Showing results by narrator "Peter Silverleaf" in All Categories

Book 2: Riches: Little Dorrit is a novel by Charles Dickens, originally published in serial form between 1855 and 1857. The story features Amy Dorrit, youngest child of her family, born and raised in the Marshalsea prison for debtors in London. Arthur Clennam encounters her after returning home from a 20-year absence, ready to begin his life anew. The novel satirises the shortcomings of both government and society, including the institution of debtors' prisons, where debtors were imprisoned, unable to work, until they repaid their debts.

Les Misérables is a French historical novel by Victor Hugo, first published in 1862, that is considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. Beginning in 1815 and culminating in the 1832 June Rebellion in Paris, the novel follows the lives and interactions of several characters, particularly the struggles of ex-convict Jean Valjean and his experience of redemption.

Victor-Marie Hugo (26 February 1802 - 22 May 1885) was a French poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote abundantly in an exceptional variety of genres. BOOK 1: A JUST MAN: In 1815, M. Charles-François-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of Digne. He was an old man of about seventy-five years of age; he had occupied the see of Digne since 1806.

Remember Violet Smith, the beautiful young woman who Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson rescued from a forced marriage, as recorded in The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist? Ever wonder what happened to her and her true husband, Cyril Morton, in the years that followed. Well, ten years later she and Cyril reappear in 221B Baker Street with a strange tale of the theft of their bicycles -- hardly a crime worthy of the brilliant mind of the world's greatest detective. But ...What on the surface seemed like a trifle turns out to be the door that leads Sherlock Holmes into a web of human trafficking.

Silver Blaze, one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 12 in the cycle collected as The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Doyle ranked "Silver Blaze" 13th in a list of his 19 favourite Sherlock Holmes stories. Sherlock Holmes and his partner Dr. Watson travel by train to Dartmoor to investigate a crime of disappearance of the great race horse Silver Blaze and the murder of the horse's trainer, John Straker.

The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615, Don Quixote is the most influential work of literature from the Spanish Golden Age and the entire Spanish literary canon. A founding work of Western literature, it is often labeled "the first modern novel" and is sometimes considered the best literary work ever written.

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 - 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, short story writer, poet and literary critic. THE DEAD: Lily, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet. Hardly had she brought one gentleman into the little pantry behind the office on the ground floor and helped him off with his overcoat than the wheezy hall-door bell clanged again and she had to scamper along the bare hallway to let in another guest.

Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 - 13 August 1946) was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, history, satire, biography and autobiography. His work also included two books on recreational war games. ABOUT SIR THOMAS MORE: There are some writers who are chiefly interesting in themselves, and some whom chance and the agreement of men have picked out as symbols and convenient indications of some particular group or temperament of opinions.

Jules Verne is considered to be an important author in France and most of Europe, where he has had a wide influence on the literary avant-garde and on surrealism. VOLUME 2: We now come to the second part of our journey under the sea. The first ended with the moving scene in the coral cemetery which left such a deep impression on my mind. Thus, in the midst of this great sea, Captain Nemo's life was passing, even to his grave, which he had prepared in one of its deepest abysses.

"Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar" is a novel by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, the fifth in his series of twenty-four books about the title character Tarzan. It first appeared in the November and December issues of All-Story Cavalier Weekly in 1916, and the first book publication was by McClurg in 1918.

Jealous of Taug and Teeka's relationship with their baby, Tarzan kidnaps Tibo, a little boy from the neighboring village to be his own "balu". He tries with indifferent success to teach the terrified and homesick child ape ways. Meanwhile, Momaya, Tibo's mother does everything she can think of to find and recover her son, even visiting the hermit witch-doctor Bukawai, a terrible, diseased exile who keeps two fearsome hyenas as pets. He names a price for recovering Tibo she cannot afford, and she leaves disappointed.

Bukawai, finding Tarzan unconscious after a storm, takes the ape man captive and stakes him out for his hyenas to devour. Escaping, Tarzan leaves the witch doctor in the same trap, in which Bukawai suffers the very fate he had intended for his enemy.

Bukawai attempts to claim credit for Tibo's return and extort payment from the boy's mother, but is rebuffed. He plots vengeance against the native family and Tarzan, but is thwarted by the ape man. In this story Tarzan's life in the wild is contrasted with scenes from the civilized existence of his cousin in England, living the life he might have had had his parents not been marooned in Africa. The cousin does not shine in the comparison.

Josh Flagsmith is a brave, epileptic pirate boy. Born with visionary powers, Josh is chosen as the Pirate Guardian, and entrusted with the onyx Stone of Truth, which he uses to control his epilepsy. But when a cruel colonist dictator seizes power and throws Josh’s parents in prison, Josh has to escape and sail to the island of Amaryllis to seek aid from the Pirate Council. Helped by his friends, Sandy and Megs, and the dictator’s cunning stepdaughter, Lavinia, Josh must find a way to rescue his parents and overthrow the evil dictator.

"BOOK THE FOURTH: ISABEL": I come to the most evasive and difficult part of my story, which is to tell how Isabel and I have made a common wreck of our joint lives. It is not the telling of one simple disastrous accident.

Tarzan's courtship of the female ape Teeka ends in failure when her preference turns to their mutual friend, the male ape Taug. Tarzan wrestles with his humanness versus his ape-ness. The allusion to Helen of Troy enriches the story, making Tarzan and Taug's fight over Teeka take on symbolic proportions. Stan Galloway writes: "when Burroughs chooses to name Helen as an objective correlative for Teeka, he expects both literal and emotional connections to occur." Tarzan's final claim of the story - "Tarzan is a man. He will go alone." - echoes the plight of Adam in the Garden of Eden.

A beautiful young woman, just weeks away from giving birth, arrives at Baker Street in the middle of the night. Her sister was attacked by a bat and died and now it is attacking her. Could it be a vampire sent by the local band of Gypsies? Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are called upon to investigate. The step-father, the local Gypsies and the furious future mother-in-law are all suspects.

THE MAN WHO WAS TWISTED BUT HIP. It is 1897 and France is torn apart by The Dreyfus Affair, a disgraceful episode of anti-Semitism that plagued France for a decade and brought out the worst of behavior in far too many French men and women. Westminster needs help from Sherlock Holmes to make sure that the evil tide of anti-Semitism that has engulfed France will not spread. While spending an uneventful morning searching for his nephew, Dr. Watson finds Sherlock Holmes and together they watch as a man is murdered, a direct consequence of the anti-Semitic conflict that is raging just across the Channel.

THE MYSTERY OF THE FIVE ORANGES. THE KIDNAPPING OF A YOUNG WOMAN LEADS SHERLOCK HOLMES INTO A DEADLY BATTLE WITH THE KKK. On a miserable rainy evening a desperate father enters 221B Baker Street. His daughter has been kidnapped and spirited off the North America. The evil network who has taken her have spies everywhere. Years ago in America they murdered his father and his wife. They set fire to his home and burned them to death. Now, if he goes to Scotland Yard he knows that they will kill his beloved daughter. There is only one hope - Sherlock Holmes.

THE HUDSON VALLEY MYSTERY. A TERRIBLE TRAGEDY HAS TAKEN PLACE JUST OUTSIDE NEW YORK CITY. A YOUNG MAN MURDERED HIS FATHER AND THEN WENT STARK RAVING MAD. Sherlock Holmes is called upon by the lad's mother to solve the crime. So Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson make their way to America. There they meet the villains of Tammany Hall and maybe - no one will ever know - a ghostly apparition the haunts the pleasant glade known as Sleepy Hollow.