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The Souls of Black Folk
W. E. B. Du Bois 试读
"The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line." Thus speaks W.E.B. Du Bois in The Souls Of Black Folk, one of the most prophetic and influental works in American literature. In this eloquent collection of essays, first published in 1903, Du Bois dares as no one has before to describe the magnitude of American racism and demand an end to it. He draws on his own life for illustration, from his early experiences teaching in the hills of Tennessee to the death of his infant son and his historic break with the conciliatory position of Booker T. Washington.Far ahead of its time, The Souls Of Black Folk both anticipated and inspired much of the black conciousness and activism of the 1960's and is a classic in the literature of civil rights. The elegance of DuBois's prose and the passion of his message are as crucial today as they were upon the book's first publication.
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The Stolen White Elephant
Mark Twain 试读
Never mind about that. I may, and I may not. We generally gather a pretty shrewd inkling of who our man is by the manner of his work and the size of the game he goes after. We are not dealing with a pickpocket or a hall thief now, make up your mind to that. This property was not 'lifted' by a novice.
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The Way We Live Now
Anthony Trollope 试读
Trollope did not write for posterity,'observed Henry James. 'He wrote for the day, the moment; but these are just the writers whom posterity is apt to put into its pocket.' Considered by contemporary critics to be Trollope's greatest novel,The Way We Live Now is a satire of the literary world of London in the 1870s and a bold indictment of the new power of specul……
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White Fang
Jack London 试读
With an introduction from award winning K.A. Applegate, White Fang is one of London's classic tales of survival and one of his most popular stories. White Fang is part dog, part wolf, and the lone survivor of his family. In his lonely world, he soon learns to follow the law of the North--kill or be killed.
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East Lynne
Henry Wood 试读
In an easy-chair of the spacious and handsome library of his town-house, sat William, Earl of Mount Severn. His hair was gray, the smoothness of his expansive brow was defaced by premature wrinkles, and his once attractive face bore the pale, unmistakable look of dissipation.
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Vandover and the Brute
Frank Norris 试读
It was always a matter of wonder to Vandover that he was able to recall so little of his past life. With the exception of the most recent events he could remember nothing connectedly. What he at first imagined to be the story of his life, on closer inspection turned out to be but a few disconnected incidents that his memory had preserved with the greatest capriciousness, absolutely independent of their importance. One of these incidents might be a great sorrow, a tragedy, a death in his family; and another, recalled with the same vividness, the same accuracy of detail, might be a matter of the least moment.
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East and West Poems
Bret Harte 试读
Francis Bret Harte (1836-1902) was a prolific American author and poet, best remembered for his accounts of pioneering life in California. The spirit of Dickens breathes through the poems and stories of Bret Harte just as the spirit of Bret Harte breathes through the poems and stories of Kipling.
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Dangerous Ages
Rose Macaulay 试读
Dangerous Ages is a fairly short novel about four generations of an English family. It's a very sarcastic and irreverent book--the first three chapters are truly extraordinary, and although the book tails off somewhat afterwards, this is novel that should make almost everyone laugh. It's also a very perceptive look at how one age group (sarcastically) views another. I'm not sure, nowadays, that anyone would dare to say such cynical things about sixty-year-olds, but even though I'm in that age bracket, I loved it.
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K
Mary Roberts Rinehart 试读
KCan a person ever really redeem themselves and erase the past? A young woman trains to become a nurse while her mother takes in a tenant to make ends meet. The man has a mysterious past, however, This book is part mystery, part romance.The Breaking PointA doctor is suffering from amnesia and the suspicion he is involved in something criminal. He decides to investigate before going ahead with his wedding day.About The AuthorAmerican writer Mary Robert’ Rinehart —— considered to be the source of the phrase "The butler did it" —— was sometimes called the "American Agatha Christie" although her first mystery was published more than a decade before the British author.
