Showing results by author "ciesse" in All Categories

In this story, a small village in rural England is the unlikely site of multiple mysterious goings-on. Dick Gordon, a young public prosecutor, and a determined police officer named Elk are on the trail of a secret society called the Frogs. Their leader is a diabolical master criminal simply known as “The Frog”. There are further interesting subplots involving the family of a pretty young lady whom Dick Gordon finds very attractive. There are plenty of other characters and a few delightful twists! - Summary by Howard Skyman

Cytherea Graye is poor, but accepts a post as lady's maid to the eccentric Miss Aldclyffe, the woman whom her father had loved but had not been able to marry. Cytherea in turn loves a young architect, Edward Springrove; but will Miss Adclyffe's machinations, the knowledge that Edward is already engaged to a woman whom he does not love, and the urgent need to support her sick brother drive Cytherea to accept the hand of Aeneas Manston? Will true love triumph in the end or will she be forced to live a life of misery with a man she doesn't love? ( Michele Eaton )

El Evangelio según Juan es un libro de la Biblia en el Nuevo Testamento que contiene la historia de la vida de Jesucristo. El apóstol Juan el evangelista es considerado su autor.The Gospel according to John is a book of the New Testament of the Bible that contains the story of the life of Jesus Christ. The apostle John the evangelist is considered its author.

In an era before the advent of electric lights, telephones or motor vehicles, there exists a small cluster of aristocratic "old revolutionary stock" families that rule New York's social life. Under the rules of this society, "being things" is better than "doing things" and reputation and outward appearances come at the exclusion of everything else. In this Gilded Age, when America’s expansion and increased industrialism produce a group of newly wealthy robber barons and financiers, the patient, time-honored values of the old ruling class, and century, are giving way to the expediencies of ...

La Fortune des Rougon est le premier volume de la série Les Rougon-Macquart. Il se déroule dans une petite ville appelée Plassans, et à Lorgues, dans le Var. Ce livre débute la généalogie des Rougon-Macquart, et se situe dans les jours qui suivent le coup d'État du 2 décembre 1851, soit au début du Second Empire. Il raconte l’histoire d’amour entre Silvère Mouret et Miette, les deux jeunes gens participant à la résistance en Provence au coup d'État du 2 décembre 1851. (Résumé par Bidou)

Adaptation of the story of Robinson Crusoe for grammar school children. Tells how the shipwrecked sailor makes a new life for himself on the island, providing shelter, food, and clothing for himself from the few tools he rescued from the ship and what he is able to find on the island. He lives on the island over twenty years before he is finally rescued and during that time must re-invent almost everything necessary for daily sustenance. (Summary from The Baldwin Project.)

Northanger Abbey is a hilarious parody of 18th century gothic novels. The heroine, 17-year old Catherine, has been reading far too many “horrid” gothic novels and would love to encounter some gothic-style terror — but the superficial world of Bath proves hazardous enough. (Summary by Kara)

In order to escape his cruel father, and led by a thirst for adventure, Huck Finn sets off down the Mississippi River with Jim, an escaped slave. But trouble is never far behind them, and their adventures are only beginning when they meet up with two men who claim to be a duke and a king! And that’s before Jim gets captured by none other than Tom Sawyer’s aunt and uncle… who mistake Huck for Tom. The hilarious adventures and scrapes of Huck, Jim, Tom, and others are brought to life in this dramatic reading. - Summary by Rachel Cast Huckleberry Finn: Patrick Saville Tom Sawyer: TenorBoy ...

The inspirational and visionary poetry of Emily Brontë will live forever in the annals of great works of creative art. Renowned as the author of the novel "Wuthering Heights", the mystically contemplative poems of Brontë are featured in this superb collection of some of her best work. These are universally appealing poems that actively examine each and everyone's place in this life of love, loss and wonderment - the wonderment of millions of magical souls on a journey whose terminus remains obscure. Brontë writes of life and exhibits a prescient insight into a mystical universal life form -...

Black Beauty is a fictional autobiographical memoir told by a horse, who recounts many tales, both of cruelty and kindness. The title page of the first edition states that it was "Translated from the Original Equine by Anna Sewell." After its publication in 1877, Sewell lived just long enough to see her first and only novel become an immediate bestseller, as well as it encouraging the better treatment of many cruelly-treated animals. Although initially intended for people who work with horses, it soon became a children's classic. While outwardly teaching animal welfare, it also contains ...

