Risultati letto da "Simon Prebble" in Tutte le categorie

One of the most revered works in English literature, Great Expectations traces the coming of age of a young orphan, Pip, from a boy of shallow aspirations into a man of maturity. From the chilling opening confrontation with an escaped convict to the grand but eerily disheveled estate of bitter old Miss Havisham, all is not what it seems in Dickens’ dark tale of false illusions and thwarted desire.

Casanova in Bolzano is a riveting novel written within the framework of historical reality, of Casanova's escape from a Venetian prison and his fateful encounter with a woman in Bolzano who finally defeats him. Marai captures Casanova and his time and world with amazingly rich detail and startling insight.

This acclaimed best seller from popular historian Alison Weir is a fascinating look at the Tudor family dynasty and its most infamous ruler. The Six Wives of Henry VIII brings to life England’s oft-married monarch and the six wildly different but equally fascinating women who married him. Gripping from the first sentence to the last and loaded with fascinating details, Weir’s rich history is a perfect blend of scholarship and entertainment.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes are overshadowed by the event with which they close - the meeting of the great detective and Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime. When "The Final Problem" was first published, the struggle between Holmes and his arch nemesis, seemingly to the death, left many readers desolate at the loss of Holmes, but it also led to his immortality as a literary figure.

My Man Jeeves, first published in 1919, introduced the world to affable, indolent Bertie Wooster and his precise, capable valet, Jeeves. Some of the finest examples of humorous writing found in English literature are woven around the relationship between these two men of very different classes and temperaments. Where Bertie is impetuous and feeble, Jeeves is coolheaded and poised.

Hard Times is Dickens' scathing portrait of Victorian industrial society and its misapplied utilitarian philosophy. And Thomas Gradgrind is one of his most richly dimensional, memorable characters. Filled with the details and wonders of small-town life, Hard Times is also a daring novel of ideas---and ultimately a celebration of love, hope, and the limitless possibilities of the imagination.

One of the most daunting ghost stories to ever be written, Henry James' The Turn of the Screw follows the transformation of Miles (age 10) and Flora (age eight) from well-behaved children to deceitful liars. When a governess comes to their country estate to look after the children, she and Flora are separately visited by a ghost; however Flora denies the experience and Miles claims to never have been visited by one, even when evidence supports an evil plot between the children and the ghosts.

A colonel receives five seeds in the mail---and dies within weeks. A young bride disappears immediately after her wedding. An old hat and a Christmas goose are the only clues to a stolen jewel. A son is accused of his father's murder. These mysteries---and many more---are brought to the house on Baker Street where detective Sherlock Holmes resides. No case is too tricky for the world's most famous sleuth and his incredible powers of deduction.

In the first of all the Sherlock Holmes stories, Dr. John Watson, discharged from military service after suffering severe wounds, is at a loose end until a chance encounter leads him to take rooms with a remarkable young man. The arrogant, irascible Sherlock Holmes is a master chemist, a talented musician, and an expert on all aspects of crime.

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (commonly known as The Pickwick Papers) is the first novel by Charles Dickens. The book became the first real publishing phenomenon, with bootleg copies, theatrical performances, Sam Weller joke books and other merchandise.

In the 1840s, Charles Dickens wrote five short stories with strong social and moral messages. "The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of Home", is the third of these stories. Following the home life of John Peerybingle, the story introduces the many people in John's family and life, along with a cricket that acts as the guardian angel of the family. Like its predecessors, this story also contains heavy social and moral implications.

In a future wracked by environmental catastrophe and social instability, physicist John Renfrew devises a longshot plan to use tachyons - strange, time-traveling particles - to send a warning to the past. In 1962, Gordon Bernstein, a California researcher, gets Renfrew's message as a strange pattern of interference in an experiment he's conducting.

From the bestselling, Man Booker-shortlisted author of The Sisters Brothers, comes a brilliant and boisterous novel that reimagines the folk tale. A love story, an adventure story, a fable without a moral, and an ink-black comedy of manners, Undermajordomo Minor is Patrick deWitt’s...

Governess Honoria Wetherby values her independence. She would rather travel the world than marry and give some man control of her life. Then, one stormy evening, fate changes all her plans. She stumbles upon a mortally wounded young man in the woods. When the stranger dies, she is trapped in a cabin with his body and with his newly arrived cousin, Devil, whom she soon learns is aptly named.

“Ridley leaps from chromosome to chromosome in a handy summation of our ever increasing understanding of the roles that genes play in disease, behavior, sexual differences, and even intelligence. . . . . He addresses not only the ethical quandaries faced by contemporary scientists but the...

“A terrific book, witty and lucid, and brimming with provocative conjectures.” (Wall Street Journal) from the author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller Genome Brilliantly written, The Red Queen compels us to rethink everything from the persistence of sexism to the endurance of...

The story of France from the Renaissance to the 19th century, as Dumas vibrantly retold it in his numerous enormously popular novels, has long been absent one vital, richly historical era: the Age of Napoleon. But no longer. Now dynamically, in a tale of family honor and undying vengeance, of high adventure and heroic derring-do, The Last Cavalier fills that gap.

In The Valley of Fear, the great detective Sherlock Holmes has been summoned by a coded message to the house of a man called Douglas. But he and his faithful friend Dr. Watson arrive to find they are too late---Douglas has been murdered, with a mysterious calling card left by his side. Scotland Yard is stumped, but Holmes, detecting the diabolical workings of his arch-enemy Professor Moriarty, has some ideas of his own.

In 1956, 23-year-old Colin Clark began work as a lowly assistant on the set of The Prince and the Showgirl, the film that united Sir Laurence Olivier with Marilyn Monroe. The blonde bombshell and the legendary actor were ill suited from the start. Monroe, on honeymoon with her new husband, the celebrated playwright Arthur Miller, was insecure, often late, and heavily medicated on pills. Clark was perceptive in his assessment of what seemed to be going wrong in Monroe's life and became her confidant and ally.

Hailed as one of the world’s masterpieces of psychological realism, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high-court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise he is brought face-to-face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?