Showing results for "The Book of Firsts" in Classics

Charles Dickens was a writer and social critic who created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity.

Herbert George "H. G." Wells (1866 - 1946) was an English writer. He was prolific in many genres, including the novel, history, politics, social commentary, and textbooks and rules for war games. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and is called a "father of science fiction"

BOOK THE FIRST: THE DAYS BEFORE TONO-BUNGAY WAS INVENTED: Most people in this world seem to live "in character"; they have a beginning, a middle and an end, and the three are congruous one with another and true to the rules of their type. You can speak of them as being of this sort of people or that.

On the coast of the Strand, Sal and his father arrive in the small, apparently normal town of Fundelry, where the locals are suspicious of newcomers and of anyone who stands out or appears different. Sal and his father are on the run from an unnamed someone...or something. When a local bully attacks Sal, he is rescued by Shilly and her teacher, Lodo. Lodo is marked with mysterious tattoos and seems to know a lot more about Sal than Sal knows about himself.

Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. Born and educated in Edinburgh, Stevenson suffered from serious bronchial trouble for much of his life, but continued to write prolifically and travel widely in defiance of his poor health. As a young man, he mixed in London literary circles, receiving encouragement from Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse, Leslie Stephen and W. E. Henley, the last of whom may have provided the model for Long John Silver in Treasure Island.

At first blush, Widdershins is a conventional haunted house story involving an unsuccessful writer who moves into an empty house in hope that isolation will help his failing creativity. His sensitivity and imagination are enhanced by his seclusion, but his art, his only friend, and his sanity are all destroyed in the process. It can be interpreted as narrating the gradual possession of the protagonist by a mysterious, possessive feminine spirit, or as a realistic description of a psychotic outbreak culminating in catatonia and murder, told from the psychotic subject’s view.

Eva Taylor has been locked in an attic for four years. Failed by the foster system, and left in the hands of a woman who hates her, and a man who wants her, Eva has given up hope of ever having a life. When she finds a mysterious letter from Rothmore College addressed to her in the trash, Eva's future suddenly comes alive. Now all she has to do is figure out a way to escape her attic prison, make her way across the country to New York City, and figure out all the things that point to the fact that she isn't exactly normal....

A sparkling new translation of this flashback to the start of Inspector Maigret's career, part of the new Penguin Maigret series. The profession he had always yearned for did not actually exist...he imagined a cross between a doctor and a priest - a man capable of understanding another's destiny at first glance. The very first investigation by eager young police secretary Jules Maigret leads him to a wealthy Paris family's dark secrets.

Ernest Hemingway’s landmark short story of a veteran’s solo fishing trip in Michigan’s rugged Upper Peninsula, featuring a revelatory foreword by John N. Maclean. “A century since its publication in the collection In Our Time, “Big Two-Hearted River” has helped shape language and...

Trisha Grove enjoys her job as a pilot for Boswell International, but she realizes something is still missing from her life: her family. She is ready to call it quits and head back home to Wyoming, where her father lives, but her last flight for Boswell ends with an unplanned trip out of this world. Trisha isn't sure at first what's real and what isn't; all she knows is she is determined to get back to her dad - no matter what it takes.

The TDF Marco Polo embarks on its maiden voyage outside Earth's solar system, leading to the discovery of an extinct civilization destroyed by orbital bombardment. Deep underground is a mysterious library of alien secrets.

Staff Sergeant Markus ‘Spartan’ Nicolos is one of the Intelligence Department’s best. A hacker who can beat any code, he’s in charge of communications intercepts for the Golden Horde’s Computer Operations section. Spartan used to be a frontline CASPer pilot - until he lost his entire squad in an ambush. He also lost his edge in the attack, and he swore he would never pilot a CASPer in combat again. Everything changed, though, when he came up with an idea for a new type of scout CASPer - one that would prevent what happened to him from ever happening again.

First recorded in February of 1952, this remastered recording of Dylan Thomas reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales recalls all of the sights, smells, and sounds of a long-ago Christmas. Thomas’s wonderful recollection of this holiday in the seaside town of his youth is captured in this vivid...