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1) The Yosemite
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John Muir, famous for his naturalist essays and books, was over 70 years old when he wrote "The Yosemite" as a reflection on the beauty of the national park. Muir was a naturalist, so he was highly invested in describing the landscape, flora, and fauna of Yosemite National Park. He even said that "no temple with manmade hands can compare with Yosemite." Muir knew the terrain well, having hiked and climbed Cathedral Peak, Mount Dana, and the old Indian...
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From the photographer who brought Thoreau's Walden and Cape Cod to life comes a new work combining classic literature with brand-new photography. This time, Scot Miller takes on the seminal work of John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra. The book details Muir's first extended trip to the Sierra Nevada in what is now Yosemite National Park, a landscape that entranced him immediately and had a profound effect on his life. The towering waterfalls,...
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Dr. Moreau, a scientist expelled from his homeland for cruel experiments, finds a deserted island where he can create hideous creatures with manlike intelligence. But as the rigid order on Moreau's island dissolves, the consequences of his experiments emerge, and his creations revert to beasts more shocking than nature could devise.
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Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read
Wuthering Heights, first published in 1847, the year before the author's death at the age of thirty, endures today as perhaps the most powerful and intensely original novel in the English language. “Only Emily Brontë,” V.S. Pritchett said about the author and her contemporaries, “exposes her imagination...
Wuthering Heights, first published in 1847, the year before the author's death at the age of thirty, endures today as perhaps the most powerful and intensely original novel in the English language. “Only Emily Brontë,” V.S. Pritchett said about the author and her contemporaries, “exposes her imagination...
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The story of Anthony Patch and his wife, Gloria. Harvard-educated and an aspiring aesthete, Patch is waiting for his inheritance upon his grandfather's death. His reckless marriage to Gloria is fueled by alcohol and is destroyed by greed. The Patches race through a series of alcohol-induced fiascoes -- first in hilarity, and then in despair.
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aA masterpiece of storytelling, this epic saga pits Ahab, a brooding and fanatical sea captain, against the great white whale that crippled him. In telling the tale of Ahab's passion for revenge and the fateful voyage that ensued, Melville produced far more than the narrative of a hair-raising journey; Moby-Dick is a tale for the ages that sounds the deepest depths of the human soul. Interspersed with graphic sketches of life aboard a whaling vessel,...
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"With the publication of this controversial novel, Edith Wharton leveled her most biting critique at the limitations that her society placed upon the ambitious woman." The reader meets Undine Spragg--woman who ruthlessly sells herself to whatever man she believes can provide her with the success she desires. Spragg is a magnificent anti-heroine, "viciously and precisely rendered by the author"--Publisher description.
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"The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today" is the collaborative work of Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner that satirized the era of political greed and corruption that followed the American Civil War. This period is often referred to as "The Gilded Age" because of this book. The corruption and greed that was typical of the era is exemplified through two fictional narratives; one of the Hawkins family, a poor family from Tennessee who try to get the government...
10) South Sea tales
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Featuring eight works of short fiction, South Sea Tales by Jack London is an adventurous collection with a nautical theme. With settings on islands or ships, South Sea Tales tell the exciting, but often heartbreaking tales of violence, colonialism, and racism. The House of Mapuhi follows the son of a trading magnate, who travels from island to island buying valuable items for his mother's business. When he learns of a brilliant pearl owned by one...
11) We
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The groundbreaking dystopian novel that inspired 1984 and Brave New World. "The best single work of science fiction yet written." -Ursula K. Le Guin
When society has programmed you to sleep . . .
How do you wake yourself up?
The One State is a world where people are merely numbers, and free will itself is a disease. Most are happy in their role as cogs in a huge machine, controlled by the ever-watchful Benefactor.
However,...
12) Twice told tales
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The stunning collection of short fiction that established Nathaniel Hawthorne as one of the most powerful and provocative artists in nineteenth-century America Dr. Heidegger invites four friends to witness an experiment. As the impoverished merchant Mr. Medbourne, the gout-ridden sinner Colonel Killigrew, the ruined politician Mr. Gascoigne, and the aged widow Wycherly watch, Heidegger places an old rose in a vase filled with water drawn from the...
13) Hard times
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Thomas Gradgrind, retired businessman and one of Coketown's most prominent citizens, runs his life and his school along strict utilitarian lines. Fact and reason are his governing principles; imagination and sentiment are to be abhorred and suppressed. Gradgrind raises his children, Tom and Louisa, by the same soulless, barren methods, blighting their young lives. Shorn of emotion because of her upbringing, Louisa yields to a loveless marriage to...
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Thomas Hardy's first masterpiece, The Mayor of Casterbridge opens with a scene of such heartlessness and cruelty that it still shocks readers today. A poor workman named Michael Henchard, in a fit of drunken rage, sells his wife and baby daughter to a stranger at a country fair. Stricken with remorse, Henchard forswears alcohol and works hard to become a prosperous businessman and the respected mayor of Casterbridge. But he cannot erase his past....
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"For an indefinite time I clung to the machine as it swayed and vibrated, quite unheeding how I went, and when I brought myself to look at the dials again I was amazed to find where I had arrived."
Embark on a journey hundreds of thousands of years into the future on a homemade time machine! The Time Traveler discovers what he first perceives as a perfect pastoral landscape inhabited by an evolved form of humanity, but soon he discovers the dark...
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Delve into the whimsical world of "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman," a groundbreaking novel that revolutionized the literary landscape.
Sterne's work, inspired by the likes of Cervantes and John Locke, challenges traditional narrative forms through its playful digressions, innovative typography, and satirical tone. The novel humorously narrates the life of Tristram Shandy, making it a pioneering precursor to stream of consciousness...
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Tells the tale of Walter Hartright, who encounters a woman all dressed in white on a moonlit road in Hampstead. Hartright helps the woman to find her way back to London. The woman warns him against an unnamed baronet and after they part he discovers that she may have escaped from an insane asylum. Hartright travels to Cumberland where he takes up a position as the art tutor of Laura Fairlie and her devoted half-sister, Marian Halcombe, who are somehow...
19) The warden
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The quiet life of an English clergyman is disturbed by rumors about the source of his income.
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Considered one of George Eliot's finest achievements, "The Mill on the Floss" is famed for its unsurpassed description of English rural life and for its striking, superbly drawn heroine, Maggie Tulliver. This novel's unsentimental evocation of childhood stands as an enduring triumph.