The delightful tale of "le petit Santos" as he dances through the sky above the City of Light at the dawn of the aerial age.A note to the listener: Throughout this story the author makes several references to helpful figures and illustrations. These may be found upon the corresponding pages in the Project Gutenberg e-book.

Surely the most deeply-rooted need of the human soul, its purest aspiration, is for the closest possible union with God. As one turns over the pages of this little work, written by Blessed Albert the Great towards the end of his life, when that great soul had ripened and matured, one feels that here indeed is the ideal of one's hopes. (From the Preface)

This is a volume of poetry written by the sisters Albion Fellows Bacon and Annie Fellows Johnston. Both of the sisters reached quite a level of fame in their own right, Ms Bacon primarily as a social reformer and Ms Johnston as an author of children's books. In this volume of poetry, they bring their two sets of skills together to write beautiful verses. - Summary by Carolin

A shy, introverted young poet. A weekend in a magnificent English country house. A beautiful young lady whom the poet is secretly in love with. An assorted group of guests with varied interests, motives, ambitions and aspirations, and the complex web of history and events that connect all of them. Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley was his first book, published in 1921, when he was just 27 years old. It is typical of many books written during this period by writers like Thomas Love Peacock and Somerset Maugham, centered round a country mansion and the quaint, British tradition of being invited to spend a weekend with a group of people whom one may or may not know...

Though later known for his essays and novels, Aldous Huxley started his writing career as a poet. Published in 1918, The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems is his third compilation of poetry. The volume begins with "The Defeat of Youth", a sequence of twenty-two sonnets that explores irreconcilability of the ideal and the disappointing reality. Jerome Meckier called it “the century’s most successful sonnet sequence, better than Auden’s or Edna St. Vincent Millay’s.” In the rest of the volume, Huxley continues to explore themes started in The Burning Wheel, his first volume of poetry, including vision, blindness, and other contrasts...

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

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

The epigram to this work from Christoher Marlowe applies to the plot of this story: "My men like satyrs grazing on the lawns / Shall with their goat-feet dance the antic hay." The plot follows Huxley and his cohorts in a search for meaning and hope and love in post WWI London.

Fascinating and brilliant at many levels, Huxley's spoof of Lady Ottoline Morrell's famous bohemian gatherings is difficult to categorize. The ironic tone and caricaturish rendering of some characters makes it partly entertaining satire, but intertwined with the irony are a very human love story and much poignant social commentary. Denis Stone (Huxley himself) is a young poet hopelessly enamored of the languid Anne Wimbush, who comes to Priscilla Wimbush's Crome estate for several weeks of intellectual and artistic escape...

Dawson published over thirty books, the one best remembered today probably being the animal adventure story Finn the Wolfhound (1908)…. His own dog Tynagh and her son Gareth, who was described as the largest and finest specimen of his breed to date, served as the models for Tara and Finn in Finn the Wolfhound (1908). This is probably Dawson’s best-remembered and certainly his most frequently reprinted work: Finn, a champion Irish Wolfhound, is taken from England to Australia where he undergoes a series of adventures, being exhibited as a wild animal in a circus and escaping to live in the outback before eventually finding his old master and saving his life.

Novelist and short story writer Alexandr Ivanovich Kuprin was one of the most widely read authors of his time. Nabokov called him the Russian Kipling for his stories about people who are often "neurotic and vulnerable". Many films and radio programs based on his works have been produced. These 15 short stories, typically “artful studies of abnormal states of mind”, were selected from various sources. The collection includes “Easter Day” ; “The Picture” ; “Hamlet” ; “The Last Word” ; “Dogs' Happiness” ; “A Clump of Lilacs” ; “Anathema” ; and “Tempting Providence” ...

While Belgium is bleeding and hoping, while Poland suffers and dreams of liberation, while Serbia is waiting for redemption, there is a little country the soul of which is torn to pieces—a little country that is so remote, so remote that her ardent sighs cannot be heard.It is the country of perpetual sacrifice, the country that saw Abraham build the altar upon which he was ready to immolate his only son, the country that Moses saw from a distance, stretching in beauty and loveliness,—a land of promise never to be attained,—the country that gave the world its symbols of soul and spirit...