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A Course of Lectures on the Principles of Domestic Economy and Cookery
Juliet Corson 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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Off on a Comet! a Journey through Planetary Space
Jules Verne 试读
As Comet Gallia flys by Earth it touches the planet and collects a few small chunks. Along with these pieces there were thirty-six people. At first the people did not realize at what had happened then they noticed weight loss, then Ben Zoof jumped twelve meters high. Zoof with Servadac also soon noticed that the alternation of day and night is shortened to six hours, that east and west changed sides, and that water begins to boil at 66 degrees Celsius If wasn't for a time that they realized that the were Off on a Comet. Jules Gabriel Verne was a French novelist, poet, and playwright best known for his adventure novels and his profound influence on the literary genre of science fiction. He was trained to follow in his father's footsteps as a lawyer, but quit the profession early to write for magazines and the stage. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages Extraordinaires, a widely popular series of scrupulously researched adventure novels including A Journey to the Interior of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Around the World in Eighty Days.
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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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Rambles Beyond Railways; or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot
Wilkie Collins 试读
I visited Cornwall, for the first time, in the summer and autumn of 1850; and in the winter of the same year, I wrote this book.At that time, the title attached to these pages was strictly descriptive of the state of the county, when my companion and I walked through it. But when, little more than a year afterwards, a second edition of this volume was called for, the all-conquering railway had invaded Cornwall in the interval, and had practically contradicted me on my own title-page.
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The Ragged Edge
Harold MacGrath 试读
The Master is inordinately fond of young fools. That is why they are permitted to rush in where angels fear to tread—and survive their daring! This supreme protection, this unwritten warranty to disregard all laws, occult or apparent, divine or earthly, may be attributed to the fact that none but young fools dream gloriously. For such of us as pretend to be wise—and we are but fools in a lesser degree—we know that humanity moves onward only by the impellant of fine dreams. Sometimes these dreams are simple and tender; sometimes they are magnificent.
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Along the Shore
Rose Hawthorne Lathrop 试读
Rose Hawthorne Lathrop (1851-1926) was an American Roman Catholic nun and social worker. Born in Lenox, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife Sophia, she was educated in London, Paris, Rome and Florence. She married author George Parsons Lathrop in 1883 the two of them converted to Roman Catholicism in 1891. Rose Hawthorne Lathrop was well known for her service near and within New York City, caring for impoverished cancer patients by founding St. Rose's Free Home for Incurable Cancer in the Lower East Side. After the death of her husband (from whom she had separated before moving to New York City) in 1898, she became a nun, and as Mother Mary Alphonsa, she founded a community of Dominican nuns, now known as the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne. She was awarded an honorary A.M. from Bowdoin College in 1925. Among her famous works are: Along the Shore (1888), A Story of Courage (with George Parsons Lathrop) (1895), and Memories of Hawthorne (1897).
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Not Like Other Girls
Rosa Nouchette Carey 试读
Five-o’clock tea was a great institution in Oldfield.It was a form of refreshment to which the female inhabitants of that delightful place were strongly addicted. In vain did Dr. Weatherby, the great authority in all that concerned the health of the neighborhood...
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Everyday Foods in War Time
Mary Swartz Rose 试读
The patriotic housewife finds her little domestic boat sailing in uncharted waters. The above message of the Food Administration disturbs her ordinary household routine, upsets her menus and puts her recipes out of commission. It also renders inoperative some of her usual methods of economy at a time when rising food prices make economy more imperative than ever. To be patriotic and still live on one’s income is a complex problem. This little book was started in response to a request for “a war message about food.” It seemed to the author that a simple explanation of the part which some of our common foods play in our diet might be both helpful and reassuring. To change one’s menu is often trying; to be uncertain whether the substituted foods will preserve one’s health and strength makes adjustment doubly difficult. It is hoped that the brief chapters which follow will make it easier to “save wheat, meat, sugars and fats” and to make out an acceptable bill of fare without excessive cost.
