The Trumpet-Major

The Trumpet-Major

Thomas Hardy

Fiction / Poetry

Anne Garland is pursued by three suitors: John Loveday, the eponymous trumpet major in a British regiment, honest and loyal; his brother Bob, a flighty sailor; and Festus Derriman, the cowardly nephew of the local squire. The novel is set in Weymouth during the Napoleonic wars; the town was then anxious about the possibility of invasion by Napoleon. Of John Loveday fights with Wellington in the Peninsular War and and his brother Bob serves with Nelson at Trafalgar.
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Marriage

Marriage

H. G. Wells

Literature & Fiction / Science Fiction & Fantasy / History

A monoplane falling out of the sky on a hot afternoon can shatter the leisurely peace of a croquet game below. And an injured aviator like Geoffrey Trafford can quite disrupt the calm of a girl like Marjorie Pope. All obstacles - her modern views, her socialism, her cool engagement to the worldly Mr Magnet - are swept away; and, as in every misguided fairy tale, 'the poor dears haven't the shadow of a doubt they will live happily ever after'. Written when Wells himself was caught in the entanglements of home and sex, this funny, utterly engrossing novel, shows him grappling with a perennial question; how can a marriage survive, when conventions stifle, when men and women want different things, when passions fade? Ironically, the answer he came to led to his meeting with an enraged young reviewer, Rebecca West - a collision as devastating as the plane crash in the rectory garden.
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A Chain of Evidence

A Chain of Evidence

Carolyn Wells

Humor / Mysteries / Children's Books

A man is found murdered in a locked Manhattan apartment, the only other inhabitants of which were his niece and a servant. The niece, under suspicion, will be indicted unless Otis Landon, a young lawyer from the apartment across the hall can discover the real killer. The clues, a safety deposit key, a woman’s hat pin without a head, a railroad timetable, and two music hall tickets, each point to a different person, none of whom can have committed the crime. From these clues, Landon, with the help of the noted detective, Fleming Stone, must forge the chain of evidence with which he can convict the killer and prove the innocence of the niece.Curl up with this classic cozy mystery from the author of The Clue.
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The End of the World: A Love Story

The End of the World: A Love Story

Edward Eggleston

Fiction / History

The End of the World - A Love Story is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by Edward Eggleston is in the English language, and may not include graphics or images from the original edition. If you enjoy the works of Edward Eggleston then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection.
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The Grandissimes

The Grandissimes

George Washington Cable

Nonfiction / History / Classics

It was in the Théatre St. Philippe (they had laid a temporary floor over the parquette seats) in the city we now call New Orleans, in the month of September, and in the year 1803. Under the twinkle of numberless candles, and in a perfumed air thrilled with the wailing ecstasy of violins, the little Creole capital's proudest and best were offering up the first cool night of the languidly departing summer to the divine Terpsichore. For summer there, bear in mind, is a loitering gossip, that only begins to talk of leaving when September rises to go. It was like hustling her out, it is true, to give a select bal masqué at such a very early--such an amusingly early date; but it was fitting that something should be done for the sick and the destitute; and why not this? Everybody knows the Lord loveth a cheerful giver.
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The Egoist: A Comedy in Narrative

The Egoist: A Comedy in Narrative

George Meredith

Fiction / Poetry

Comedy is a game played to throw reflections upon social life, and it deals with human nature in the drawing-room of civilized men and women, where we have no dust of the struggling outer world, no mire, no violent crashes, to make the correctness of the representation convincing. Credulity is not wooed through the impressionable senses; nor have we recourse to the small circular glow of the watchmaker's eye to raise in bright relief minutest grains of evidence for the routing of incredulity. The Comic Spirit conceives a definite situation for a number of characters, and rejects all accessories in the exclusive pursuit of them and their speech. For being a spirit, he hunts the spirit in men; vision and ardour constitute his merit; he has not a thought of persuading you to believe in him. Follow and you will see. But there is a question of the value of a run at his heels. Now the world is possessed of a certain big book, the biggest book on earth; that might indeed be called the Book of Earth; whose title is the Book of Egoism, and it is a book full of the world's wisdom. So full of it, and of such dimensions is this book, in which the generations have written ever since they took to writing, that to be profitable to us the Book needs a powerful compression. Who, says the notable humourist, in allusion to this Book, who can studiously travel through sheets of leaves now capable of a stretch from the Lizard to the last few poor pulmonary snips and shreds of leagues dancing on their toes for cold, explorers tell us, and catching breath by good luck, like dogs at bones about a table, on the edge of the Pole? Inordinate unvaried length, sheer longinquity, staggers the heart, ages the very heart of us at a view. And how if we manage finally to print one of our pages on the crow-scalp of that solitary majestic outsider? We may get him into the Book; yet the knowledge we want will not be more present with us than it was when the chapters hung their end over the cliff you ken of at Dover, where sits our great lord and master contemplating the seas without upon the reflex of that within
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The Rosary

The Rosary

Florence L. Barclay

Florence L. Barclay

The Rosary is a novel by Florence L. Barclay. It was first published in 1909 by G.P. Putnam's Sons and was a bestselling novel for many years running, reaching the number one spot in 1910. Florence Louisa Barclay was an English romance novelist and short story writer. The Rosary, a story of undying love, was published in 1909 and its success eventually resulted in its being translated into eight languages and made into five motion pictures, also in several languages. According to the New York Times, the novel was the No.1 bestselling novel of 1910 in the United States. The enduring popularity of the book was such that more than twenty-five years later, Sunday Circle magazine serialized the story and in 1926 the prominent French playwright Alexandre Bisson adapted the book as a three-act play for the Parisian stage.
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The Girl in the Golden Atom

