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The Happiness Advantage
Shawn Achor 试读
Our most commonly held formula for success is broken. Conventional wisdom holds that once we succeed, we’ll be happy; that once we get that great job, win that next promotion, lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But the science reveals this formula to be backward: Happiness fuels success, not the other way around.
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The Body Keeps the Score
Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. 试读
Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors.
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A Dance with Dragons
乔治·R.R.马丁 试读
Dubbed “the American Tolkien” by Time magazine, George R. R. Martin has earned international acclaim for his monumental cycle of epic fantasy. Now the #1 New York Times bestselling author delivers the fifth book in his landmark series—as both familiar faces and surprising new forces vie for a foothold in a fragmented empire.
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The Maze Runner
James Dashner 试读
When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his name. He’s surrounded by strangers—boys whose memories are also gone. Outside the towering stone walls that surround them is a limitless, ever-changing maze. It’s the only way out—and no one’s ever made it through alive. Then a girl arrives. The first girl ever. And the message she delivers is terrifying. Remember. Survive. Run.
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And the Mountains Echoed
Khaled Hosseini 试读
Khaled Hosseini, the 1 New York Times–bestselling author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, has written a new novel about how we love, how we take care of one another, and how the choices we make resonate through generations. In this tale revolving around not just parents and children but brothers and sisters, cousins and caretakers, Hosseini explores the many ways in which families nurture, wound, betray, honor, and sacrifice for one another.
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Tao Te Ching
Lao Tzu 试读
This is the lauded translation of the eighty-one poems constituting an Eastern classic, the mystical and moral teachings of which have profoundly influenced the sacred scriptures of many religions—and the lives and happiness of countless men and women through the centuries.
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Vacation Guide to the Solar System
Olivia Koski 试读
Packed with real science and fueled by imagination, a beautifully illustrated guide to traveling in our solar system Imagine taking a hike along the windswept red plains of Mars to dig for signs of life, or touring one of Jupiter's sixty-four moons where you can photograph its swirling storms.
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The Servant Leader
James A. Autry 试读
A Practical Guide to Using the Principles of Servant Leadership Leadership is a calling. And servant leadership—the idea that managing with respect, honesty, love,and spirituality empowers employees—helps individuals answer that calling. Bestselling author and former Fortune 500 executive James A. Autry reveals the servant leader’s tools, a set of skills and ideals that will transform the way business is done.
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The Art of Travel
Alain De Botton 试读
A wise and utterly original book of travel essays from an international bestselling author that will “give one an expansive sense of wonder” (The Baltimore Sun). Any Baedeker will tell us where we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us how and why. With the same intelligence and insouciant charm he brought to How Proust Can Save Your Life, de Botton considers the pleasures of anticipation; the allure of the exotic.
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Positive Discipline: The First Three Years, Revised and Updated Edition
Jane Nelsen 试读
The celebrated Positive Discipline brand of parenting books presents the revised and updated third edition of their readable and practical guide to communicating boundaries to very young children and solving early discipline problems to set children up for success. Over the years millions of parents have used the amazingly effective strategies of Positive Discipline to raise happy, well-behaved, and successful children.
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Nelson Mandela: From Prisoner to President
Suzy Capozzi 试读
This Step 4 leveled reader about Nelson Mandela, the Nobel Prize–winning activist for racial equality in South Africa, is as spellbinding a biography as you can find. His journey from student to revolutionary to inmate to president of South Africa will inspire and engage kids of all ages.As conversations about race, prejudice, and injustice pervade classrooms and homes, teachers and parents need books that can bring those discussions within the grasp of kids.
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Anna and the French Kiss
Stephanie Perkins 试读
Anna is looking forward to her senior year in Atlanta, where she has a great job, a loyal best friend, and a crush on the verge of becoming more. Which is why she is less than thrilled about being shipped off to boarding school in Paris - until she meets Etienne St. Clair: Perfect, Parisian (and English and American, which makes for a swoon-worthy accent), and utterly irresistible.
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Mariel of Redwall
Brian Jacques 试读
When the mouse-ship carrying Joseph the Bellmaker and his daughter Mariel runs afoul of a pirate rat king, they are mercilessly tossed overboard. Washed ashore and certain that her father is dead, Mariel vowsrevenge.
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Great Dialogues of Plato
Plato 试读
Written in the form of debates,Great Dialogues of Plato comprises the most influential body of philosophy of the Western world—covering every subject from art and beauty to virtue and the nature of love.
