Classics World Literature

In the wake of the 1929 stock market crash, Lanny Budd’s financial acumen and his marriage into great wealth enable him to continue the lifestyle he has always enjoyed. But the devastation the collapse has wrought on ordinary citizens has only strengthened Lanny’s socialist ideals. In Germany to visit relatives, Lanny encounters a disturbing atmosphere of hatred and jingoism. But Lanny’s gravest fear is the threat a national socialist government poses to the German Jewish family of Hansi, the musician husband of Lanny’s sister, Bess.

The Smoky God is a classic tale from the genre of hollow Earth or subterranean literature. A once-favorite tale of Amazing Stories publisher Ray Palmer, The Smoky God is the (purportedly true) tale of two Norwegian fishermen Jens and Olaf Jansen, who sailed their fishing vessel into the inner Earth in the year 1829. While in the center of the Earth, they find an entire society and meet a race and of advanced giants.

Set 10 years after Little Men, Jo's Boys revisits Plumfield, the New England school still presided over by Jo and her husband, Professor Bhaer. Jo's Boys — including sailor Emil, promising musician Nat, and rebellious Dan — are grown. Jo remains at the center of this tale, holding her boys fast through shipwreck and storm, disappointment...and even murder.

I thought the threat from Seattle was finished. That we showed up in time and took care of business. I hate being wrong. It really ruins my day. When Roger, the alpha of the North American pack, shows up at my door with the news that a demon has made it to the Underworld with knowledge of me, some hard decisions have to be made. Do I stay above ground, with all my magical friends, and wait for the battle to come to me? Or do I seek the demon out, and pluck the threat out by the root? I don't want my friends to die on my behalf.

In The Crowd - A Study of the Popular Mind, social theorist Gustave Le Bon gives historical insight into the political thinking of his era while offering timeless social commentary. Le Bon challenges the listener to contemplate how individual ideas change - often to a destructive end - when employed in a setting of groupthink. As technology and communications innovations make group formation easy and accessible for better or for worse, this book's message is certainly one that will not be lost in the crowd.

Set in Mississippi at the height of the Depression, this is the story of one family's struggle to maintain their integrity, pride, and independence in the face of racism and social injustice. And it is also Cassie's story - Cassie Logan, an independent girl who discovers over the course of an important year why having land of their own is so crucial to the Logan family, even as she learns to draw strength from her own sense of dignity and self-respect.

Newly re-mastered for digital formats, this is the definitive recording of Hans Christian Andersen's six best-loved stories. Narrator Diane Wolkstein, the artistic director of the Hans Christian Andersen Center in New York City, tells Andersen stories throughout the world. She is the author of 23 award-winning books of folklore and has been honored by the National Storytelling Network as a recipient of its coveted Circle of Excellence Award, a designation reserved for America's best living storytellers.

Que celui qui pourrait écrire un tel livre serait heureux, pensais-je, quel labeur devant lui ! Pour en donner une idée, c'est aux arts les plus élevés et les plus différents qu'il faudrait emprunter les comparaisons ; car cet écrivain, qui d'ailleurs pour chaque caractère en ferait apparaître les faces opposées, pour montrer son volume, devrait préparer son livre, minutieusement, avec de perpétuels regroupements de force, comme une offensive, le supporter comme une fatigue.

At the dawn of the nineteenth century, two very different magicians emerge to change England's history. In the year 1806, with the Napoleonic Wars raging on land and sea, most people believe magic to be long dead in England—until the reclusive Mr Norrell reveals his powers, and becomes a celebrity overnight. Soon, another practicing magician comes forth: the young, handsome, and daring Jonathan Strange. He becomes Norrell's student, and they join forces in the war against France. But Strange is increasingly drawn to the wildest, most perilous forms of magic.

For 300 years, The Pilgrim's Progress has remained perhaps the best-loved and most read of devotional fictions. In plain yet powerful and moving language, Bunyan tells the story of Christian's struggle to attain salvation and the Gates of Heaven. He must pass through the Slough of Despond, ward off the temptations of Vanity Fair, and fight the monstrous Apollyon. In Part II, his wife and children follow the same path, helped and protected by Great-heart, until for them, too, "the trumpets sound on the other side."

