The scene is Rome, 935 A.D. Thirty-year-old Tristan, dressed as a pilgrim, overhears a conversation between Basil, the Grand Chamberlain, and Il Gobbo, his assistant. After the two have left, Tristan continues to observe the revelry on the Eve of St. John. Suddenly a chariot containing a beautiful woman stops before him. They exchange words. He kisses her hand. Then she moves on, leaving him to ponder her beauty as he returns to the inn where he is staying. That night he has an enchanting and haunting dream of him together with another woman...

A weary survivor of the Great War, Major Rane Smith wanders in a great ennui amidst the mystical beauties of the fjords of Norway after the War, seeking a spiritual renewal. Deep in the forest he stumbles fatefully upon the strange, almost elvish home of Karl Ingman, an iconoclastic old Ibsen scholar. There Major Smith meets Ingman's two beautiful young daughters and his eldritch wife Rosa, entering into long days of profound dialogue with each member of the family. A rare and exquisite gem of...

The first in a trilogy of the Reconstruction era - The Leopard's Spots (1902), The Clansman (1905), and The Traitor (1907), parts of this novel were incorporated in the 1915 silent movie classic, "The Birth Of A Nation". Set in North Carolina, the book explores the extreme social and racial tensions of the period as Confederates attempt to fight off "reconstructionist" policy, rebuild the war-torn South's economy, and grapple with the rampant "race question" of the day, whether the black and white races can ever live side by side as equals, i...

Dixon lived through Reconstruction, and believed it ranked with the French Revolution in brutality and criminal acts. The Traitor (1907), the final book in his trilogy which also includes The Leopard’s Spots (1902), and The Clansman (1905), spans a two-year period just after Reconstruction (1870-1872), and covers the decline of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina. Dixon, whose father was an early Klan leader, maintained that the original Klan, the “reconstruction Klan” was morally formed in desperation to protect the people from lawlessness, address Yankee brutality, and save southern civilization...

Despised by Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, What Is To Be Done? is a fascinating, sympathetic story of idealistic revolutionaries in mid-nineteenth century tsarist Russia; translator Nathan Haskell Dole affirms in his preface his conviction that it is a thriller that no one can put down once s/he begins it. Its variegated cast of characters includes Vera Pavlovna, a boldly independent woman in a time of great oppression, and the inspirational radical Rakhmetov. The author wrote the novel from the depths of the infamous Peter & Paul Fortress of St...

The daughter of a minister, Deborah Alcock wrote novels on a Christian theme. The Spanish Brothers is set in the sixteenth century and deals with Protestant martyrdom during the Spanish Inquisition. Follow the fortunes of brothers Juan and Carlos as they face the trials and pressures of remaining true to their faith despite hardship, imprisonment, torture and even the agonizing deaths of those dear to them.

Mrs. Warren's Daughter is a continuation, in novel form, of George Bernard Shaw's controversial play, Mrs. Warren's Profession. In the play, Vivie Warren, an emancipated young woman recently graduated from University, disavows her mother Kitty when she learns that Kitty's fortune comes from an ownership share in an international string of brothels, and that Kitty herself was once a prostitute. This novel, written by a world renowned botanist, explorer, and colonial administrator, follows Vivie's personal and political adventures through her involvement in the Suffragist movement and the years leading up to and during World War I.

A fictionalized version of the self-discovery of primitive man, including: fire, cooking, defense and protection, architecture, community, communication, religion, government, and social interaction

Written from the midst of the struggle for female suffrage, Constance Elizabeth Maud’s novel No Surrender (1911) is a Call to Arms. It is a dramatic narrative portraying key players and historical events in the battle for the Vote for Women in Britain. Jenny Clegg is a Lancashire millgirl working long, hard hours under unhealthy conditions in order to support her mother and younger siblings, only to have her father take possession of her savings. In order to seek the rights to improved work conditions, equal pay, and many other human rights, she joins the movement of women seeking political representation...

I am inclined to rank Count Tolstoy not among the realists or naturalists, but rather as an impressionist. He is often careless about accuracy. Numberless incongruities can be pointed out. He is as willing to adopt an anachronism as a medieval painter. I would defy an historian to reconstruct the battle of Austerlitz from Count Tolstoy's description. And yet what a picture of a battle was ever more vivid! It is like a painting where the general impression is true, but a close analysis discovers...

A fine adventure set in 10th-century England at a time when everyday life in north was made hazardous by wars and shifting alliances among Saxon, British and Norse rulers. Thorstein, like his father Swein before him, is a peaceful Norse settler but brave and ready for battle when the time comes. His adventures as child and man will appeal to younger listeners, while older listeners can enjoy a history lesson into the bargain. W. G. Collingwood, artist and antiquarian, set the story in his adopted...

