The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories

Edith Wharton

Seven short stories from the prolific Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist Edith Wharton. With a wide variety of protagonists a cloistered monk to a struggling artist to a Governor to a New England lawyers wife she is flexing her writing muscles and trying on personas. Includes The Last Asset, In Trust, The Pretext, The Verdict, The Pot-Boiler, and The Best Man. In the title story, the reader learns that the hermit, as a young boy, witnessed the killing of his parents and sister during an attack on his town. As a result of his trauma, he has retreated into isolation until he meets a wild woman who comes to live nearby. Highly recommended when you want something short but stimulating between longer reads!

Northanger Abbey

Jane Austen

The storys heroine is Catherine Morland, an innocent seventeen-year-old woman from a country parsonage. While spending a few weeks in Bath with a family friend, Catherine meets and falls in love with Henry Tilney, who invites her to visit his family estate, Northanger Abbey. Once there, Catherine, a great reader of Gothic thrillers, lets the shadowy atmosphere of the old mansion fill her mind with terrible suspicions. Northanger Abbey is often referred to as Jane Austens Gothic parody.

Nowele i opowiadania pozytywistyczne. Wybór

Praca zbiorowa

Najsłynniejsi pisarze polskiego pozytywizmu Maria Konopnicka, Eliza Orzeszkowa, Bolesław Prus i Henryk Sienkiewicz mają w swoim dorobku oprócz licznych powieści także setki nowel i opowiadań. Utwory te poruszały aktualne problemy, opisywały życie środowisk zacofanych, nawoływały do poprawy warunków na wsiach. Te zwięzłe, jednowątkowe utwory wypowiadały protesty pisarzy, którzy starali się w ten sposób walczyć z niesprawiedliwością i krzywdą ludzką. Pozytywiści podejmowali próby pracy u podstaw, pragnęli działać na rzecz klas najuboższych. Głoszono również hasła emancypacji kobiet i asymilacji Żydów. Odzwierciedlenie haseł epoki pozytywizmu można było przede wszystkim odnaleźć właśnie w nowelistyce. Utwory typu: Gloria victis, Antek, Sachem, Janko Muzykant czy Nasza szkapa, zebrane w tomie Nowele i opowiadania pozytywistyczne, nie tylko tworzą kanon literatury, lecz także pozwalają zobaczyć, jak bardzo świat zmienił się od drugiej połowy XIX stulecia.

Żmija

Juliusz Słowacki

Turecki żołnierz w trakcie jednej z wojen przechodzi na stronę kozaków, aby następnie zostać hetmanem na Siczy Zaporoskiej. Kieruje nim żądza zemsty za śmierć ojca i odebranie kochanki. Nie wszystko jednak idzie po jego myśli.

The Time Machine

Herbert George Wells

Decades ahead of his time, H.G. Wells leaps beyond the bounds of conventional imagination to tell the story of the Time Traveler. A seminal and hugely imaginative work of early science fiction, H.G. Wellss The Time Machine is the first and greatest modern portrayal of time-travel and definitely a spiritual ancestor of every time travel story since. The book introduces a scientist who uses a Time Machine to be transferred into the age of a slowly dying earth. Humans have been separated by time, genetics, wars and change of their habitats into two different races, the Eloi and the subterranean Morlocks. After narrowly escaping from the Morlocks, the Time Traveller undertakes another journey even further into the future where he finds the earth growing bitterly cold as the heat and energy of the sun wane. Horrified, he returns to the present, but soon departs again on his final journey. The Time Machine examines the age-old questions of humankinds ultimate destiny and the role we play in shaping it.

The Luck of the Spindrift

Max Brand

A Novel of Adventure. A quest for a fabulous treasure. The ordeal of Sam Culver. He gets mugged and shanghaied aboard the ship Spindrift. A race for exquisite pearls belonging to a man who is about to die. Prolific in many genres Max Brand wrote historical novels, detective mysteries, pulp fiction stories and many more. "The Luck of the Spindrift" is not the usual Max Brand Western - its a South Seas treasure hunt adventure. The plot is well constructed with well drawn subsidiary characters and provides a number of interesting twists.

The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation

Joseph Smith Fletcher

Marshall Allerdyke is driving through the night from London to Hull in response to an urgent telegram from his cousin. As he nears Hull, a beautiful woman stops his car to ask for directions to Scotland. Odd time to be traveling so far and in such a hurry, but Allerdykes mind is elsewhere. When he finally arrives in Hull, he finds his cousin dead in his hotel room and a valuable consignment of jewels missing. Allerdykes only clue rests with that woman hurrying off to Scotland. Written in beautifully period English, this mystery has many threads to solve. The main characters work wonderfully with each other to solve the mystery, with the assistance of the British police. There are enough twists and turns and revelations to keep you busy right to the end.

Sinfully Rich

Hulbert Footner

We learn from the very beginning that the main character dies. But, of course, readers need to find out who is the killer. There were many people in her entourage: friends, journalists, lawyers, lieutenants, and maids. What do these guys have in common? And how did the main character die?