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Charlotte Brontë was a British author, the eldest of the three famous Brontë sisters who have become standards of English literature. She is best known for her novel Jane Eyre, one of the greatest classics of all time. Just two years after Charlotte's death, her friend Elizabeth Gaskell wrote her biography. Want to know more about Charlotte Brontë? If you do, please read this biography. Summary by Stav Nisser. A recording of Volume 2 of this work is also available.

This is a collection of early Sir Arthur Conan Doyle short stories. It includes stories of mystery, comedy, shipwrecks and fantasy. (Summary by Richard Kilmer)

Lucy Maud Montgomery’s classic children’s novel, Anne of Green Gables tells the story of a red headed orphan girl with a personality you can’t help but love. Despite her “tragical” past, Anne’s optimism and imagination have helped her to always see the best in things. Anne’s life changes considerably when she is accidentally adopted by the Cuthberts, a brother and sister who thought they were getting a boy to help out on the farm. The Cuthberts decide Anne will have to be sent back to the orphange but before they know it, she has begun to work her way into their hearts. (Summary ...

These twenty-eight lectures to laymen are elementary and almost conversational. Freud sets forth with a frankness almost startling the difficulties and limitations of psychoanalysis, and also describes its main methods and results as only a master and originator of a new school of thought can do. A text like this is the most opportune and will naturally more or less supersede all other introductions to the general subject of psychoanalysis. It presents the author in a new light, as an effective and successful popularizer, and is certain to be welcomed not only by the large and growing number ...

The Lusiads (Os Lusíadas) is a Portuguese epic poem, written in the 16th century by Luis Vaz de Camões. The poem tells the tale of the Portuguese discoveries in the 15th and 16th centuries, specially the voyage to India by Vasco da Gama. Modelled after the classic epic tradition, Camões' Lusiads are considered not only the first literary text in Modern Portuguese, but also a national epic of the same level as Vergil's Aeneid. In the 19th century, Sir Richard Francis Burton translated Camões' Lusiads, in what he considered "the most pleasing literary labour of his life". (Summary by Leni)

LibriVox’s Short Poetry Collection 020: a collection of 20 public domain poems.

This is a sequel to Kidnapped. Many thought Kidnapped ended quite abruptly. The reason is Stevenson planned on writing a sequel. Catriona takes up the story of David Balfour on the same day Kidnapped ends. He must now try to clear his name and the name of James Stewart of the Appin murder. This will not be easy because the Campbells want James Stewart to hang."Catriona: Being Memoirs of the Further Adventures of David Balfour at Home and Abroad, in which are set forth his misfortunes anent the Appin Murder, his troubles with Lord Advocate Grant: captivity on the Bass Rock, Journey into Holland...

Anyone, as Freud tells us in Reflections on War and Death, forced to react against his own impulses may be described as a hypocrite, whether he is conscious of it or not. One might even venture to assert—it is still Freud's argument—that our contemporary civilisation favours this sort of hypocrisy and that there are more civilised hypocrites than truly cultured persons, and it is even a question whether a certain amount of hypocrisy is not indispensable to maintain civilisation. When this travesty of civilisation, this infallible state that has regimented and dragooned its citizens into ...

A humorous tale about a poor Irish charwoman living in the slums of Dublin, and her innocent teenage daughter, Mary Makebelieve, whose first forays into courtship and romance, and their desire to escape from drudgery -- provide us with a charming picture of youth's enthusiasm and a mother's devotion, amidst Dublin's many parks and shops. The chapters are filled with James Stephens' witty Irish observations on life, love, ignorance, the frustrations of the poor and the wishful thinking that sustains them . . . . told as jauntily as only a few authors can equal. ( ~ Michele Fry, Soloist)

