego brata Harry'ego, wywołuje tym czynem lawinę wydarzeń, które przyczynią się do upadku całej rodziny. Narracja prowadzi nas przez pełen napięcia proces zemsty i sprawiedliwości, w którym pozostali dwaj Meltonowie stają w obliczu zasłużonej kary. W tej części cyklu powieściowego pojawia się także postać Judyty, żony wodza plemienia Yuma, Przebiegłego Węża. Jej obecność rzuca cień podejrzliwości na wydarzenia i decyzje głównych bohaterów. Judyta, córka imigranta z wcześniejszej części powieści, staje się kluczową postacią w tym splocie emocji i tajemnic. "The Player" to literacka podróż przez zawiłe intrygi, emocje i relacje między postaciami. Karol May nie tylko ukazuje Dziki Zachód w swojej charakterystyczny sposób, ale również zgłębia psychologiczne aspekty postaci, ich wybory i motywacje. Ta trzymająca w napięciu opowieść o zdradzie, miłości i zemście to nieodłączna część cyklu powieściowego Karola Maya. "The Player" to lektura dla tych, którzy poszukują głębokich emocji, skomplikowanych relacji i pełnych zwrotów akcji opowieści.