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The Puritans thought Hester Prynne's crime was unforgiveable. She was convicted, imprisoned -- and then forced to wear, forever, a public reminder of her sin. The Scarlet Letter. The Letter was unending punishment: it set Hester apart from society, it tormented her days and haunted her soul. But the Letter haunted others, as well. Its mystery turned Roger Chillingworth from a gentle healer into a man driven by revenge. Its meaning burned into Rev....
3) Dracula
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As fledgling English lawyer Jonathan Harker treks into the Carpathian Mountains to complete a real estate transaction, frightened peasants warn him of horrible dangers that await him. Harker, terrified by eerie events along the way, finally meets his client, Count Dracula, a tall, gaunt old man with a surprisingly powerful handshake. Harker soon realises that he is a prisoner in Draculas sumptuously furnished castle a castle strangely devoid of mirrors....
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Dr. Manette is released from the Bastille after eighteen years' confinement, which has driven him to the edge of madness. He is "recalled to life" by the joyous reconciliation with his daughter Lucie, and returns with her to England. But Manette's maniacal obsession with shoemaking, developed during his long incarceration, is not quite over, for there are dark secrets surrounding his "crime" that have yet to emerge; secrets involving the reprehensible...
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In Jules Verne's "Around the World in 80 Days", Phileas Fogg, a solitary British gentleman of the Victorian era wagers that he can circumnavigate the globe in under 80 days. With his french manservant, Passepartout, Fogg embarks on a great adventure taking him through Egypt, India, the South Pacific, San Francisco and the Great Plains of the United States. But will he succeed and collect on his bets? One of the best-loved works by the French adventure...
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"Assembling at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, a group of pilgrims begin their journey to Canterbury Cathedral. To entertain themselves on the long road, their host suggests that they regale each other with stories, with the teller of the best tale set to earn a free supper. The pilgrims correspond to all sections of medieval society, from the crusading knight to the drunken cook, and their tales span a range of genres, including the comic ribaldry and...
7) Emma
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Emma's opening sentence, which describes the titular heroine's many advantages, is loaded with foreboding. Discomfort and vexation lie on the horizon, triggered by her penchant for matchmaking. Emma's latest scheme involves finding a suitable husband for ingenue Harriet Smith, and to that end she persuades the latter to reject good-natured farmer Robert Martin, despite a mutual attraction. Harriet must set her sights higher, she exhorts, fixing on...
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In the year 1792, Sir Percy and Lady Marguerite Blakeney are the darlings of British society-he is known as one of the wealthiest and most fashionable men in England, and a dimwit; she is French, a stunning fomer actress, and "the cleverest woman in Europe" - and they find themselves at the center of a deadly political intrigue. The Reign of Terror controls France and everyday, aristocrats in Paris fall victim to Madame la Guillotine. Only one man...
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Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera, first published in 1910, remained a perennial favorite throughout the twentieth century and into the early 2000s. It was adapted to several popular motion pictures and into one of the most successful stage musicals of all time. Its main character, Erik, is a romantic figure whose appeal reaches across different cultures and times. He is a sensitive soul, an accomplished composer and musician whose great...
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Classic fiction. On the grounds of Misselthwaite, her Uncle Archibald's estate near the Yorkshire moors, nine-year-old Mary Lennox finds a walled-in garden that has been locked securely for years. With the help of Dickon Sowerby, a young local boy who can charm animals, Mary cultivates the garden, an experiences that both improves her health and raises her spirits. Ultimately, the secret garden proves beneficial not only to to Mary, but to her sickly...
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A little girl falls down a rabbit hole and discovers a world of nonsensical and amusing characters. Alice has two adventures: first she follows a rabbit into a curious world where she meets the Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts. In Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (written 1870; orig. U.S. pub. 1899; St. Martin, 1977; Knopf, 1986; Schocken, 1987; Morrow, 1993), she steps through a mirror into a backward world. Davy and the Goblin,...
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The adventures of a boy and a runaway slave as they travel down the Mississippi River on a raft. Originally intended as a sequel to his immensely popular Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn stands on its own as one of America's most important and beloved literary classics. For generations, young and old alike have delighted in the unforgettable adventures of runaways Huck Finn and Jim, a slave. In vivid, often gripping...
13) The Iliad
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When Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey appeared in 2017-revealing the ancient poem in a contemporary idiom that was "fresh, unpretentious and lean" (Madeline Miller, Washington Post)-critics lauded it as "a revelation" (Susan Chira, New York Times) and "a cultural landmark" (Charlotte Higgins, Guardian) that would forever change how Homer is read in English. Now Wilson has returned with an equally revelatory translation of Homer's other great...
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Of all Jane Austen's books, Pride and Prejudice has earned a special place in the hearts of the reading public as her best-loved and most intimately known novel. From its famous opening sentence the story of the Bennet family and of the novel's two protagonists, Elizabeth and Darcy, told with a wit that its author feared might prove 'rather too light and bright, and sparkling', delights its most familiar readers as thoroughly as it does those who...
15) Oedipus the King
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This new translation of the great classic of Ancient Greece starts a cycle of drama recordings by Naxos AudioBooks. The anguished tale of Oedipus, who having solved the riddle of the Sphinx and become King of Thebes, gradually realises the crimes he has, unwittingly, committed, remains a drama of unremitting power 2,500 years after it was written. With full drama values, Naxos AudioBooks the atmosphere of the Greek amphitheatre to the soundworld of...
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The preeminent American slave narrative first published in 1845, Frederick Douglass's Narrative powerfully details the life of the abolitionist form his birth into slavery to his escape to the North in 1838. Douglass tells how he endured the daily physical and spiritual brutalities of his owners and drivers, how he learned to read and write, and how he grew into a man who could only live free or die. In addition to Douglass's classic autobiography,...
17) Tom Sawyer
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A simplified retelling of the classic story of the mischievous 19th-century boy in a Mississippi River town and his friends, Huck Finn and Becky Thatcher, as they run away from home, witness a murder, and find treasure in a cave.
18) Huckleberry Finn
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An abridged version of the classic about a boy living in mid-nineteenth century Missouri as he relates the many adventures that he and his friend, an escaped slave, experience as they travel down the Mississippi River on a raft.
19) Frankenstein
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Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein when she was only eighteen. At once a Gothic thriller, a passionate romance, and a cautionary tale about the dangers of science, Frankenstein tells the story of committed science student Victor Frankenstein. Obsessed with discovering the cause of generation and life and bestowing animation upon lifeless matter, Frankenstein assembles a human being from stolen body parts but; upon bringing it to life, he recoils...