Abner Doubleday began the Civil War as a Union officer and aimed the first cannon shot in response to the bombardment opened on Ft. Sumter in 1861. Two years later, after a series of battles (including Antietam, where he was wounded), Doubleday took over a division in the Army of the Potomac's 1st Corps.These are his memoirs of service in two of the War's great campaigns. At Chancellorsville, a very promising start made by General Hooker against Lee's Confederate forces fell to a defeat when, in Doubleday's estimation, normal and prudent precautions against surprise in the heavily-wooded ...

The Fortune of the Rougons (French: La Fortune des Rougon), originally published in 1871, is the first novel in Émile Zola's monumental twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. In his introduction Zola indicates that this series is intended to demonstrate the interaction of heredity and environment along the lines of natural selection and evolution. While Zola's metascience is questionable, this novel is successful in its analysis of the interaction of momentous social and political events and the everyday lives and aspirations of a provincial society. In a satisfyingly intricate, vast and ...

The short novel “At the Sign of the Cat and Racket” was one of Balzac’s earliest fictions, first published in 1830 and substantially revised in following years. The title (“La Maison du Chat-qui-pelote”) refers to a sign that hangs over a Parisian fabric shop, depicting a cartoon cat playing racquetball. The business is owned by a family with a narrow view of prim bourgeois propriety. Their complacency is disrupted when a gifted young man of artistic temperament and aristocratic upbringing woos their daughter. What follows is a poignant picture of domestic life and the stress that ...

The second volume of Amelia. - Summary by Libby Gohn

“These papers were originally published as prefaces to the separate books of Dickens in one of the most extensive of those cheap libraries of the classics which are one of the real improvements of recent times. Thus they were harmless, being diluted by, or rather drowned in Dickens. My scrap of theory was a mere dry biscuit to be taken with the grand tawny port of great English comedy; and by most people it was not taken at all--like the biscuit.Nevertheless the essays were not in intention so aimless as they appear in fact. I had a general notion of what needed saying about Dickens to the ...

The Tang Dynasty (618 to 907) was a golden age of Chinese culture: religion and philosophy, painting and calligraphy, sculpture, architecture and music all reached peaks of perfection. Poetry was the epitome of the arts: a scholastic requirement, a route to fame, a moulder of character. Nearly 50,000 poems of the Tang have survived. The collection 'Three Hundred Tang Poems' was compiled around 1763. It comprises six volumes, with poems grouped by verse form. Volume 1 covers the 'ancient verse' style in five-character lines (poems 1 to 35), and 'folk song style verse' (36 to 45). The masters Li...

“The legion that never was listed,”The soft-lilting rhythm and song,The starlight, and shadowy tropics,The palms—and all that belong;The unknown that ever persistedIn dreams that were epics of bliss,Of glory and gain without effort—And the visions have faded, like this.-- (Excerpt from the opening poem, "The Tropics"

The worshipers of this ancient tentacled horror are still with us, waiting for this terrible being to awake and take vengeance again on an earth filled with nonbelievers. Lovecraft delves into this eons old cult in the greatest detail of any of his stories about Cthulhu and gives us hints about how it is worshiped and the abominable rituals involved. Creepy. Very creepy. - Summary by phil chenevert

The letters... will perhaps more clearly exhibit the temper and character of Knox, than his more elaborate compositions: but to understand the allusions with which they abound, it is necessary to revert to his domestic history while he resided in England. During his stay at Berwick, be contracted an acquaintanceship with Mrs. Bowes, in the course of which, a mutual attachment was formed between him and her daughter Marjory, with the approbation of the mother, who gave her hearty consent to their union. But the intended match was opposed by her husband’s relatives, and especially, by Sir ...

"International disputes that end in war are not generally questions of absolute right and wrong. They may quite as well be questions of opposing rights. But, when there are rights on both sides; it is usually found that the side which takes the initiative is moved by its national desires as well as by its claims of right.This could hardly be better exemplified than by the vexed questions which brought about the War of 1812."This volume of the Chronicles of Canada series explains both the causes of the War of 1812 and the campaigns of the war from a primarily Canadian viewpoint, a perspective ...