Showing results for "Glasses" in Classics

Rajkumar is only another boy, helping on a market stall in the dusty square outside the royal palace, when the British force the Burmese King, Queen and all the Court into exile. He is rescued by the far-seeing Chinese merchant, and with him builds up a logging business in upper Burma. But haunted by his vision of the Royal Family, he journeys to the obscure town in India where they have been exiled.

Set in the 23rd century, The Glass Bead Game is the story of Joseph Knecht, who has been raised in Castalia, which has provided for the intellectual elite to grow and flourish. Since childhood, Knecht has been consumed with mastering the Glass Bead Game, which requires a synthesis of aesthetics and scientific arts, such as mathematics, music, logic, and philosophy, which he achieves in adulthood, becoming a Magister Ludi (Master of the Game).

The Glass Menagerie is a memory play by Tennessee Williams that premiered in 1944 and catapulted Williams from obscurity to fame. The play has strong autobiographical elements, featuring characters based on its author, his histrionic mother, and his mentally fragile sister, Laura.

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Katie Leung, star of the Harry Potter films. This definitive recording includes an Introduction by Hugh Haughton. Conjured up one 'golden afternoon' in 1862 to entertain Alice Liddell, the daughter of the dean of Carroll's college...

Originally published in 1943, The Glass Bead Game was Herman Hesse’s last novel. It was hailed as his magnum opus, and was instrumental in securing him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946. Set in a utopian future society, it explores themes of knowledge, individualism, creativity and spirituality, and has inspired contemporary thinkers from authors to game designers. Narrated by Derek Jacobi, this two-part radio drama tells the story of Joseph Knecht (Tom Ferguson), plucked from obscurity as a young orphan, admitted to the finest elite school and groomed for greatness.

Brought to you by Penguin. THE FOURTH GEORGE SMILEY NOVEL When the Department - faded since the war and busy only with bureaucratic battles - hears rumours of a missile base near the West German border, it seems the perfect opportunity to regain some standing in the Intelligence world. Desperate...

George Smiley is one of the most brilliantly realised characters in British fiction. Bespectacled, tubby, eternally middle-aged and deceptively ordinary, he has a mind like a steel trap and is said to possess ‘the cunning of Satan and the conscience of a virgin’. When word reaches 'The...

Once there were three worlds, each with their own human species. Then, fleeing out of the void came a fourth species, the Charon. Desperate, on the edge of extinction, they changed the balance between the worlds forever. Karan, a sensitive with a troubled heritage, is forced to steal an ancient relic in repayment of a debt. It turns out to be the Mirror of Aachan, a twisted, deceitful thing that remembers everything it has ever seen.

Ken Campbell, Windsor Davies, John Bird and John Fortune star in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation. When Alice leans too close to the Looking Glass, she suddenly finds herself in a land of caustic characters and twisted logic – a back-to-front world where flowers can talk, Queens can...

The fantasy worlds of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass come to life in these audio theatre presentations with music and sound effects.

Tom shares the cramped and claustrophobic tenement home with his overbearing mother, Amanda, and painfully shy sister, Laura. He works in a warehouse but dreams of becoming a poet, escaping his mundane life. Laura hides at home, lacking the confidence to engage meaningfully with the outside world, preferring instead to lose herself in her collection of fragile glass animals. Amanda sells magazine subscriptions over the phone and commits herself to finding a match for her daughter. One day, Tom succumbs to his mother's pressure and brings home a gentleman caller....

London, June 1965. Karl Braun arrives as a lodger in Pimlico: hatless, with a bow-tie, greying hair, slight in build. His new neighbours are intrigued by this cultured German gentleman who works as a piano tuner; many are fellow émigrés, who assume that he, like them, came to England to flee Hitler. That summer, Braun courts a woman, attends classical concerts, dances the twist. But as the newspapers fill with reports of the hunt for Nazi war criminals, his nightmares become increasingly worse.

Wilmet Forsyth is well dressed, well looked after, suitably husbanded, good looking, and fairly young - but very bored. Her husband Rodney, a handsome army major, is slightly balder and fatter than he once was. Wilmet would like to think she has changed rather less. Her interest wanders to the nearby Anglo-Catholic church, where at last she can neglect her comfortable household in the more serious-minded company of three unmarried priests and Piers Longridge, a man of a different character altogether.

Jobless, jaded and on the 'wrong' side of 30, Jack Corman is facing the threat of eviction from his London flat while reeling from the sudden death of his father, one-time film director Bob Corman. Back in the '80s, Bob poured his heart and soul into the creation of his 1986 puppet fantasy, The Shadow Glass. But The Shadow Glass flopped, and Bob became a laughing stock. In the wake of Bob’s death, Jack returns to his decaying home, a place creaking with movie memorabilia and painful memories. Then, during a freak thunderstorm, the puppets in the attic start talking.

Brought to you by Penguin. The Mermaid Collection The jewel in the crown of the beloved Dr Basil Willing mysteries - when unassuming art teacher Faustina Crayle loses her second job in quick succession, only Basil can help, and it goes from bad to worse for Faustina when a body is found...

What if reality is only a fragile surface… and with one curious step, everything you trust begins to slip away? Enter a world where clocks argue, riddles whisper secrets, and logic unravels into beautiful, bewildering wonder. In this spellbinding 2-in-1 audiobook, wander through the strange, dreamlike landscapes of "Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland", then pass beyond the mirror into the eerie, enchanting chessboard realm of "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There".

All the delightful and bizarre inhabitants of Wonderland are here: the White Rabbit and the Cheshire Cat, the hooka-smoking Caterpillar and the Mad Hatter, the March Hare and the Ugly Duchess... and, of course, Alice herself - growing alternately taller and smaller, attending demented tea parties and eccentric croquet games, and observing everything with clarity and rational amazement.

Seven strange stories of intriguing optical illusions. The Diamond Lens by Fitz James O'BrienThe Devil's Spectacles by Wilkie CollinsThe Secret of the Smoked Spectacles by William Le QueuxMy Black Mirror by Wilkie CollinsThe Man who was Blind by Edwin PughA Coincidence by A. J. AlanTitbottom’s Spectacles by George William Curtis.

Lewis Carroll was a minister in the Church of England and a Professor of Mathematics at Christ Church College. In his diary he described "An expedition up the river to Godstowe with the three Liddells", daughters of the college Dean, "on which occasion I told them the fairy tale of 'Alice's Adventures Underground', which I undertook to write out for Alice".

Mary Robinette Kowal stunned readers with her charming first novel, Shades of Milk and Honey, a loving tribute to the works of Jane Austen in a world where magic is an everyday occurrence. This magic comes in the form of glamour, which allows talented users to form practically any illusion they can imagine. Shades debuted to great acclaim and left readers eagerly awaiting its sequel. Glamour in Glass continues following the lives of beloved main characters Jane and Vincent, with a much deeper vein of drama and intrigue.