Historyczna
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
Into a compellingly real portrait of nineteenth-century Russian society, Dostoevsky introduces his ideal hero, the saintly Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin. Returning to St. Petersburg from a Swiss sanatorium, the gentle and nave epileptic Myshkin, the last, poverty-stricken member of a once great family and regarded by many as an idiot, pays a visit to his distant relative General Yepanchin and proceeds to charm the General and his family. Here he sees a picture of Nastasya Fillipovna and falls in love with her. Things get complicated when he proposes her and she rejects him for a man of dubious character called Rogozhin. Myshkin finds love in Aglaya but all hell loose breaks when once again Nastasya decides that she is still in love with the Prince. Utterly infatuated, he soon finds himself caught up in a love triangle and drawn into a web of blackmail, betrayal, and finally, murder. In Prince Myshkin, the author portrays the purity of a truly beautiful soul and explores the perils that innocence and goodness face in a corrupt world. A tragicomic masterpiece.
The Invaders and Other Stories
Leo Tolstoy
A fantastic collection of stories written by the master Leo Tolstoy himself. The war of Russia with foreign invaders is depicted in the novel as a peoples war, fair. The people defended their national independence, their historical right to decide their own destinies.
The Kingdom of the Sun. A Romance of the Far West Coast
Alexander Maitland Stephen
A young man, Richard Anson is a crewman on board Sir Francis Drakes Golden Hind, which is travelling north to the coast of what will one day become British Columbia. The Kingdom of the Sun: A Romance of the Far West Coast (1927) is an adventure novel by Alexander Maitland Stephen (May 8, 1882 July 1, 1942), who was a Canadian author of poetry and fiction. He began writing in the early 1920s. His first book was a volume of poetry called The Rosary of Pan which was published in 1923. He wrote two novels, the first being The Kingdom of the Sun in 1927. Most of his books were published by J.M. Dent and Sons where his brother worked as a vice-president. In March 1942 he became ill with pneumonia and died in Vancouver on July 1, 1942.
The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories
Leo Tolstoy
So in this work the reader appears to be one of the companions in the train. At first, there are usual discussions on a common topic, when everyone expresses his opinion, and then, leaving at his station, he remains at his own. But those who go further can hear a frank story about passions, feelings, about the tragedy of one private life. Accurately written about the influence of music. And this moment only emphasizes that the person who so perceives music, deep down in his soul is capable of the strongest experiences. It is not surprising that it was music, observation of what was happening in the soul of musicians during a truly felt performance, that became a powerful impetus to that tragic act.
Harold Begbie
According to many people, true friendship lasts until the end of life. However, what happens if something goes wrong? The Laslett Affair novel was written on this subject. A story about friends who believe that there is nothing stronger than their friendship and nothing can prevent their friendship. However, everything changes with time...
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices
Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens
This story is about two students who go on a journey to find a way to completely relax. Along the way, they encounter some problems and humorous incidents. The reader can distinguish the voice of Dickens and Collins in the narration. Especially memorable is the sensational story of Collins and Dickenss wonderful story about the wedding chamber. This is just one of many texts that are not widely used, but they are definitely worth reading.
Rudyard Kipling
Kipling wrote the first novel, The Light That Failed in many ways an autobiographical novel, having already gained fame with his poems and stories. In addition to the novel and selected stories from collections of different years, the book includes the story Brave Captains - about the romance and hardships of sea travel, the formation of the character of a young man, about metamorphoses that occur in people under the influence of merciless circumstances...
Honoré de Balzac
Autobiographical and exceptionally romantic, The Lily of the Valley is an 1835 novel about love and society by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (17991850) and is one of his personal favorites among his innumerable novels. The creator of the Human Comedy brings his creative insight to a portrait of a lady and a love affair set in the Loire valley. It concerns the affection emotionally vibrant but never consummated between Felix de Vandenesse and Henriette de Mortsauf. The young and successful Felix, a young man with a dark past always turned away, always unloved, begins a forthright correspondence on the subject of love with Henriette. Her unexpected reply to his candid reminiscences, however, reveals the truth about his lily of the valley and the feminine side of amour.
G.K. Chesterton
This is a detective story collection of Gilbert Keith Chesterton. Most of the stories in the collection are about the hermit of society, Horn Fischer, who has the talent to solve crimes. Journalist Harold March was walking around the outskirts of Turnbull and met the bizarre Horn Fisher, whom he immediately made friends with. No sooner did they get to know each other when they became witnesses of the disaster: the car flew off the road and fell into the abyss. Fisher and March approached the crash site and identified Sir Humphrey Turnbull, the local rich man. It turned out that he was shot, so that he fell into the abyss. New acquaintances take up the investigation.
