Classic Irish Fiction

On an ordinary summer's afternoon, Alice tumbles down a hole - and an extraordinary adventure begins. In a strange world with even stranger characters, she meets a rabbit with a pocket watch, joins a Mad Hatter's Tea Party, and plays croquet with the Queen! Lost in this fantasy land, Alice finds herself growing more and more curious by the minute.

When her father remarries, the honest, innocent Molly Gibson suddenly finds herself with a new stepsister, Cynthia, who is beautiful, worldly and impetuous. This would be more than enough to deal with, but the new wife is the deeply snobbish (and darkly secretive) Hyacinth. Thwarted love, scheming ambition and small-town gossip underlie the warmth, irony and brilliant social observation which link the relationships and the inevitable conflicts as profound change comes to rural England.

Without doubt, Judy was the worst of the seven, probably because she was the cleverest. Judy's father, Captain Woolcot, found his vivacious, cheeky daughter impossible - but seven children were really too much for him, and most of the time they ran wild at their rambling riverside home, Misrule. Step inside and meet them all: dreamy Meg and Pip, daring Judy, naughty Bunty, Nell, Baby, and the youngest - 'the General'. Come and share in their lives, their laughter and their tears.

Siobhan McKenna reads The White Trout, The Soul Cages and Jamie Freel and The Young Lady.

Suite au décès de M. Dashwood, sa veuve et ses trois filles se voient contraintes de quitter le Sussex et le domaine familial de Norland. Elles se réfugient dans le Devon, à l'invitation d'un généreux parent, où une nouvelle vie, plus modeste les attend. Les sœurs aînées, Elinor et Maria, l'une plus raisonnable, l'autre plus sentimentale vont vivre leur premiers émois amoureux non sans quelques revers.

You can’t fight love. Darcy knows he is falling for Elizabeth Bennet, but he doesn’t want to be connected to her ill-bred family, so he struggles to put her out of his mind. Until he receives an anonymous valentine. Caroline Bingley sent the valentine, but Darcy thinks it is from Elizabeth Bennet. Elizabeth thinks Mr. Darcy is an arrogant, disagreeable man, until he shows up on her doorstep, declaring his undying love for her. She is astonished. He is only half as obnoxious as he was before. What could have made the difference? A Valentine for Darcy is a Pride and Prejudice Variation ...

In Cameo ~ A Profile In Courage, Mary McMahon, a Cornell University student in the year1900, mourns her lover, Casey, who dies when a wagon wheel crushes his neck. Her ashamed parents demand their pregnant daughter remain hidden until they can arrange a marriage. Mary rehearses the attitude of a lonely wife before fleeing to New York City. She lives with cockroaches in Una's tenement and rolls tobacco into cigars in Kezrat Carr's sweatshop. Checkmated by Casey who died and a child who lives, Mary trades the cameo Casey carved for her in exchange for an illegal abortion performed by Mrs. ...

Shakespeare is regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's best dramatist. His plays have been translated into every major language, and are the most performed ever. His work contains stunningly modern insight, witty jokes and soaring passion; it is an endless source of amazement and inspiration.

Rainbow Valley was written in 1919 by L. M. Montgomery for the series that began with Anne of Green Gables. Anne and Gilbert's children are growing up! Their new friends, the Merediths, live in the Manse nearby. When the Merediths aren't playing in the graveyard or riding pigs through town, they meet up with the Blythes to play, fish, and study insects in Rainbow Valley!

Shakespeare is regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's best dramatist. His plays have been translated into every major language, and are the most performed ever. His work contains stunningly modern insight, witty jokes and soaring passion; it is an endless source of amazement and inspiration. Romeo and Juliet is perhaps his most famous and beloved; this heartbreaking tale of impossible love has marked every generation since its publication, and it is an essential part of Western culture.

Captain Stephen Sorrell returns from the First World War decorated with the Military Cross but unnerved by the conflict. His mercenary wife has deserted him for 'one of the fellows who stayed behind' and left him responsible for their son, Christopher. A promised position in an antique shop fails to materialise, and Sorrell faces poverty. Despite losing status, he takes a job as a hotel porter, cleaning shoes and carrying luggage. Thus begins the long climb to financial security.

The follow up to best-selling audio Three Men in a Boat, Three Men on the Bummel features delightful, gentle, comic writing. First published in 1900, the story revives the three companions from Three Men in a Boat, this time taking them on a bicycle tour through the German Black Forest. Written during the Victorian era bicycle-craze, it is a light-hearted commentary on German culture at the time, told through the eyes of the hapless British tourist.

Take Me to Your President is another brilliant political satire by the author of The Mouse That Roared. After chasing his dog (who was chasing a rabbit), a simple farmer from a small village in England finds himself inexplicably on board a top-secret intergalactic missile. Before he can sort it out, the farmer finds himself touching down in the United States of America where he is mistaken for a Martian. And now it’s up to him to bring world peace. “Once again Leonard Wibberley—author of The Mouse That Roared—has conjured a unique sort of comedy from a blend of fantasy, blandly ...

"The Prisoner of Zenda" is an adventure novel by Anthony Hope, published in 1894. The king of the fictional country of Ruritania is drugged on the eve of his coronation and thus unable to attend the ceremony. Political forces are such that in order for the king to retain his crown his coronation must go forward. An English gentleman on holiday who fortuitously resembles the monarch, is persuaded to act as his political decoy in an attempt to save the situation.

In this first book of "The Forsyte Saga", Galsworthy paints a vivid portrait of a wealthy and ambitious London family at the turn of the century. Interwoven with this is the ill-fated romance of Irene and Bossiny.

Tom Jones is a splendid Hogarthian panorama of 18th-century English life and morals, encompassing both city and country, and comprising some of the greatest comic characters in British literature. First published in 1749, it was an instant success and has gone on to become a classic of its genre. Quite simply, there has never been anything like it.

The novel is the story of a scientist who, through the study of optics finds a way to make things invisible. In a desire for recognition, fame, and the advantages of being invisible, he subjects himself to the process. But being unseen isn't as positive as he had hoped, and he soon finds himself regretting his condition, and his mind also becomes warped. He becomes mentally unhinged. Later, he embraces his invisibility and begins to spiral into a lust for power and control, and he reveals a plan he has hatched to unleash his personal "terror" on the world.

Just as many more sayings and doings of the Lord existed prior to and alongside the canonical Gospels, so were there, prior to and alongside the subsequently selected or canonical acts, many other narratives professing to record the doings and sayings of the apostles and disciples of the Lord. This is one such gnostic text which had been lost for centuries.

Découvrez l'ouvrage original de Rudyard Kipling. Sept récits constituent ce premier livre ; Mowgli est le héros de trois d'entre elles.

Under the Greenwood Tree, Hardy's second novel, was published in 1872 and became the first of his great series of Wessex novels. The book, subtitled A Rural Painting of the Dutch School, tells the endearing tale of a group of church musicians who accompany the hymns at the local Mellstock parish choir and we follow the fortunes of one of its member, Dick Dewy, who falls in love with the new school mistress, Fancy Day.