Frederick Davidson
Author
Series
Summary
The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky's crowning achievement, is a tale of patricide & family rivalry that embodies the moral & spiritual dissolution of an entire society (Russia in the 1870s). It created a national furor comparable only to the excitement stirred by the publication, in 1866, of Crime & Punishment. To Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov captured the quintessence of Russian character in all its exaltation, compassion, & profligacy. Significantly,...
Author
Summary
When a Swiss couple and their four sons are shipwrecked on an isolated island, they adapt to their "New Switzerland" using many imaginative methods of farming and animal taming.
Following a wild and raging storm, the Swiss family Robinson are stranded at sea. But the thundering waves have swept them off to a tropical island, where a new life awaits them. Their ship is laden with supplies and the island is packed with treasures, so they soon adapt...
Author
Summary
When a mysterious seafarer puts up at the Admiral Benbow, young Jim Hawkins is haunted by his frightening tales; the sailor's sudden death is the beginning of one of the most exciting adventure stories in literature. The discovery of a treasure map sets Jim and his companions in search of buried gold, and they are soon on board the Hispaniola with a crew of buccaneers recruited by the one-legged sea cook, Long John Silver. As they near their destination,...
Author
Summary
Colonial politics in 1930 Kyauktada, India, come to a head when the European Club, previously for whites only, is ordered to elect one token native member. The deeply racist members do their best to manipulate the situation, resulting in the loss not only of reputations, but of lives.
Amidst this cynical setting, timber merchant James Flory stands as a bridge between the warring factions, a Brit with a genuine appreciation for the native
...Author
Summary
Mr. William Whittlestaff was strolling very slowly up and down the long walk at his countryseat in Hampshire, thinking of the contents of a letter, which he held crushed up within his trousers' pocket. He always breakfasted exactly at nine, and the letters were supposed to be brought to him at a quarter past. The postman was really due at his hall-door at a quarter before nine; but though he had lived in the same house for above fifteen years, and...
Author
Summary
Regarded by Charles Dickens as his best novel upon publication, "Martin Chuzzlewit" relates a tale of familial selfishness and eventual moral redemption. First published serially from 1842 to 1844, it is the story of young Martin Chuzzlewit, who has been raised by his grandfather. He has fallen in love with his grandfather's ward and caretaker, the young orphan Mary Graham. Martin's grandfather does not approve and young Martin alienates himself from...
Author
Series
Summary
"Written between 1873 and 1884 but not published until 1903, a year after Butler's death, his marvelously uninhibited satire savages Victorian bourgeois values as personified by multiple generations of the Pontifex family. A thinly veiled account of his own upbringing in the bosom of a God-fearing Christian family, Butler's scathingly funny depiction of the self-righteous hypocrisy underlying nineteenth-century domestic life was hailed by George Bernard...
Author
Series
Richard Sharpe volume 2
Formats
Summary
The continuing adventures of Richard Sharpe, a 19th century soldier, as he fights to enlarge the British empire. He helps the Duke of Wellington put down the Indian Mahratta rebellion, an operation culminating in the 1803 Battle of Assaye which is described in vivid detail.
Author
Series
Summary
Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's brutally honest account of his experience as a militiaman during the Spanish Civil War.
In the last days of 1936, Spain was five months into a bitter civil war, in which volunteers from many countries were helping the elected government of the Spanish Republic battle a military coup led by General Francisco Franco and backed by Hitler and Mussolini. Some foreigners flocking to Spain had come for another reason:...
11) Sharpe's tiger
Author
Series
Richard Sharpe volume 1
Summary
In 1799, the British Army is fighting its way through India in an attempt to push the ruthless Tippoo of Mysore from his throne and drive his French allies out. Posing as a deserter, the young and illiterate private Richard Sharpe must penetrate into the Tippoo's city and make contact with a Scottish spy being held prisoner there. Success will mean winning his sergeant stripes; failure, being turned over to the Tippoo's brutal executioners--or his...
12) The cunning man
Author
Series
Summary
When Father Hobbes mysteriously dies at the high alter on Good Friday, Dr. Jonathan Hullah-whose holistic work has earned him the label "Cunning Man" (for the wizard of folk tradition)-wants to know why. The physician-cum-diagnostician's search for answers compels him to look back over his own long life. He conjures vivid memories of the dazzling, intellectual high-jinks and compassionate philosophies of himself and his circle, including flamboyant,...
Author
Summary
"One of the first novels to feature someone who travelled far into the future, the story centres around the character of Graham, a man who fell asleep in 1897 and awoke two centuries later as both the richest man in the world and an almost mythical figure only known as 'The Sleeper.' It soon becomes clear that the society he has arrived in is a dystopian one, as factions fight over his support while the ordinary man languishes in squalor."--Page 8...
Author
Summary
The Great Hunger is the story of one of the worst disasters in world history: the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s. Within five years, one million people died of starvation. Emigrants by the hundreds of thousands sailed for America and Canada in small, ill-equipped, dangerously unsanitary ships. Some ships never arrived; those that did carried passengers already infected with and often dying of typhus. The Irish who managed to reach the United States...
Author
Summary
From one of the truly preeminent historians of our time, this is a landmark book chronicling the French Revolution. Simon Schama deftly refutes the contemporary notion that the French Revolution represented an uprising of the oppressed poor against a decadent aristocracy and corrupt court. He argues instead that the revolution was born of a rift among the elite over the speed of progress toward modernity and science, social and economic change. Schama's...
Author
Summary
Thomas More (1478-1535) was a renowned statesman; the author of a political treatise, Utopia; and, most famously, a Catholic martyr and saint. Born into the professional classes, Thomas More applied his formidable intellect and well-placed connections to become the most powerful man in England, second only to the king. In reconstructing the life of Thomas More, Peter Ackroyd provides an unmatched portrait of the everyday, religious, and intellectual...
Author
Series
Summary
First published in 1919, W. Somerset Maugham's "The Moon and Sixpence" is an episodic first person narrative based on the life of Paul Gaugin. At the center of the novel is the story of Charles Strickland, an English banker who walks away from a life of privilege, abruptly abandoning his wife and children, in order to pursue his passion to become an artist. Strickland leaves London for Paris and ultimately Tahiti, mirroring the life of Gaugin who...
18) The dogs of war
Author
Formats
Summary
In a remote corner of Zangaro, a small republic in Africa, lies Crystal Mountain. At certain times of the day the mountain emits a strange glow. Only mining magnate Sir James Manson, a shadowy titan of London's financial district, knows why.
The mountain contains ten billion dollars' worth of the world's most valuable mineral, platinum, just waiting to be exploited. Now the only question is how to get hold of it. Sir James
...Author
Series
Formats
Summary
Criminals beware - there is no eluding the extraordinary mind of Father Brown Dr. Orion Hood is one of the eminent thinkers of his day, a psychologist whose expert opinion on human nature is sometimes sought by the police. Usually, he is called on to solve only the most spectacular crimes - a nobleman murdered, a diplomat poisoned - but today a more ordinary problem presents itself. An amiable little priest named Father Brown asks Dr. Hood to help...
20) Dombey and Son
Author
Summary
Charles Dickens was an English short story writer, dramatist, essayist, and the most popular novelist to come out of the Victorian era. Many of his novels, with their frequent concern for social reform, were first published in magazines in serial form under the pseudonym, Boz. Unlike authors who completed entire novels before serialization, Dickens often created the episodes as they were being serialized. The continuing popularity of his novels and...
