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1) Hedda Gabler
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Henrik Ibsen's 1890 drama Hedda Gabler is one of the Norwegian playwright's best-known works and boasts one of the greatest female lead roles in the history of theatre. A new bride, Hedda is bored and disillusioned with her marriage. The reappearance of Eilert, her former lover and recovering alcoholic writer creates havoc in her own marriage to George, a sober academic. When Hedda and George come into possession of the only copy of Eilert's explosive...
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A native woman working in the little cultivated patch just outside the palisade which surrounded the mission was the first to see them. Her scream penetrated to the living room of the little thatched bungalow where the Rev. Sangamon Morton sat before a table. He had heard such screams before. The one thing always uppermost in his mind and the one, great, abiding terror of their lives there in the midst of the savage African jungle was the Wakandas....
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The Worm Ouroboros (1922) is a high fantasy novel by E. R. Eddison. Inspired by the Norse sagas and medieval history, Eddison crafted an epic story of magic, adventure, romance, and war. Praised by New York Times critic Edwin Clark as a novel that "transcends all ordinary life," The Worm Ouroboros is frequently named among the greatest works of fantasy fiction ever produced. At their palace in Demonland, Lord Juss, his brothers Goldry and Spitfire,...
5) The Vampyre
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Noted as one of the first pieces of literature to feature vampirism effectively, The Vampyre follows the adventures of a wealthy young man named Aubrey who befriends a mysterious, suave nobleman named Lord Ruthven. As Aubrey begins to realize just how dangerous Lord Ruthven is, he discovers that his beloved sister is in the monster's sights. A product of a competition that also produced Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, this classic gothic novella became...
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Presents a satirical drama about Satan's visit to Moscow, where he learns that the citizens no longer believe in God. He decides to teach them a lesson by perpetrating a series of horrific tricks. Combines two distinct yet interwoven parts, one set in contemporary Moscow, the other in ancient Jerusalem.
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When two young people are given a life-changing opportunity, they encounter moral and systemic challenges that are directly tied to their racial and economic backgrounds. In The Quest of the Silver Fleece, W.E.B. Du Bois confronts covert discrimination in contemporary America.
Cotton, also known as "silver fleece," is still a prized possession in the early-twentieth century. It continues to generate massive profits that are barely distributed amongst...
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On a sultry summer night in 1915, Jay Follet leaves his house in Knoxville, Tennessee, to tend to his father, whom he believes is dying. The summons turns out to be a false alarm, but on his way back to his family, Jay has a car accident and is killed instantly. Dancing back and forth in time and braiding the viewpoints of Jay's wife, brother, and young son, Rufus, Agee creates an overwhelmingly powerful novel of innocence, tenderness and loss that...
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With Father in Washington and Cuffy, their housekeeper, away visiting a sick cousin, almost anything might happen to the Melendy kids left behind at the Four-Story Mistake. In the Melendy family, adventures are inevitable: Mr. Titus and the catfish; the villainy of the DeLacey brothers; Rush's composition of Opus 3; Mona's first rhubarb pie and all the canning; Randy's arrowhead; the auction and fair for the Red Cross. But best of all is the friendship...
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"For fans of the popular and award-winning Netflix movie Don't Look Up, a prescient, rediscovered speculative novel about how a small English village prepares for the end of the world. Edgar Hopkins is a retired math teacher in his mid-fifties with a strong sense of self-importance, whose greatest pride in life is winning poultry breeding contests. When not meticulously caring for his Bantam, Edgar is an active member of the British Lunar Society....
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Chronicles of Brother Cadfael volume 1
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The "irresistible" and "compelling" first novel in the historical mystery series featuring a Welsh Benedictine monk in the twelfth century (The Washington Post).
A Welsh Benedictine monk living at Shrewsbury Abbey in western England, Brother Cadfael spends much of his time tending the herbs and vegetables in the garden—but now there's a more pressing matter. Cadfael is to serve as translator for a group of monks heading to...
A Welsh Benedictine monk living at Shrewsbury Abbey in western England, Brother Cadfael spends much of his time tending the herbs and vegetables in the garden—but now there's a more pressing matter. Cadfael is to serve as translator for a group of monks heading to...
12) Benito Cereno
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A fictionalized account about the revolt on a 19th-century Spanish slavery ship, Benito Cereno was first published in three installments in 1855. Melville scholar Merton M. Sealts, Jr. called the story "an oblique comment on those prevailing attitudes toward blacks and slavery in the United States that would ultimately precipitate civil war between North and South." The famous question of what had cast such a shadow upon Cereno was used by American...
14) The Landlady
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Generally considered something of a departure for Dostoyevsky, The Landlady was first published in 1847, when most of the author's classic novels were still in his future. Set in Saint Petersburg, the novella tells of a brooding, reclusive scholar, Vasily Mikhailovich Ordynov, who develops an obsession with a young woman, Katerina. After encountering Katerina and her much-older husband at a church service, Ordynov contrives to become a lodger at their...
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Driven by an insatiable thirst for power, Doctor Faustus chooses to make the ultimate sacrifice to become an all-knowing practitioner of traditional and supernatural arts. He enters an agreement with Lucifer, trading his soul for unbridled access to a catalog of mystical spells.
Doctor Faustus signs a contract ensuring 24 years of service from the demon Mephastophilis. In exchange, Lucifer will own his soul for all of eternity. Faustus immediately...
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Ingersoll Lockwood invented the fictional character Baron Trump in 1890 for a two-part sci-fi/fantasy series about a privileged boy who undertakes a sequence of fantastic voyages. The style of the Baron Trump series-a mix of fantasy and young-reader-oriented science fiction-anticipated and may have influenced L. Frank Baum's Oz series. The second in that series, Baron Trump's Marvellous Underground Journey, describes Baron's trip to the earth's interior...
17) Light in August
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A novel about hopeful perseverance in the face of mortality, featuring some of Faulkner's most memorable characters: guileless, dauntless Lena Grove, in search of the father of her unborn child; Reverend Gail Hightower, who is plagued by visions of Confederate horesemen; and Joe Christmas, a desperate, enigmatic drifter consumed by his mixed ancentry.
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"An astonishingly beautiful book. The best gay novel written by anyone of our generation."-Harper's
"Through the sweat and haze of longing come piercing insights – about the closeness of gay male friendship, about the vanity and imperfections of men. The more one reads the novel, we realise that what Holleran has given us is our very own queer (queerer?) Great Gatsby: its decadence, its fear, its violence, its ecstasy, its transience."-The Guardian
Andrew...
19) The symposium
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Written sometime during the 4th century BC, "Symposium" is one the most poetic and sublime works by the Greek philosopher Plato. The action of the dialogue is set during a party hosted by the poet Agathon to celebrate his first victory in a dramatic competition. The title 'Symposium', or 'Banquet' refers to the setting of the work, however the more literal translation from the Greek is a 'drinking party.' At this party several notable figures from...
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James Wormold, a cash-strapped vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana, finds the answer to his prayers when British Intelligence offers him a lucrative job as an undercover agent. To keep the checks coming, Wormold must at least pretend to know what he's doing. Soon, he's apparently deciphering incomprehensible codes, passing along sketches of secret weapons that look suspiciously like vacuum parts, and claiming to recruit fellow operatives from his country...