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Poison Island
Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch 试读
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch short stories, novels, criticism, and edited anthologies, including the "Oxford Book" series. He was Assistant Editor of the Liberal weekly "The Speaker," and from 1912 until his death was Professor of English at Cambridge University. Writing under the pen name "Q," Sir Arthur produced a variety of work, including adventure stories, historical fiction, satire, stories of the supernatural, and mysteries. "Poison Island" is an adventure after Robert Louis Stevenson. Harry Brooks is sent at age fourteen by his widowed father for a classical education at Mr. Stimcoe's Academy for the Sons of Gentlemen. Mr. Stimcoe is a drunk, and the school a travesty, but Harry meets the mysterious Captain Coffin. Coffin is building a ship to voyage to the Honduras, where he expects to find large amounts of gold, while avoiding the poison of the title. The Captain has a map, but is the treasure real, or a product of drunken imagination? Harry will find out.
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Babbitt
Sinclair Lewis 试读
Prosperous and socially prominent, George Babbitt appears to have everything. But when a personal crisis forces the middle-aged real estate agent to re examine his life, Babbitt mounts a rebellion that jeopardizes everything he values. Widely considered Sinclair Lewis' greatest novel, this satire remains an ever-relevant tale of an individual caught in the machinery of modern life.
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Daisy Miller
Henry James 试读
Famous novella chronicles a young American girl’s willful yet innocent flirtation with a young Italian, and its unfortunate consequences. Throughout, James contrasts American customs and values with European manners and morals in a narrative rich in psychological and social insight.
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Eureka-A Prose Poem
Edgar Allan Poe 试读
Turning his immense intellect and remarkable artistic flair to the most challenging concepts of all - that of the creation of the world, its continued existence and its ultimate end - Poe has created a truly extraordinary work. In his strange blend of poetry and scientific treaty, fact and frenzied speculation, he displays amazing prescience and foresight, anticipating some of the key scientific discoveries of the twentieth century.
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Little Dorrit
Charles Dickens 试读
A novel in which Dickens launches a ferocious onslaught against England and English society.He draws on the memory of his father in his depiction of the Marshalsea debtors prison and there is also the story of the love between an older man and a younger woman.
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A Woman of Thirty
Honoré de Balzac 试读
By the French author,who,along with Flaubert,is generally regarded as a founding—father of realism in European fiction.His large output of works,collectively entitled The Human Comedy (La Comedie Humaine),consists of 95 finished works (stories,novels and essays) and 48 unfinished works.His stories are an attempt to comprehend and depict the realities of life in contemporary bourgeois France.They are placed in a variety of settings,with characters reappearing in multiple stories.
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The Book of Nonsense
Edward Lear 试读
Edward Lear, the 20th child of a London stockbroker, entered the household of Lord Stanley as little more than a servant, but his sense of humour soon made him welcome above stairs and he began to amuse the children with comic drawings and rhymes. This book was first published in 1846.
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The Golden Bough
James George Frazer 试读
A monumental study of comparative folklore and religion, THE GOLDEN BOUGH was originally published in two volumes in 1890, grew to 12 volumes for the third edition in 1915, then abridged by the author into this one-volume edition in 1922. Drawing on the beliefs and customs of ancient European civilizations and primitive cultures throughout the world, James Frazer's work continues to be an important reference.
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The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle 试读
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories.
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1492
Mary Johnston 试读
1492: The Year Our World Began by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto traces modernity to its roots in the year 1492. It focuses on specific events of 1492 (including the Renaissance and voyages of Columbus) which Fernandez-Armesto views as crucial to the development of modern ways of thinking and the physical state of the world today. Exploring how the creation of the earliest surviving globe showed a world shrinking with advances in cartography as a result of exploration, Fernandez-Armesto shows how people, separated by millions of years of geographical change and evolution in terms culture and ecology, began to set out to chart the places they visited, shifting the balance of global power west and establishing a global trade which prefigured that of today, while China marked time. While civilizations were rediscovering one another, however, further divisions emerged as Granada, the last Muslim-ruled state in Western Europe, fell to Spanish Christians confining Islam to the southern shore of the Mediterranean and the Sahara. Meanwhile, Jews expelled from Spain were making their way to destinations around the Mediterranean and Russia was expanding North. With confessional, sovereign states on the rise and challenging the pluralistic empires of the past, ideological differences were more than ever becoming a pretext for war. Power and economic concerns were at the forefront in Florence and Rome, and science and secular clashed with the supernatural. 1492: The Year Our World Began explores a crucial, yet largely neglected point in history and demonstrates how events during this year and the surrounding period began the globalisation and hegemony of the West and the shaping of power relations which we see today.
