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Having, on his first voyage, discovered Australia, Cook still had to contend with those who maintained that the Terra Australians Incognita (the unknown Southern Continent) was a reality. To finally settle the issue, the British (More) Admiralty sent Cook out again into the vast Southern Ocean with two sailing ships totalling only about 800 tons. Listen as Cook, equipped with one of the first chronometers, pushes his small vessel not merely into the Roaring Forties or the Furious Fifties but becomes the first explorer to penetrate the Antarctic Circle, reaching an incredible Latitude 71 degrees South, just failing to discover Antarctica.

A Christmas Carol is a novella by English author Charles Dickens first published by Chapman & Hall on 17 December 1843. The story tells of sour and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge’s ideological, ethical, and emotional transformation (More) after the supernatural visitations of Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present, and Yet to Come.

Born in the Marshalsea Prison for Debtors, Amy—Little Dorrit—the daughter of the ruined, but self-respectful William Dorrit, has put her entire heart in caring for her dear father, until one day her humble path is crossed by (More) Arthur Clennam. Their meeting proves providential not only for Amy’s life, but for the whole Dorrit family, whose new rise will, in many ways, be also their fall. As in all his novels, in Little Dorrit Dickens ushers us into a fascinating and startlingly rich world of human characters and destinies, where virtue and nobility cross swords with vice and villainy, where strength and weakness intertwine with prejudice and magnanimity and where the author’s inspired pen wields a compelling and unforgettable power over the readers.

Oliver Twist is an 1838 novel by Charles Dickens. It was originally published as a serial.
Like most of Dickens’ work, the book is used to call the public’s attention to various contemporary social evils, including the workhouse, (More) child labour and the recruitment of children as criminals. The novel is full of sarcasm and dark humour, even as it treats its serious subject, revealing the hypocrisies of the time.
It has been the subject of numerous film and television adaptations, and the basis for a highly successful British musical, Oliver!.

Crime and Punishment focuses on the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, an impoverished St. Petersburg student who formulates and executes a plan to kill a hated, unscrupulous pawnbroker for her (More) money, thereby solving his financial problems and at the same time, he argues, ridding the world of evil. Crime and Punishment is considered by many as the first of Dostoevsky’s cycle of great novels, which would culminate with his last completed work, The Brothers Karamazov, shortly before his death.

The extraordinary child-adult Prince Myshkin, confined for several years in a Swiss sanatorium suffering from severe epilepsy, returns to Russia to claim his inheritance and to find a place in healthy human society. The teeming St (More) Petersburg community he enters is far from receptive to an innocent like himself, despite some early successes and relentless pursuit by grotesque fortune-hunters. His naive gaucheries give rise to extreme reactions among his new acquaintance, ranging from anguished protectiveness to mockery and contempt. But even before reaching the city, during the memorable train journey that opens the novel, he has encountered the demonic Rogozhin, the son of a wealthy merchant who is in thrall to the equally doomed Natasha Filippovna: beautiful, capricious and destructively neurotic, she joins with the two weirdly contrasted men in a spiralling dance of death…

The Three Musketeers (Les Trois Mousquetaires) is a novel by Alexandre Dumas, père. It recounts the adventures of a young man named d’Artagnan after he leaves home to become a musketeer. D’Artagnan is not one of the musketeers of (More) the title; those are his friends Athos, Porthos, and Aramis — inseparable friends who live by the motto, “One for all, and all for one”.
The Three Musketeers was first published in serial form in the magazine Le Siècle between March and July 1844. Dumas claimed it was based on manuscripts he had discovered in the Bibliothèque Nationale. It was later proven that Dumas had based his work on the book Mémoires de Monsieur D’Artagnan, capitaine lieutenant de la première compagnie des Mousquetaires du Roi

The book examines the role of education in the lives of the characters and how such education and study has affected the characters. Rosamond Vincy’s finishing school education is a foil to Dorothea Brooke’s religiously-motivated (More) quest for knowledge. Rosamond initially admires Lydgate for his exotic education, and his intellect. A similar dynamic is present in Dorothea and Casaubon’s relationship, with Dorothea revering her new husband’s intellect and eloquence. In both cases, however, the young wives’ expectations of their husbands intellects are not reflected in reality.

