Showing titles in Literary History & Criticism

Discover professional reviews and immersive audio previews or Kindle editions of the world's most popular titles. Our library offers detailed insights into various genres, helping you find your next great listen or read with expert narration.

Henry Fielding could not write plays that he could get published. So he decided to write a play - a farce - about that, and success was his at last. The third act of the play is the play that the Author in the play supposedly writes - a Puppet Show (though acted by people) called The Pleasures of the Town. - Summary by ToddHW Cast list: Luckless, the Author and Master of the Show: Adrian Stephens Witmore, his friend: Greg Giordano Marplay Senior, Comedian: Alan Mapstone Marplay Junior, Comedian: Availle Bookweight, a Bookseller: ToddHW Scarecrow, a Scribler: David Purdy Dash, a Scribler: ...

Your destination for curated book summaries, Kindle editions, and audio versions. Explore our collection of mystery, romance, and non-fiction titles designed for the modern reader seeking quality storytelling.

Explore an extensive archive of literature through our digital-first approach. We feature detailed reviews, author backgrounds, and professional previews for book enthusiasts seeking a premium Kindle or Audio experience.

Your destination for curated book summaries, Kindle editions, and audio versions. Explore our collection of mystery, romance, and non-fiction titles designed for the modern reader seeking quality storytelling.

Discover professional reviews and immersive audio previews or Kindle editions of the world's most popular titles. Our library offers detailed insights into various genres, helping you find your next great listen or read with expert narration.

A podcast about good bpopks, great women and fantastic pie.

From a dancing automaton running amok at a ball, to a prehistoric beast lurking in the depths of a Yorkshire cave, this anthology explores the nature of the ‘old weird’, and unordinary stories which go outside the boundaries of everyday life. The anthology includes not only stories by well-known writers like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Jerome K. Jerome, but also by long-forgotten authors such as D. F. Hannigan and Reginald Bacchus.

Author, broadcaster and 'rock star classicist' Natalie Haynes is a little bit obsessive about Ancient Greece and Rome. In these four series, she explores some of the most prominent historical and mythological figures from the classical world, telling their stories through a mix of stand-up comedy and conversation.

Anne's House of Dreams by L. M. Montgomery is the continuing story of Anne Shirley Blythe who lived in Green Gables. This book is the fifth in the "Anne of Green Gables" series. In this episode, Anne is twenty-five years old and is preparing for her wedding. She is going to marry young Gilbert Blythe who is an up and coming physician.They will be moving from Green Gables to Four Winds, a sleepy seaside community on Prince Edward Island in Nova Scotia. Anne, tall, slender and flame-haired, has been a teacher for three years at a school called Summerside. Gilbert Blythe has been after Anne for ...

When John Bercow retired as Speaker of the House of Commons on 31 October 2019, he had become one of the most recognisable and iconoclastic figures in British politics, occupying a ringside seat during one of the most febrile periods in modern British history. In his no-holds-barred memoir, he...

When Seán meets Elias, the two fall headlong into a love story. But as Elias struggles with severe depression, the couple comes face-to-face with crisis. Wrestling with this, Seán Hewitt delves deep into his own history, enlisting the ghosts of queer figures and poets before him. From a 19th-century cemetery in Liverpool to the pine forests of Gothenburg, Hewitt plumbs the darkness in search of solace and hope. All Down Darkness Wide is an unflinching meditation on the burden of living in a world that too often sets happiness and queer life at odds.

With millions of downloads, hundreds of hours of soundtracked content, and an overall emphasis on the cultural history behind famous works of literature, Literature and History is one of the most popular independent podcasts on its subject. Starting with Sumerian cuneiform in 3,100 BCE, Literature and History moves forward in chronological order through Assyriology, Egyptology, the Old Testament, Ancient Greece and Rome, and the birth of Christianity. The show's current season is on Late Antiquity (or 200-700 CE) and the dawn of the Middle Ages. A typical episode (they average about two hours)...

English novelist Barbara Pym’s career was defined, in many senses, by rejection. Her first novel Some Tame Gazelle was turned down by every publisher she sent it out in 1935, finally published only 15 years later. Though she picked up a publisher from there and received modest praise, the publishing industry grew restless and her sales spiralled downwards. By her seventh novel, she had been dropped. This brilliant biography, brimming with Pym’s private diaries and intimate letters, offers a first full insight into Barbara Pym’s life and how it informed her writing.

In Hamlet, Shakespeare's play, a ghost tells a prince a terrible tale. ‘Is it true?’ the prince asks himself. This book asks, and answers, that same question. A ghost is something one may see and believe or look through and doubt. Doubt runs through the entire play. But it is in how...

Set in English society before the 1832 Reform Bill, Wives and Daughters centers on the story of youthful Molly Gibson, brought up from childhood by her father. When he remarries, a new stepsister enters Molly's quiet life, the loveable, but worldly and troubling, Cynthia. The narrative traces the development of the two girls into womanhood within the gossiping and watchful society of Hollingford.

Edited by bestselling anthologist John Joseph Adams, LIGHTSPEED is a Hugo Award-winning, critically-acclaimed digital magazine. In its pages, you'll find science fiction from near-future stories and sociological SF to far-future, star-spanning SF. Plus there's fantasy from epic sword-and-sorcery and contemporary urban tales to magical realism, science-fantasy, and folk tales. Each month, LIGHTSPEED brings you a mix of original short stories and flash fiction featuring a variety of authors, from the bestsellers and award-winners you already know to the best new voices you haven't heard yet. ...

Mrs Gereth, a wealthy widow, is dreading the day that her son, Owen, gets married. She hopes that he will marry a woman who will appreciate their home and all of its treasures as she does. So she enlists the help of Fleda Vetch to try to corrupt the impending marriage of her son and Mona Brigstock - a philistine who is determined to marry Owen in order to inherit Mrs Gereth’s valuable possessions and home by any means. Meanwhile, Fleda hides her real feelings towards Owen. Even when he ends up feeling the same way, Fleda cannot bring herself to marry him as this would force him to break his engagement to Mona, and thus betray all of her own ideals.

The definitive critical study of Tolkien’s greatest works by the respected and world renowned Tolkien scholar Professor T.A. Shippey. Following the unprecedented and universal acclaim for The Lord of the Rings, the respected academic and world-renowned Tolkien scholar, Professor Tom Shippey...

Stopping to use a cash machine one evening, a man inexplicably falls to the ground: dead. A taxi driver is brutally murdered by two teenage girls. Quickly apprehended they appal local policemen with their total lack of remorse. One girl escapes police custody and disappears without trace. Soon afterwards, a blackout covers half the country. When an engineer arrives at the malfunctioning power station, he makes a grisly discovery. Inspector Kurt Wallander is sure that these events must be linked - somehow.