The Marble Faun. Or, The Romance of Monte Beni
Nathaniel Hawthorne
At the center of the novel is a group of four characters. These are two young American artists, Hilda and Kenyon, who were brought to Rome by a thirst to comprehend the secrets of art, and their friends the artist Miriam and the young Donatello, who are introduced into this circle not by a passion for art, but by love for Miriam. Everyone is struck by the similarity of the count with the famous statue of Praxiteles, depicting a faun. Most importantly, this similarity is not limited to external similarity: traits dominate in the depiction of his image, beyond which the innocence of a creature unaware of the existence of evil is revealed.
Honoré de Balzac
Just a plain old story told by a superb story teller. A Marriage Contract (French: Le Contrat de marriage) is an 1835 novel by French author Honoré de Balzac and included in the Scenes de la vie privée section of his novel sequence La Comédie humaine. Set in Bordeaux, the marriage between an elegant but weak young Parisian gentleman, Paul de Manerville, and the beautiful but spoiled daughter of a Spanish heiress, Natalie Evangélista, is undermined from the beginning by a fight over the contract of marriage and the financial arrangements, which causes the mother-in-law to seek revenge against Paul. The story is told in a typical Balzac prose style, a forthright narrative sprinkled with witty adages and life lessons, a swift change in emotions running in his characters such that its difficult to decipher the true nature of each character but only to gratify ones curiosity by admitting that inherent fallacy of human character its multi-faced nature.
Robert Barr
Robert Barr has been almost completely overlooked by critics and anthologists of Canadian literature, in part because, although he was educated in Canada, he spent most of his life in the United States and England. However, since most of his serious novels are either set in Canada or have some Canadian connection, Barr deserves attention. The Measure of the Rule is a 1907 coming-of-age novel about a country teacher who migrates to the city to study engineering, but is forced by dint of circumstance to go to a teachers training college, where he meets his wife-to-be. In this novel, Barr is exorcising unhappy memories and is ironic, even bitter, about the schools system and schools quality of education, the rigid discipline observed by its staff and their indifference to their students, and the sexual segregation practiced. A number of men under whom Barr actually studied are vividly caricatured.
May Agnes Fleming
This story is told during the great plague of London. A fantastic and historical tale begins with the story of Sir Norman Kingsley about the mystical La Masque, he ends up visiting her, and soon certain visions come to life in her presence. But how does a woman, supposedly dead, come to life and how can such a dead man suddenly disappear?
George Eliot
If you had to choose between the love of a lifetime and your relationship with your family, who would you pick? In The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot, the author draws on her own experiences when writing the tale of the complicated relationship between a young woman Maggie and her brother Tom Tulliver during a time when women had limited choices. Maggies often tormented battle to do her duty and belong on the one hand, and to be herself, wild and natural on the other, propels her from one crisis to another. As the Tulliver fortunes decline and fall, the rift between Maggie and her family becomes almost irreconcilable. But Maggies biggest mistake of all is to fall in love with Stephen Guest who is engaged to another woman. This novel is a masterpiece of ambiguity in which moral choice is subjected to the hypocrisy of the Victorian age.
Robert Barr
First published in 1896 and considered one of Robert Barrs best works, this historical novel set in London at the beginning of the 20th century and centering on an industrial strike and a love triangle. The men in Monkton and Hopes factory strike. Sartwell, their manager, refuses to compromise with them, but discusses the situation with Marsten, one of their number, who clings to his own order, at the same time that he avows his love for Sartwells daughter Edna. Sartwell forbids him to speak to her. The strike is crushed, Marsten is dismissed, and becomes secretary to the Labor Union. He sees Edna several times, she becomes interested in him, and her father sends her away to school... A great read, The Mutable Many is thoroughly recommended for inclusion on the bookshelf of any home and for lovers of historical novels.
H. Rider Haggard
In this story, readers are introduced to Leonard Outram, a penniless British adventurer in his pocket who is seeking wealth in distant lands, having lost his family lands and estates. He is involved in the rescue of a young Portuguese woman from the largest slave camp in Africa. As a result, the main character discovered a lost race. He will not be easy, because he will face their God.