Fast-paced and suspenseful, The Last of the Mohicans follows an intrepid group of frontiersmen and Native Americans as they navigate the rugged terrain of both the landscape and their racial differences. Together they strive to deliver Colonel Munro’s two daughters to safety at Fort William Henry during the French and Indian War. Widely considered the first “Great American Novel”, James Fenimore Cooper’s classic encapsulates the violence and beauty, tragedy and heroism at the heart of the American frontier, set against the stunning backdrop of the northern New York wilderness.

One of Charles Bukowski's best, this beer-soaked, deliciously degenerate novel follows the wanderings of aspiring writer Henry Chinaski across World War II-era America. Deferred from military service, Chinaski travels from city to city, moving listlessly from one odd job to another, always needing money but never badly enough to keep a job. His day-to-day existence spirals into an endless litany of pathetic whores, sordid rooms, dreary embraces, and drunken brawls, as he makes his bitter, brilliant way from one drink to the next.

Dans ce discours à portée réaliste, Rousseau nous livre ici ses idées...

You, dear listener, continue at your own risk. It is not for the faint of heart - no more so than the study of dragons itself. But such study offers rewards beyond compare: to stand in a dragon's presence, even for the briefest of moments - even at the risk of one's life - is a delight that, once experienced, can never be forgotten….All the world, from Scirland to the farthest reaches of Eriga, know Isabella, Lady Trent, to be the world's preeminent dragon naturalist.

The night after a shooting star is seen streaking through the sky from Mars, a cylinder is discovered on Horsell Common in London. At first, naïve locals approach the cylinder armed just with a white flag - only to be quickly killed by an all-destroying heat ray, as terrifying tentacled invaders emerge. Soon the whole of human civilisation is under threat, as powerful Martians build gigantic killing machines, destroy all in their path with black gas and burning rays, and feast on the warm blood of trapped, still-living human prey.

Anna Karénine est une jeune femme mariée à Alexis Karénine et mère d'un jeune garçon. Elle se rend à Moscou chez son frère Stiva Oblonski. En descendant du train, elle croise le comte Vronski. Anna tombe amoureuse de Vronski, cet officier brillant, mais frivole. Elle lutte contre cette passion et finit pourtant par s'abandonner avec un bonheur coupable. Puis Anna tombe enceinte. Elle décide d'avouer son infidélité à son mari.

In the second volume of Proust's great novel, the narrator emerges as an actor in the drama of his own life. Swann has now dwindled into a husband for his former mistress, Odette, and their daughter, Gilberte, becomes the adolescent narrator's playmate and tantalising love object. We move from Paris to the seaside town of Balbec, from ritualised social performances to midsummer spontaneity and from Gilberte to her successor Albertine.

The Water Margin is one of the most popular classics of early Chinese literature. It tells the vigorous story of 108 characters who, falling foul of the established state authorities, are forced to become outlaws. They form a bandit community in Liangshan Marsh, becoming such a formidable force in their own right that they threaten the power of government itself.

Harry Haller loue un modeste meublé chez une logeuse pour quelques mois ; la cinquantaine, l'homme est bien mis, poli et discret mais attise les curiosités. Le personnage semble lointain, farouche, vivant en marge de ses contemporains qu'il observe avec ironie. Le manuscrit qu'il laissera suite à son départ nous permet de pénétrer son univers. Le roman le plus connu de Hermann Hesse, prix Nobel de littérature en 1946, il est parmi les incontournables chef-d'œuvres du XXème siècle.

"La décroissance du jour me replongeant par le souvenir dans une atmosphère ancienne et fraîche, je la respirais avec les mêmes délices qu'Orphée l'air subtil, inconnu sur cette terre, des Champs Élysées. Mais déjà la journée finissait et j'étais envahi par la désolation du soir. Regardant machinalement à la pendule combien d'heures se passeraient avant qu'Albertine rentrât, je voyais que j'avais encore le temps de m'habiller."