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A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2
John Miller Dow Meiklejohn 试读
Immigrants from Denmark and NW Germany arrived in Britain in the 5th and 6th Centuries A.D., speaking in related dialects belonging to the Germanic and Teutonic branches of the Indo-European language family. Today, English is most closely related to Flemish, Dutch, and German, and is somewhat related to Icelandic, Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish. Icelandic, unchanged for 1,000 years, is very close to Old English.
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Lena Rivers
Mary Jane Holmes 试读
Mary Jane Holmes was a 19th century author. She was born in Massachusetts and taught school at age 13. After marring she moved to Kentucky. In 1854 she wrote her first novel, Tempest and Sunshine. Her novels center around domestic life. Lena River was written in 1856. Lena is not the typical heroine of the 19th century. She has spunk and a temper. She is beautiful and there are tears and laughs in her story. The supporting characters give this book a lot of humor. Grandma Nichols is the ultimate redneck. If you must have political correctness in your books then this book is not for you. The humor and language surrounding the black slaves is correct if read in the context of the time period in mind.
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Moby Dick: or the White Whale
Herman Melville 试读
A story of the war between man and mammal, in which the author explores his obsessions with good and evil, love and solitude, speech and silence, using his technical knowledge of sailing and the sea to tell a story which is at once minutely realistic and powerfully symbolic.
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Moon and Sixpence
毛姆 试读
Charles Strickland, a conventional stockbroker, abandons his wife and children for Paris and Tahiti, to live his life as a painter. Whilst his betrayal of family, duty and honour gives him the freedom to achieve greatness, his decision leads to an obsession which carries severe implications. Inspired by the life of Paul Gauguin, The Moon and Sixpence is at once a satiric caricature of Edwardian conventions and a vivid portrayal of the mentality of a genius.
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Robin Hood
J.Walker McSpadden 试读
Escape to Sherwood Forest's idyllic charms and join the jolly fellowship of the green wood with these rollicking, tales of the celebrated archer and gentleman thief. Lively episodes introduce each of the famous merry men and other colorful characters, including the villainous Sheriff of Nottingham, lovely Maid Marian, and King Richard the Lionhearted.
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Roughing It
Mark Twain 试读
A classic tour of the wild west.In 1861, young Mark Twain found himself adrift as a tenderfoot in the Wild West—and Roughing It is his hilarious record of his travels come to life with his inimitable mixture of reporting, social satire, and rollicking tall tales.
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Tess of the dUrbervilles
Thomas Hardy 试读
Violated by one man, forsaken by another, Tess Durbeyfield is the magnificent and spirited heroine of Thomas Hardy's immortal work. Of all the great English novelists, no one writes more eloquently of tragic destiny than Hardy. With the innocent and powerless victim Tess, he creates profound sympathy for human frailty while passionately indicting the injustices of Victorian society. Scorned by outraged readers upon its publication in 1891, Tess of the d'Urbervilles is today one of the enduring classics of nineteenth-century literature.
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A Fairy Tale in Two Acts Taken from Shakespeare(1763)
William Shakespeare 试读
Quince, a Carpenter, Mr. Love.Bottom, the Weaver, Mr. Baddely.Snug, the Joiner, Mr. Clough.Flute, the Bellows-mender, Mr. Castle.Snout, the Tinker, Mr. Ackman.Starveling, the Taylor, Mr. Parsons.(This paragraph from the first chapter)
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A Daughter of the Snows
Jack London 试读
"A Daughter of the Snows" by Jack London is the story about a rebellious girl who is not afraid to challenge a traditional society where females are expected to be obedient.
