English Literature Great

In 1727, Stefan Silbermann is a grief-stricken 13-year-old, struggling with the death of his mother and his removal to a school in distant Leipzig. Despite his father’s insistence that he try not to think of his mother too much, Stefan is haunted by her absence, and, to make matters worse, he’s bullied by his new classmates. But when the school’s cantor, Johann Sebastian Bach, takes notice of his new pupil’s beautiful singing voice and draws him from the choir to be a soloist, Stefan’s life is permanently changed.

Some of the world's finest short fiction has originated in and continues to flow from the cities, villages, rivers, forests and plains of Bengal. This selection features 21 of the very best stories from the region.

Have we been taught to discount the veracity and deeper meaning of our emotional resonance with the world around us? In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis looks at the curriculum of the English "prep school" and begins to wonder if this subliminal teaching has indeed produced a generation who discount such a nature.

The American Classics Collection is a century-spanning collection of 17 classic novels, short stories, essay, and poetry by American authors, read by a cast of incredible narrators including Kobna Holdbrook-Smith; Nathan Osgood; Robert G. Slade; Jonathan Keeble, and more. Included here are stories by some of the greatest writers of all time, including Ernest Hemingway; Mark Twain; F. Scott Fitzgerald; Edith Wharton; Frederick Douglass; and H.P. Lovecraft, amongst a host of others.

The terror and purges of Stalin's Russia in the 1930s discouraged Soviet officials from leaving documentary records, let alone keeping personal diaries. A remarkable exception is the unique diary assiduously kept by Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to London between 1932 and 1943. This selection from Maisky's diary grippingly documents Britain's drift to war during the 1930s, appeasement in the Munich era, negotiations leading to the signature of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact....

America has been through the biggest financial crisis since the great Depression, unemployment numbers are frightening, median wages have been flat since the 1970s, and it is common to expect that things will get worse before they get better. Certainly, the multidecade stagnation is not yet over. How will we get out of this mess?

The small, rundown village of Great Diddling is full of stories—author Berit Gardner can feel it. The way the villagers avoid outsiders, the furtive stares and whispers in the presence of newcomers… Berit can sense the edge of a story waiting to be unraveled, and she's just the person to do it. In fact, with a book deadline looming over her and no manuscript (not even the idea for a manuscript, truth be told), Berit doesn't just want this story. She needs it. Then, while attending a village tea party, Berit becomes part of the action herself.

Renowned critic Greil Marcus takes on the fascinating legacy of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. An enthralling parable (or a cheap metaphor) of the American Dream as a beckoning finger toward a con game, a kind of virus infecting artists of all sorts over nearly a century, Fitzgerald's story has become a key to American culture and American life itself.

It is said that the canal will be the greatest feat of engineering in history. But first, it must be built. For Francisco, a local fisherman who resents the foreign powers clamoring for a slice of his country, nothing is more upsetting than the decision of his son, Omar, to work as a digger in the excavation zone. But for Omar, whose upbringing was quiet and lonely, this job offers a chance to finally find connection.

Texas, 1921. A time of abundance. The Great War is over, the bounty of the land is plentiful, and America is on the brink of a new and optimistic era. But for Elsa Wolcott, deemed too old to marry in a time when marriage is a woman’s only option, the future seems bleak. Until the night she meets Rafe Martinelli. By 1934, the world has changed; millions are out of work and drought has devastated the Great Plains. Elsa must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or leave it behind and go west, to California, in search of a better life for her family.

Long before they were spirit animals, the four were still legends - Great Beasts, the most powerful beings to roam the wilds of Erdas. Aided by a brave resistance of humans and animals, they gave their lives to protect the world from a threat more dangerous than any it had seen before: their own kind. Wise and cunning, gentle and ruthless, these are tales of the true heroes and villains in the war that started it all.

In the rolling hills just outside Gaborone, surrounded by a grove of acacia trees, lies the Great Hippopotamus Hotel. With spacious rooms overlooking the Botswanan countryside and a fine and loyal staff, the hotel has served as a refuge to weary travelers for many years. But a sudden string of misfortunes threatens to ruin the hotel’s reputation. Food poisoning befalls an unlucky diner, laundry mysteriously disappears from the drying line, and a scorpion stings one of the guests. Mishap after mishap occurs, until it becomes apparent that these incidents are more than simple coincidences.

Born in 1859 to Irish immigrants, Mary Dowling arrived at the height of anti-Irish and anti-Catholic fervor in America. The hardscrabble life her family led provided the foundation of grit and determination that would serve her well. She married the enterprising John Dowling. He offered her oversight of their burgeoning bourbon company's financial books and sought her insight as they grew from distillery investors to sole proprietors of Waterfill and Frazier.

Yet, as the powers of hell watch eagerly, Scorio and Naomi spurn those who would recruit them and venture into the untold depths of hell in search of the enigmatic Herdsmen. Amidst landscapes of haunting beauty and terror, they will face terrible fiends, forge friendships with wondrous new allies, and encounter societies of Great Souls to put the worst of hell to shame.

In the third installment of his acclaimed anthology series, master of crime fiction Lawrence Block has gathered together the best talent from popular fiction to produce an anthology of short stories based on masterpieces of American art. Among the star-studded lineup of writers you'll find Jerome Charyn, Jane Hamilton, Christa Faust, John Sandford, Sara Paretsky, Walter Mosley, Charles Ardai, Barry Malzberg, and Janice Eidus.

In the late 1860s, the Oregon Trail was said to have a grave every mile, its two-thousand-mile stretch wrought with hardship and danger. But in 1840, no wagons had yet made the treacherous journey to the Columbia River.

Under the titan Hyperion's rule, the sun is burning even brighter than normal and scorching everything in northern Greece - including the villagers! The Olympians are forced to play a sizzling "game" of Dodge the Sunbursts as Hyperion hurls giant fireballs that could fry them to pieces! Armed with some clues, Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades set out to figure out why in the world Hyperion has been making things so hot. They also need to rescue Hera, who is still missing. Battling the extreme heat, the boys are off on another epic adventure.

Hannah Cowan presents Book 5 in the Greatest Love series.

Here are delightful upendings of genre clichés and heartfelt revitalizations of classic tropes. Here is social commentary with teeth, and here are scenes of pants-wettingly funny comedy. Here are characters and situations that by their very outrageousness achieve a heightened realism unlike any other. And here is one of the strongest voices in modern science fiction, the writer called by Andrew Sean Greer “this generation’s Le Guin”.

On his last long walk, septuagenarian war hero, deserter, and professor Alessandro Giuliani shares his past with an illiterate young factory worker, spinning a remarkable tale of heart-stopping escapes, of loves unrequited and won, of madmen, dwarfs, and mafiosi. But overshadowing all is his most miraculous and terrible adventure, the Great War: a surreal parade of horrors that devastated and defined Alessandro, yet enabled him to experience fully the magic and beauty of the absurd human comedy called life.