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19049 кн.
The futuristic Caribbean island of Jacaranda is a place under the constant pressures of crime, globalisation, advancing technology and environmental decay. Under these ominous skies Curdella Forbes builds a compelling tale of love, murder and psychological mayhem – a forbidden, tragic love affair, and a family torn apart by injustice. Published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Jamaica's independence, and written in a heady, lyrical mix of English and Jamaican Creole, Ghosts...
| Автор | Curdella Forbes |
A man lies in a newspaper-lined room dreaming an other life. Bob Marley's spirit flew into him at the moment of the singer's death. A woman detaches herself from her perfunctory husband and finds the erotic foreplay she longs for in journeying round the island. A man climbs Blue Mountain Peak to fly and hear the voice of God. Sonia paints her new friend Joan and hopes that this will be the beginning of a sexual adventure. Dawes's characters are driven by their need for...
| Автор | Kwame Dawes |
First published in 1897, “The Blood of the Vampire” is a vampire novel by prolific writer Florence Marryat. The story revolves around one Miss Harriet Brandt, the daughter of a mad scientist and a voodoo priestess who leaves her home in Jamaica for the first time to travel to Europe. However, Harriet is not a normal young woman, as everybody who gets close to her becomes ill or even dies. Boasting a sensational plot and utterly bizarre characters, Florence Marryat's Victorian vampire tale...
| Автор | Florence Marryat |
Around two hundred years ago the famous writer Lord Byron rented the mansion known as the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva. Accompanying Byron, among others, was the 23-year-old poet Percy Shelley, his mistress, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, and Byron's physician John William Polidori. The summer would be forever known as the 'Lost Summer of 1816'. For three days they were shut up in the Villa due to cold and stormy weather, which would serve as the backdrop to the telling and writing...
| Автор | Lord Byron |
Set amidst the real world events which occurred following the Jacobite rising of 1745, Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novel “Kidnapped” is the story of David Balfour, who travels to meet his uncle and collect his inheritance following the death of his father. Betrayed by his Uncle, David finds himself kidnapped by Captain Hoseason of the brig “Covenant”, who plans to sell him into slavery in the Carolina Colonies of America. However the ship is blown of course and driven back towards Scotland...
| Автор | Роберт Стивенсон |
First published in 1842, “Dead Souls” is the story of Chichikov, a young middle-class gentleman who comes to a small town in Russia with a dubious plan to improve his wealth and position in life. He begins by spending beyond his means on the premise that he can impress the local officials and gain standing and connections in the community. At the heart of his plan is the idea of acquiring “dead souls” or more explicitly serfs of landowners who have died since the last census. Since the taxes of...
| Автор | Николай Гоголь |
First published in 1862, Ivan Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons” is widely considered to be the author’s greatest literary achievement. It is a novel about the clash of ideologies of two generations. The older generation, the fathers, represents an upper class whose power and influence is fading and giving way to the younger generation, the sons, who represent an increasing objection to the status quo. This conflict is embodied in the characters of Arkady Nikolaevich Kirsanov and Yevgeny Vasilevich...
| Автор | Ivan Turgenev |
Thomas Hardy’s final novel “Jude the Obscure” began as a serial publication on December 1894 before being published in book form the following year. It is the story of its titular character Jude Fawley, a young lower-class man with dreams of being a scholar, and his relationships with his wife, Arabella, and his free-spirited cousin, Sue Bridehead. The novel follows the life of Jude from his youth living in a village in southern England where he works in a bakery and studies Classical Greek and...
| Автор | Thomas Hardy |
Jack London’s 1904 novel “The Sea Wolf” is the story of Humphrey van Weyden, an effete gentleman who finds himself shipwrecked when the San Francisco ferry his is aboard collides with another ship in the fog. Adrift in the bay, Humphrey is rescued by Wolf Larsen, the brutish captain of a seal-hunting schooner, the “Ghost”. However his relief in being saved is short-lived, for he is soon put to work, essentially enslaved as a cabin boy forced to do menial work aboard the “Ghost” by Larsen....
| Автор | Jack London |
The following text has been drawn from Sir Richard Burton's exhaustive translation of «The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night», more commonly known as «The Arabian Nights». The story of «The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor» tells the tale of Sinbad who ventures out to sea, at first to acquire wealth, but afterwards in search of adventure. During these voyages he encounters many obstacles including giant animals, monsters, and savage cannibals, yet always seems to escape with an even...
| Автор | Robert Burton |
One of the most important, though controversial, French novelists of the late nineteenth century, and founder of the Realist movement, was Émile Zola (1840-1902). He was the most important example of the literary genre of naturalism, and an integral part of developing theatrical naturalism. «The Kill» is the second book in Zola's «Les Rougon-Macquart», a twenty-volume series about a fictional family during the Second French Empire. The Kill, a second translation of «La Curée», undertaken by...
| Автор | Emile Zola |