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Moon of Israel
Henry Rider Haggard 试读
This is the story of me, Ana the scribe, son of Meri, and of certain of the days that I have spent upon the earth. These things I have written down now that I am very old in the reign of Rameses, the third of that name, when Egypt is once more strong and
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Die frohliche Wissenschaft
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche 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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In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim
Frances Hodgson Burnett 试读
"In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim" by Frances Hodgson Burnett is a melodramatic American Novel about a group of people whose lives intertwine.
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Greyfriars Bobby
Eleanor Atkinson 试读
When the time-gun boomed from Edinburgh Castle, Bobby gave a startled yelp. He was only a little country dog - the very youngest and smallest and shaggiest of Skye terriers-bred on a heathery slope of the Pentland hills, where the loudest sound was the bark of a collie or the tinkle of a sheep-bell. That morning he had come to the weekly market with Auld Jock, a farm laborer, and the Grassmarket of the Scottish capital lay in the narrow valley at the southern base of Castle Crag. Two hundred feet above it the time-gun was mounted in the half-moon battery on an overhanging, crescent-shaped ledge of rock. In any part of the city the report of the one-o'clock gun was sufficiently alarming, but in the Grassmarket it was an earth-rending explosion directly overhead. It needed to be heard but once there to be registered on even a little dog's brain. Bobby had heard it many times, and he never failed to yelp a sharp protest at the outrage to his ears; but, as the gunshot was always followed by a certain happy event, it started in his active little mind a train of pleasant association
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Three Ghost Stories
Charles Dickens 试读
Three Ghost Stories is a collection of three stories that are Gothic classics. Included are: The Signal Man, The Haunted House, The Trial for Murder.
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Lair of the White Worm
Bram Stoker 试读
Adam Salter is newly returned from Australia to inherit his uncle's estate in the Peak District of Derbyshire. He marries Mimi, the dauther of a neighbouring farmer, who has to face alone the evil Edgar Caswall. And then there is the Lady Arabella March, of reptilian beauty and viprous nature... A novel of horror from the author of Dracula
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You Never Can Tell
George Bernard Shaw 试读
You Never Can Tell, by Shaw, George Bernard - Akasha Classics, AkashaPublishing.Com - One of Shaw, George Bernard's sunniest plays, You Never Can Tell is a comedy of love and mistaken identity. Mrs. Clandon has returned to England with her three children after an extended stay abroad. Having abandoned her husband long ago, she finds herself unexpectedly dining with him at a family lunch in a remarkable series of coincidences. Can these two strong wills be reunited with the help of an extraordinary waiter? And will Mrs. Clandon's independent-minded daughter fall for the charms of a handsome dentist? First produced in 1897, You Never Can Tell combines Shaw's characteristic lively dialogue with a charmingly absurd story.
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The Green Fairy Book
Andrew Lang 试读
The Green Fairy Book collects more fairy tales from around the world, including "The Blue Bird," The Three Little Pigs," "The Golden Mermaid," "The Story of the Fisherman and His Wife," and many more.
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Is Life Worth Living
William Hurrell Mallock 试读
To avoid any chance of confusion or misconception, it will be well to say that these words as used by me have no special reference to the system of Comte or his disciples, but are applied to the common views and position of the whole scientific school, one of the most eminent members of which—I mean Professor Huxley—has been the most trenchant and contemptuous critic that 'positivism' in its narrower sense has met with.
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Keats – Poems Published in 1820
John Keats 试读
Although John Keats poems were not generally well received by critics during his lifetime, his reputation grew after his death, and by the end of the 19th century, he had become one of the most beloved of all English poets. He had a significant influence on a diverse range of poets and writers. Jorge Luis Borges stated that his first encounter with Keats was the most significant literary experience of his life.
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Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions ¿ Volume 1
Charles Mackay 试读
In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do.
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How to Tell Stories to Children, And Some Stories to Tell
Sara Cone Bryant 试读
The stories which are given in the following pages are for the most part those which I have found to be best liked by the children to whom I have told these and others. I have tried to reproduce the form in which I actually tell them,—although that inevitably varies with every repetition,—feeling that it would be of greater value to another story-teller than a more closely literary form.
