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Little Women or, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy is a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888). Written and published in two parts in 1868 and 1869, the novel follows the lives of four sisters — Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy March — (More) and is loosely based on the author’s childhood experiences with her three sisters. The first part of the book was an immediate commercial and critical success and prompted the composition of the book’s second part, also a huge success. Both parts were first published as a single volume in 1880. The book is an unquestioned American classic.

In contrast to Scott’s South Pole expedition, Amundsen’s expedition benefited from good equipment, appropriate clothing, and a fundamentally different primary task (Amundsen did no surveying on his route south and is known to have (More) taken only two photographs). Amundsen had a better understanding of dogs and their handling, and he used of skis more effectively. He pioneered an entirely new route to the Pole, and they returned. In Amundsen’s own words: “Victory awaits him who has everything in order — luck, people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck.” Short accounts by other members of the party are appended.

Mansfield Park is Jane Austen’s 1814 novel focusing on Fanny Price, the daughter of a poor Portsmouth family, who is taken to live with her aunt and uncle Bertram’s family on their estate at the age of ten. Surrounded by her (More) wealthy and privileged cousins, and continually reminded of her lower status by her bullying Aunt Norris, Fanny grows up timid and shy, but with a strong sense of ethics, partly instilled by her kindly cousin Edmund. Fanny’s gratitude and friendship for Edmund gradually grow into love, but the introduction of Mary and Henry Crawford, a captivating sister and brother, into the neighborhood of Mansfield Park, confuses and complicates the affections of the Bertram household. In this recording, LibriVox volunteers lend their voices to the colorful cast of characters in Austen’s classic novel.

The story is about Elinor and Marianne, two daughters of Mr Dashwood by his second wife. They have a younger sister, Margaret, and an older half-brother named John. When their father dies, the family estate passes to John, and the (More) Dashwood women are left in reduced circumstances. The novel follows the Dashwood sisters to their new home, a cottage on a distant relative’s property, where they experience both romance and heartbreak. The contrast between the sisters’ characters is eventually resolved as they each find love and lasting happiness. Through the events in the novel, Elinor and Marianne encounter the sense and sensibility of life and love.

The novel tells the story of Agnes Grey, the daughter of a minister, whose family comes to financial ruin. Desperate to earn the money to care for herself, she takes one of the few jobs allowed to respectable women in the early (More) Victorian era – the role of governess to the children of the wealthy. In working with two different families (the Bloomfields and the Murrays), she comes to learn about the troubles that face a young woman who must try to rein in unruly, spoiled children for a living, and about the ability of wealth and status to destroy social values. After her father’s death, Agnes opens a small school with her mother and finds happiness with a man who loves her for herself. They have three children at the end of the novel, Edward, Agnes and Mary.

Life Is a Dream (Spanish: La vida es sueño) is a Spanish-language play by Pedro Calderón de la Barca. First published in 1635 (or possibly early in 1636),  it is a philosophical allegory regarding the human situation and the (More) mystery of life. The play has been described as “the supreme example of Spanish Golden Age drama”. The story focuses on the fictional Segismundo, Prince of Poland, who has been imprisoned in a tower by his father, King Basilio, following a dire prophecy that the prince would bring disaster to the country and death to the King. Basilio briefly frees Segismundo, but when the prince goes on a rampage, the king imprisons him again, persuading him that it was all a dream.

Nicolai (anglicised Nicholas in this translation) Ivanov, a middle-aged public servant, is unhappy. His wife Anna, disinherited by her family after converting from Judaism, is dying of tuberculosis. He is deeply in debt. And his (More) best friend’s daughter is infatuated with him. Comedy and tragedy ensue in truly Chekhovian fashion. An example of the young Chekhov’s maturing style, Ivanov is an early harbinger of themes that would recur throughout his work.

Anton Chekhov, perhaps better known as a world famous classical playwright for works such as “Uncle Vanya” and “The Cherry Orchard” was also a prolific short story writer. “The Schoolmaster and Other Stories” is one of several of (More) his collections. It’s a compilation of 30 short stories. Some bizarre, some comical but all very interesting.

