The Sun Also Rises was Hemingway's first novel to be published, though there is his novella The Torrents of Spring which was published earlier in the same year. The novel describes, expressed through the voice of Jake Barnes, a short period of social life that ranges from Paris to locations in Spain. One might say that the action occurs in Pamplona, Spain with the annual festival of San Fermin and its running of bulls and subsequent days of bullfights, but one can easily argue that the real interest of the novel is in its portrayal of the group to which Barnes is a part and how he details their anxieties, frailties, hopes, and frustrations.

Constance van der Welcke returns to the Hague and the bosom of her family after a twenty year exile caused by a marital indiscretion and divorce from the Dutch ambassador to Rome. Wanting only to be accepted into the family circle again, Constance and her husband Henri find they are the target of gossip that pulls the family apart. As the facade of the family circle begins to crack, the psychological foibles of the brothers and sisters begin to reveal themselves. Small Souls is the first of four novels that make up the quartet known as 'The Books of the Small Souls', the master work of the foremost author of modern Dutch literature, Louis Couperus...

Paradoxically, it is variety that unites the tales you are about to read. They take place in widely separated countries and historical periods, and their outcomes—fortunate or tragic—cannot always be predicted with accuracy. The characters too speak with varied voices; even the narrative voice is not uniform, for the author often frames story within a story, using a character in one tale to narrate another. The reader will sometimes feel as though the author is extending an invitation to enter his workshop to observe him at his trade and admire his craftsmanship...

Everything changed when Ordynov, a secluded young thinker, stepped out of his old lodgings in search of another corner. The ailing landlord watched from a distance, while the beautiful landlady came close... A tale of love, murder, and sorcery, The Landlady is one of a kind among Fyodor Dostoevsky's works. Written at the age of 26 before he was sent to Siberia, preceded only by The Double and Poor Folk, this novella draws inspiration from Russian folklore as well as stories by Pushkin and Gogol. It anticipates some of the writer's most important ideas to be developed in his later writings.

This is Aldous Huxley's first collection of short stories, which consists of 6 stories and a play. Characters in the play, "Happy Families", read by the following volunteers: Aston: ToddHW Aston's Dummy: James R. Hedrick Topsy: czandra Topsy's Dummy: czandra Sir Jasper: Marvin Larson Belle: Dawn Sutton Henrika: Rachel Costello Cain: Krista Zaleski Stage Direction: Krista Zaleski

This beautifully written book imagines the lives of Igraine and Uther Pendragon before the legend of Arthur began.

A story of love and innocence, by one of India's most loved novelist/ poets of the 20th century, the mentor of Rabindrath Tagore.

This is a collection of 8 works by Clarence Darrow written between 1893 and 1917. Clarence Darrow was most noted in his time as an enormously successful defense attorney. Consider that he was the defense attorney at the Scopes Monkey Trial and at the "trial of the century", the Bobby Franks murder trial. He, like Robert G. Ingersoll, William Cowper Brann , William Jennings Bryan , Daniel Webster, etc. was also known as a world-class orator. These collected 8 works include speeches, essays, and public debates. The man had a silver tongue... sharpened to a rapier's edge!

The novel “Settlers of the Marsh” is a foundational work of realism in Canadian fiction. Its author, Frederick Philip Grove, a German immigrant, settled in Manitoba and wrote vividly about the struggles of settlers in the early multi-ethnic communities of western Canada. The protagonist of “Settlers of the Marsh” is a Swedish immigrant who wrestles in stoic solitude with the hardships of pioneer life, only to discover that he has been catastrophically naïve about relations with women. Some early reviewers objected that the novel’s treatment of sexuality was “indecent,” but the book is today seen as a cornerstone of Canadian literature. - Summary by Bruce Pirie

Twelve of H. G. Wells' early short stories originally printed in various magazines and papers. His earlier works delve into the human condition, looked at through a humorous lens. Love, romance, infidelity, parenthood and more are the subjects of the various stories, often told with a wry twist of humor.