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Prince Zaleski
Matthew Phipps Shiell 试读
Never without grief and pain could I remember the fate of Prince Zaleski—victim of a too importunate, too unfortunate Love, which the fulgor of the throne itself could not abash;
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Cat and Mouse
Ralph Williams 试读
The Harn first came to the Warden's attention through its effect on the game population of an area in World 7 of the Warden's sector. A natural ecology was being maintained on World 7 as a control for experimental seedings of intelligent life-forms in other similar worlds. How the Harn got there, the Warden never knew. In its free-moving larval state, the Harn was a ticklike creature which might have sifted through a natural inter-dimensional rift; or it might have come through as a hitchhiker on some legitimate traveler, possibly even the Warden himself.
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Clayhanger
Arnold Bennett 试读
In this, the first volume of an ambitious trilogy designed to trace the parallel lives of a man and woman from youth to marriage and from marriage to old age, Bennett introduces the character of Edwin Clayhanger. A sober portrait of a boy growing up under a tyrannical father contrasts with young Edwin's glimpses of the mysterious and tantalizing Hilda Lessways. As the lives of these two characters unfold before us, Bennett uses autobiographical detail to beautifully depict the constraints and spiritual adventures of young life in the Potteries.
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Comedies of Courtship
Anthony Hope 试读
"The Wheel of Love," published in Scribner's Magazine during the past year, and "The Lady of the Pool," both protected by American copyright, are here printed for the first time in book form. The four other stories appeared without their author's consent or knowledge, with their titles changed beyond recognition, and combined with other unauthorized material, in a small volume printed by an American firm. They are here given for the first time in their proper form and by my authority.
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Everychild A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret t
Louis Dodge 试读
Everychild encounters the giant Fear and sets forth on a strange journey. And Everychild pities the sorrow of Cinderella and rejoices in her release from bondage; he encounters a dog that looks upon him with favor. On his wanderings Everychild bethinks him of his parents, and discovers that though he has seemed to lose them, he has not really done so.
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The Black Creek Stopping-House
Nellie L. McClung 试读
To the Pioneer Women of the West, who made life tolerable, and even comfortable, for the others of us who fed the hungry, advised the erring, nursed the sick, cheered the dying, comforted the sorrowing, and performed the last sad rites for the dead The beloved Pioneer Women, old before their time with hard work, privations, and doing without things, yet in whose hearts there was always burning the hope of better things to come The godly Pioneer Women, who kept alive the con- science of the neighborhood, and preserved for us the best traditions of the race To these noble Women of the early days, some of whom we see no more, for they have entered into their inheritance, this book is respectfully dedicated by their humble admirer, The Author. Let me live in a house by the side of the road, and be a friend of man. CONTENTS THE BLACK CREEK STOPPING-HOUSE CHAPTER PAGE I. The Old Trail - 9 II. The House of Bread 15 III. The Sailors Rest 24 IV. Farm Pupils 30 V. The Prairie Club-House 37 VI. The Counter-irritant VII. Ladies Day at the Stopping-House - 48 VIII. Shadows of the Night IX. His Evil Genius X. Das Turn 79 XI. The Blizzard XII. When the Day Broke 103 THE RUNAWAY GRANDMOTHER THE RETURN TICKET THE UNGRATEFUL PIGEONS You NEVER CAN TELL - 44 61 71 89 113 131 145 159 A SHORT TALE OF A RABBIT - 179 THE ELUSIVE VOTE 187 THE WAY OF THE WEST - - 209 THE BLACK CREEK STOPPING HOUSE The Black Creek Stopping- House CHAPTER I. THE OLD TRAIL. WHEN John Corbett strolled leisurely into the Salvation Army meeting in old Victoria Hall in Winnipeg that night, so many years ago now, there may have been some who thought he came to disturb the meeting. There did not seem to be any atmospheric reason why Mr.Corbett or anyone else should be abroad, for it was a drizzling cold November night, and the streets were muddy, as only Winnipeg streets in the old days could be none of your light-minded, fickle-hearted, changeable mud that is mud to-day and dust to-morrow, but the genuine, original,
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Charles Rex
