Catalog Search Results
Author
Lexile Measure
1080L
Summary
In the most seminal slave narrative ever written, Frederick Douglass writes, "From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace and in the darkest hours of my career in slavery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope departed not from me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me through the gloom." Reading this narrative is to witness...
Author
Lexile Measure
870L
Summary
A Tale of Two Cities is Charles Dickens's great historical novel, set against the French Revolution. The most famous and perhaps the most popular of his works, it compresses an event of immense complexity to the scale of a family history, with a cast of characters that includes a bloodthirsty ogress and an antihero as believably flawed as any in modern fiction. Though the least typical of the author's novels, A Tale of Two Cities still underscores...
3) Faust
Author
Summary
Goethe's 'Faust' is considered to be his Magnum Opus and one of the best works of German literature ever completed. It is a universal tale of belonging, love, despair and finding ones purpose.
Faust is a man in anguish; having dedicated his life to the sciences, to understanding the world around him he now sees that he has learnt all that he can. He is distraught by the notion that he cannot be at one with the cosmic universe and attain the highest...
Author
Appears on list
Summary
This new translation by Francis Steegmuller was published as a part of the centenary celebration of the original publishing of Madame Bovary. Perhaps no book in the history of the novel has been more enjoyed and praised by critics, fellow craftsmen and general readers of all sorts than this tale of a provincial woman who could not bear the discrepancy between her romantic dreams and the dull routine of her daily life. There is a special poignancy...
Author
Lexile Measure
1080L
Summary
"The book relates the tale of Hank Morgan, an engineer from 19th century Hartford Connecticut, who is inexplicably transported to the early medieval England of King Arthur. While there he uses his knowledge of modern technology to appear as though he is a magician. Despite his best intentions, Hank?s attempts to modernize the past bring about a tragic end. A bittersweet depiction of the Arthurian legend through the eyes of a 19th century American..."...
Author
Summary
These updated editions of classic plays feature new cover art along with the complete text of each work, full explanatory notes, scene-by-scene plot summaries, a key to famous lines and phrases, and illustrations from the Folger Shakespeare Library's vast holdings of rare books. Reissue. (Plays/Drama).
Author
Summary
David Copperfield enjoys an idyllic life with his gentle, widowed mother and his loving nurse, Peggotty. Then tragedy strikes when Mr. Murdstone weds David's mother and drives her to an early grave. Despised by his stepfather, the boy is forced to live in misery and poverty until he runs away to throw himself upon the mercy of his eccentric aunt. Charles Dickens's classic tale of growing up.
Author
Summary
"...tells the story of the shipwrecked Edward Prendick, who finds himself rescued by the mysterious character of the title. On the island, he discovers that his saviour is a mad scientist, intent on creating human-animal hybrids and testing where the boundaries of morality lies."--Page 8.
10) Ethan Frome
Author
Lexile Measure
1200L
Summary
A marked departure from Edith Wharton's usual ironic contemplation of the fashionable New York society to which she herself belonged, Ethan Frome is a sharply etched portrait of the simple inhabitants of a nineteenth-century New England village. The protagonist, Ethan Frome, is a man tormented by a passionate love for his ailing wife's young cousin. Trapped by the bonds of marriage and the fear of public condemnation, he is ultimately destroyed by...
11) Pollyanna
Author
Lexile Measure
870L
Summary
Unwanted and unloved, Pollyanna Whittier comes to her aunt's home without a warm welcome. Pollyanna's irrepressible spirits make punishments seem like treats and her cheerfulness brings happiness to her aunt and other members of the community.
Author
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Summary
A portrait is a key example of the Keunstlerroman (an Artist's Buldungsroman) in English literature. Joyce's novel trace the intellectual and religio-philosophical awakening of young Stephen Dedalus as he begins to question and rebel against the Catholic and Irish conventions in which he has been raise.
13) My Ántonia
Author
Lexile Measure
990L
Summary
A successful lawyer remembers his boyhood in Nebraska and his friendship with an immigrant Bohemian girl.
Author
Lexile Measure
420L
Summary
"Moby Dick by Herman Melville is the story of Captain Ahab's quest to avenge the whale that 'reaped' his leg. The quest is an obsession and the novel is a diabolical study of how a man becomes a fanatic. But it is also a hymn to democracy. Bent as the crew is on Ahab's appalling crusade, it is equally the image of a co-operative community at work: all hands dependent on all hands, each individual responsible for the security of each. Among the crew...
15) Dubliners
Author
Appears on list
Summary
Fifteen stories evoke the character, atmosphere, and people of Dublin at the turn of the century.
16) Winnie-the-Pooh
Author
Lexile Measure
790L
Appears on list
Summary
The adventures of Christopher Robin and his friends, in which Pooh Bear uses a balloon to get honey, Piglet meets a Heffalump, and Eeyore has a birthday.
17) Don Quixote
Author
Lexile Measure
1410L
Appears on list
Summary
""The final and greatest utterance of the human mind." -- Fyodor Dostoyevsky. A founding work of modern Western literature, Cervantes' masterpiece has been translated into more than 60 languages and the novel's elderly knight, Don Quixote, and his loyal squire, Sancho Panza, rank among fiction's most recognized characters. This monumental parody of chivalric romances and epic of heroic idealism presents a strikingly contemporary narrative that also...
Author
Summary
A companion to the epic poem Paradise Lost, John Milton's Paradise Regained describes the temptation of Christ. After Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden, Satan and the fallen angels stay on earth to lead people astray. But when God sends Jesus, the promised savior, to earth, Satan prepares himself for battle. As an adult, Jesus goes into the wilderness to gain strength and courage. He fasts for 40 days and nights, after which Satan...
19) Kidnapped
Author
Lexile Measure
630L
Summary
In 1751 in Scotland, cheated out of his inheritance by a greedy uncle who has him kidnapped and put on a ship to the Carolinas, seventeen-year-old David Balfour escapes to the Highlands with the help of the Jacobite Alan Breck Stewart and there encounters further danger and intrigue as he attempts to clear his name and regain his property.
Author
Lexile Measure
1170L
Summary
Presents the story of Dr. Frankenstein and his obsessive experiment that leads to the creation of a monstrous and deadly creature.
"First published in 1818, Frankenstein electrified the world with its haunting exploration of reckless innovation, misplaced justice, and what makes a man or a monster. This keepsake edition presents Mary Shelley's 1831 revision, which reflects significant shifts in her philosophy and includes her introduction to the...
