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(0)Frederick Davidson
83) The Gin Palace
The Gin Palace is the seventh novel in Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle, which follows two branches of a French family through several generations. It is also the work that made his reputation, introducing one of the most sympathetic heroines in nineteenth-century literature.
Abandoned by her lover and left to bring up their two children alone, Gervaise Macquart has to fight to earn an honest living. When she accepts the marriage proposal of
...This second volume in Solzhenitsyn's narrative chronicles the appalling inhumanity of the Soviets' "Destructive-Labor Camps" and the fate of prisoners in them—felling timber, building canals and railroads, and mining gold without equipment or adequate food or clothing, and subject always to the caprices of the camp authorities. Most tragic of all is the life of the women prisoners and the luckless children they bear.
Once again, this chronicle
...Wellington must call on the only man brave and ruthless enough to win at any cost—Richard Sharpe.
Only a year after its stunning victory at Talavera in July of 1809, Wellington's Peninsular army—vastly outnumbered, its coffers empty—is on the brink of collapse. The Spanish government has fallen, and the last Spanish armies have been crushed by the French. But Wellington has one hope left: in the dangerous Portuguese hills
...Here is one of those rare novels that completely transports the reader to an unforgettable time and place in history.
At Talavera in July of 1809, Captain Richard Sharpe, bold, professional, and ruthless, prepares to lead his men against the armies of Napoleon in what will be the bloodiest battle of the war. Sharpe has earned his captaincy, but there are others, such as the foppish Lieutenant Gibbons and his uncle, Colonel Henry Simmerson,
...In this final volume of a towering work that is both literary masterpiece and a living memorial to the untold millions of Soviet martyrs, Solzhenitsyn's epic narrative moves to its astounding and unforeseen climax. We now see that this great cathedral of a book not only commemorates those massed victims but celebrates the unquenched spirit of resistance which flickered and then burst into flame even in Stalin's "special camps."
Of the Archipelago
..."To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour." —from "Auguries of Innocence"
At the end of his life, William Blake gave up hope of being widely understood, but the twentieth century brought his work a new and intense interest and acclaim. A poet, artist, and mystic, Blake declared that "I must Create a System or be enslav'd by another Man's." And create
...89) The Decameron
90) His Last Bow
How is it that the small continent of Europe, with its rich multiplicity of cultures and traditions, has managed to exert so profound an influence on the rest of the world? Roberts' sweeping and entertaining history notes the paradoxical effect, for good and ill, on everything touched by those Western values that originated in Europe.
Beginning with its Paleolithic origins and the early civilizations of the Aegean, Roberts traces the development
...With the emperor Napoleon at its head, an enormous French army is marching toward Brussels. The British and their allies are also converging on Brussels—in preparation for a grand society ball. It is up to Richard Sharpe to convince the Prince of Orange, the inexperienced commander of Wellington's Dutch troops,...