Historyczna
Henry James
In the hope of a successful marriage, Eugene, Baroness Münster, and her younger brother, the artist Felix, descendants of Wentworth, come to Boston. Having settled in the neighborhood, they become close friends with the young Wentworths Gertrude, Charlotte and Clifford. Witness and sophistication of Eugene, along with the cheerfulness of Felix create a difficult combination with Puritan morality, frugality and the intrinsic dignity of Americans.
L. Frank Baum
Need an adventure story with plots and counterplots? Intrigue? A love interest? Politics? Murder? Follow our young American hero, Robert Harcliffe, as he goes on the adventure of his lifetime. A young man just out of college goes to Brazil as secretary of the prime mover in the revolution, and by so doing begins a series of adventures that run from tragic to comic, ending with the success of the conspiracy, a straightening out of many tangles, and the marriage of the hero to one of the most brilliant and beautiful conspirators. Written by the famous Oz author L. Frank Baum under the alias of Schuyler Staunton, The Fate of a Crown is a stirring novel of the events of a South American revolution against the monarchy at the turn of the 20th Century. It was Baums first novel for an adult readership.
Henry James
The Finer Grain a collection of small stories. The A Round of Visits is a thoughtful tragedy that triggered the opening of Watch and Trusteeship. The Bench of Desolation, located in an English seaside town, is a touching story of reconciliation after some very offensive and bitter misunderstandings.
The Forged Coupon and Other Stories
Leo Tolstoy
At the beginning of the story, walking along an incline, some of Tolstoys characters lie, commit robberies and even killings. The author allows his heroes to experience feelings of satisfaction and complete impunity, after they have committed terrible atrocities. Pelageyushkin, going to the massacres, is content with one own impunity. Tolstoy conducts his heroes in hellish circles: all terrible crimes are uncovered. The punishment for the crime hangs with a Damocles sword over the heads of Tolstoy literary characters. It is also interesting that the writer selects his heroes from each social group.
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
Inspired by Dostoevskys own gambling addiction and written under pressure in order to pay off his creditors and retain his rights to his literary legacy, The Gambler is set in the casino of the fictional German spa town of Roulettenburg and follows the misfortunes of the young tutor Alexei Ivanovich working in the household of an imperious Russian general. He begins gambling to win enough money to become a rich man and therefore win the favor of the woman that he loves. In the disastrous love affairs and gambling adventures of Alexei Ivanovich, Dostoevsky explores the irresistible temptation to look into the abyss of ultimate risk that he believed was an essential part of the Russian national character. In The Gambler, Dostoevsky reaches the heights of drama with this stunning psychological portrait
Honoré de Balzac
The Girl with the Golden Eyes is the third part of a trilogy. Part one is entitled Ferragus and part two is The Duchesse de Langeais. The three stories are frequently combined under the title The Thirteen. It tells the story of a rich and ruthless young man in nineteenth century Paris caught up in an amorous entanglement with a mysterious beauty. Henri de Marsay, a young dandy who is obsessed with appearances, a physically beautiful but spiritually empty young man who devotes all his time to the pursuit of sensation and sensual pleasure. He develops a burning lust for the inaccessible golden-eyed girl of the title, Paquita Valdes. He becomes determined to win her love, regardless of whatever, or whoever, stands in his path. If you enjoy the works of Honoré de Balzac then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection.
Henry James
This is the biography of Henry Morgan, the pirate admiral. In his youth, he spent several years in slavery, later became famous as a skilled warlord and vice-governor of Jamaica. The central theme of the novel ingenious assault, lightning capture and ruthless looting of the Golden Cup so called Panama, which was the richest city in the West Indies.
The Great Stone Face and Other Tales of the White Mountains
Nathaniel Hawthorne
In The Great Stone Face, Hawthorne compares different types of human activity. Most of them are aimed at finding success in society. But Hawthorne believes that the success of the Finnish businessman or general, who turned military affairs into a means of his personal career, or a clever politician who is uncleanly making his way to power, is an imaginary success. Even the poet, the creator of beautiful works of art, still retains a lot of vicious individualism and self-love, and only the humble young man Ernst, who devoted his life to serving people, selflessly doing good, won the favor of the author he gives preference to him and his selfless altruism proclaims the ideal of human life.
May Agnes Fleming
There was nobody on the road except herself. Late time after all, it was almost midnight and an increasing storm kept pedestrians at the door of that gloomy March night. From time to time she passed cottages in which lights were still burning, but most of the houses were shrouded in silence and darkness. And still during the night, and the storm, and the gloom, the wanderer answered, with ruthless rain beating across her face, cold explosions from her thin shabby clothes and long wild black hair. Nevertheless, not stopping, not resting, never taking his gaze away from a distant city like a lost soul, hurrying to death.
The House of the Dead. Or, Prison Life in Siberia
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
Aleksandr Petrovich lives through a spiritual re-awakening that culminates with his release from the prison camp. The narrator has been sentenced to penalty deportation to Siberia and ten years of hard labor for murdering his wife. Published in 1861, House of the Dead is a semi-autobiographical work based upon Dostoevskys exile to Siberia where he was punished with hard labor after he was initially convicted to be punished by death by firing-squad for his involvement in the Petrashevsky Circle. This experience allowed him to describe with great authenticity the conditions of prison life and the characters of the convicts. Dostoyevsky skillfully portrays the inmates of the prison with sympathy for their plight, and admiration for their energy, ingenuity and talent. The book is a loosely-knit collection of facts, events and philosophical discussion organized by theme rather than as a continuous story.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
In the novel The House of the Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of the founders of American literature, once again, after a series of short stories and the famous Scarlet Letter, addresses the Puritan past and present of his homeland, New England. Legends and legends from national and family history, animated by the authors fantasy on Gothic themes, add up to the chronicle of the age-old confrontation of two families, which is implicated in greed, perjury and a tribal curse and which can only stop the love of young heroes...
Victor Hugo
The story of a love triangle from the Middle Ages. The young girl falls in love with the captain of the guard, who once saved her. But an aged priest falls in love with her. Both feelings are perverted, the priest pursues the girl, rolls his life downhill for the sake of love. The feeling of his religiosity is even more distorted. The girl is madly in love, she is also ready to give everything and die for the sake of a man who is absolutely indifferent to him and doesnt care when they want to hang the girl because of an attempt on him.
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.