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Girl with a Pearl Earring
Tracy Chevalier 试读
Translated into thirty-nine languages and made into an Oscar-nominated film, starring Scarlett Johanson and Colin Firth Tracy Chevalier transports readers to a bygone time and place in this richly-imagined portrait of the young woman who inspired one of Vermeer's most celebrated paintings.History and fiction merge seamlessly in this luminous novel about artistic vision and sensual awakening.
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Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte 试读
Initially published under the pseudonym Currer Bell in 1847, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyreerupted onto the English literary scene, immediately winning the devotion of many of the world’s most renowned writers, including William Makepeace Thackeray, who declared it a work “of great genius.”
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WOMEN IN LOVE
David Herbert Lawrence 试读
D.H. Lawrence's magnificent exploration of human sexuality in the days surrounding World War I. "Let us hesitate no longer to announce that the sensual passions and mysteries are equally sacred with the spiritual mysteries and passions," wrote D.H. Lawrence in "Women In Love, a masterpiece that heralded the erotic consciousness of the twentieth century. Echoing elements of Lawrence's own life, "Women In Love delves into the mysteries between men and women as two couples strive for love against a haunting backdrop of coal mines, factories, and a beleaguered working class.
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Bartleby the Scrivener A Story of Wall-Street
Herman Melville 试读
Bartleby is a kind of clerk, a copyist,who obstinately refuses to go on doing the sort of writing demanded of him; During the spring of 1851, Melville felt similarly about his work on Moby Dick. Thus, Bartleby can be seen to represent Melville's frustration with his own situation as a writer, and the story itself is about a writer who forsakes conventional modes because of an irresistible preoccupation with the most baffling philosophical questions Bartleby can also be seen to represent Melville's relation to his commercial, democratic society.
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Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
Thomas de Quincey 试读
HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. I here present you, courteous reader, with the record of a remarkable period in my life. The Confessions of an English Opium Eater is both a classic of the English autobiographical genre and a hard-nosed study of the effects of drugs on an artistic mind. A close associate of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the brilliant but troubled de Quincey recounts both the pleasures and pain of opium addiction in captivating prose. The result is by turns enlightened, nightmarish and witty – a faithful mirror of the drug itself.
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Gettysburg Address
Abraham Lincoln 试读
The words of President Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address are as relevant and meaningful today as they were in 1863. This magnificent book is a stunning exploration of some of the most powerful words ever spoken in American history.
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Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte 试读
Orphaned at an early age, Jane Eyre, leads a lonely life until she finds a position as a governess at Thornfield Hall. There she meets the mysterious Mr. Rochester and sees a ghostly woman who roams the halls at night. What is the sinister secret that threatens Jane and her new found happiness? Step into Classics(TM) adaptations feature easy-to-read texts, big type, and short chapters that are ideal for reluctant readers and kids not yet ready to tackle original classics.
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Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy 试读
A brooding tragedy which scandalised Hardy's contemporaries on first publication. Jude's story -- his futile desire to better himself through education, his failed marriage and doomed love for the free-spirited Sue Bridehead -- shows with heartbreaking clarity the devastating effects of prejudice and oppression upon innocent minds, and forms a passionate plea for tolerance. It was met with widespread condemnation upon first publication in 1895 and, as a result, was the last novel Hardy ever wrote.
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Little Dorrit
Charles Dickens 试读
A novel in which Dickens launches a ferocious onslaught against England and English society.He draws on the memory of his father in his depiction of the Marshalsea debtors prison and there is also the story of the love between an older man and a younger woman.
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Across China on Foot
Edwin John Dingle 试读
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
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An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Adam Smith 试读
The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations.According, therefore, as this produce, or what is purchased with it, bears a greater or smaller proportion to the number of those who are to consume it, the nation will be better or worse supplied with all the necessaries and conveniencies for which it has occasion. This is a public domain book converted by anonymous volunteers and you may find it for free on the web.This work is respectfully inscribed by the author.