In a surreal turn-of-the-century London, Gabriel Syme, a poet, is recruited to a secret anti-anarchist taskforce at Scotland Yard. Lucian Gregory, an anarchist poet, is the only poet in Saffron Park, until he loses his temper in (More) an argument over the purpose of poetry with Gabriel Syme, who takes the opposite view. After some time, the frustrated Gregory finds Syme and leads him to a local anarchist meeting-place to prove that he is a true anarchist. Instead of the anarchist Gregory getting elected, the officer Syme uses his wits and is elected as the local representative to the worldwide Central Council of Anarchists. The Council consisting of seven men, each using the name of a day of the week as a code name; Syme is given the name of Thursday…

In her first published mystery, Agatha Christie introduces readers to the heroic detective, Hercule Poirot. This is a classic murder mystery set in the outskirts of Essex. The victim is the wealthy mistress of Styles Court. The (More) list of suspects is long and includes her gold-digging new spouse and stepsons, her doctor, and her hired companion.

Hiring themselves out as “young adventurers willing to do anything” is a smart move for Tommy and Tuppence. All Tuppence has to do is take an all-expenses-paid trip to Paris and pose as someone named Jane Finn. But with the job (More) comes a threat to her life, and the disappearance of her mysterious employer. Now Tuppence’s newest job is playing detective—because if there’s a Jane Finn that really exists, she’s got a secret that’s putting both their lives in danger.

Armadale (1866) by Wilkie Collins is a 19th-century semi-epistolary novel. Some chapters consist of letters between the various characters, while other chapters record the events as the characters perceive them.
The novel has a (More) convoluted plot about two distant cousins both named Allan Armadale. The father of one had murdered the father of the other (the two fathers are also named Allan Armadale). The story starts with a deathbed confession by the murderer in the form of a letter to be given to his baby son when he grows up. Many years are skipped over. The son, mistreated at home, runs away from his mother and stepfather, and takes up a wandering life under the assumed name of Ozias Midwinter. He becomes a companion to the other Allan Armadale, who throughout the novel never discovers the relationship. But Ozias is constantly haunted by feeling that he might harm Allan, first after he reads the letter left for him, and then again after they spend the night on a shipwreck off the Isle of Man–the ship turning out to be the same on which the old murder took place (the murderer locked his victim in a cabin as the boat filled with water). On the boat, Allan has a mysterious dream involving three characters. This dream fills Ozias with foreboding, its three scenes becoming fulfilled in the course of the novel.

The story concerns a young woman called Rachel Verinder who inherits a large Indian diamond, the Moonstone, on her eighteenth birthday.The book is widely regarded as the precursor of the modern mystery and suspense novels. T. S. (More) Eliot called it ‘the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels’. It contains a number of ideas which became common tropes of the genre: a large number of suspects, red herrings, a crime being investigated by talented amateurs who happen to be present when it is committed, and two police officers who exemplify respectively the ‘local bungler’ and the skilled, professional, Scotland Yard detective.

A classic of early literary modernism, Lord Jim tells the story of a young “simple and sensitive character” who loses his honor in a display of cowardice at sea — and of his expiation of that sin against his own “shadowy ideal of (More) conduct” on the remote island of Patusan. The novel, written by Conrad for magazine serialization during an intense and chaotic ten months in 1899 and 1900, has, in the words of Thomas C. Moser, “the rare distinction of being a masterpiece in two separate genres. It is at once an exotic adventure story of the Eastern seas in the popular tradition of Kipling and Stevenson and a complexly wrought ‘art novel’ in the tradition of Flaubert and James.

Mr Verloc, the secret agent, keeps a shop in London’s Soho where he lives with his wife Winnie, her infirm mother, and her idiot brother, Stevie. When Verloc is reluctantly involved in an anarchist plot to blow up the Greenwich (More) Observatory things go disastrously wrong, and what appears to be ‘a simple tale’ proves to involve politicians, policemen, foreign diplomats and London’s fashionable society in the darkest and most surprising interrelations.
The Secret Agent is Conrad’s dark, and darkly comic story of a band of spies, anarchists, agents-provocateurs plotting and counter-plotting in the back streets of London in the early 20th Century.