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Author
Summary
In this hard-hitting novel, first published in 1924, the murky personal relationship between an Englishwoman and an Indian doctor mirrors the troubled politics of colonialism. Adela Quested and her fellow British travelers, eager to experience the "real" India, develop a friendship with the urbane Dr. Aziz. While on a group outing, Adela and Dr. Aziz visit the Marabar caves together. As they emerge, Adela accuses the doctor of assaulting her. While...
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A brilliant psychological portrait of a troubled young man's quest for self-awareness, this coming-of-age novel achieved instant critical and popular acclaim upon its 1919 publication. A landmark in the history of twentieth-century literature, it reflects Hermann Hesse's preoccupation with the duality of human nature and the pursuit of spiritual fulfillment.
Emil Sinclair recounts episodes from his childhood that led to a change in his attitudes...
6) Snow
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Series
Everyman's Library volume 338
Summary
"Returning to Turkey from exile in the West, Ka is driven by curiosity to investigate a surprising wave of suicides among religious girls forbidden to wear their head scarves in school. But the epicenter of the suicides, the eastern border city of Kars, is also home to the radiant and newly divorced Ipek, a friend of Ka's youth, whom he has never forgotten and whose spirited younger sister is a leader of the rebellious schoolgirls. As a fierce snowstorm...
Author
Summary
From the author of 1984, George Orwell narrates the journey of a writer among the down-and-out in two great cities in this sobering, truthful portrayal of poverty and society.
Famous for its realistic and unsentimental description of poverty, Down and Out in London and Paris follows the adventures of a penniless British writer who finds himself rapidly descending into the seedy heart of two great European capitals....
Famous for its realistic and unsentimental description of poverty, Down and Out in London and Paris follows the adventures of a penniless British writer who finds himself rapidly descending into the seedy heart of two great European capitals....
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"Though Monk is witness to the terrible bombing of an afternoon pleasure boat on the river that leaves 200 people dead, much to his dismay the case is taken from his hands and given over to the commissioner of police. An Egyptian man is quickly caught, tried, and sentenced to death--and then just as swiftly murdered in prison. When evidence surfaces that proves the dead man innocent, the case is handed back to Monk, who must now rely on his own memory...
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Kingsbridge volume 5
Summary
"The Spinning Jenny was invented in 1770, and with that, a new era of manufacturing and industry changed lives everywhere within a generation. A world filled with unrest wrestles for control over this new world order: A mother's husband is killed in a work accident due to negligence; a young woman fights to fund her school for impoverished children; a well-intentioned young man unexpectedly inherits a failing business; one man ruthlessly protects...
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Wyoming stories volume 3
Summary
Pioneer homesteaders facing drought and debt give way to modern-day hippies trying to lose themselves in the vanishing wilderness and real estate developers out to make a buck-unforgettable characters in nine stories that range in tone from crude cowboy humor to heartbreaking American tragedy.
11) Hard times
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"Hard Times is perhaps the archetypal Dickens novel, full as it is with family difficulties, estrangement, rotten values and unhappiness. It was published in 1854 and it is the story of the family of Thomas Gradgrind, and occurs in the imaginary Coketown, an industrial city inspired by Preston. Gradgrind is a man obsessed with misguided 'Utilitarian' values that make him trust facts, statistics and practicality more than emotion and is based upon...
13) Mrs. Everything
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Summary
Growing up in 1950s Detroit, Jo and Bethie Kaufman's roles in the family are clearly defined. Jo is the tomboy, the bookish rebel with a passion to make the world more fair; Bethie is the pretty, feminine good girl, a would-be star who enjoys the power her beauty confers and dreams of a traditional life. As their lives unfold against the background of free love and Vietnam, Woodstock and women's lib, Bethie becomes an adventure-loving wild child who...
14) Women in love
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Formats
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This novel, originally written in 1916, published in 1921, explores the lives of the Brangwen sisters, Ursula and Gudrun, and their developing love affairs with Rupert Birkin, an intellectual, and Gerald Crich, an industrialist. The despair of one sister's relationship contrasts with the happiness of the other's as the four clash in thought, passion, and belief, in their search for a life that is truly complete. The novel is the sequel to The Rainbow....
15) The idiot
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"Just two years after completing Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky produced a second novel with a very different man at its center. In The Idiot, the saintly Prince Myshkin returns to Russia from a Swiss sanatorium and finds himself a stranger in a society obsessed with wealth, power, and sexual conquest. He soon becomes entangled in a love triangle with a notorious kept woman, Nastasya, and a beautiful young girl, Aglaya. Extortion and scandal escalate...
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"During the Great Depression, wretched labor camps crop up in remote areas of the expansive pine forests throughout the American South. Destitute workers live and toil under terrible conditions to harvest pine gum, hacking into tree trunks, drawing out the sticky sap that gives the Tar Heel State its nickname, and hauling it to stills to be refined into turpentine. Subsistence living means racking up huge debts they are forced to work off, creating...
17) Fathers and sons
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Ivan Turgenev's nineteenth-century Russian novel of generational conflict during a period of social revolution.
18) Ruth
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Ruth is a young orphaned girl who works in a sweatshop. Mrs. Mason, Ruth's boss, runs the sweatshop in a respectable manner, earning a sterling reputation among her employees and society. However, the comfort and acclaim of Ruth's job is threatened when she attends a ball to repair any dresses that get torn during dancing. There, she meets an aristocratic man named Henry Bellingham, who is infamous for his immoral treatment of women and frivolous...
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"Sophie Beckett never dreamed she'd be able to sneak into Lady Bridgerton's famed masquerade ball--or that "Prince Charming" would be waiting there for her! Though the daughter of an earl, Sophie has been relegated to the role of servant by her disdainful stepmother. But now, spinning in the strong arms of the debonair and devastatingly handsome Benedict Bridgerton, she feels like royalty. Alas, she knows all enchantments must end when the clock strikes...
20) Sweet and deadly
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Six months after the death of her parents in a car crash, Catherine Linton returns to her hometown of Lowfield, Mississippi, unconvinced that it was an accident and looking for answers. Her suspicions seem to be confirmed when she stumbles upon the dead and beaten body of her doctor father's long-time nurse. Catherine is right: there are secrets being kept in Lowfield. But if she continues to investigate, the town where she grew up may be the same...