Charlotte Bronte was a British author, the eldest of the three famous Bronte sisters who have become standards of English literature. She is best known for her novel Jane Eyre, one of the greatest classics of all times. Just two years after Charlotte's death, her friend Elizabeth Gaskell wrote her biography. Want to know more about Charlotte Bronte? If you do, please read this biography. Summary by Stav Nisser.Volume One of this biography is available here

The Old Curiosity Shop tells the story of Little Nell, a beautiful and virtuous young girl who lives with her grandfather in his shop of curiosities. Her grandfather loves her dearly, and Nell does not complain, but she lives a lonely existence without friends of her own age. Her only friend is Kit, an honest young lad who works at the shop, and whom she is teaching to write. Unbeknownst to Nell, her grandfather is obsessed with their precarious financial position and is attempting to make Nell a good inheritance by winning at cards. He keeps these nocturnal activities a secret, but borrows ...

Barrack-Room Ballads is a collection of poems by Rudyard Kipling which describe life in the British Army, particularly in India, in his time. The poems are written in the voice and language of soldiers of that time. The collection includes some of his best known poems. (Summary by Alan Mapstone)

Here are some classic, short Christmas stories from Charles Dickens, who, one may easily argue, was the greatest Christmas storyteller to date. In this season, may we do as Dickens' asked: "Welcome, everything! Welcome, alike what has been, and what never was, and what we hope may be, to your shelter underneath the holly, to your places round the Christmas fire, where what is sits open-hearted!" Happy Holidays! - Summary by jvanstan

The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain, A Fancy for Christmas-Time, (better known as The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain) is a novella by Charles Dickens first published in 1848. It is the fifth and last of Dickens' Christmas novellas. The story is more about the spirit of the holidays than about the holidays themselves, harking back to the first of the series, A Christmas Carol. The tale centers around a Professor Redlaw and those close to him. (Summary from the Wikipedia)

Don Quixote is an early novel written by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Cervantes created a fictional origin for the story in the character of the Morisco historian, Cide Hamete Benengeli, whom he claims to have hired to translate the story from an Arabic manuscript he found in Toledo's bedraggled old Jewish quarter. The protagonist, Alonso Quixano, is a minor landowner who has read so many stories of chivalry that he descends into fantasy and becomes convinced he is a knight errant. Together with his companion Sancho Panza, the self-styled Don Quixote de la Mancha sets out in ...

In the 1870s, supporters of the pretender to the throne of Spain take advantage of a young man's attraction to the sea to persuade him to run dangerous missions on their behalf, with the financial support of a beautiful but exceedingly baffling young heiress, with whom the young man is soon giddily in love. Told largely in the first person, the novel is unusual, for Conrad, in focusing largely on the evolving psychology of a young man in the throes of a great romantic passion. (Summary by Peter Dann)

The people of the small town of Tamfield are not used to exciting things happening. When millionaire Raffles Haw moves to town, rumors spread like wildfire about him. The advent of Mr. Haw, however, changes the town, and particularly the lives of the McIntyre family, in ways no one could ever have guessed. (summary by Patrick Wells)

Born in the Marshalsea Prison for Debtors, Amy—Little Dorrit—the daughter of the ruined, but self-respectful William Dorrit, has put her entire heart in caring for her dear father, until one day her humble path is crossed by Arthur Clennam. Their meeting proves providential not only for Amy's life, but for the whole Dorrit family, whose new rise will, in many ways, be also their fall. As in all his novels, in Little Dorrit Dickens ushers us into a fascinating and startlingly rich world of human characters and destinies, where virtue and nobility cross swords with vice and villainy, where ...

Shirley is an 1849 social novel by the English novelist Charlotte Brontë. It was Brontë's second published novel after Jane Eyre (originally published under Brontë's pseudonym Currer Bell). The novel is set in Yorkshire in the period 1811–1812, during the industrial depression resulting from the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. The novel is set against a backdrop of the Luddite uprisings in the Yorkshire textile industry. (Summary by Wikipedia)

Eleven short stories. - Summary by david wales