Girl with a Pearl Earring by
Griet, the young daughter of a tilemaker in 17th century Holland, obtains her first job as a servant in Vermeer's household. She loves being drawn into his artistic life, but the cost to her own survival may be high.
Joy Luck Club by
In 1949, four Chinese women begin meeting in San Francisco for fun. Nearly 40years later, their daughters continue to meet as the Joy Luck Club. 8 CD. Unabridged.
A Tale of Two Families by
Jan Packard starts a diary because she is bored ... and suddenly she finds there is such a lot happening around her. Family, friends and neighbours all seem to be changing and doing things she had never expected.
Then quiet Jan decides it's time to become involved herself.
It's the '70s.
The Three Musketeers by
When hot-blooded young d'Artagnan comes to Paris to seek his fortune, he finds himself challenged to a duel with not one, but three of the King's Musketeers. But Athos, Porthos and Aramis are to become his greatest friends, and companions in dangerous adventure when he becomes embroiled in the intrigues of the Court and the beautiful, evil Lady de Winter.
Uncle Tom's Cabin by
Stowe's novel tells the stories of three slaves — Tom, Eliza, and George — who start out together in Kentucky, but whose lives take different turns. Eliza and George, who are married to each other but owned by different masters, manage to escape to free territory with their little boy, Harry. Tom is not so lucky. He is taken away from his wife and children. Tom is sold first to a kind master, Augustine St. Clare, and then to the fiendish Simon Legree, at whose hands he meets his death. Stowe relied upon images of domesticity, motherhood, and Christianity to capture her nineteenth century audience's hearts and imaginations. In spite of the critical controversy surrounding the book, the characters of Uncle Tom, Little Eva, and Simon Legree have all achieved legendary status in American culture. Often called sentimental and melodramatic, Uncle Tom's Cabin nevertheless endures as a powerful example of moral outrage over man's inhumanity to man.
Where my heart used to beat by
Summary: On a small island off the south coast of France, Robert Hendricks, an English doctor who has seen the best and the worst the twentieth century had to offer, is forced to confront the events that made up his life. His search for sanity takes him back through the war in Italy in 1944, to a passionate love that seems to hold out hope, to the great days of idealistic work in the 1960s and finally, unforgettably, back into the trenches of the Western Front.
The taming of the Queen by
Summary: Why would a woman marry a serial killer? Because she cannot refuse... Kateryn Parr, a thirty-year-old widow in a secret affair with a new lover, has no choice when a man old enough to be her father who has buried four wives - King Henry VIII - commands her to marry him. Kateryn has no doubt about the danger she faces: the previous queen lasted sixteen months, the one before barely half a year. But Henry adores his new bride and Kateryn's trust in him grows as she unites the royal family, creates a radical study circle at the heart of the court, and rules the kingdom as Regent. But is this enough to keep her safe? A leader of religious reform and the first woman to publish in English, Kateryn stands out as an independent woman with a mind of her own. But she cannot save the Protestants, under threat for their faith, and Henry's dangerous gaze turns on her.The traditional churchmen and rivals for power accuse her of heresy - the punishment is death by fire and the king's name is on the warrant... (Back cover)
Rebecca by
With these words, the reader is ushered into an isolated gray stone mansion on the windswept Cornish coast, as the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter recalls the chilling events that transpired as she began her new life as the young bride of a husband she barely knew. For in every corner of every room were phantoms of a time dead but not forgotten—a past devotedly preserved by the sinister housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers: a suite immaculate and untouched, clothing laid out and ready to be worn, but not by any of the great house's current occupants. With an eerie presentiment of evil tightening her heart, the second Mrs. de Winter walked in the shadow of her mysterious predecessor, determined to uncover the darkest secrets and shattering truths about Maxim's first wife—the late and hauntingly beautiful Rebecca.
A Girl Like Me by
Their lives couldn't be more different, but Emmie can't help liking Bertha Schippan. She's funny and knowing and wild, and she distracts Emmie from the monotony of farm life in their tiny, isolated community. But, as Emmie soon discovers, Bertha has secrets. Terrible secrets. This heartbreaking story is based on a real crime that took place more than a century ago, capturing headlines all around Australia.
A World Apart by
A sweeping Australian historical saga that crosses oceans to prove love conquers all...
April, 1820. As children, they shared a schoolroom, but no education can remove the stain of being peasant-born. So when Eliza Downing begins to blossom into womanhood and the future Viscount de Havilland notices, his family steps in to intervene.
Once full of possibilities, Eliza's life spirals into shame and degradation, culminating finally in a false conviction and transport to Botany Bay. Through shipwreck, exile, secrets, and scandals, Eliza holds fast to the belief that Harry will come for her — but he doesn't come soon enough, and Eliza must learn to recognise her own value and become the heroine of her own story.