Ethel May Dell 试读
I shall go to sea to-morrow, said Saltash, with sudden decision. "I'm tired of this place, Larpent, - fed up on repletion." "Then by all means let us go, my lord " said Larpent, with the faint glimmer of a smile behind his beard, which was the only expression of humour he ever permitted himself. "Believe you're fed up too," said Saltash, flashing a critical look upon him. Captain Larpent said nothing, deeming speech unnecessary. All time spent ashore was wasted in his opinion. Saltash turned and surveyed the sky-line over the yacht's rail with obvious discontent on his ugly face. His eyes were odd, one black, one grey, giving a curiously unstable appearance to a countenance which otherwise might have claimed to possess some strength. His brows were black and deeply marked. He had a trick of moving them in conjunction with his thoughts so that his face was seldom in absolute repose. It was said that there was a strain of royal blood in Saltash, and in the days before he had succeeded to the title when he had been merely Charles Burchester, he had borne the nickname of "the merry monarch."
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Eight Cousins
Louisa May Alcott 试读
When Rose Campbell, a shy orphan, arrives at "The Aunt Hill" to live with her six aunts and seven boisterous male cousins, she is quite overwhelmed. How could such a delicate young lady, used to the quiet hallways of a girls' boarding school, exist in such a spirited home It is the arrival of Uncle Alec that changes everything. Much to the horror of her aunts, Rose's forward-thinking uncle insists that the child get out of the parlor and into the sunshine. And with a little courage and lots of adventures with her mischievous but loving cousins, Rose begins to bloom.
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AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS
Jules Verne 试读
In this classic adventure story, a wealthy gentleman, Phileas Fogg, makes a bet that he can travel around the world in eighty days. Fogg and his servant set off immediately, determined to win this race against time. Little do they know they aren't making the journey alone.... Fogg has been fingered as the culprit in a bank robbery, and a detective in hot pursuit is trailing them as they cross every continent.
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HEART OF DARKNESS黑暗之心
Joseph Conrad 试读
In a novella which remains highly controversial to this day, Conrad explores the relations between Africa and Europe. On the surface, this is a horrifying tale of colonial exploitation. The narrator, Marlowe journeys on business deep into the heart of Africa. But there he encounters Kurtz, an idealist apparently crazed and depraved by his power over the natives, and the meeting prompts Marlowe to reflect on the darkness at the heart of all men. This short but complex and often ambiguous story, which has been the basis of several films and plays, continues to provoke interpretation and discussion.作
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Aesop‘s Fables
Aesop 试读
203 of Aesop's most enduring and popular fables, translated into readable, modern American English and beautifully illustrated with 50 classic woodcuts by the great French artist J.J. Grandville.
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Great Expectations
Charles Dickens 试读
Great Expectations tells the unforgettable story of the orphan Pip and his coming of age with the help of a mysterious benefactor. It is at once an expertly crafted novel and a profound reappraisal of the Victorian middle class and its values.
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Pride and Prejudice
简·奥斯汀 试读
Pride and Prejudice is the story of Mr and Mrs Bennet (minor gentry), their five daughters, and the various romantic adventures at their Hertfordshire residence of Longbourn. The parents' characters are greatly contrasted: Mr Bennet being a wise and witty gentleman; while Mrs Bennet is permanently distracted by the issue of marrying off her daughters at any cost. The reason for Mrs Bennet's obsession is that their estate will pass by law after Mr Bennet's death to his closest blood relative: his cousin, the Reverend William Collins (a fatuous, tactless and pompous man). Austen's tale is spurred on by the arrival of the young and wealthy bachelor Charles Bingley and his friend Fitzwilliam Darcy. It is the story of the various affections, affectations and engagement shenanigans that develop due to Mrs Bennet's relentless matchmaking and the dashing Darcy's tempestuous relationship with Elizabeth Bennet who Jane Austen claimed was favourite amongst her literary offspring. Its 1797 earlier version was turned down for publication and it appeared in this form in 1813.
