Showing results by author "Mentor New York" in All Categories

The Hundred Years' War: a series of conflicts waged from 1337 to 1453 by the House of Plantagenet, rulers of the Kingdom of England, against the House of Valois, rulers of the Kingdom of France, over the succession to the French throne. It was a time of intrigue, plot, murder and romance. Agnes Sorel, aged 20, became the favorite mistress of the King of France, wielding much influence over him and earning many enemies. Her untimely death at the age of 28, just days after bearing him a fourth child, was blamed on dysentery. In this novel, we follow the trials of Jean Charost, secretary to the ...

In May Sinclair’s remarkable first novel, Audrey Craven is a beautiful young woman who has by her idiosyncrasies acquired a thoroughly undeserved reputation for originality. In fact, Audrey is a shallow, selfish, malleable person of negligible intelligence, with a fastidious horror of anyone who might be considered a nobody. Her pursuit of the stimulation of extraordinary minds (and her persistent fantasy of being somebody’s Muse) brings her into contact with serious women and men representing the profoundest passions of art, religion, science, and love. The question is, will these ...

“Beasts, Men and Gods” is an account of an epic journey, filled with perils and narrow escapes, in the mold of “The Lord of the Rings.” The difference is: it’s all true. Ferdinand Ossendowski was a Pole who found himself in Siberia and on the losing side during the Bolshevik Revolution. To escape being rounded up and shot, he set out with a friend to reach the Pacific, there to take ship back to Europe. During his journey he fell in with dozens of other military men who shared the same objective… but nearly every one of them perished on the way. It’s up to you to decide whether ...

Barchester Towers, published in 1857, is the 2nd novel in Anthony Trollope's series known as the "Chronicles of Barsetshire". It follows on from The Warden, set some years later, with some of the same characters. Among other things it satirises the then raging antipathy in the Church of England between High Church and Evangelical adherents. Trollope began writing this book in 1855. He wrote constantly, and made himself a writing-desk so he could continue writing while travelling by train. "Pray know that when a man begins writing a book he never gives over," he wrote in a letter during this ...

The Adventures of Maya the Bee is an exciting tale for children of all ages. Themes of growth and development of courage and wisdom are found, as well as the extreme joy and satisfaction that Maya experiences in the beauty of creation and all creatures. Her ultimate and innate loyalty to her Nation of Bees is acted out in the final heroic scenes. This story gives us the delightful sense of having seen a small segment of the world through a Bee's eyes. (Summary by Brenda Price)

This audiobook is a collection of Mark Twain's anti-imperialist writings (newspaper articles, interviews, speeches, letters, essays and pamphlets). (Summary by Vineshen Pillay)

An account of life on the Goldfields of Victoria, New South Wales, and New Zealand by a Bank Official. At the present time—1888—it may appear almost impossible to many that a bank agency should have been in a tent; that bankers should have, often on foot, gone long distances to purchase gold from small storekeepers, the said gold often being carried by them on their backs, till the security (?) of some rough bush shanty had been reached; that instead of cedar counters, massive ledgers, impregnable strong-rooms, and all the appliances of modern banking, a gin case to write on, a note-book ...

Against Celsus, preserved entirely in Greek, is a major apologetics work by the Church Father Origen of Alexandria, written in around 248 AD, countering the writings of Celsus, a pagan philosopher and controversialist who had written a scathing attack on Christianity in his treatise "The True Word". Among a variety of other charges, Celsus had denounced many Christian doctrines as irrational and criticized Christians themselves as uneducated, deluded, unpatriotic, close-minded towards reason, and too accepting of sinners. He had accused Jesus of performing his miracles using black magic rather...

John Linden is a very wealthy man. The people who should inherit his property are his nephew, Curtis Waring, his niece Florence Linden, and his long lost son - if alive. John thinks it would be best if Florence and Curtis were married, and makes it a requirement if Florence wishes to have any of the property. A boy named Dodger was sent to steal one of the wills of John Linden so that Curtis would inherit all the property. But Florence prevents Dodger from stealing, and they become friends… To the shock of her uncle and cousin, she decides to leave her uncle's house with Dodger instead of ...