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A Book of Irish Verse Selected from modern writers with an introduction and notes by W. B. Yeats
W. B. Yeats 试读
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
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Oliver Twist
Charles Dickens 试读
This fiercely comic tale stands in marked contrast to its genial predecessor, The Pickwick Papers. Set against London's seedy back street slums, Oliver Twist is the saga of a workhouse orphan captured and thrust into a thieves' den, where some of Dickens's most depraved villains preside: the incorrigible Artful Dodger, the murderous bully Sikes, and the terrible Fagin, that treacherous ringleader whose grinning knavery threatens to send them all to the "ghostly gallows." Yet at the heart of this drama is the orphan Oliver, whose unsullied goodness leads him at last to salvation. In 1838 the publication of Oliver Twist firmly established the literary eminence of young Dickens. It was, according to Edgar Johnson, "a clarion peal announcing to the world that in Charles Dickens the rejected and forgotten and misused of the world had a champion."
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Poems and Songs of Robert Burns
Robert Burns 试读
Robert Burns (1759-1796) (also known as Rabbie Burns, Scotland's favourite son, the Ploughman Poet, the Bard of Ayrshire and in Scotland as simply The Bard), was a poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide. He is the bestknown of the poets who have written in the Scots language, although much of his writing is also in English and a 'light' Scots dialect, accessible to an audience beyond Scotland. He is regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic Movement and after his death became an important source of inspiration to the founders of both liberalism and socialism. Burns also worked to collect and preserve Scottish folk songs, sometimes revising, expanding, and adapting them. His poem (and song) Auld Lang Syne is often sung at Hogmanay (New Year), and Scots Wha Hae served for a long time as an unofficial national anthem of the country. Other poems and songs of Burns that remain well-known across the world today, include A Red, Red Rose, A Man's A Man for A' That, To a Louse, To a Mouse, The Battle of Sherramuir, and Ae Fond Kiss.
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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Mark Twain 试读
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is Mark Twain's most popular book, and its hero is a national icon, celebrated as a distinctively American figure both at home and abroad. Tom Sawyer's bold spirit, winsome smile, and inventive solutions to the problems of everyday life in fictional St Petersburg - whether getting his friends to whitewash a fence for him, or escaping the demands of his vigilant Aunt Polly - have won him the hearts of generations.
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The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe(1808)
Daniel Defoe 试读
Daniel Defoe (1659 1661-1731) was an English writer, journalist and spy, who gained enduring fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe (1719). Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest practitioners of the novel and helped popularise the genre in Britain. In some texts he is even referred to as one of the founders, if not the founder, of the English novel. A prolific and versatile writer, he wrote over five hundred books, pamphlets, and journals on various topics (including politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology and the supernatural). He is also a pioneer of economic journalism. His most famous novel, Robinson Crusoe (1719), tells of a man's shipwreck on a desert island and his subsequent adventures. He also wrote Captain Singleton (1720), which portrays the redemptive power of one man's love for another and Moll Flanders (1722), a picaresque first-person narration of the fall and eventual redemption of a lone woman in 17th century England.
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The Moonstone
Wilkie Collins 试读
Praised by T.S. Eliot as the first……and best of modern English detective novels, "The Moonstone" draws the reader into its world of danger, suspense, and foreign menace as Collins unmasks a restrictive society marked by sexual and imperial domination. Revised reissue.
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The Princess of Cleves
Madame de La Fayette 试读
The text of this Norton Critical Edition is that of Thomas Sargent Perry's 1892 translation, indisputably the translation that has best served readers in English. Reprinted repeatedly over the last one hundred years, the Perry translation is a classic in its own right. After careful review, the editor has corrected minor infelicities of translation (necessary to remain true to Lafayette's text) and updated vocabulary. To experience the innovation of Lafayette's writing, it is necessary to understand the critical resistance it met with in seventeenth-century France. "Contemporary Reactions" includes five assessments of The Princess of Cleves by Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette herself, Roger de Bussy-Rabutin and Marie de Sevigne, Jean-Baptiste-Henry du Trousset de Valincour, Jean-Antoine de Charnes, and Du Plaisir following its controversial publication. John Lyons's translations for this Norton Critical Edition make these reactions available in English for the first time. "Criticism" includes eleven modern studies of the novel, five of which appear here in English for the first time, by Jean Fabre, Michel Butor, Jean Rousset, Helen Karen Kaps, Gerard Genette, Roger Francillon, Kurt Weinberg, Peggy Kamuf, Erica Harth, Joan DeJean, and Laurence Gregario. A Glossary of Characters and a Selected Bibliography are also included.
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The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Omar Khayyam 试读
Omar Khayyam was a Persian astronomer and mathematician born in the later part of the 11th century. His poetry, which received very little notoriety in its day, achieved classic status when it was discovered and rendered into English verse by Edward Fitzgerald more than 700 years later. Presented here are the traditionally collected first and fifth editions with the original notes and Introduction by Fitzgerald.