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A Little Princess
Frances Hodgson Burnett 试读
Captain Crewe is very wealthy and states that Sara is destined for a lavish, comfortable future. Despite being pampered all her life in India, Sara herself is very intelligent, polite, and creative. Headmistress Miss Minchin is secretly jealous and dislikes Sara for her cleverness, but openly praises and flatters her because of her father's wealth. Before departing for India, Captain Crewe purchases Sara an elegant wardrobe and a doll whom Sara adores and names "Emily." Sara's friendliness and love for pretending and storytelling makes her popular with most of the school's students.
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A Short History of the World
赫伯特·乔治·威尔斯 试读
A Short History of the World is a period—piece non—fictional historic work by H.G. Wells first published by Cassell & Co,Ltd Publishing in 1922. It was republished under Penguin Classics in 2006. The book was largely inspired by Wells earlier 1919 work The Outline of History. The book tells of the history of the world,starting with the believed origins of the Earth around 2,000 million years ago,now known to be 4,404 million years according to 2005 estimates.The book then goes on to explain the,at the time believed,development of the Earth and life on Earth,until reaching primitive thought and the development of humankind from the Cradle of Civilisation. The book ends with the outcome of the First World War,the Russian famine of 1921,and the League of Nations in 1922.
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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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Daddy-Long-Legs
Jean Webster 试读
Bright and lively Judy Abbott is an orphan who dreams of escaping the drudgery of her life at the John Grier Home. One day she receives a marvelous opportunity—a wealthy male benefactor has agreed to fund her higher education. In return, Judy must keep him informed about the ups and downs of college life. From horrendous Latin lessons to falling in love, the result is a series of letters both hilarious and poignant. Fans of L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables and Louisa May Alcott's Little Women will relish this American-girl-power coming-of-age story. This gentle romance is the seventh book in the Looking Glass Library series.
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Ethan Frome
伊迪丝·华顿 试读
Tragic story of wasted lives, set against a bleak New England background. A poverty-stricken New England farmer, his ailing wife and a youthful housekeeper are drawn relentlessly into a deep-rooted domestic struggle in this hauntingly grim tale of thwarted love.
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Fathers and Children
Ivan Turgenev 试读
Examines the conflict of attitudes in mid-19th-century Russia, as distant pre-echoes of the Revolution continue to rumble through the remote rural landscape. The story follows the Kirsanov family, representatives of the old regime, and the violent character of the anti-hero Bazarov.
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Lady Windermeres Fan
王尔德 试读
"Lady Windermere's Fan" is Oscar Wilde's classic comedic play set in London in the late 19th century. It is the story of Lady Windermere who becomes jealous of her husband's interest in Mrs. Erlynne. Lady Windermere suspects her husband of infidelity, however unbeknownst to her, Mrs. Erlynne is really Lady Windermere's divorced mother who for the last 20 years was thought to be dead.
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A Double Barrelled Detective Story
Mark Twain 试读
Mark Twain is best known for his novels and short stories. Twain uses his incredible whit to depict life in America. His books Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn have been read by school children for generations. His life on the Mississippi River has peeked the imagination of boys to go and build a raft and sail off into unknown adventures. Double Barrelled Detective Story is a story in which Sherlock Holmes finds himself in the Old West. From Wikipedia, At a mining camp in California, Fetlock Jones, a nephew of Sherlock Holmes, kills his master, a silver-miner, by blowing up his cabin. Since this occurs when Holmes happens to be visiting, he brings his skills to bear upon the case and arrives at logically worked conclusions that are proved to be abysmally wrong by an amateur detective with an extremely keen sense of smell, which he employs in solving the case. This could be seen as yet another piece where Twain tries to prove that life does not quite follow logic.