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Oliver Twist by
Oliver is an orphan living on the dangerous London streets with no one but himself to rely on. Fleeing from poverty and hardship, he falls in with a criminal street gang who will not let him go, however hard he tries to escape.
One of the most swiftly moving and unified of Charles Dickens's great novels, Oliver Twist is also famous for its re-creation--through the splendidly realized figures of Fagin, Nancy, the Artful Dodger, and the evil Bill Sikes--of the vast London underworld of pickpockets, thieves, prostitutes, and abandoned children. Victorian critics took Dickens to task for rendering this world in such a compelling, believable way, but readers over the last 150 years have delivered an alternative judgment by making this story of the orphaned Oliver Twist one of its author's most loved works.
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Huckleberry Finn by
Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is regarded by many as the greatest literary achievement America has yet produced. Inspired by many of the author's own experiences as a riverboat pilot, the book tells of two runaways—a white boy and a black man—and their journey down the mighty Mississippi River.
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Measuring the world by
Measuring the World marks the debut of a glorious new talent on the international scene. Young Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann's brilliant comic novel revolves around the meeting of two colossal geniuses of the Enlightenment.Late in the eighteenth century, two young Germans set out to measure the world. One of them, the aristocratic naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, negotiates jungles, voyages down the Orinoco River, tastes poisons, climbs the highest mountain known to man, counts head lice, and explores and measures every cave and hill he comes across. The other, the reclusive and barely socialized mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, can prove that space is curved without leaving his home. Terrifyingly famous and wildly eccentric, these two polar opposites finally meet in Berlin in 1828, and are immediately embroiled in the turmoil of the post-Napoleon world.
The Henna artist by
Escaping from an abusive marriage, seventeen-year-old Lakshmi makes her way alone to the vibrant 1950s pink city of Jaipur. There she becomes the most highly requested henna artist - and confidante - to the wealthy women of the upper class. But trusted with the secrets of the wealthy, she can never reveal her own...Known for her original designs and sage advice, Lakshmi must tread carefully to avoid the jealous gossips who could ruin her reputation and her livelihood. As she pursues her dream of an independent life, she is startled one day when she is confronted by her husband, who has tracked her down these many years later with a high-spirited young girl in tow - a sister Lakshmi never knew she had. Suddenly the caution that she has carefully cultivated as protection is threatened. Still she perseveres, applying her talents and lifting up those that surround her as she does.
The Secret River by
After a childhood of poverty and petty crime in the slums of London, William Thornhill is sentenced in 1806 to be transported to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. With his wife Sal and children in tow, he arrives in a harsh land that feels at first like a death sentence. But among the convicts there is a whisper that freedom can be bought, an opportunity to start afresh.Away from the infant township of Sydney, up the Hawkesbury River, Thornhill encounters men who have tried to do just that: Blackwood, who is attempting to reconcile himself with the place and its people, and Smasher Williams, whose fear of this alien world turns into brutal depravity towards it. As Thornhill and his family stake their claim on a patch of ground by the river, the battle lines between old and new inhabitants are drawn.The Secret River joins a tradition of grand historical fiction that stretches from Thomas Keneally's The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith and Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang.
The Great Gatsby by
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. This exemplary novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when The New York Times noted “gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession,” it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.
The Great Gatsby is one of the great classics of twentieth-century literature.
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Anna Karenina by
Rebellious Anna, renounces a respectable yet stifling marriage for an extramarital affair that offers a taste of passion even as it ensnares her in a trap for destruction. Her story contrasts with that of Levin, a young self-doubting agnostic who takes a different path to fulfilment and finds faith and marital bliss in an age of repression.
The Inquisitor by
I hereby record those events which took place in and around the city of Lazet relating to the assassination of our venerable Brother Augustin Duese in the year of the Incarnate Word, 1318.
Freedom Ride by
Robbie knows bad things happen in Walgaree. But it’s nothing to do with him. That’s just the way the Aborigines have always been treated. In the summer of 1965 racial tensions in the town are at boiling point, and something headed Walgaree’s way will blow things apart. It’s time for Robbie to take a stand. Nothing will ever be the same.
The Witch of Blackbird Pond by
Kit has grown up on the island of Barbados, loved and pampered by her grandfather. But after his death Kit must leave. It's not proper for a sixteen-year-old girl to live by herself. She's heard stories about her aunt and uncle who live in the colony of Connecticut. These are the only relatives Kit knows of. so, alone and desperate, she sets sail to live with them in New England.
One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich by
The Gulag, the Stalinist labour camps to which millions of Russians were condemned for political deviation were brought to attention by Solzhenitsyn in this novel. His story of one typical day as experienced by prisoner Ivan Denisovich Shukhov is sufficient to describe the entire world of the Soviet camps.