Home from college, Lynn is heartbroken to find her childhood friend Mark, has fallen away from his faith in God. After making some poor life choices, Mark is caught up in a local scandal. Billy, one of the bright young boys from Lynn's Sunday School class, is determined to clear Mark's name. But at what cost? And will Billy's betrayal hurt the people he's trying to protect? - Summary by Emily Grace

Aldous Huxley is best known as a philosopher and novelist – notably as the author of Brave New World. He also wrote poetry, short stories and critical essays. Most of his work is somewhat dark and mildly sardonic, partly because he came of age just after World War I, when all of Europe was in a state of cultural, political and social confusion. His novel, Crome Yellow, is a prime example. Mortal Coils includes four short stories and a play, including one of the author’s most famous short works: "The Gioconda Smile." - Summary by Kirsten Wever

An impossibly imperturbable old sea captain, with two hundred Chinese labourers aboard his steamship, faces a terrifying typhoon for the first time in his life. When emigré Austrian peasant Yanko is washed up on an English beach, he encounters widespread hostility from the local people on account of his foreign ways, and only in time earns a meagre measure of grudging respect. Captain Falk — seemingly half man, half tug boat - desperately loves a shapely young woman, but standing in the way of any possible match is a most delicate question indeed...

Ms. Pinckney says in her "Forward" to this book the following: "It is against this background of the world need that Mrs. Alice Dunbar-Nelson's book is seen to have peculiar significance to the colored race in America. Hers is the first attempt I have known of directly on the part of any Negro to frame a speaker composed entirely of literature produced by black men and women, and about black men and women, and embodying the finest spiritual ideals of the Negro race." And in addition, Alice Dunbar-Nelson includes some very meaningful support from some Caucasian writers.

Set in the stifling world of turn of the century Dutch aristocracy, the second volume of the 'Books of the Small Souls' quartet, begins where the first volume ended. Constance Van der Welcke has returned to The Hague after her twenty-year exile for a scandalous affair in Rome. Hoping for acceptance by her family and the society of her former 'set', Constance and her husband Henri are now estranged from the family and have given up all ambitions of acceptance in society. Determined to live quietly, they form new friendships - Henri with Constance's niece, Marianne, and Constance with Henri's eccentric old friend, Max Brauws - that lead each of them on a journey of self-discovery...

E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India is widely acclaimed as one of the hundred best literary works of 20th century. Time magazine rates it among the top 100 English-language novels of all time. A Passage to India is set at the moment when the lasting supremacy of the British Raj could no longer be taken for granted. Imperial power had been effectively supported by old and deep-seated religious and cultural conflicts between India’s Hindu and Muslim populations, which divided and sapped the local powers ultimately needed to overthrew imperial rule in 1947...

Prince D.S. Mirsky was a prominent Russian literary historian who spent several years in emigration, teaching at the University of London. This book, published in 1925, presents a brief and incisive overview of Russian literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was written in English and meant to be accessible to the general reading public in the West. - Summary by Kazbek

“The Chouans” was the first novel published under Balzac’s own name . It became the first book in the great work of his lifetime — the novel series titled “The Human Comedy.” Balzac was impressed by the writings of Sir Walter Scott. Scott made Scottish history come alive by creating fictions that used real history as backdrop. Balzac’s novel is set in 1799 — the year that Napoleon became First Consul of France. In the far west of France , anti-revolutionary sentiment still simmered...

The third book in Louis Couperus' Books of the Small Souls quartet. The Twilight of the Souls begins some months after the conclusion of The Later Life. Constance Van der Welcke and her husband Henri have settled down to a quieter life in the Hague, sister Bertha and her daughter Marianne have moved to the country, and Mama Van Lowe's Sunday evenings are no longer the gatherings of the whole family they once were. But the family's troubles are far from over. The story shifts to the trials and tribulations of Constance's brothers, Gerrit and Ernst, and Bertha's son and daughter, Henri and Emilie, who have fled together to Paris. - Summary by Phil Benson

'A Man Could Stand Up' is the third, and culminating, part of Ford Madox Ford's 'Parade's End' tetralogy of novels, which begins with 'Some Do Not', followed by 'No More Parades', and whose coda would be 'Last Post'. While 'A Man Could Stand Up' can be appreciated on its own, it will make far better sense to a listener or reader already familiar with its predecessors. It's at once a war story , a story of immense upheaval in social mores, and a passionate, if extraordinarily restrained, love story. Just like, say, Virginia Woofe's 'Mrs Dalloway', published the previous year, Ford's novel is pitched at readers who are assumed to be highly literate and well-educated.

When a few men decide to go for looking for gold in the outback of Australia, days of extreme heat with no water and no rain in sight, make them turn back and give up the trip; all but two of them that is, Smith and Mandeville, aka the "Baker. Smith and Baker decide to tough it out and go after their dreams, chancing their lives to find "their luck". Little do they realize, they will put their lives in grave danger, and this quest for gold will turn into a nightmare. Life threatening food and water deprivation is a constant issue, and they had no idea they would stumble upon an unknown tribe of prehistoric white men that are head hunters and cannibals...