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A Chinese Wonder Book
Norman Hinsdale Pitman 试读
The winter had been a hard one: extreme cold deep snow and violent winds. The Wang house had suffered greatly. The roof had fallen in weighed down by heavy snow. Then a hurricane had blown a wall over and Ming-li the son up all night and exposed to a bitter cold wind had caught pneumonia.
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Keeping up with Lizzie
Irving Bacheller 试读
Bacheller's novels are primarily concerned with early American life in the North Country of New York State. In 1900 his novel Eben Holden, A Tale of the North Country, proved a major success. According to the New York Times it was the 4th best-selling novel in the United States that year.
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Yesterdays
Ella Wheeler Wilcox 试读
This little volume might be called ‘Echoes from the land of youthful imaginings’; or ‘Ghosts of old dreams. ’ It has been compiled at the request of Messrs. Gay and Hancock (my only authorised publishers in Great Britain), and contains verses written in my early youth, and which never before (with the exception, perhaps, of three or four) have been placed in book form.
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Caesar and Cleopatra
George Bernard Shaw 试读
Caesar and Cleopatra satirizes Shakespeare's use of history and comments wryly on the politics of Shaw's own time, but the undertone of melancholy makes it one of his most affecting plays.
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You Never Can Tell
George Bernard Shaw 试读
Kathleen Eagle's novels of love and passion have touched the hearts of countless readers. Now this award-winning writer has created her most compelling story of all. Reporter Heather Reardon has been hot on the trail of Native American activist Kole Kills Crow for years, so when she finds him living on a Minnesota reservation, she's shocked that the outspoken activist is now a private man who has faced both a disastrous brush with the law and a tragic twist of fate. Soon the pair is involved in a cause that forces Kole back intothe spotlight -- and challenges Heather's belief that Kole shouldreturn to the public eye. They travel from the isolation ofMinnesota to the bright lights of Los Angeles...and to a placewhere they must each face the truth about their love. You Never Can Tell is a story you will never forget.
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Danger! and Other Stories
Arthur Conan Doyle 试读
The Title story of this volume was written about eighteen months before the outbreak of the war, and was intended to direct public attention to the great danger which threatened this country. It is a matter of history how fully this warning has been justified and how, even down to the smallest details, the prediction has been fulfilled. The writer must, however, most thankfully admit that what he did not foresee was the energy and ingenuity with which the navy has found means to meet the new conditions. The great silent battle which has been fought beneath the waves has ended in the repulse of an armada far more dangerous than that of Spain.
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A Collection of Ballads
Andrew Lang 试读
When the learned first gave serious attention to popular ballads, from the time of Percy to that of Scott, they laboured under certain disabilities. The Comparative Method was scarcely understood, and was little practised. Editors were content to study the ballads of their own countryside, or, at most, of Great Britain. Teutonic and Northern parallels to our ballads were then adduced, as by Scott and Jamieson. It was later that the ballads of Europe, from the Faroes to Modern Greece, were compared with our own, with European Märchen, or children’s tales, and with the popular songs, dances, and traditions of classical and savage peoples. The results of this more recent comparison may be briefly stated. Poetry begins, as Aristotle says, in improvisation. Every man is his own poet, and, in moments of stronge motion, expresses himself in song.
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Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen
Harding, Emily J. 试读
Aleksander Borejko Chodzko Chodsko coat of arms Kozciesza (1804-1891) was a Polish poet, Slavist and Iranologist. He was a Native of Krzywicze in the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth. Chodsko was an Alumnus of the University of Vilnius, and a friend of poet Adam Mickiewicz. He was an Alumnus of the Institute of Oriental Studies that was attached to the Ministry of Foreign Affaires of the Russian Empire in Saint-Petersburg. From 1830 until 1844, he worked as a Russian diplomat in Iran. From 1852 until 1855, he worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affaires of France. From 1857 until 1883 he succeeded Adam Mickiewicz in the chair of Slavic languages and literature in the College de France. Chosdsko was a Member of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland and the Societe de Linguistique de Paris. He spoke many languages such as: French, English, Russian, Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Polish and German. His works include: Popular Poetry of Persia, Specimens of the Popular Poetry of Persia, Theatre Persan, Polish-English and English-Polish Dictionary and Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen.