"Gifted with poesy as are the Highlanders, and given to the praise of their country and their leaders, it would be expected that many poems would still be extant concerning the MacLeans and their ancestral dominions," wrote John Patterson MacLean in his "A History of the Clan MacLean," These selections, collected and arranged by J.P. Maclean comprise part of Note C of MacLean's treatise (pp. 406-452), although they were written by different authors for different reasons. Dealing with incidents experienced by the MacLeans throughout their long history this highland poetry reveals, in ways the ...

A story of two sets of lovers and the development of their relationships, set in rural France in the mid 19th century. - Summary by PeterTucker

The Bab Ballads are a collection of light verse by W. S. Gilbert, illustrated with his own comic drawings. Gilbert wrote the Ballads before he became famous for his comic opera librettos with Arthur Sullivan. In writing the Bab Ballads, Gilbert developed his unique "topsy-turvy" style, where the humour was derived by setting up a ridiculous premise and working out its logical consequences, however absurd. The Ballads also reveal Gilbert's cynical and satirical approach to humour. They became famous on their own, as well as being a source for plot elements, characters and songs that Gilbert ...

Beatrice is a lonely twenty-two year old woman. After saving Geoffrey's life, they fall in love. However, Geoffrey is married. In addition, a local rich land owner wants to marry the beautiful Beatrice. This is a romance by the author of King Solomon's Mines, Allen Quatermain, and She." (Summary by Stav Nisser)

This wonderful collection of poems showcases the incredible talent of the some of the greatest poets in the world. These creative masterpieces are truly the best of the best, the crème de la crème, one hundred of the most awe inspiring and magnificent examples of poetic skill - works that will live forever in the annals of great literature. Embracing the most influential names in poetry we have all come to love, respect and revere, this exceptional compilation has a verse for every occasion, a theme for each day of existence and poetic instances for all of life's varied circumstances. ...

This is a collection of short poems and readings, both religious and secular, on death and bereavement. (Summary by Ruth Golding)

“He had faith in his good fortune, in that power of attraction which he felt within him - a power so irresistible that all women yielded to it.”Though firmly set in 1880s Paris, Maupassant's gripping story of an amoral journalist on the make could, with only slight modifications of detail, be updated to the 1960s, to the Reagan-Thatcher years, or maybe to the present day. Anti-hero Georges Duroy is a down-at-heel ex-soldier of no particular talent. Good-looking but somewhat lacking in self-confidence, he discovers an ability to control and exploit women - whereupon his career in journalism...

Barbara, an English girl and the eldest of her family, spends most days helping her widowed mother care for her younger siblings. Then disaster strikes - or so the children believe! Barbara is taken to France to see Paris by her father's formidable sister, Aunt Anne. She stays on in Brittany to perfect her French. In this series of funny stories about her adventures in France, we meet a cast of recurring characters - and both Barbara and Aunt Anne find love! (Summary by Sibella Denton)

“THE BOOK THAT DORIAN GRAY LOVED AND THAT INSPIRED OSCAR WILDE”. Such is the enticing epigraph of one early translation of Huysmans’ cult novel of 1884, which is also routinely called the Bible of Decadence. Accurate descriptions, both, of this bizarre masterpiece which has reverberated ever since through high and popular culture.“Against Nature” (or in this version “Against The Grain”) explores to the furthest limit the life of the world-rejecting aesthete living a reclusive existence devoted entirely to artificial paradises of his own devising. This is no solemn tract, however:...

This is the third of Burrough's Tarzan novels. Originally serialized in All-Story Cavalier magazine in 1914, the novel was first published in book form by A. C. McClurg in 1916. In the previous novel Tarzan reclaimed his name and title as John Clayton, Lord Greystoke. In this novel he finds that proper society is just as vicious as the jungle when greedy men threaten him and his new family. Jane and her infant son Jack are kidnapped by Tarzan's enemies, Nikolas Rokoff and Alexis Paulvitch, who then trap Tarzan himself and attempt to exile him forever on a primitive island, bereft of all those ...

This is a fast-paced mystery, set in New York City, has two or three really interesting ("round") characters, a solid plot, no cheap plot-twists, two full-fledged sub/urban battles and some real surprises. Winifred Bartlett, a beautiful and poor orphan, suddenly finds herself homeless and out of a job. Prince Charming (nee Rex Carshaw) comes on to her by accident and begins to take an interest. As strange, apparently unconnected disasters continue to batter poor Winnie, Rex and two police detectives (the most interesting characters in the book) probe the causes and forces threatening the dear ...