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The Voyage of the Beagle
Charles Darwin 试读
In 1831, Charles Darwin embarked on an expedition that, in his own words, determined my whole career. The Voyage of the Beagle chronicles his five-year journey around the world and especially the coastal waters of South America as a naturalist on the H.M.S. Beagle. While traveling through these unexplored countries collecting specimens, Darwin began to formulate the theories of evolution and natural selection realized in his master work, The Origin of Species. Travel memoir and scientific primer alike, The Voyage of the Beagle is a lively and accessible introduction to the mind of one of history's most influential thinkers.
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Lady into Fox
David Garnett 试读
Mrs. Tebrick's maiden name was certainly Fox, and it is possible that such a miracle happening before, the family may have gained their name as a soubriquet on that account. They were an ancient family, and have had their seat at Tangley Hall time out of mind. It is also true that there was a half-tame fox once upon a time chained up at Tangley Hall in the inner yard, and I have heard many speculative wiseacres in the public-houses turn that to great account—though they could not but admit that "there was never one there in Miss Silvia's time."
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Fairy Book
Sophie May 试读
Rebecca Sophia Clarke (1833-1906) was an American author of children's fiction. She wrote under the penname Sophie May and had 45 published works between 1860 and 1903. The most successful were the Little Prudy characters which made their first appearance in short stories for the children's periodicals, The Little Pilgrim and the Congregationalist. The series was later published into books. Her sister Sarah Jones Clarke (1840- 1929) was also an author of children's books. She wrote under the penname Penn Shirley. Rebecca attended a "female academy" in Norridgewock and taught for a while, but she never married. Amongst her works are: Little Prudy (1863), Little Prudy's Sister Susy (1864), Little Prudy's Captain Horace (1864), Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple (1868), Dotty Dimple Out West (1868), Dotty Dimple at Play (1869), Little Folks Astray (1870) and The Twin Cousins (1880).
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Unconscious Comedians
Honoré de Balzac 试读
One morning as he ate his breakfast and cursed his fate, he picked up a newspaper savagely. The following lines, ending an article, struck Gazonal as if the mysterious voice which speaks to gamblers before they win had sounded in his ear: "Our celebrated landscape painter, Leon de Lora, lately returned from Italy, will exhibit several pictures at the Salon; thus the exhibition promises, as we see, to be most brilliant."
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Under Drakes Flag A Tale of the Spanish Main
George Alfred Henty 试读
With 30 pages of additional articles, references, and bibliographies of recommended reading. The high seas adventures of Sir Francis Drake, as he sails The Golden Hind into dangerous encounters with Spanish ships, and privateers. Henty places Ned Hearne, a young Devonshire lad, aboard Drake's ship where they set out to sail around the world. Ned and his newfound companions, join in some wild exploits on the Spanish Main, are washed ashore on an island, and then become embroiled in the first successful insurrection against Spain in the western islands.
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A Collection of Ballads
Andrew Lang 试读
When the learned first gave serious attention to popular ballads, from the time of Percy to that of Scott, they laboured under certain disabilities. The Comparative Method was scarcely understood, and was little practised. Editors were content to study the ballads of their own countryside, or, at most, of Great Britain. Teutonic and Northern parallels to our ballads were then adduced, as by Scott and Jamieson. It was later that the ballads of Europe, from the Faroes to Modern Greece, were compared with our own, with European Märchen, or children’s tales, and with the popular songs, dances, and traditions of classical and savage peoples. The results of this more recent comparison may be briefly stated. Poetry begins, as Aristotle says, in improvisation. Every man is his own poet, and, in moments of stronge motion, expresses himself in song.
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Queen Mary and Harold
Alfred Tennyson Tennyson 试读
Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (1809-1892) was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom and is one of the most popular English poets. Much of his verse was based on classical mythological themes. One of Tennyson's most famous works is Idylls of the King (1859), a series of narrative poems based entirely on King Arthur and the Arthurian tales. During his career, Lord Tennyson attempted drama, but his plays enjoyed little success even in his lifetime. His first publication entitled Poems by Two Brothers was published in 1827. He published his first solo collection of poems, Poems Chiefly Lyrical in 1830. In 1833, Tennyson published his second book of poetry, which included his well-known poem, The Lady of Shalott. In 1842 Tennyson published two volumes of Poems. The Princess, a satire of women's education, which came out in 1847, was also popular. It was in 1850 that Tennyson reached the pinnacle of his career, being appointed Poet Laureate until his death. Amongst his other works are Becket and Other Plays (1884) and Lady Clare (1884).
