Showing results by author "Beauty_23" in All Categories

Jean de La Bruyère famously characterized Versailles as "that region where joys were visible but false, and vexations hidden but real." In this witty and scholarly book, Baron Arthur-Léon Imbert de Saint-Amand explores the solar system of the Sun King with its planets, the women of the court, now orbiting in warm proximity to the monarch, now hurtling away under his glacial disfavor. Here are his neglected queen, Maria Theresa, his imperious mistress, Madame de Montespan, his illegitimate daughters, and his final consort, the pious and influential, Madame de Maintenon.(Summary by Pamela ...

Before he wrote the Oz books, L. Frank Baum wrote this book which was the best selling book of 1897. Taking 22 beloved nursery rhymes, he explains their meaning and fascinating history. What is the true story of Little Boy Blue? Why was Mary contrary?As he says in the introduction, "Many of these nursery rhymes are complete tales in themselves, telling their story tersely but completely; there are others which are but bare suggestions, leaving the imagination to weave in the details of the story. Perhaps therein may lie part of their charm, but however that may be I have thought the children ...

The Centaur deals with the concept of higher order of consciousness - earth consciousness and that all other living beings are emanations of this supreme consciousness through the protagonist O'Malley, Dr Stahl and the narrator. It is at once subtle and powerful in laying bare the paranormal - or is it the abnormal? - Summary by Yoganandh T

H. G. Wells is best known for his science fiction, but some of his greatest works were in other genres. The Passionate Friends is a love story. It also is a story about dreams, despair, jealousy, sex, the struggle against social convention, the future of civilization, and much much more. It is written by a father to his son, "not indeed to the child you are now, but to the man you are going to be." He writes it so that one day, perhaps when he is dead, his grown son can read it and rediscover him as a friend and equal. In the process, he tries to make sense of a lifetime's experiences and ...

Viviette is a headstrong young girl who is pursued by two brothers: Austin, a headstrong man of the world and a barrister in London, and Dick, who is much quieter and who has remained at the family home to look after the estate and his mother. This short story follows the twists and turns of the relationships of the three, leading to a surprising ending. - Summary by Simon Evers

As the butterfly is drawn by instinct over thousands of miles to its mate, so the man Hudson is drawn to a deadly island of terrors to the woman of his dreams. Hudson is found adrift on a sampan, seemingly drawn forth by a cloud in the riggings that suddenly lifts and soars off against the wind. We hear bits and pieces of Hudson's tale in fits and starts, his earlier life in a doomed long-distance romance, his eventual adventure on the China Seas. Written by Melville Davisson Post, noted author of primarily detective fiction including the long-running Uncle Abner series, The Revolt of the ...

Fisher’s treatment of the history of Finland, in the context of its relations with Russia, was released in 1899—at the start of the first attempted wave of Russification. At this time, it seems, many Finns regarded it as a misunderstanding. A mistake. Not a contrivance of Nicholas II, but a villainy emanating instead, fen-sucked, from the sinister Russian state machinery—the fief of a myopic and obdurate cadre of supremacists and absolutists. Men like the rabid anti-semite Konstantin Pobedonostsev who, by the camera's harsh testimony, seems to have died long before he stopped coming in ...

Incredibly prolific author Oscar Schisgall, who contributed over 4,000 stories to publications like Reader's Digest and Colliers, published two thrilling stories in Weird Tales magazine, "The Death Pit" ("a novelette of grim tragedy") in November of 1923 and "In Kashla's Garden ("a tale of hypnotism") in May of 1927. Enjoy this pair of macabre tales sure to bring tingles to the spine! - Summary by Ben Tucker

My dear friends... Do you find that you suffer from the condition known as ARACHNOPHOBIA? Do you cower in fear at the feeling of those hairy little legs as they crawl slowly up your leg, a wisp of webbing in their wake? Do you spend sleepless nights shivering in horror at the idea of their sharp fangs sinking into your tender, soft flesh? Boy, do we have a collection of stories for you! From those madcap maniacs at Weird Tales magazine, we bring you eleven spine-tingling tales of arachnid terror that is sure to give you goosebumps! - Summary by Ben Tucker

