English Literature Great

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.

After offending the powerful pastor of a cult, Mari McGavin has to flee with her six-year-old son. With no money and no place else to go, she returns to the tiny Maine island where she grew up—a place she swore she'd never see again. There Mari runs into her lifelong friend Harry Richardson, one of the island's summer residents, now back himself to sell his family's summer home.

Herriot continues the rich and rewarding day-to-day life of a small-town veterinarian, and we journey with him across the dales, meeting a whole new cast of unforgettable characters - humans, dogs, horses, lambs, parakeets - all of them drawn with the same infinite fascination, affection and insight that made James Herriot one of the most beloved authors of our time. And all the stories are warmly, evocatively told by the world-renowned "voice" of Dr. Herriot: Christopher Timothy.

Walk in Hell is the incredible second book of best-selling author Harry Turtledove’s alternate history tetralogy of World War I, The Great War. The first book, American Front, was chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of the Best Books of 1998.

In this startlingly vivid portrait of a world torn apart by war and strife, the Confederate States of America ally with Britain and France, while the United States sides with Germany in a World War I that might have been.

Alexander's beauty, strength and defiance were apparent from birth, but his boyhood honed those gifts into the makings of a king. His mother, Olympias, and his father, King Philip of Macedon, fought each other for their son's loyalty, teaching Alexander politics and vengeance from the cradle. His love for the youth Hephaistion taught him trust, while Aristotle's tutoring provoked his mind and Homer's Iliad fuelled his aspirations.

Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny didn't think the old trunk in their house held anything interesting. But an unusual statue they find inside leads them to the Reddimus Society, a secret guild dedicated to returning lost treasures to where they belong. Now the Aldens must help their new friends by traveling across the country with the statue and six mysterious boxes! Can the Boxcar Children keep these seven treasures out of the wrong hands?

Scorio will rise from the ashes to conquer the 10 layers of hell. Reborn without memories, Scorio learns that he is a Great Soul, a legendary defender of the ancient city of Bastion. That within the hallowed halls of the Academy and under the stern eyes of the underworld’s greatest instructors he will enjoy enormous privilege, rediscover unique and wondrous powers, and one day return to the millennium-old battle against their infernal foes. Until he is betrayed.

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.

The Great Eggscape is when the Good Egg and his pals escape their carton and drop into the store for a morning of fun, enjoyed by everybody. Well, almost everybody. Shel (an egg) isn’t a huge fan of group activities, especially when he’s made to be “It” for a game of hide-and-seek. Nevertheless, Shel doesn’t want to let his friends down, so he reluctantly plays, anyway. But after a morning of hiding and seeking, somebody’s still missing. Will the dozen eggs friends ever be reunited?

By July 1914, the ties between Kezia Marchant and Thea Brissenden, friends since girlhood, have become strained - by Thea's passionate embrace of women's suffrage, and by the imminent marriage of Kezia to Thea's brother, Tom, who runs the family farm. When Kezia and Tom wed, just a month before war is declared between Britain and Germany, Thea's gift to Kezia is a book on household management - a veiled criticism of the bride's prosaic life to come.

Luciel is moving up in the world and people, both good and bad, powerful and weak, have begun to take notice of this peculiar young man. Bent on becoming the best healer he can be in order to aid the many people who can’t afford treatment from the price-gouging clinics, he accepts his new position with trepidation, heading straight for the source of the infamous guild’s corruption. But something is up with the Church—a labyrinth of monsters lurks beneath the floor of the healers’ headquarters.

One moment, a certain salaryman is on cloud nine, that promotion finally within his grasp, and the next, he’s keeled over pain, and that was all she wrote. Luckily for him, fate had a bit more to say. A world of magic, monsters, and other such life-shortening entities await his newly reincarnated self for a second shot at life. With nothing but his past-life experiences and sharp business skills to guide him in the foreign lands of Galdardia, he takes up the name Luciel and vows that his (next) demise will be from naught but old age.

When an intricate old map is found stuffed into the walls of the bistro in Three Pines, it at first seems no more than a curiosity. But the closer the villagers look, the stranger it becomes. Given to Armand Gamache as a gift the first day of his new job, the map eventually leads him to shattering secrets. To an old friend and older adversary. It leads the former Chief of Homicide for the Sûreté du Québec to places even he is afraid to go. But must. And there he finds four young cadets in the Sûreté academy, and a dead professor. And, with the body, a copy of the old, odd map.

Henry and his slobbering dog Mudge are visiting Great-Grandpa Bill, who lives in a house with lots of other grandpas. Henry likes the grandpas because they play checkers and rock in rocking chairs. Mudge likes them because they feed him mint candies. When Henry and Mudge leave the house to go exploring, they find a beautiful swimming pond. They come back to let everybody know, and soon all the grandpas want to go swimming. Henry's father says, "We'll have to go in our Skivvies."

When the world of Quadravidia comes under attack by the insidious tau, only one man can defeat the aliens and save the planet in the Emperor's name – the legendary Hero of the Imperium, Commissar Ciaphas Cain. When the aliens call for a ceasefire, Cain expects the worst, and his fears are answered in the form of the dread menace of the tyranids. As a hive fleet approaches Quadravidia, Cain must try to forge an alliance between the Imperium and the t'au – but can he truly trust the inscrutable xenos?

C. S. Lewis had one of the great minds of the 20th century. Many know Lewis as an author of fiction and fantasy literature, including the Chronicles of Narnia and the Space Trilogy. Others know him for his books in apologetics, including Mere Christianity and The Problem of Pain. But few know him for his scholarly work as a professor of medieval and Renaissance literature. What shaped the mind of this great thinker?

Fitzgerald's legendary novel, one of the greatest classics of American literature, is now accessible to learners of English at a level B2 of the CEFR, including those preparing for the Cambridge First Certificate. It has been adapted and edited for an extensive reading and a fluid decoding and assimilation of its contents. The book also aims at improving language skills through FIRST-style activities and at promoting its appreciation through a rich literary analysis of the themes, characters, setting and context.

The Persian Boy traces the last years of Alexander's life through the eyes of his lover, Bagoas. Abducted and gelded as a boy, Bagoas is sold as a courtesan to King Darius of Persia, but finds freedom with Alexander the Great after the Macedon army conquers his homeland. Their relationship sustains Alexander as he weathers assassination plots, the demands of two foreign wives, a sometimes mutinous army, and his own ferocious temper.

Teeny, Sonny Boy and Vic have been swallowed up by the desperation and devastation of the Great Depression, but the trio is buoyed by the fantastical tales Teeny weaves around campfires in hobo jungles and migrant camps, including the story of the raffle baby. As the three navigate the ravages of poverty and prejudices, they form a family bond as strong as the forces against them. But when a solemn pact fails to protect them, their lives are forever changed. And Sonny Boy is left to tell their story, and his own.

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.