Aspiring academic Andrei Kovrin, while summering in the countryside per the advice of a physician, is haunted by the apparition of a black monk that appears only to him and encourages him in his intellectual pursuits. Although Kovrin is the only one who can see the apparition, the monk assures him that, even if he were a creation of the imagination, he would still be a thing of nature and consequently real. Chekhov uses this vehicle for a gothic exploration into scholarly obsession and madness. - Summary by Daniel Davison

The Ordeal of Mark Twain analyzes the literary progression of Samuel L. Clemens and attributes shortcomings to Clemens' mother and wife. The Encyclopaedia Britannica says, Brooks' work "was a psychological study attempting to show that Twain had crippled himself emotionally and curtailed his genius by repressing his natural artistic bent for the sake of his Calvinist upbringing." Also, Brooks says, his literary spirit was sidelined as "...Mark Twain was inducted into the Gilded Age, launched, in defiance of that instinct which only for a few years was to allow him inner peace, upon the vast welter of a society blind like himself, like him committed to the pursuit of worldly success...

This first collection of the correspondence of Oscar Wilde begins with the Irish playwright's earliest extant letter, thanking his mother for the hamper she had sent to him at school. It includes letters about his travels in Italy, his American lecture tour, the staging of his first play , arrangements for the publication of a friend's poetry collection, and exchanges in the press with artist James McNeill Whistler. The letters, some of which have been excerpted or redacted, are sourced from auction catalogues, newspapers, biographies, and other texts in the public domain...

A minor lord is killed and a rich socialite is missing, and they are both tied to the enigmatic Kazmah the Dream Reader, who has also disappeared. New Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Red Kerry scours post-WWI London looking for clues, encountering rich Bohemians, theatre people, landed gentry, sailors, and, stereotypically, sinister Chinese people and sneaky Jews. The story is based on the history of Billie Carleton, a young English actress whose scandalous lifestyle ended with her death from a drug overdose in 1918. - Summary by TriciaG

The eight short stories that comprise South Sea Tales are powerful tales that vividly evoke the early 1900’s colonial South Pacific islands. Tales of hurricanes, missionaries, brotherhood and seafaring are intertwined with enslavement, savagery, and lawless trading to expose the often-barbarous history of the South Pacific islands. You will also gain unsparing insight into the life, culture and relations between natives and Westerners during this period. If you like nautical and sea adventures, if you are interested in the history of the South Pacific islands, and especially if you want to read gripping tales set in the exotic lands, then this book will be perfect for you...

"And God tempted Abraham and said unto him: take Isaac, thine only son, whom thou lovest and go to the land Moriah and sacrifice him there on a mountain which I shall show thee. Genesis 22:1" Soren Kierkegaard wondered how Abraham made the movement of faith that made him the father of faith mentioned in the New Testament . Fear and Trembling is the product of his wonder. Work out your salvation in fear and trembling . One-third of "Fear and Trembling" was translated in 1923 by Lee Hollander in the University of Texas Bulliten. This book has already been read in parts in the Short Nonfiction Collection but I think some might be interested in listening to it as a complete reading.

This is the first volume of Thomas Jefferson's public and private writings edited and compiled by his oldest grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph and published three years after the president's death. There are a total of four volumes in Randolph's set. Summary by Joel Kindrick.

From the noted artist and father of the celebrated Irish poet William Butler Yeats comes this short collection of essays on the literary life of their age. Included are two short biographical remembrances of the author. - Summary by Larry Wilson

Bosanquet was secretary or amanuensis to James from 1907 to his death in 1916. She wrote this essay eight years after his death as part of the series Hogarth Essays by the Hogarth Press. It is a narrative of her experience of his methods, values, and life. - Summary by David Wales

"The Rover: A weekly magazine of tales, poetry and engravings, original and selected" was a magazine started in 1843 by Seba Smith and Lawrence Labree. The editors aimed at a high quality standard in their selection of short stories and poetry. Every half-year, the 26 weekly issues were also published under a bound compilation. This is the very first issue, containing 7 short stories. - Summary by Sonia

We present here ten stories and poems from the master of horror, Mr. Edgar Allan Poe. They are our personal favorites. We hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoy presenting them to you. - Summary by cavaet