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Vanishing Roads and Other Essays
Richard Le Gallienne 试读
Richard Thomas Le Gallienne (1866-1947) was an English man of letters, very much associated with the literary world of London in the 1890s. He was born in Liverpool. He started work in an accountant's office, but abandoned this to write. My Ladies' Sonnets appeared in 1887, and in 1889 he became for a short time literary secretary to Wilson Barrett. He joined the staff of The Star in 1891, and wrote for various papers using the signature of Logroller. He contributed to The Yellow Book, and associated with the Rhymer's Club. In 1906 he translated, from the Danish, Peter Nansen's Loves Trilogy. Among his famous works are: English Poems (1892), The Quest of the Golden Girl (1896), Prose Fancies (1896), Young Lives (1899), The Worshipper of the Image (1900), October Vagabonds (1910), The Lonely Dancer, and Other Poems (1913), and A Jongleur Strayed (1922).
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Tales for Fifteen, or, Imagination and Heart
James Fenimore Cooper 试读
James Fenimore Cooper (September 15, 1789 – September 14, 1851) was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. He is best remembered as a novelist who wrote numerous sea-stories and the historical novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales, featuring frontiersman Natty Bumppo. Among his most famous works is the Romantic novel The Last of the Mohicans, often regarded as his masterpiece.
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Otto of the Silver Hand
Howard Pyle 试读
Between the far away past history of the world, and that which lies near to us; in the time when the wisdom of the ancient times was dead and had passed away, and our own days of light had not yet come, there lay a great black gulf in human history, a gulf of ignorance, of superstition, of cruelty, and of wickedness.
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Salted with Fire-George MacDonald
George MacDonald 试读
Blessed with quiet but keen dark eyes, and a complexion given a white-rose tinge by the fresh Scottish air, Maggie MacLean has grown to learn and love the trade of her father, the village's soutar, or shoemaker.A friend of her childhood has returned, she learns -- James Blatherwick, home from Edinburgh, where he was a divinity student. Yet the proud young man speaking so ably from the pulpit has a secret -- one he almost conceals from himself.Then an even stranger arrival startles her, when she stumbles upon the crying bairn -- a baby, abandoned upon the moor.
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Modern English Books of Power
George Hamlin Fitch 试读
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
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A Man and His Money
Frederic Stewart Isham 试读
"A mistake! Beg pardon!" he murmured with exquisite politeness and began to back out, when a somewhat brutal command on the other's part to "shut that d—— door d—— quick, and not let any more d—— hot air out" arrested the visitor's purpose. Instead of retreating, he advanced.(This paragraph from the first chapter)
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Outdoor Sports and Games
Claude Harris Miller 试读
If we live a natural open-air life we shall have but little need of doctors or medicine. Many of our grandmothers' notions on how to keep well have changed in recent years. Old-fashioned remedies made from roots and herbs have been almost completely replaced by better habits of life and common-sense ideas.' (Excerpt from Chapter 1)"
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Susy, a story of the Plains
Bret Harte 试读
Where the San Leandro turnpike stretches its dusty, hot, and interminable length along the valley, at a point where the heat and dust have become intolerable, the monotonous expanse of wild oats on either side illimitable, and the distant horizon apparently remoter than ever, it suddenly slips between a stunted thicket or hedge of "scrub oaks," which until that moment had been undistinguishable above the long, misty, quivering level of the grain. The thicket rising gradually in height, but with a regular slope whose gradient had been determined by centuries of western trade winds, presently becomes a fair wood of live-oak, and a few hundred yards further at last assumes the aspect of a primeval forest.
