English Books And Novels

  Jean-Baptiste Baratte, an engineer of modest origin, arrives in the city in 1785, charged by the King’s minister with emptying the overflowing cemetery of Les Innocents, a ancient site whose stench is poisoning the neighborhood’s air and water and leaving a vile taste in its inhabitants’ food. At first the ambitious Baratte sees his work as a chance to clear the burden of history, a fitting task for a modern man of reason. But before long he begins to suspect that the destruction of the cemetery might be a prelude to both his own demise and that of the monarchy. Baratte expects the task to be unpleasant but cannot foresee the dramas and calamities it will trigger, or the incident that will transform his life. As unrest against the court of Louis XVI mounts, the engineer realizes that the future he had planned may no longer be the one he wants. His assignment becomes a year of relentless work, exhuming of mummified corpses and listening to the chants of priests, a year of assault ...

  Depicting both the horrors of the Holocaust and the lifetime of emptiness that pursues a survivor, 'The Shawl' and 'Rosa' recall the psychological and emotional scars of those who suffered at the hands of the Nazis. Genres Short Stories Fiction Historical Fiction Holocaust Jewish American War

  Heart of Darkness, a novel by Joseph Conrad, was originally a three-part series in Blackwood's Magazine in 1899. It is a story within a story, following a character named Charlie Marlow, who recounts his adventure to a group of men onboard an anchored ship. The story told is of his early life as a ferry boat captain. Although his job was to transport ivory downriver, Charlie develops an interest in investing an ivory procurement agent, Kurtz, who is employed by the government. Preceded by his reputation as a brilliant emissary of progress, Kurtz has now established himself as a god among the natives in “one of the darkest places on earth.” Marlow suspects something else of Kurtz: he has gone mad. A reflection on corruptive European colonialism and a journey into the nightmare psyche of one of the corrupted,  Heart of Darkness  is considered one of the most influential works ever written.

  With Commentary by E. M. Forster, Dorothy Parker, H. L. Mencken, Lewis Mumford, Rebecca West, Sherwood Anderson, Malcolm Cowley, Alfred Kazin, Constance Rourke, and Mark Schorer. Main Street , the story of an idealistic young woman's attempts to reform her small town, brought Lewis immediate acclaim when it was published in 1920. It remains one of the essential texts of the American scene. Lewis Mumford observed: "In  Main Street  an American had at last written of our life with something of the intellectual rigor and critical detachment that had seemed so cruel and unjustified [in Charles Dickens and Matthew Arnold]. Young people had grown up in this environment, suffocated, stultified, helpless, but unable to find any reason for their spiritual discomfort. Mr. Lewis released them." Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951), was born in Sauk Centre, Minnesota and graduated from Yale in 1907. In 1930 he became the first American recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.  Main S...

  First published in 1905,  The House of Mirth  shocked the New York society it so deftly chronicles, portraying the moral, social and economic restraints on a woman who dared to claim the privileges of marriage without assuming the responsibilities. Lily Bart, beautiful, witty and sophisticated, is accepted by 'old money' and courted by the growing tribe of nouveaux riches. But as she nears thirty, her foothold becomes precarious; a poor girl with expensive tastes, she needs a husband to preserve her social standing, and to maintain her in the luxury she has come to expect. Whilst many have sought her, something - fastidiousness or integrity- prevents her from making a 'suitable' match.

  Lawrence Durrell's series of four novels set in Alexandria, Egypt during the 1940s. The lush and sensuous series consists of  Justine (1957)  Balthazar (1958)  Mountolive (1958)  Clea (1960). Justine ,  Balthazar  and  Mountolive  use varied viewpoints to relate a series of events in Alexandria before World War II. In  Clea , the story continues into the years during the war. One L.G. Darley is the primary observer of the events, which include events in the lives of those he loves, and those he knows. In  Justine , Darley attempts to recover from and put into perspective his recently ended affair with a woman.  Balthazar  reinterprets the romantic perspective he placed on the affair and its aftermath in  Justine , in more philosophical and intellectual terms. Mountolive  tells a story minus interpretation, and  Clea  reveals Darley's healing, and coming to love another woman.

  New edition of a classic adventure novel and one of the most startling, highly praised stories in English literature - a brilliant chronicle of two sensitive children's violent voyage from innocence to experience. After a terrible hurricane levels their Jamaican estate, the Bas-Thorntons decide to send their children back to the safety and comfort of England. On the way their ship is set upon by pirates, and the children are accidentally transferred to the pirate vessel. Jonsen, the well-meaning pirate captain, doesn't know how to dispose of his new cargo, while the children adjust with surprising ease to their new life. As this strange company drifts around the Caribbean, events turn more frightening and the pirates find themselves increasingly incriminated by the children's fates. The most shocking betrayal, however, will take place only after the return to civilization. The swift, almost hallucinatory action of Hughes's novel, together with its provocative insight ...