Showing results by narrator "Frederick Davidson" in All Categories

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 Monsieur Coupeau, it seems as though she is on the path to a decent, respectable life at last. But with her husband's drinking and the unexpected appearance of a figure from her past, Gervaise's plans begin to unravel tragically.

This terse and startling novel is the story of a struggle for possession and of its devastating consequences. Three women seek to secure the affections of one man, while he, in turn, tries to satisfy them all. But in the middle of this contest of wills stands his unwitting and vulnerable young daughter. The conclusion of The Other House makes it one of the most disturbing and memorable of Henry James' depictions of the uncontrollable passions that lie beneath the polished veneer of civilized life.

The Professor, the first novel that Charlotte Brontë completed, is based on her experiences as a language student in Brussels in 1842. Told from the point of view of William Crimsworth, the only male narrator she created, the work questions many of the presuppositions of Victorian society.

When a journalist at a singularly uncontroversial magazine allows his literary aspirations to run riot, circulation goes up, but so does the danger level...

Born in an overcrowded slum in Scotland in 1813, David Livingstone worked 12-hour days in a cotton factory from age 10 to 24. But a pamphlet by Karl Gutzlaff changed his life. Resolved to become a missionary, he applied himself to medicine, self-educating and eventually qualifying as a doctor.

This collection of eight world-famous cases from Doctor Watson's portfolio illustrates the singular mental faculties of Sherlock Holmes: a body on the London Underground; the strange disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax; a parcel containing some coarse salt and two freshly severed human ears.

This monumental work made the Arthurian cycle available for the first time in English. Malory took a body of legends from Celtic folklore that had been adapted into French literature, gave them an English perspective, and produced a work which ever since has had tremendous influence upon literature.

St. Augustine was the greatest Western philosopher for 1,000 years and a dominant influence on the history of Christian theology. From his conversion in 386 to his death in 430, he remained a great teacher, church statesman, and polemical theologian. St. Thomas Aquinas was one of many scholars influenced by Augustine’s theories.

First published in 1908, and widely regraded as his masterpiece, Penguin Island is Anatole France's most searching and satirical novel. A humorous critique of customs and laws, rituals and rites, its subject is human nature, but its characters are penguins in the mythical land of Penguinia. The story of the strutting penguins and their virtues and vices is not merely a burlesque allegory of French history, it is a satire of the history of mankind. With gentle yet biting irony, France challenges the Spencerian belief in the ultimate perfectibility of man, though his irony reveals his sympathy for man's weaknesses and his need for social institutions.

His last and most controversial novel, Jude the Obscure provoked such widespread and bitter attacks that Hardy claimed it caused him to stop writing novels. The primary causes of the uproar involved Hardy’s frank treatment of sexual themes and his unconventional portrayal of the pillars of Victorian society: the British university system, marriage, and religion. Today, many consider this to be Hardy’s finest work.

Robert Browning's intensely romantic love affair with Elizabeth Barrett inspired some of literature's most celebrated verse. His view that love is the key to the meaning of life and life's animating force is evident in these collected poems.

What would you say to a young stranger who wishes to die? What arguments would you use to restore his will to live? What ideas and ideals would you invoke to save him? Faced with that dilemma, the principal character of Elie Wiesel's magnificent novel - an old wanderer named Azriel - decides to tell a story: his own. The very one he was not supposed to tell, the one he had pledged to keep to himself.

One rainy morning in the winter of 1909, a man with an altogether average look about him quit his job at the London Morning Leader, kissed his wife and children goodbye, and took a train to Swansea in Wales, where he talked his way aboard a freighter bound for somewhere in the upper reaches of the Amazon. Three years later, Tomlinson published a book about his adventures. This book made him famous.

'The right good book,' says Mr. Tomlinson, 'is always a book of travel: it is about a life's journey.'

Three young truants from a church meeting on Sunday make their way to a seashore hideaway, where they observe a huge black man muttering incantations and performing weird rites. When the man discovers the children, he chases them with a knife. In defense, Davy Crawfurd flings a rock at him, and they narrowly escape. Years later, young David Crawfurd goes to South Africa to make his fortune and is caught in the very heart of a great native uprising. Under strange circumstances, he comes face-to-face with its leader, only to recognize the strange blazing eyes of the black man he had encountered as a child on the beach.

James Orlebar Cloyster, in order to marry his true love, embarks on a scheme of such clever deception that he very nearly manages to ruin both his romance and his career. Told from multiple viewpoints - that of James, his fiancée, and friends - Not George Washington lampoons London society, literary pretension, the West End stage, playwrights, playgoers, bohemian life, and the newspapers of the day.

The Trespasser, first published in 1912, was Lawrence's second novel and foreshadowed the passion of Lady Chatterley's Lover. Helena Verden, a young woman in her late 20s, and Siegmund MacNair, her violin teacher, are in love. But there is more than one obstacle to their happiness. Siegmund is a married man with children and Helena is full of inhibitions. They spend a week together on the Isle of Wight, their passion remaining unrequited. When they return to London, Siegmund faces a deadlock. Tormented by his family's bitter reproaches, he is nonetheless unable to desert them for Helena. His solution to his dilemma turns a woman's longing for love into tragedy. Lawrence based his novel on the true-life experiences of his friend Helen Corke, as revealed in her diaries.

In this largely autobiographical coming-of-age story, James Joyce describes the awakening young mind of a middle-class Irish Catholic boy named Stephen Dedalus. The story follows Stephen’s development from his early troubled boyhood through an adolescent crisis of faith—partially inspired by the famous “hellfire sermon” preached by Father Arnall, and partly by the guilt of his own precocious sexual adventures—to his discovery of his ultimate destiny as a poet.

A case from his past is about to ruin Assistant Chief Constable Ned French's career. Heather Jonas, forced into a false confession to murder after a harrowing late-night interview session with French, has now served 15 years of her 20-year sentence. In all that time she's never appealed against her lot; but now, someone else has confessed, and a citizen's rights campaigner is determined to get to the truth.

A twisted tale indeed, featuring love lost, alluring demons, idiotic servants, beautiful ladies, magicians, spells, pirates, and duels, Stolen from Gypsies has been called a comedic tour de force comparable to Shakespeare.

In the seventh century, at the dawn of Christianity, Bega, a bewitching Irish princess bestowed with miraculous powers, and Padric, a charismatic British prince gifted with the fiery power of the sword, sacrifice themselves for what they believe to be a greater destiny.