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Vanity Fair
William Makepeace Thackeray 试读
A deliciously satirical attack on a money-mad society, Vanity Fair, which first appeared in 1847, is an immensely moral novel, and an immensely witty one. Called in its subtitle "A Novel Without a Hero," Vanity Fair has instead two heroines: the faithful, loyal Amelia Sedley and the beautiful and scheming social climber Becky Sharp. It also engages a huge cast of wonderful supporting characters as the novel spins from Miss Pinkerton's academy for young ladies to affairs of love and war on the Continent to liaisons in the dazzling ballrooms of London. Thackeray's forte is the bon mot and it is amply exercised in a novel filled with memorably wicked lines. Lengthy and leisurely in pace, the novel follows the adventures of Becky and Amelia as their fortunes rise and fall, creating a tale of both picaresque and risqué. Thackery mercilessly skewers his society, especially the upper class, poking fun at their shallow values and pointedly jabbing at their hypocritical "morals." His weapons, however, are not fire and brimstone but an unerring eye for the absurd and a genius for observation of the foibles of his age. An enduring classic, this great novel is a brilliant study in duplicity and hypocrisy…and a mirror with which to view our own times.
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Villette
Charlotte Bronte 试读
Another powerful novel from Charlotte Bront, Villette tells the story of Lucy Snowe, a teacher at an all-girls school who finds herself in the thralls of romance and adventure. A novel known less for its plot than the compelling psychology of protagonist, Villette touches upon the themes of gender roles, repression, and religious conflict in nineteenth century Belgium.
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Northanger Abbey
简·奥斯汀 试读
Portraying social life in fashionable Bath and centred around Catherine Morland, this novel ridicules the popular tales of romance and terror and contrasts with these the normal realities of life.
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Of Human Bondage
毛姆 试读
The first and most autobiographical of Maugham's masterpieces. It is the story of Philip Carey, an orphan eager for life, love and adventure. After a few months studying in Heidelberg, and a brief spell in Paris as a would-be artist, he settles in London to train as a doctor where he meets Mildred, the loud but irresistible waitress with whom he plunges into a tortured and maso...
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Poor White
Sherwood Anderson 试读
Sherwood Anderson was a 20th century American writer of short stories. Anderson grew up in Ohio and after college became a copywriter in Chicago. He is most famous for his collection of interrelated short stories, Winesburg Ohio, which he began writing in 1919. Poor White was published in 1920. Hugh McVey is an inventor who rises from poverty. The story is set on the banks of the Mississippi River during the years when rural America is influenced by industrialization sweeping the country.
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Queer Little Folks
H·Stowe 试读
Now she bustled up to the parsonage at the top of the oak-tree, to tell old Parson Too-Whit what she thought he ought to preach for his next sermon, and how dreadful the morals of the parish were becoming. Then, having perfectly bewildered the poor old gentleman, who was always sleepy of a Monday morning, Mother Magpie would take a peep into Mrs. Oriole's nest, sit chattering on a bough above, and pour forth floods of advice, which, poor little Mrs. Oriole used to say to her husband, bewildered her more than a hard north-east storm.
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Sonnets from the Portuguese
Elizabeth Barrett Browning 试读
"I love your verse with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett . . . and I love you too," Robert Browning wrote in January 1845, thus initiating the most celebrated literary correspondence of the nineteenth century. During their courtship, Elizabeth privately wrote a series of forty-four sonnets to Robert, which she disclosed to no one -- not even to him -- until three years after their marriage. The poems were later collected in a volume entitled Sonnets form the Portuguese. In this elegant new edition, the poems are accompanied by relevant excerpts from Elizabeth and Robert's love letters.
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Swanns Way
Marcel Proust 试读
Marcel Proustas "In Search of Lost Time" is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest novel of the twentieth century.