Showing results for "Life" in Classics

Years before Dorothy and her dog crash-land, another little girl makes her presence known in Oz. This girl, Elphaba, is born with emerald-green skin—no easy burden in a land as mean and poor as Oz, where superstition and magic are not strong enough to explain or overcome the natural disasters of flood and famine. Still, Elphaba is smart, and not long after entering Shiz University, she becomes a member of a charmed circle of Oz's most promising young citizens. But Elphaba's Oz is no utopia. The Wizard's secret police are everywhere.

Brought to you by Penguin. A darkly funny account of family life from the author of The Haunting of Hill House and The Lottery 'Sometimes, in my capacity as a mother, I find myself sitting open-mouthed and terrified before my own children' As well as being a master of the macabre, Shirley...

A handsome young man, Dorian Gray, wishes that his portrait would age rather than himself. The wish is fulfilled and Dorian pursues hedonistic pleasures. After each of his questionable immoral activities, he finds his portrait continues to become increasingly ugly. Finally, after many years, Dorian stabs the image out of guilt, and the result is that he dies as an old man while the portrait reverts to the original image of the handsome young man.

Daniel Defoe (1659-1661 to 1731) was an English writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. The Life, Adventures, and Piracies of Captain Singleton is one of his earliest novels. The narrative describes the life of an Englishman, stolen from a well-to-do family as a child and raised by Gypsies, who eventually makes his way to sea.

These are the valiant and lyrically descriptive letters, written in 1873, by Isabella Bird, a courageous and spirited Englishwoman, telling her sister of her adventures on horseback over 800 miles of American wilderness.

Elizabeth Gaskell's remarkable first novel, Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life portrays a love that defies the rigid boundaries of class with tragic consequences.

A man dressed in a long coat with bandages covering his face arrives in a small village and does not engage much in conversation. While striving to maintain his privacy, he receives what he calls his luggage, yet in reality is chemicals and laboratory supplies, thereby furthering the mystery around himself. Eventually, he reveals his name to be Griffin and later runs into Mr. Kemp, a former student from medical school. Griffin creates a diabolical plan after recounting to Kemp how he is able to create invisibility.

Set in 1930s London, Winifred Watson’s Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day recounts twenty-four hours in the life of a governess who turns up for a very unexpected first day at work. Watson’s comedic, light-hearted novel is read by Academy Award-winning actress Frances McDormand, who plays Miss...

This is the autobiographical novel by Harriet Wilson, the first African-American to publish a novel in North America. Originally published in 1859, it was rediscovered in 1982.

A man builds a time machine and tells his dinner guests that he can travel through time. He leaves from dinner in his machine for three hours and has adventures that include going back in time hundreds of years and forward in time millions of years, where he finds strange and dangerous places from which he is lucky to escape from. He returns and tells them of his adventures and shows proof of his travels by providing strange items from his pocket.

A man is held prisoner for most of his life and is forced to wear a mask. There is much mystery surrounding the reason for the mask, but a likely reason is that the prisoner's true identity would threaten the reigning French King Louis XIV. This novel is thought to have some basis in fact, but as the situation was such a mystery at the time it is hard to speculate on what aspects of the current story might be accurate.

Have you ever wondered why the pursuit of great ideals is so often entangled in the complexities of everyday relationships? Widely considered one of the greatest novels in the English language, George Eliot's Middlemarch is a sweeping panorama of life on the brink of profound historical change. It masterfully intertwines the destinies of diverse characters to create an unparalleled study of provincial life.

This audiobook is about slavery in the 1850s and follows a man known as Uncle Tom through his struggles of being human under ownership in the south of the United States when slavery was still legal.

An extraterrestrial alien attack from Mars takes place outside London, England in the late 1800s. The aliens are big, grey, and rather ugly. They invade using very large tripod warships. The citizen and military defense has some measure of success, but, ultimately, the aliens prevail and traverse the land unimpeded. This audio classic novel has been carefully abridged and adapted into 10 short, easy-to-understand chapters. This format enables listeners of all ages and English language abilities to understand and enjoy the story.

The Origin of Species sold out on the first day of its publication in 1859. It is the major book of the 19th century and one of the most readable and accessible of the great revolutionary works of the scientific imagination. Though, in fact, little read, most people know what it says—at least they think they do. The Origin of Species was the first mature and persuasive work to explain how species change through the process of natural selection. Upon its publication, the book began to transform attitudes about society and religion.

A key figure in the metaphysical movement known as New Thought, Florence Scovel Shinn has influenced many modern spiritual leaders, including Dr. Wayne Dyer, Dr. Christiane Northrup, Deepak Chopra, May McCarthy, and Louise Hay. Through stories of real-life situations and biblical tenets, Shinn teaches that the empowering use of positive attitude and affirmations can create a path to wealth, good health, and loving relationships. Intuition, love, and prosperity can expand through intentional thoughts and prayer.

En dag i Ivan Denisovitjs liv offentliggjordes i november 1962 i tidskriften Novy Mir efter Khrusjtjovs personliga tillåtelse. Romanen väckte enorm uppmärksamhet både i och utanför Sovjetunionen, eftersom det var första gången som en berättelse om Stalintidens undertryck gavs ut offentligt. Berättelsen utspelar sig i ett sibiriskt specialläger för politiska fångar och skildrar en typisk dag i fången Ivan Denisovitjs liv i januari 1951.

The American Classics Collection is a century-spanning collection of 17 classic novels, short stories, essay, and poetry by American authors, read by a cast of incredible narrators including Kobna Holdbrook-Smith; Nathan Osgood; Robert G. Slade; Jonathan Keeble, and more. Included here are stories by some of the greatest writers of all time, including Ernest Hemingway; Mark Twain; F. Scott Fitzgerald; Edith Wharton; Frederick Douglass; and H.P. Lovecraft, amongst a host of others.

The life of Mr. Badman forms a third part to The Pilgrim’s Progress, but it is not a delightful pilgrimage to heaven. On the contrary, it is a wretched downward journey to the infernal realms. The author’s goal is to warn poor, thoughtless sinners, not with smooth words they can ignore, but with words that thunder against their consciences regarding the danger of their souls and the increasing wretchedness into which they are madly hurrying.

Harryboy Boas is a gambling man. An independent Jewish bachelor, he lives in a Hackney boarding house: reading Zola, betting on the dogs at the track, womanising, philosophising, and repressing his tortured wartime past. Until, that is, a new family moves in. As his life dramatically unravels—financially, emotionally, and existentially—Harryboy descends into a murky criminal underworld where debts, violence, gangsters and revenge are the inevitable payback for those who can't pay up ...