Lost in the depths of the forest without food, fire, weapons, or compass, what is a young man to do? This "modern-day" Robinson Crusoe has to dig deep and develop skills he didn't know he had.

It tells the burlesque adventures of Tartarin, a local hero of Tarascon, a small town in southern France, whose invented adventures and reputation as a swashbuckler finally force him to travel to a very prosaic Algiers in search of lions. Instead of finding a romantic, mysterious Oriental fantasy land, he finds a sordid world suspended between Europe and the Middle East. And worst of all, there are no lions left.

This is a collection of short stories by Alphonse Daudet. The stories paint an incredibly vivid picture of life in continental Europe before the turn of the last century. The settings of the stories also take us all over France, Belgium, and Germany, with little excursions also outside of those countries. The spirit of Europe of the 19th century is palpable, and described in a way few writers can. - Summary by Carolin

Few stories of shipwreck and survival can equal that of the 16th century Spaniard Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca who, cast ashore near present day (USA) Tampa Bay, Florida, in 1528, survived eight years of hand-to-mouth existence among the Indians of the South and Southwest, and who walked on foot across the plains to the Pacific Coast, arriving in Mexico in 1536. In 1542 he published an account of his adventures, and the present reading is based on Fanny Bandelier’s English translation of that text...

A series of six volumes of Wheels anthologies was produced by members of the Sitwell family between 1916 and 1922. The third volume, published in 1918, contains poems by Aldous Huxley, Arnold James, Iris Tree, Sherard Vines, and Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell.

Amanda McKittrick Ros, a Northern Irish writer, did for the novel what William McGonagall did for poetry and Florence Foster Jenkins for the coloratura voice. She published a number of novels (all at her own expense) and in addition to being a novelist was a poet, her best known being 'Visiting Westminster Abbey' which beginsHoly Moses!Take a look!Flesh decayed in every nook!Some rare bits of brain lie here,Mortal loads of beef and beer.C.S. Lewis, J.R. Tolkien and The Inklings were admirers and held competitions to see who could read her work for the longest time whist keeping a straight face...

This is a volume of five short stories for Children. Each of them contains a cute little learning experience and a happy end. - Summary by Carolin

RESPECTABILITY, n. The offspring of a liaison between a bald head and a bank account. BEAUTY, n. The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband. LITIGANT, n. A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones. If these caustic definitions catch your fancy, you'd enjoy The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. He was a columnist with the San Francisco News Letter, a weekly paper which was a business publication aimed at the corporate sector. However, it had a column entitled Town Crier which featured satirical asides and comments in a lighter vein...

Ambrose Bierce (1842 – 1914?), satirist, critic, poet, short story writer and journalist. His fiction showed a clean economical style often sprinkled with subtle cynical comments on human behaviour. Nothing is known of his death, as he went missing while an observer with Pancho Villa’s army in 1913/14. (Summaries by Peter Yearsley)The Ways of Ghosts: Stories of encounters with the ghosts of the dead and dying. The spirits of the dead reach out to the living, to pass on a message or to pursue a killer...

Ambrose Bierce (1842 – 1914?), best known as journalist, satirist and short story writer. Cynical in outlook, economical in style; Bierce vanished while an observer with Pancho Villa’s army. Four grotesque short stories about murder within the family, seen through the gently innocent eyes of family members … usually the murderer himself.My favorite murder (00:23)Oil of Dog (20:13)An Imperfect Conflagration (29:32)The Hypnotist (37:14)

Witty, opinionated alphabetical examples of what Bierce considered poor (American) English and advice on alternatives – entertaining, thought-provoking, occasionally outdated but so interesting to see how style and taste have changed.

24 short stories in fairly typical Bierce fashion - ghostly, spooky, to be read (or listened to) in the dark, perhaps with a light crackling fire burning dimly in the background. Stories of ghosts, apparitions, and strange, inexplicable occurrences are prevalent in these tales, some of which occur on or near Civil War fields of battle, some in country cottages, and some within urban areas. Can Such Things Be? implies and relates that anything is possible, at any time.

