Georgina Sutton
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Description
A novel powered by two characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom.
2) The Italian
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The Italian (1797) is a novel by Ann Radcliffe. Radcliffe's final novel is a tragic story of romance and mystery set in Naples during the brutal years of the Holy Inquisition. Published in the aftermath of the French Revolution, the novel investigates the issues of religion and class that had inspired the Republican cause, changing Europe and the world forever. Considered an essential work of Gothic fiction, The Italian is an early example of her...
3) Uncle Silas
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Uncle Silas (1864) is a novel by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. Expanded from an earlier short story, Uncle Silas is considered an important precursor to the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, and remains the author's most popular novel. It has been adapted several times for film, television, and radio.
Following the untimely death of her father, Maud Ruthyn is sent to live at Bartram-Haugh, the estate of her estranged Uncle Silas. Under the terms of her father's...
5) Shirley
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The story of a complicated friendship between two very different women: shy and socially constrained Caroline, the poor niece of a tyrannical clergyman; and the independent heiress Shirley, who has both the resources and the spirit to defy convention. The romantic entanglements of the two women with a local mill owner and his penniless brother pit the claims of passion against the boundaries of class and society.
7) Adam Bede
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Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 9.4 - AR Pts: 42
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Description
George Eliot takes the well-worn tale of a lovely dairy-maid seduced by a careless squire and out if it creates a portrait of the lives of ordinary Midlands working people their labors and loves, their beliefs, their speech.
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In Virginia Woolf's lyrical, inventive last novel, the action takes place on one summer's day at a country house in the heart of England on the eve of World War II.
"Love. Hate. Peace. Three emotions made the ply of human life." Between the Acts takes place on a June day in 1939 at Pointz Hall, the Oliver family's country house in the heart of England. In the garden, everyone from the village has gathered to present the annual pageant ??-?? scenes...
10) Hester
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Hester (1883) is a dramatic story of female power and family tensions within Victorian society. Using her own money, Catherine Vernon manages to save the family bank from collapse after her cousin John absconds with some of its money. As the matriarch of Redborough, Catherine is used to commanding authority, but this is challenged with the arrival of John's strong and capable teenage daughter, Hester. Ignorant of her father's conduct, Hester takes...
11) The Oaken Heart
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Margery Allingham, already a successful crime writer, was living quietly in the Essex village of Tolleshunt D'Arcy ('Auburn') when the Second World War broke out. Her house became an Air Raid Wardens' post and a First Aid centre, and Allingham herself became responsible for 275 East London evacuees in a rural community of just over 600. Commissioned by American publishing friends to recount what life was like, she began The Oaken Heart in the autumn...
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Do not think, because this collection of essays is titled Volume 2, that there is anything lesser or additional to it. Here is Virginia Woolf at her most entertaining and informative, relishing the portraits and insights she presents as she surveys a varied collection of individuals in English society and English literature.
The subjects range from the Elizabethans to Thomas Hardy, and then concludes, unexpectedly, with 'How Should One Read A Book?'...
13) The Pillow Book
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In the tenth century, Japan was both physically and culturally isolated from the rest of the world. The Pillow Book recaptures this lost world with the diary of a young court lady. Sei Shōnagon was a contemporary of Murasaki Shikibu, who wrote the well-known novel The Tale of Genji. Unlike the latter's fictionalized view of the Heian-era court, Shōnagon's journal provides a lively miscellany of anecdotes, observations, and gossip, intended to be...
14) The Monk
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Set in the sinister monastery of the Capuchins in Madrid, The Monk is a violent tale of ambition, murder and incest.
15) Vanity Fair
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Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 12.4 - AR Pts: 66
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Description
Thackeray's best-loved work, "Vanity Fair, is a satire of epic proportions, and proves that deep-seated cynicism and heartfelt morality don't have to get in the way of a good story. Filled with exceptionally drawn characters, biting social humor, and Thackeray's own illustrations, "Vanity Fair is not only one of the great English novels of the nineteenth century, its title has become synonymous with the follies of high society. Nicholas Dames is Assistant...
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Shocked and distressed by a male writer's vilification of women, Christine de Pizan has a powerful dreamlike vision in which she is visited by three personified Virtues: Reason, Rectitude and Justice. They tell her she has been chosen to write a book which will be like a city, housing virtuous women and protecting them from feminist attack. Heroines past and present form the foundations of this city — biblical and mythical heroines, ruling queens,...
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Sharply observant and wickedly funny, E.F. Benson's six 'Mapp and Lucia' novels satirise the upper-middle-class social climbers in 1920s and '30s rural England. Games of bridge and cups of tea fuel hilarious gossip and vindictive plots a-plenty. It is a masterfully sustained spotlight on the minutiae of village life — a clever and ultimately heart-warming series that seems tailor-made for audio. Volume 2 contains the second three books.
Mapp and...
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Lady B. stays to tea. (Mem.: Bread-and-butter too thick. Speak to Ethel.) We talk some more about bulbs, the Dutch School of Painting, our Vicar's wife, sciatica, and All Quiet on the Western Front. (Query: is it possible to cultivate the art of conversation when living in the country all the year round?)'
If the question suggests a qualified answer, there is no doubt that the art of diary writing is alive and well and very, very funny in Devonshire...
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The Provincial Lady in Wartime, though the last of the Provincial Lady series, is one of the finest.
No further 'Diaries' had appeared since The Provincial Lady in America (published in 1934) when, in 1939, Harold Macmillan, then chairman of Macmillan publishers and a fan, made a personal request to E. M. Delafield for a new book. The onset of the war with Germany was serious, but, he said, Britain, was in need of the entertaining but pertinent...
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No one could have been more surprised than our Provincial Lady to receive an invitation from her American agent to travel transatlantic and embark upon a programme of lectures and signings. She was particularly amazed because, having received an overture sometime before and feeling that she would rather stay in the English countryside, she requested that they meet quite a few 'requirements' before she would agree to go.
They met every stipulation....