The Girl in the Golden Atom

Ray Cummings

Science Fiction & Fantasy

This novel is a classic work of science fiction, and it was one of the first to explore the world of the atom. The Girl in the Golden Atom is the story of a young chemist who finds a concealed atomic world within his mother's wedding ring. Under a powerful microscope, he sees within the ring a beautiful young woman sitting in front of a cave. Captivated by her, he uses a method he discovered to shrink himself and does so to join her in her world. Eventually, four friends join him through many adventures to assist the beautiful woman, Lylda, in her conquest of her microscopic world. Having worked for Thomas Alva Edison, Ray Cummings (1887 - 1957) was inspired by science's possibilities and began to write science fiction.
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The Fruit of the Tree

The Fruit of the Tree

Edith Wharton

Fiction

John Amherst, the reform-minded assistant manager at the Hanaford textile mills, meets trained nurse Justine Brent at the hospital bedside of Dillon, an injured mill worker. The two agree Dillon would be better off dead if he is deprived of his occupation, a conversation that unites them in their approval of euthanasia sets the action of the novel in motion.
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The Wheat Princess

The Wheat Princess

Jean Webster

Literature & Fiction / Parenting & Families

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XII THE week following Easter proved rainy and disagreeable. It was not a cheerful period, for the villa turned out to be a fair-weather house. The stone walls seemed to absorb and retain the moisture like a vault, and a mortuary atmosphere hung about the rooms. Mr. Copley, with masculine imperviousness to mud and water, succeeded in escaping from the dampness of his home by journeying daily to the ever-luring Embassy. But his wife and niece, more solicitous on the subject of hair and clothes, remained storm-bound, and on the fourth day Mrs. Copley's conversation turned frequently to malaria. Marcia, who had taken the villa for better, for worse, steadfastly endeavored to approve of it in even this uncheerful mood. She divided her time between romping through the big rooms with Gerald, Gervasio, and Marcellus (to the astonishment of Bianca, whose previous knowledge had been only of Italian signorinas) and shivering over a brazier full of coals in her own room, to the accompaniment of dripping ilex trees and the superfluous splashing of the fountain. Her book was the "Egoist," and the " Egoist " is an illuminating work to a young woman in Marcia's frame of mind. It makes her hesitate. She knew that Paul Dessart in no wise resembled the magnificent Sir Willoughby, and that it was unfair to make the comparison, but still she made it. Paul, these days, was furnishing her with a great deal of food for reflection. As she stood by the window, gazing down on the rainswept Campagna, she pondered the situation and pondered it again, and succeeded only in working herself into a state of deeper indecision. Paul was interesting, attractive--as her uncle said, "decorative "; but was he any more, or was that enough? Should she be sorry if she...
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Memoirs of Emma Courtney

Memoirs of Emma Courtney

Mary Hays

Classics / Literature / 18th Century

Memoirs of Emma Courtney is one of the most articulate and detailed expressions of the yearnings and frustrations of a woman living in late eighteenth-century English society. It questions marital arrangements and courtship rituals by depicting a woman who actively pursues the man she loves. In this first fully annotated edition of a key sentimental novel, Hays reveals the lamentable gap between "what women are" and "what women ought to be" by exploring the links between sexaulity and desire, and economic and social freedom.
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The Glimpses of the Moon

The Glimpses of the Moon

Edith Wharton

Fiction

"She was conscious of throwing in the moor tentatively, and yet with a somewhat exaggerated emphasis, as if to make sure that he shouldn't accuse her of slurring it over. But he seemed to have no desire to do so. "Poor old Fred!" he merely remarked; and she breathed out carelessly: "Oh, well - " His hand still lay on hers, and for a long interval, while they stood silent in the enveloping loveliness of the night, she was aware only of the warm current running from palm to palm, as the moonlight below them drew its line of magic from shore to shore." This book has a beautiful glossy cover and a blank page for the dedication.
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Poor Miss Finch

Poor Miss Finch

Wilkie Collins

Fiction / Mystery / Travel

You are here invited to read the story of an Event which occurred in an out-of-the-way corner of England, some years since. The persons principally concerned in the Event are:—a blind girl; two (twin) brothers; a skilled surgeon; and a curious foreign woman. I am the curious foreign woman. And I take it on myself—for reasons which will presently appear—to tell the story. So far we understand each other. Good. I may make myself known to you as briefly as I can. I am Madame Pratolungo—widow of that celebrated South American patriot, Doctor Pratolungo. I am French by birth. Before I married the Doctor, I went through many vicissitudes in my own country. They ended in leaving me (at an age which is of no consequence to anybody) with some experience of the world; with a cultivated musical talent on the pianoforte; and with a comfortable little fortune unexpectedly bequeathed to me by a relative of my dear dead mother (which fortune I shared with good Papa and with my younger sisters). To these qualifications I added another, the most precious of all, when I married the Doctor; namely—a strong infusion of ultra-liberal principles. Vive la République!
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