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The Ear in the Wall
Arthur Benjamin Reeve 试读
This early work by Arthur Benjamin Reeve was originally published in 1916 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'The Ear in the Wall' features super-sleuth Professor Craig Kennedy who is sometimes referred to as "The American Sherlock Holmes" due to his astounding ability at crime solving and his Watson-like sidekick Walter Jameson, a newspaper reporter. In 'The Ear in the Wall, ' Kennedy and Jameson, aided by a tough but compassionate woman detective start a race to save Betty Blackwell who has transcribed deals with criminal gangs and Wall Street plungers . Arthur Benjamin Reeve was born on 15th October 1880 in New York, USA. Reeve received his University education at Princeton and upon graduating enrolled at the New York Law School. However, his career was not destined to be in the field of Law. Between 1910 and 1918 he produced 82 short stories for Cosmopolitan. During this period he also began authoring screenplays, and by the end of the decade, his film career was at its peak with his name appearing on seven films, most of them serials and three of them starring Harry Houdini. Reeves died on 9th August 1936, a few years after moving to Trenton.
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English Men of Letters – Crabbe
Alfred Ainger 试读
Part of the English Men of Letters Series, published in 1903, this edition features George Crabbe the English poet and naturalist.
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Hardings luck
Edith Nesbit 试读
Dickie lived at New Cross. At least the address was New Cross, but really the house where he lived was one of a row of horrid little houses built on the slope where once green fields ran down the hill to the river, and the old houses of the Deptford merchants stood stately in their pleasant gardens and fruitful orchards.
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Ten Girls from Dickens
Kate Dickinson Sweetser 试读
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book
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Lectures on Evolution
Thomas Henry Huxley 试读
The French expedition to Egypt had called the attention of learned men to the wonderful store of antiquities in that country, and there had been brought back to France numerous mummified corpses of the animals which the ancient Egyptians revered and preserved, and which, at a reasonable computation, must have lived not less than three or four thousand years before the time at which they were thus brought to light.
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Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde
王尔德 试读
With a Preface by Robert Ross. Contents Include: How they Struck a Contemporary - The Quality of George Meredith - Life the Fallacious Model - Life the Disciple - Life the Plagiarist - The Indispensable East - The Influence of the Impressionists on Climate - An Exposure of Naturalism - Thomas Griffiths Wainewright - Wainewright at Hobart Town - Cardinal Newman and the Autobiographers - Robert Browning - The Two Supreme and Highest Arts - The Secrets of Immortality - The Critic and his Material - Dante the Living Guide - The Limitations of Genius - Wanted a New Background - Without Frontiers - The Poetry of Archaeology - The Art of Archaeology - Herod Suppliant - The Tetrarch's Remorse - The Tetrarch's Treasure - Salome Anticipates Dr. Strauss - The Young King - A Coronation - The King of Spain - A Bull Fight - The Throne Room - A Protected Country - The Blackmailing of the Emperor - Covent Garden - A Letter from Miss Jane Percy to her Aunt - The Triumph of American 'Humor' - The Garden of Death - An Eton Kit-Cat - Mrs. Erlynne Exercises the Prerogative of a Grandmother - Motherhood more than Marriage - The Damnable Ideal - From a Rejected Prize-Essay - The Possibilities of the Useful - The Artist - The Doer of Good - The Disciples - The Master - The House of Judgment - Wilde gives Directions about 'De Pro Fundis' - Carey Street - Sorrow Wears no Mask - Vita Nuova - The Grand Romantic - Clapham Junction - The Broken Resolution - Domesticity at Berneval - A Visit to the Pope
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The After House
Mary Roberts Rinehart 试读
By the bequest of an elder brother, I was left enough money to see me through a small college in Ohio, and to secure me four years in a medical school in the East. Why I chose medicine I hardly know. Possibly the career of a surgeon attracted the adventurous element in me. Perhaps, coming of a family of doctors, I merely followed the line of least resistance. It may be, indirectly but inevitably, that I might be on the yacht Ella on that terrible night of August 12, more than a year ago.(This paragraph from the first chapter)
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A Counter-Blaste to Tobacco
King of England James I 试读
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
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Dick Sands, the Boy Captain
Ellen Elizabeth Frewer 试读
Dick Sand is a fifteen-year-old boy serving as a sailor on the schooner "Pilgrim." The crew are whale hunters that voyage every year down to New Zealand. As they plan their return after an unsuccessful season as the wife of the owner of the firm, Mrs. Weldon asks for a return passage to San Francisco for her five-year-old son Jack her cousin, an entomologist and herself. Several days into the journey they save five shipwrecked passengers from another ship and a dog who was with them at the time. Towards the end of their passage, they notice a whale and the crew, hoping for some profit after a bad season, decide to hunt it. Captain Hull reluctantly leaves Dick responsible for the ship. But the hunt goes awry and all the crew members are killed. Now Dick is left in charge of the ship with no experienced sailors to help him. Jules Gabriel Verne was a French novelist, poet, and playwright best known for his adventure novels and his profound influence on the literary genre of science fiction. He was trained to follow in his father's footsteps as a lawyer, but quit the profession early to write for magazines and the stage. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages Extraordinaires, a widely popular series of scrupulously researched adventure novels including A Journey to the Interior of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Around the World in Eighty Days.
