Arms and the Man is a comedy by George Bernard Shaw that takes place in 1885, during the Serbo-Bulgarian War. Raina Petkoff is engaged to the gallant Sergius Saranoff, hero of the recent Bulgarian victory over the Serbs. But she is distracted by the abrupt arrival of Captain Bluntschli, a Swiss mercenary who fought for the Serbian army. He takes refuge in her bedroom after the battle and although he is initially threatening, reveals that he carries chocolate creams inste...
Comedy
The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) is a tragic novel by English author Thomas Hardy subtitled, The Life and Death of a Man of Character. It is set in the fictional town of Casterbridge (based on the town of Dorchester in Dorset). The book is one of Hardy's Wessex novels, all set in a fictional rustic England. (Wikipedia)A poor, disgruntled, drunken young man sells his wife and child to the highest bidder. When he awakens, sober, the next day he regrets his rash act and vow...
Literature, Fiction
The premise of the book is that everyone who has ever died (up until the time in which the book is set, which seems to be about the time of its publication) has gone to Styx. This does not appear to be the conventional Hell described by Dante in The Inferno, but rather the Hades described in Greek myth (both of which had Styxes): a universal collecting pot for dead souls, regardless of their deeds in life. The book begins with Charon, ferryman of the Styx (in The Inferno...
Fantasy, Fiction
Up From Slavery is the 1901 autobiography of Booker T. Washington detailing his slow and steady rise from a slave child during the Civil War, to the difficulties and obstacles he overcame to get an education at the new Hampton University, to his work establishing vocational schools—most notably the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama—to help black people and other disadvantaged minorities learn useful, marketable skills and work to pull themselves, as a race, up by the bootstr...
Memoirs, Politics, History
Containing many realistic details based on Childers' own sailing trips along the German North Sea coast, the book is the retelling of a yachting expedition in the early 20th century combined with an adventurous spy story. It was one of the early invasion novels which predicted war with Germany and called for British preparedness. The plot involves the uncovering of secret German preparations for an invasion of the United Kingdom. It is often called the first modern spy n...
Mystery, War stories, Spy stories, Sea stories, Travel
Captain Blood is an adventure novel by Rafael Sabatini, originally published in 1922. It concerns the sharp-witted Dr. Peter Blood, an Irish physician, who is convicted of treason in the aftermath of the Monmouth rebellion in 1685, and enslaved on the Caribbean island of Barbados. He escapes and becomes a pirate. [wikipedia] Captain Blood was the basis for the Academy Award-nominated swashbuckling film that rocketed Errol Flynn and Olivia de Haviland to stardom in Hollyw...
Adventure
Universal Digital Library
A little princess is protected by her friend Curdie from the goblin miners who live beneath the castle; A little princess is protected by her friend Curdie from the goblin miners who live beneath the castle
THE MAGNET ATTRACTING. A WIFE AMID FORCES. When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago, her total outfit consisted of a small trunk, a cheap imitation alligator-skin satchel, a small lunch in a paper box, and a yellow leather snap purse, containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister?s address in Van Buren Street, and four dollar in money. It was in August, 1889. She was eighteen years or age, bright, timid, and full of the illusions of ignoranc...
Excerpt: Chapter 1; THE family of Dashwood had been long settled in Sussex. Their estate was large, and their residence was at Norland Park, in the centre of their property, where, for many generations, they had lived in so respectable a manner, as to engage the general good opinion of their surrounding acquaintance. The late owner of this estate was a single man, who lived to a very advanced age, and who for many years of his life, had a constant companion and housekeep...
Persons Represented: DUNCAN, King of Scotland. MALCOLM, his Son. DONALBAIN, his Son. MACBETH, General in the King?s Army. BANQUO, General in the King?s Army. MACDUFF, Nobleman of Scotland. LENNOX, Nobleman of Scotland. ROSS, Nobleman of Scotland. MENTEITH, Nobleman of Scotland. ANGUS, Nobleman of Scotland. CAITHNESS, Nobleman of Scotland. FLEANCE, Son to Banquo. SIWARD, Earl of Northumberland, General of the English Forces. YOUNG SIWARD, his Son. SEYTON, an Officer atten...
Supplemental catalog subcollection information: American Libraries Collection; Historical Literature; Translation of Le fantôme de l'opéra; 1
Chapter 1: WELL, PYOTR, STILL NOT IN SIGHT? WAS THE QUESTION ASKED ON 20th May, 1859, by a gentleman of about forty, wearing a dusty overcoat and checked trousers, who came out hatless into the low porch of the posting station at -- X. He was speaking to his servant, a chubby young fellow with whitish down growing on his chin and with dim little eyes. The servant, in whom everything -- the turquoise ring in his ear, the hair plastered down with grease and the polite flex...
English Literature 1300-1399
Excerpt: Chapter One. The BROWN FAMILY ?I'm the Poet of White Horse Vale, sir, With liberal notions under my cap.??Ballad The Browns have become illustrious by the pen of Thackeray and the pencil of Doyle, within the memory of the young gentlemen who are now matriculating at the universities. Notwithstanding the well?merited but late fame which has now fallen upon them, any one at all acquainted with the family must feel that much has yet to be written and said before th...