It’s a dreary February in post-World War I London when Mrs. Wilkins spots an advertisement in The Times for a small Italian castle for rent in April. She sees another member of her women’s club, Mrs. Arbuthnot, reading the same advertisement and manages to convince her that the two of them should rent it. Both are miserable and lonely in their marriages. They can’t afford the cost of the villa, San Salvatore, on their own and must advertise for two others, eventually recruiting an elderly widow named Mrs. Fisher, and Lady Caroline Dester, a beautiful young socialite desperate to escape ...

The disappearance of a noted archaeologist hunting the secret of the Lost Tribe of the Wiramwazi Mountains was a signal to the one man who could penetrate Africa's deepest interior—Tarzan of the Apes. For only Tarzan, the white man who had been raised by the anthropoid apes, could understand the ways of the jungle and its beasts perfectly enough to speed to the scientist's rescue. But this time, in addition to savage tribes and vicious beasts, Tarzan uncovered a strange lost land—twin cities of Roman soldiery, outposts of a ruthless empire that had fallen fifteen hundred years before. ...

The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other Homeric epic. The Odyssey is fundamental to the modern Western canon; it is the second-oldest extant work of Western literature, while the Iliad is the oldest. Scholars believe the Odyssey was composed near the end of the 8th century BC, somewhere in Ionia, the Greek coastal region of Anatolia. The poem mainly focuses on the Greek hero Odysseus (known as Ulysses in Roman myths), king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the fall of Troy. It takes Odysseus ten years to...

By turns illuminating, infuriating, bewildering, and amusing, Nietzsche's masterwork covers a lot of ground. He rejects most strands of Western thought, especially on the subject of morality, and develops his own theme demanding that individuals embrace their own 'will to power' to give life intention and direction. First published in German in 1887, this translation was produced in 1907 by Helen Zimmern, a long-standing acquaintance of Nietzsche.There is an accessible text at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4363 but it leaves out all words in Greek, and is not in alignment with any printed ...

When Lucy Honeychurch travels to Italy with her cousin, she meets George Emerson, a bohemian and an atheist who falls in love with her. Upon her return to England, she is forced to choose between free-spirited George and her more conventional fiancé, Cecil Vyse. The story is both a romance and a critique of English society at the beginning of the 20th century. (Summary from Wikipedia)

In a little town of Buckskin, population 100, or 200 depending on who did the counting, all kinds of trouble is brewing. See, there was a rivalry going on between Buckskin and a nearby town, Perry's Bend. That rivalry had turned sour, and involved the four nearby ranches. Hopalong Cassidy lives on the Bar-20, and the cows from the C 80 were mixing with his herd. There are gun fights, barroom brawls and stampedes to make live exciting out there on the Texas-New Mexico line!

The first chapter of a book is often the hook to draw a reader in. It could make you eager for more or realize it isn't for you. Here we offer the sixth First Chapter Collection" in which readers share the first chapters of a variety of fiction and non-fiction works.

Treasure Island is an adventure novel, a thrilling tale of "buccaneers and buried gold." Traditionally considered a coming of age story, it is an adventure tale of superb atmosphere, character and action, and also a wry commentary on the ambiguity of morality—as seen in Long John Silver—unusual for children's literature then and now. (Summary from wikipedia.org)

“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 ...

Walden by Henry David Thoreau is one of the best-known non-fiction books written by an American. Published in 1854, it details Thoreau's life for two years, two months, and two days around the shores of Walden Pond. Walden is neither a novel nor a true autobiography, but a social critique of the Western World, with each chapter heralding some aspect of humanity that needed to be either renounced or praised. Along with his critique of the civilized world, Thoreau examines other issues afflicting man in society, ranging from economy and reading to solitude and higher laws. He also takes time to ...

This is a little volume of poetry by Canadian poet Virna Sheard. Published in 1917, its subject is the then ongoing first World War. - Summary by Carolin