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Studies of Trees
Jacob Joshua Levison 试读
In presenting this volume, the author is aware that there are several excellent books, dealing with one phase or another of tree life, already before the public. It is believed, however, that there is still need for an all-round book, adapted to the beginner, which gives in a brief and not too technical way the most important facts concerning the identification.....
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A Fool and His Money
George Barr McCutcheon 试读
Fabulous romantic comedy adventure featuring a castle, hidden treasure, and we can't forget the villain - the count. This was made into a silent film in the 20's. I say it would make a nice remake today. Reads like a modern book - very entertaining and witty.
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A Lost Leader
Edward Phillips Oppenheim 试读
The two men stood upon the top of a bank bordering the rough road which led to the sea. They were listening to the lark, which had risen fluttering from their feet a moment or so ago, and was circling now above their heads. Mannering, with a quiet smile, pointed upwards. "There, my friend " he exclaimed. "You can listen now to arguments more eloquent than any which I could ever frame. That little creature is singing the true, uncorrupted song of life. He sings of the sunshine, the buoyant air the pure and simple joy of existence is beating in his little heart. The things which lie behind the hills will never sadden him. His kingdom is here, and he is content."
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Allan and the Holy Flower
Henry Rider Haggard 试读
I do not suppose that anyone who knows the name of Allan Quatermain would be likely to associate it with flowers, and especially with orchids. Yet as it happens it was once my lot to take part in an orchid hunt of so remarkable a character that I think it ...
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The Daughters of Danaus
Mona Caird 试读
This brilliantly witty novel (1894) follows the lives of two sisters in a wealthy Scots family. One escapes to a profession in London and eventually a decent marriage while the heroine, Hadria, vows to become a composer in Paris, but is thwarted. The novel reveals the power of marriage and the family hold in controlling the lives of talented, spirited women; but unlike other oppressed heroines of the period, Hadria and her feminism both survive. The books includes a trailblazing essay on marriage published by Caird, a visionary novelist and social critic.
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The Delectable Duchy
Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch 试读
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch wrote short stories, novels, and criticism -- and edited anthologies, including the "Oxford Book" series. He was Assistant Editor of the Liberal weekly "The Speaker," and from 1912 until his death was Professor of English at Cambridge University. Writing under the pen name "Q," Quiller-Couch produced a variety of work, including adventure stories, historical fiction, satire, stories of the supernatural, and mysteries. "The Delectable Duchy" is a collection of stories about the Cornwall area of Britain, inspired by a journalist friend who comes for a visit to learn what Cornwall is like. He has spent a week in Cornwall, and wishes to spend a day with Q learning about his particular area. Q despairs of spinning out the story of "his little nook" for a whole day, and realizes "that my love for this spot is built up of numberless trivialities, of small memories all incommunicable, or ridiculous when communicated; a scrap of local speech heard at this corner, a pleasant native face remembered in that doorway, a battered vessel dropping anchor," and the stories in the collection are the result.
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The Moon-Voyage
Jules Verne 试读
The Moon Voyage compiles From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon. From the Earth to the Moon is a humorous science fantasy novel that tells the story of the president of a post-American Civil War gun club in Baltimore, his rival, a Philadelphia maker of armor, and a Frenchman, who built an enormous sky-facing Columbiad space gun and launched themselves with intentions of a Moon landing. Around the Moon is Verne's sequel to From the Earth to the Moon in which a bullet-shaped projectile, along with its three passengers, Barbicane, Nicholl and Michel Ardan, begin the five-day trip to the moon. Jules Gabriel Verne was a French novelist, poet, and playwright best known for his adventure novels and his profound influence on the literary genre of science fiction. He was trained to follow in his father's footsteps as a lawyer, but quit the profession early to write for magazines and the stage. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages Extraordinaires, a widely popular series of scrupulously researched adventure novels including A Journey to the Interior of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Around the World in Eighty Days.