A dark tale of adventure, piracy, murder, and revenge set on a rugged Cornish island in the mid-1700s. Told with the literary excellence to be expected from the author of The Four Feathers, the tale begins with a dangerous youth who sat in the stocks, and a girl named Helen, and a gang of men watching a granite house at the edge of the sea. NOTE: Contains some language that would be considered offensive to the modern ear. (Christine Dufour)

Joel, a crippled boy, cannot play with the children and has nothing to care about. Rabbi Phineas helps him to find something he can do and tells him the reason that he is so kind is because of a boy from his hometown of Nazareth. Soon stories are going about everywhere of miracles, and some people think that the Messiah has come. Then someone tells Joel he should ask for his back to be healed. Will Joel be able to find the miracle worker?

World War I stories, as told through the eyes of someone who was there, but leavened with humour and an eye for the ridiculous side of human nature. This is a collection of McNeile's early short stories, drawing on his experiences with the Royal Engineers Corps. These are the memoirs which describe the experiences that made him who he was, and gave him his famous name "Sapper". The first half is made up of separate stories, the second half is selected accounts from the life of "Jim Denver" in Ypres and France.

Lawrence’s first novel is set in Nethermere (his name for the real-life Eastwood in Nottinghamshire). The plot is narrated by Cyril Beardsall and focuses in particular on the relationship of his sister Lettie with two admirers, the more handsome and down to earth George and the more effete gentleman Leslie. She eventually marries Leslie although she is sexually attracted to George. George marries the conventional Meg and both marriages end in unhappiness. The countryside of the English midlands is beautifully evoked and there is powerful description also of the impact of industrialisation on both town and country.

Following the short story collections, Clog Shop Chronicles and Beckside Lights, John Ackworth completed the adventures of clogger Jabez Clegg and his Beckside cronies with a novel. Jabez's niece, the young and vivacious Doxie Dent, has grown up in 'Lunnon'. Arriving in the Lancashire village that is cloggers home, she delights the villagers with her southern ways, but Jabez remains unimpressed...

The eyes of the Légionnaire, now grown accustomed to the glow of the light, made sure that the figure had not moved, nor was aware of his silent and furtive approach. Two plans of action suggested themselves, one to move behind the foliage to the right and intercept the monk with the lantern should he attempt to flee toward the lights of the house nearby, the other to risk all in a frank statement, a plea for charity and asylum. (A selection from Chapter 1. )

This is a unique sequel to the book Titus: A Comrade of the Cross written in a very different style, though none the less memorable, full of excitement and suspense! The author combines several stories together with great skill and ease, creating tension, making you wonder how things can play out until the very climax is reached. A blind girl and her brother just barely surviving in Egypt, threatened by the slave trade, almost without hope, one day hear about miracles happening in Jerusalem. They fly for their lives, hoping against hope and when they finally get there they find themselves at the foot of the cross. Is it too late? Was all their suffering for nothing?

In 1647, Poland is a land facing complete destruction with fire and sword. It may come from without, as the Tartar hordes swarm over the steppes, turning cities to ash and the Poles to slaves. It may come from within the country’s bounds, as the traitor Hmyelnitski leads the Cossacks in a devastating revolt. Or it may come simply because the nation’s leaders and nobility have become selfish, lazy, and complacent, and are ill-equipped to face the horrors coming their way. If Poland is to survive, it will depend on the heroes who rise in her time of need...

"Never have bright romance and black scandal been more attached to the name of lovely woman," writes a quaint and susceptible chronicler, " than to that of fair Anne Boleyn." Certainly no girl ever flashed so meteor-like above the satellites of an English court, and no woman ever went to her doom under more awful accusations. Since fiction could not be half so amazing as the facts of Anne Boleyn's story, I have kept this novel of her fortunes true to those facts, and have gone, for their knowledge, not only to the histories written of this period, but in many cases to the sources of those histories...

The novel begins with the arrival of a family staking a claim in the black delta of the Deep South. Whitlaw is a brutish sort who bullies his cowering wife into working herself to death. Shortly after giving birth to a strapping man-child, the wife, Portia, dutifully dies. Her sister-in-law, Clio, takes over the responsibilities of raising the young Whitlaw and tending to every need and whim of her brother. Jonathan Jefferson grows up to be shrewd, conniving, and sly, driven – as Trollope thought most Americans were – by a compulsion for financial success...