Beloved by millions, The Way is St. Josemaría’s spiritually rich collection of points for meditation and prayer. Genial but pointed, The Way is born out of deep Christian experience and aims at encouraging people to love God and (More) live for Him. Says St. Josemaría: The 999 points which make up The Way were written with yearnings to see Christ, the light of the world. Anyone who reads it with the same yearnings will not have opened this book in vain. This mini-edition fits easily into the most jammed purse or pocket.

In this sardonic portrait of the up-and-coming middle class during the prosperous 1920s, Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) perfectly captures the sound, the feel, and the attitudes of the generation that created the cult of consumerism. (More) With a sharp eye for detail and keen powers of observation, Lewis tracks successful realtor George Babbitt’s daily struggles to rise to the top of his profession while maintaining his reputation as an upstanding family man.
On the surface, Babbitt appears to be the quintessential middle-class embodiment of conservative values and enthusiasm for the well-to-do lifestyle of the small entrepreneur. But beneath the complacent facade, he also experiences a rising, nameless discontent. These feelings eventually lead Babbitt into risky escapades that threaten his family and his standing in the community.

Gone with the Wind is a novel written by Margaret Mitchell, first published in 1936. The story is set in Clayton County, Georgia, and Atlanta during the American Civil War and Reconstruction era. It depicts the experiences of (More) Scarlett O’Hara, the spoiled daughter of a well-to-do plantation owner, who must use every means at her disposal to come out of the poverty she finds herself in after Sherman’s March to the Sea. A historical novel, the story is a Bildungsroman or coming-of-age story, with the title taken from a poem written by Ernest Dowson.
Gone with the Wind was popular with American readers from the onset and was the top American fiction bestseller in the year it was published and in 1937. As of 2014, a Harris poll found it to be the second favorite book by American readers, just behind the Bible. More than 30 million copies have been printed worldwide.
Mitchell received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for the book in 1937. It was adapted into a 1939 American film. The book is often read or misread through the film. Gone with the Wind is the only novel by Mitchell published during her lifetime.

Nineteen Eighty-Four, sometimes published as 1984, is a dystopian novel by George Orwell published in 1949. The novel is set in Airstrip One (formerly known as Great Britain), a province of the superstate Oceania in a world of (More) perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public manipulation, dictated by a political system euphemistically named English Socialism (or Ingsoc in the government’s invented language, Newspeak) under the control of a privileged Inner Party elite that persecutes all individualism and independent thinking as “thoughtcrimes”. The tyranny is epitomised by Big Brother, the quasi-divine Party leader who enjoys an intense cult of personality, but who may not even exist. The Party “seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power.” The protagonist of the novel, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party who works for the Ministry of Truth (or Minitrue), which is responsible for propaganda and historical revisionism. His job is to rewrite past newspaper articles so that the historical record always supports the current party line. Smith is a diligent and skillful worker, but he secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion against Big Brother.

Saki (December 18, 1870 – November 14, 1916) was the pen name of British author Hector Hugh Munro. Saki’s world contrasts the effete conventions and hypocrisies of Edwardian England with the ruthless but straightforward (More) life-and-death struggles of nature. Nature generally wins in the end.

Follows the fortunes of the son of a noble Saxon family in Norman England as he woos his lady, disobeys his father, and is loved by another. Set in late 12C England and in Palestine with Richard Cœur-de-Lion at the Crusades, it’s (More) another ripping historical yarn by Scott

El libro se desarrolla en el siglo XV durante el reinado de Luis XI de Francia y en pleno enfrentamiento con Carlos el temerario, duque de Borgoña. Quentin Durward es un joven escocés que busca fortuna en Francia junto a su tío, (More) capitán de la guardia de arqueros escoceses que custodian al rey. Al mismo tiempo, y escapando de la custodia del Duque, que en un arreglo político quiere casarla contra su voluntad, llega a la corte la bella y joven condesa Isabel de Croye.
Las complicadas relaciones entre ambos monarcas no mejoran cuando la linda condesita pide asilo al rey francés.

Rob Roy is a historical novel by Walter Scott. It is narrated by Frank Osbaldistone, the son of an English merchant who travels first to the North of England, and subsequently to the Scottish Highlands to collect a debt stolen (More) from his father. On the way he encounters the larger-than-life title character of Rob Roy MacGregor. Though Rob Roy is not the lead character (in fact the narrative does not move to Scotland until half way through the book) his personality and actions are key to the development of the novel.