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The Trumpeter Swan
Temple Bailey 试读
It had rained all night, one of the summer rains that, beginning in a thunder-storm in Washington, had continued in a steaming drizzle until morning. There were only four passengers in the sleeper, men all of them-two in adjoining sections in the middle of the car, a third in the drawing-room, a fourth an intermittent occupant of a berth at the end. They had gone to bed unaware of the estate or circumstance of their fellow-travellers, and had waked to find the train delayed by washouts, and side-tracked until more could be learned of the condition of the road. The man in the drawing-room shone, in the few glimpses that the others had of him, with an effulgence which was dazzling. His valet, the intermittent sleeper in the end berth, was a smug little soul, with a small nose which pointed to the stars. When the door of the compartment opened to admit breakfast there was the radiance of a brocade dressing-gown, the shine of a sleek head, the staccato of an imperious voice.
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Voyage au Centre de la Terre(French Edition)
Jules Verne 试读
Un professeur découvre un ancien parchemin sur lequel est indiqué le moyen de se rendre au centre de la terre, par le biais d'un cratère de volcan éteint. Enthousiaste, il tente lui même l'aventure, en compagnie de son neveu (narrateur de l'histoire) et d'un guide.Le début est un peu lent et on se perd un peu dans les considérations minéralogiques, la descripton des paysages et les physionomies de personnages secondaires.
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Widdershins
Oliver Onions 试读
The centerpiece of this rare collection, "The Beckoning Fair One," is widely regarded as a classic of the horror genre. At first blush, it's 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. . . .
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The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science
Thomas Henry Huxley 试读
“The narrative may be exactly true. That is to say, the words, taken in their natural sense, and interpreted according to the rules of grammar, may convey to the mind of the hearer, or of the reader an idea precisely correspondent with one which would have remained in the mind of a witness. For example, the statement that King Charles the First was beheaded at Whitehall on the 30th day of January 1649, is as exactly true as any proposition in mathematics or physics...”
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A Dog with a Bad Name
Talbot Baines Reed 试读
This book was published in 1894 and later serialized. It starts at Bolsover, with the headmaster's decision that all of the boys are to play rugby football. We are introduced to a great range of characters, amongst whom is "Cad" Jeffreys a hulking and short-tempered sort. Jeffreys severely injures the most popular boy at the school and leaves in disgrace. (Jeffreys is the "dog" with the bad name.) We then follow Jeffreys' path to redemption. This sounds rather dry and melodramatic, but the character sketches are so compelling, the dialogue is so bright, and the narrative is so driving it is actually a very refreshing and satisfying read.
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A Fair Barbarian
Frances Hodgson Burnett 试读
1901. Burnett, began as a novelist, but she is now best remembered for her children's books including The Secret Garden and Sara Crewe (which was later rewritten to become The Little Princess). Her romance novels were also quite popular during her lifetime. A Fair Barbarian begins: Slowbridge had been shaken to its foundations. It may as well be explained, however, at the outse...
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The Little Prince
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 试读
12I ask the indulgence of the children who may read this book for dedicating it to a grown-up. I have a serious reason:he is the best friend I have in the world. I have another reason: this grown-up understands everything, even books about children. I have a third reason: he lives in France where he is hungry and cold. He needs cheering up. If all these reasons are not enough, I will dedicate the book to the child from whom this grown-up grew.All grown-ups were once children-- although few of them remember it.
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Daniel Boone The Pioneer of Kentucky
John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott 试读
Daniel Boone was gentle, kindly, modest, peace-loving, absolutely fearless, strong as a bear and active as a panther his life was lived in danger, almost perpetual hardship and exposure yet he died in his bed at almost 90 years of age. This outstanding American's story is one that will inspire any young person today.