The Arc
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Swashbuckling British adventurers find triumph and tragedy in nineteenth-century Afghanistan in this novella J. M. Barrie called "the most audacious thing in fiction." While on tour in India, a British journalist encounters Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnehan, two foolhardy drifters with a plan. Claiming they've exhausted all the schemes and odd jobs they could find in India, the two are in search of an even greater adventure. They tell the journalist...
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Adela Quested travels to India with Mrs. Moore, her fiance's mother, to visit her fiance, who is the city magistrate of Chandrapore. They befriend a young Indian man, Dr. Aziz, who invites them on a picnic to Marabar caves, and is later accused of attempting to rape Miss Quested.
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Generally considered the first English sensation novel, The Woman in White features the remarkable heroine Marian Halcombe and her sleuthing partner, drawing master Walter Hartright, pitted against the diabolical team of Count Fosco and Sir Percival Glyde. A gripping tale of murder, intrigue, madness, and mistaken identity, Collins's psychological thriller has never been out of print in the 140 years since its publication.
5) Nostromo
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"Nostromo, A Tale of the Seaboard" is set in the South American country of Costaguana, and more specifically in that country's Occidental Province and its port city of Sulaco. Though Costaguana is a fictional nation, its geography as described in the book resembles real-life Colombia. Costaguana has a long history of tyranny, revolution and warfare, but has recently experienced a period of stability under the dictator Ribiera. Charles Gould is a native...
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When her father has a crisis of conscious, Margaret Hale's life is turned upside down. Because her parents decide to move away from southern London, Margaret must leave behind the tranquil, rural life she's always known to settle in an industrial town called Milton. Though she does her best to assimilate, Margaret cannot help but feel trapped and hopeless in Milton, as she witnesses the brutal effects industrialization has on the environment and the...
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"Nothing so coarsely indecent as the whole history of Jude in his relations with his wife Arabella has ever been put in English print," asserted M. O. W. Oliphant, the Scottish humorist. Hardy's "Jude the Obscure--the ill-received novel that was to be his last--is a strikingly modern portrait of provincial, workaday life, frank sexuality, and the desire to transcend the mire of prosaic living. Amy M. King is Assistant Professor of Literature at the...
8) Othello
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Unique features include an extensive overview of Shakespeare's life, world, and theater by the general editor of Signet Classic Shakespeare series, plus a special introduction to the play by the editor Sylvan Barnet, Tufts University. This book contains information on the source from which Shakespeare derived "Othello"--selections from Giraldi Cinthio's "Hecatommithi". Special introduction by Alvin Kernan, Princeton University.
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Set in a topsy-turvy world like a holiday revel, this comedy devises a romantic plot around separated twins, misplaced passions, and mistaken identity. Juxtaposed to it is the satirical story of a self-deluded steward who dreams of becoming "Count Malvolio" only to receive his comeuppance at the hands of the merrymakers he wishes to suppress. The two plots combine to create a farce touched with melancholy, mixed throughout with seductively beautiful...
10) The Lost World
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Originally published serially in 1912, "The Lost World" is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic tale of discovery and adventure. The story begins with the narrator, the curious and intrepid reporter Edward Malone, meeting Professor Challenger, a strange and brilliant paleontologist who insists that he has found dinosaurs still alive deep in the Amazon. Malone agrees to accompany Challenger, as well as Challenger's unconvinced colleague Professor Summerlee,...
12) The tempest
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Presents the annotated text of the darkly humorous play about Prospero, the deposed Duke of Milan, who is exiled to a magical island with his daughter, Miranda; and includes an introduction, an essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare, and a note on the text used.
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When Elizabeth Bennet meets Fitzwilliam Darcy for the first time at a ball, she writes him off as an arrogant and obnoxious man. He not only acts like an insufferable snob, but she also overhears him rejecting the very idea of asking her for a dance! As life pits them against each other again and again, Darcy begins to fall for Elizabeth's wit and intelligence and Elizabeth begins to question her feelings about Darcy. But when Darcy saves her youngest...
14) Hamlet
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"One of the most frequently read and performed of all stage works, Shakespeare's Hamlet is unsurpassed in its complexity and richness. Now the most extensively annotated version of Hamlet to date makes the play completely accessible to readers in the twenty-first century. It has been carefully assembled with students, teachers, and the general reader in mind." "Eminent linguist and translator Burton Raffel offers generous help with vocabulary and...