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La Maison Tellier
Guy de Maupassant 试读
"Fermé pour cause de première communion" : un tel avis, sur laporte d'une maison close, n'est pas chose courante, et les habituésde la maison Tellier, de Fécamp, n'en reviennent pas. Pendant cetemps, Madame et ses cinq pensionnaires vont retrouver à lacampagne, le temps d'une fête, leurs émois et leur innocence depetites filles... A c?té de ce chef-d'?uvre, huit autres nouvellesdéploient ici l'éventail du génie de Maupassant. Petits employésparisiens, paysans timides, noceurs désabusés, filles rouées ouna?ves : toute une humanité, où des surprenantes candeurs se mêlentà la violence des appétits et des intérêts, est dépeinte avec lacouleur éclatante et le réalisme vigoureux des toiles de Renoir, deManet ou de Toulouse-Lautrec.
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Madame Bovary-Flaubert,Gustave、 Aveling,Eleanor Marx
Gustave Flaubert 试读
To Marie-Antoine-Jules Senard Member of the Paris Bar, Ex-President of the National Assembly, and Former Minister of the Interior Dear and Illustrious Friend, Permit me to inscribe your name at the head of this book, and above its dedication; for it is to you, before all, that I owe its publication. Reading over your magnificent defence, my work has acquired for myself, as it were, an unexpected authority.
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Gitanjali
泰戈尔 试读
Moving, heart-felt prose poems by the beloved and much admired Bengali poet and mystic who first achieved international fame (and a Nobel Prize) in 1913 with his translation of these moving poems. Reminiscent of Blake and Gibran, they include many works that are almost biblical in their rhythms, phrasing and images. Introduction by William Butler Yeats.
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Household Papers and Stories
Harriet Beecher Stowe 试读
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
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Chess History and Reminiscences
Henry Edward Bird 试读
Of all the claims which have been advanced to the invention and origin of chess, that of the Hindu Game the Chaturanga is the most ancient, and its accounts contain the earliest allusion worthy of serious notice to anything partaking of the principles and form of chess. The description of it is taken from the Sanskrit text, and our first knowledge of it is obtained through the works of Dr. Hyde, 1693, and Sir William Jones, 1784, Professor Duncan Forbes in a History of Chess, dedicated to Sir Frederic Madden and Howard Staunton, published in 1860, further elaborated the researches of his predecessors and claims by the aid of his better acquaintance with chess, and improved knowledge of the Sanskrit to have proved the Chaturanga as the first form of chess beyond a shadow of doubt.
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Modern English Books of Power
George Hamlin Fitch 试读
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
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Guy Rivers – A Tale of Georgia
William Gilmore Simms 试读
Our scene lies in the upper part of the state of Georgia, a region at this time fruitful of dispute, as being within the Cherokee territories. The route to which we now address our attention, lies at nearly equal distances between the main trunk of the Chatahoochie and that branch of it which bears the name of the Chestatee, after a once formidable, but now almost forgotten tribe.
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History of American Literature
Reuben Post Halleck 试读
The transcendentalist, while voicing his ecstasy over life, has put himself on record as not wishing to do anything more than once. For him God has enough new experiences, so that repetition is unnecessary. He dislikes routine. "Everything," Emerson says, "admonishes us how needlessly long life is," that is, if we walk with heroes and do not repeat. Let a machine add figures while the soul moves on. He dislikes seeing any part of a universe that he does not use. Shakespeare seemed to him to have lived a thousand years as the guest of a great universe in which most of us never pass beyond the antechamber.
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Love-at-Arms
Rafael Sabatini 试读
From the valley, borne aloft on the wings of the evening breeze, rose faintly the tolling of an Angelus bell, and in a goat-herd's hut on the heights above stood six men with heads uncovered and bowed, obeying its summons to evening prayer.
