England) Folio Society (London
2) The Odyssey
Author
Series
Lexile measure
1130L
Language
English
Description
Odysseus--soldier, sailor, trickster, and everyman--is one of the most recognizable characters in world literature. His arduous, ten-year journey home after the Trojan War, the subject of Homer's Odyssey, is the most accessible tale to survive from ancient Greece, and its impact is still felt today across many different cultures. This lively free verse translation, from one of today's leading Homeric scholars, preserves the clarity and simplicity...
Author
Lexile measure
1130L
Language
English
Formats
Description
Set against the sweeping panoply of Napoleons invasion of Russia, "War and Peace" is often considered the greatest novel ever written.
By turns philosophical and poetic, this sweeping Russian novel recounts the events surrounding the French invasion of Russia during the Napoleonic era. It covers the years between 1805 and 1813 and is based on extensive historical research. Readers are introduced to the Bolkonskys, the Rostovs, the Kuragins, and the...
4) Bleak House
Author
Series
Lexile measure
1180L
Language
English
Formats
Description
Bleak House, Dickens's most daring experiment in the narration of a complex plot, challenges the reader to make connections - between the fashionable and the outcast, the beautiful and the ugly, the powerful and the victims. Nowhere in Dickens's later novels is his attack on an uncaring society more imaginatively embodied, but nowhere either is the mixture of comedy and angry satire more deftly managed. Bleak House defies a single description. It...
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Series
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
A retelling of the medieval poem about a group of travelers on a pilgrimage to Canterbury and the tales they tell each other. With their astonishing diversity of tone and subject matter, The Canterbury Tales have become one of the touchstones of medieval literature. Translated here into modern English, these tales of a motley crowd of pilgrims drawn from all walks of life-from knight to nun, miller to monk-reveal a picture of English life in the fourteenth...
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Series
Language
English
Description
"Since its publication five decades ago, William L. Shirer's monumental study of Hitler's empire has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of the twentieth century's blackest hours. A worldwide bestseller with millions of copies in print, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich offers an unparalleled and thrillingly told examination of how Adolf Hitler nearly succeeded in conquering the world. Here, in a thoughtful new introduction for the fiftieth...
7) The Republic
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Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
"The Republic is Plato's masterwork. It was written 2,400 years ago and remains one of the most widely read books in the world, famous for both the richness of its ideas and the virtuosity of its writing. Presented as a dialogue between Plato's teacher Socrates and various interlocutors, it is an exhortation to study philosophy, inviting its readers to reflect on the choices we must make if we are to live the best life available to us. This complex,...
Author
Series
Everyman's library volume 252
Language
English
Description
Tony and Brenda Last and their son, John Andrew, live an idyllic life in the huge Victorian house that is the symbol of Tony's family pride. The chance arrival of a penniless scrounger irrevocably shatters the gentle balance of their lives.
Author
Series
Lexile measure
800L
Language
English
Formats
Description
While the French Army in Indo-China is grappling with the Vietnamese, back in Saigon a young and high-minded American named Pyle begins to channel economic aid to a "Third Force." Caught between French colonialists and the Vietnamese, Fowler, the narrator and seasoned foreign correspondent, observes: "I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused." As young Pyle's policies blunder on into bloodshed, the older man finds it...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
John Harmon returns to England as his father's heir. Believed drowned under suspicious circumstances--a situation convenient to his wish for anonymity--John evaluates Bella Wilfer whom he must marry to secure his inheritance. The story is filled with colorful Victorian characters and incidents -- the faded aristocrats and parvenus gathered at the Veneering's dinner table, Betty Higden and her terror of the workhouse and the greedy plottings of Silas...
Author
Language
English
Description
The History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
• New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars
• Biographies of the authors
• Chronologies...
Author
Pub. Date
1983
Physical Desc
8 volumes : illustrations, maps ; 26 cm
Language
English
Description
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire tells the story of the Roman Empire from the time of Trajan in the third century to the fall of Constantinople in the sixteenth. Along the way Gibbon describes not only the internal issues that arise within the empire, but also the various outside forces that contribute to its fall: the Goths, Huns, Persians, Muslims, and many others. He also has two highly controversial (at the time, and still...
15) The histories
Author
Language
English
Description
Widely referred to as the "Father of History", Greek Historian Herodotus lived during the 5th century BC and "The Histories" is generally accepted as the first work of historical literature in Western Civilization. Departing from the ancient Homeric tradition of treating historical subjects as epically romantic figures, Herodotus instead approached his subjects with a systematic method of investigation. "The Histories" of Herodotus describe the important...
16) The big sleep
Author
Series
Lexile measure
660L
Language
English
Formats
Description
Marlowe takes on an assignment from the Sternwood family: the child-woman Carmen, the sultry Frances, and the ancient General too far past his prime to cope with his daughters' brand of trouble. Stepping in to deal with a case of blackmail, Marlowe follows a trail that leads him into a landscape littered with murder and deception.
Author
Series
Pub. Date
1988
Physical Desc
6 volumes : illustrations ; 25 cm
Language
English
Description
This comprehensive anthology provides every single one of Shakespeare's tragedy plays, from the earliest "Titus Andronicus" to "Coriolanus." Follow one of the greatest love stories ever told in perhaps his most widely known play, "Romeo and Juliet." In this classic tale, the two young lovers are members of feuding families, but they believe that their love transcends their families' hate. In "Othello," a Moorish general in the Venetian army is destroyed...
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Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Eight years ago Moose Malloy and cute little redhead Velma were getting married - until someone framed Malloy for armed robbery. Now his stretch is up and he wants Velma back. PI Philip Marlowe meets Malloy one hot day in Hollywood and, out of the generosity of his jaded heart, agrees to help him.
20) Lord Jim: a tale
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
"Jim, first mate on board the Patna, is a simple and sensitive young man who dreams of becoming a hero. But when the Patna threatens to sink, Jim takes the cowardly way out and jumps clear. His unbearable guilt and shame at having violated the unwritten moral code of the sea leads him to become an exile in a remote Malay state. There he fashions a new identity for himself as the benevolent ruler of an exotic land--until his idyll is interrupted."...