At the outset of the American Civil War, [the writer Ambrose] Bierce enlisted in the Union Army's 9th Indiana Infantry Regiment....In February 1862 he was commissioned First Lieutenant, and served on the staff of General William Babcock Hazen as a topographical engineer, making maps of likely battlefields. Bierce fought at the Battle of Shiloh (April 1862), a terrifying experience that became a source for several later short stories and the memoir, "What I Saw of Shiloh". In June 1864, he sustained a serious head wound at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, and spent the rest of the summer on furlough, returning to active duty in September. He was discharged from the army in January 1865.

These stories detail the lives of soldiers and civilians during the American Civil War. This is the 1909 edition. The 1909 edition omits six stories from the original 1891 edition; these six stories are added to this recording (from an undated English edition). The 1891 edition is entitled In The Midst Of Life; Tales Of Soldiers And Civilians. The Wikipedia entry for the book uses the title Tales of Soldiers and Civilians. Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842 – after December 26, 1913) was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist...

Civilization, Immortality, the Death Penalty, these are just a few of the essays enclosed in this collection, A Cynic Looks At Life. Written by Ambrose Bierce, these essays continue to be thought provoking, offering a valid outlook on life.

LibriVox volunteers bring you 8 recordings of An Interpretation by Ambrose Bierce. This was the Weekly Poetry project for September 22, 2013.

Ambrose Bierce's collection of short parables, published under the pen name of Dod Grile, is similar to Aesop's Fables. This compilation is comprised of "Fables of Zambri, the Parsee," "Brief Seasons of Intellectual Dissipation" and the "Divers Tales," all of which were first serialized in the magazine "FUN." A great read for any lover of short stories or poetry with faraway lands, talking animals and supernatural occurrences!

MANUAL OF SURGERY, OXFORD MEDICAL PUBLICATIONSBY ALEXIS THOMSON, F.R.C.S.Ed.PREFACE TO SIXTH EDITION Much has happened since this Manual was last revised, and many surgical lessons have been learned in the hard school of war. Some may yet have to be unlearned, and others have but little bearing on the problems presented to the civilian surgeon. Save in its broadest principles, the surgery of warfare is a thing apart from the general surgery of civil life, and the exhaustive literature now available on every aspect of it makes it unnecessary that it should receive detailed consideration in a manual for students...

This is a volume of poetry by the influential Lebanese American author Ameen Rihani. In these poems, the author playfully introduces the American public of the early 1920's to the environment in which he grew up, embellishing the poems with folklore and fairy tale romance. - Summary by Carolin

Known as the Godmother of Egyptology, Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards traveled through Egypt at a time when archeology was in its infancy in that country and literally anyone with a spade or trowel could go exploring through the magnificent, untouched ruins. She was one of a group of amazing Victorian women who ignored the repressive 19th century attitudes toward female scientists and defied society to follow their passion for history. A Thousand Miles up the Nile was first published in 1877. The title refers to the approximate distance from Alexandria to the Second Cataract of the Nile river, a journey that the author undertook over the course of a year in Egypt...

Amelia B. Edwards wrote this historical travelogue in in 1873. The book describes her travels through a relatively un-visited area in the South Tyrol district of Italy. The Dolomites are a part of that most famous of mountain chains, the Alps.In this book, the Writer and her friend and companion, L., travel from Southern Italy, having over-wintered there, to visit the Dolomite district. Her chatty style, dry sense of humor, accuracy of facts, and sympathy for humanity set her works apart. The slice of Victorian British life presented is quite captivating...

The Maid of Maiden lane is a wonderful love story in which Mrs. Barr intertwines the hot political and social issues that were occurring in America during the last decade of the 18th century with an excellent love story plot. Some of those issues include: the moral dilemma and debate over the French Revolution, and how that event touched the lives of the immigrants in America; the prejudices between the immigrants from England, and those from France or Holland, and how those animosities affected the ordinary lives of the people; and the political debate over titles, foreign policy, and such things(for example)as where the capital of the nation was to reside, New York or Philadelphia...