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Jessamine A Novel
Marion Harland 试读
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
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The Social Cancer
Jose Rizal 试读
The Social Cancer (Noli Me Tangere) is a novel by hero Jose Rizal a writer and Filipino national. Having completed his studies in Europe, Juan Crisostomo Ibarra y Magsalin comes back to the Philippines after a 7-year absence. In his honor, Don Santiago de los Santos, a family friend, throws a party, which was attended by friars and prominent figures. One of the guests, former San Diego curate Father Damaso belittled and slandered Ibarra. Ibarra brushed off the insults and took no offense he instead politely excused himself from the party. Before Ibarra left for San Diego, Lieutenant Guevara, a guardia civil, reveals to him the incidents preceding the death of his father, Don Rafael Ibarra, a rich hacendero of the town. According to Guevara, Don Rafael was unjustly accused of being a heretic, in addition to being a filibuster - an allegation brought forth by Father Damaso because of Don Rafael's non-participation in the Sacraments. Ibarra's carried through his father's plan of putting up a school, he believed that education would pave the way to his country's progress. During the inauguration of the school, Ibarra would have been killed in a sabotage had Elias - a mysterious man who had warned Ibarra earlier of a plot to assassinate him - not saved him.
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A Crystal Age
William Henry Hudson 试读
I do not quite know how it happened, my recollection of the whole matter ebbing in a somewhat clouded condition. I fancy I had gone somewhere on a botanizing expedition, but whether at home or abroad I don't know. At all events, I remember that I had take ...
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Don Rodriguez; chronicles of Shadow Valley
Plunkett,Edward J. M. D.,Lord Dunsany 试读
After long and patient research I am still unable to give to the reader of these Chronicles the exact date of the times that they tell of. Were it merely a matter of history there could be no doubts about the period but where magic is concerned, to however slight an extent, there must always be some element of mystery, arising partly out of ignorance and partly from the compulsion of those oaths by which magic protects its precincts from the tiptoe of curiosity. Moreover, magic, even in small quantities, appears to affect time, much as acids affect some metals, curiously changing its substance, until dates seem to melt into a mercurial form that renders them elusive even to the eye of the most watchful historian. It is the magic appearing in Chronicles III and IV that has gravely affected the date, so that all I can tell the reader with certainty of the period is that it fell in the later years of the Golden Age in Spain.
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Jess
Henry Rider Haggard 试读
The day had been very hot even for the Transvaal, where the days still know how to be hot in the autumn, although the neck of the summer is broken—especially when the thunderstorms hold off for a week or two, as they do occasionally. Even the succulent blue lilies—a variety of the agapanthus which is so familiar to us in English greenhouses—hung their long trumpet-shaped flowers and looked oppressed and miserable, beneath the burning breath of the hot wind which had been blowing for hours like the draught from a volcano. The grass, too, near the wide roadway that stretched in a feeble and indeterminate fashion across the veldt, forking, branching, and reuniting like the veins on a lady's arm, was completely coated over with a thick layer of red dust. But the hot wind was going down now, as it always does towards sunset. Indeed, all that remained of it were a few strictly local and miniature whirlwinds, which would suddenly spring up on the road itself, and twist and twirl fiercely round, raising a mighty column of dust fifty feet or more into the air, where it hung long after the wind had passed, and then slowly dissolved as its particles floated to the earth.
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Lady Merton, Colonist
Humphry Ward 试读
Towards the end of this story the readers of it will find an account of an "unknown lake" in the northern Rockies, together with a picture of its broad expanse, its glorious mountains, and of a white explorers' tent pitched beside it. She leant over the side of the observation platform, attached to the private car in which she and her brother were travelling, at the rear of the heavy Canadian Pacific train. To the left of the train a small blue lake had come into view, a lake much indented with small bays running up among the woods, and a couple of islands covered with scrub of beech and spruce, set sharply on the clear water.
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The Air Trust
George Allan England 试读
First published in 1915, this is the story of billionnaire Isaac Flint who attemps to control the very air people breathe and the violent consequences of his greed.
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A Dozen Ways Of Love
Lily Dougall 试读
A love tale by the author of Beggars All and What Necessity Knows.
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A Dog with a Bad Name
Talbot Baines Reed 试读
This book was published in 1894 and later serialized. It starts at Bolsover, with the headmaster's decision that all of the boys are to play rugby football. We are introduced to a great range of characters, amongst whom is "Cad" Jeffreys a hulking and short-tempered sort. Jeffreys severely injures the most popular boy at the school and leaves in disgrace. (Jeffreys is the "dog" with the bad name.) We then follow Jeffreys' path to redemption. This sounds rather dry and melodramatic, but the character sketches are so compelling, the dialogue is so bright, and the narrative is so driving it is actually a very refreshing and satisfying read.