This is a group of Imaginary Conversations by Walter Savage Landor. It is a series of dialogues of historical and mythical characters. Marcellus and Hannibal, Queen Elizabeth and Cecil, Peter the Great and Alexis, Louis XIV and Father La Chaise, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn are just a few of the delights on offer. Plenty to choose from and some great reads. - Summary by Michele Eaton Cast List: Landor: pjmorgan Marcellus: SirQueezle Hannibal: bala The Surgeon: CharlieOldfield Gaulish...

Marie Antoinette lives a happy life in a glittering court as Queen of France, but that soon changes as the revolution begins. Her son is Louis Charles, and his whole life changes with the death of his parents. But, that life is not what the people of France would expect.

1870's rural Massachusetts communities became famous as “Oldtown” in Harriet Beecher Stowe's 7th novel and national bestseller. Based partially on her husband Rev. Calvin Stowe's childhood memories and other old timers' recollections, this story of growing up in rural New England just after the American Revolution is one of the earliest examples of local color writing in New England. Young Horace Holyoke, the novel's narrator, describes life during the early Federalist years, capturing its many rich ideas, customs, and family lore...

Edward the Confessor is very weak and will die soon. But with no son to succeed him, who will gain the throne? The common folk and loyal Saxon barons in England want Harold, while the Norman barons and the people in Normandy, France want Duke William. They claim Edward gave William the throne. Who is right? Will Britain be Normanized? - Summary by Esther ben Simonides Cast List King Edward the Confessor: Beth ThomasHarold, Earl of Wessex: Adele de PignerollesGyrth, brother to Harold; Cecilia, daughter...

Zola's original French publication, Au Bonheur des Dames , published 1882, is the eleventh novel in his Rougon-Macquart series. This English translation by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, was published in 1886. It's a glitzy, fast paced Parisian drama depicting life at the world's first department store, revealing its many innovative marketing concepts, fashion, glamour, lust, greed, courage, deception, human foibles, and the vision and financial risk-taking that led to a world transformation in shopping -- one that set all the little shop keepers on their heads...

Doctor Syn: A Tale of the Romney Marsh is the first in the series of Doctor Syn novels by Russell Thorndike and inspired a Disney movie called the Scarecrow of Romney Marsh starring Patrick Patrick McGoohan. In this story we are introduced to the complex Christopher Syn, the kindly vicar of the little town of Dymchurch. Dr Syn seems pleasant, but is he much more than he seems? Although published first, this book is the last of the series chronologically. The town is located near the Romney Marsh, an ideal location for smuggling operations...

The sequel to "Chicot the Jester" and final book of the "Valois Romances." This story begins six years after the famed "Duel of the Mignons" between the favorites of the courts of King Henry III and Henry the Duke of Guise . Dumas concludes his historical fiction on the War of the Three Henries while detailing the formation of the Forty-Five Guardsmen , following Chicot the Jester as he stays loyal to the failing regency of King Henry III, and continuing the story of Diana . - Summary by jvanstan

Juan and Carlos Meñaya have longed to find their father ever since they were little. Their dream starts to get lost, though, as they grow up and go separate ways. Juan goes off to war and falls under the influence of a Huguenot prisoner while Carlos becomes a monk and begins to discover the Bible for himself. - Summary by Adele de Pignerolles Dramatis Personae Narration by Adele de Pignerolles and Rapunzelina Carlos, read by Joseph Tabler Juan Rodrigo, read by Aaron Rivera Dolores, read by Sonia Fray...

Preface note by George Gibbs: There were no more vivid episodes in the colonization of the New World than those resulting from the attempts of the French people to gain a permanent foothold on our shores.... The most thrilling chapter in all this history, strangely neglected or overlooked by the romantic writers, is that of the struggle between the Spanish and French colonists for dominion over our own land of Florida. To me, whose profession it is to see pictures in the words of other men and...

The Fortune of the Rougons , originally published in 1871, is the first novel in Émile Zola's monumental twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. In his introduction Zola indicates that this series is intended to demonstrate the interaction of heredity and environment along the lines of natural selection and evolution. While Zola's metascience is questionable, this novel is successful in its analysis of the interaction of momentous social and political events and the everyday lives and aspirations of a provincial society...

Hans of Iceland was written in 1821 and is the very first novel written by young Victor, years before he became the great Hugo. It has all the ingredients of a gothic novel: dreadful murders by the hand of a human monster, a young hero in love with the destitute heroine, royal court-intrigues and rebellious uprising, all set in dungeons, dark towers and the untamed nature of Norway.This audio-book has been recorded as Dramatic Reading with all the voices performed by one single reader, including laughs, sobs, groans, occasional screams and a lot of growls. I hope you will enjoy listening to this adventurous journey just as much as I enjoyed recording it. - Summary by Sonia