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This book is a good reference on the perennial flower gardening and landscaping. It contains information on growing the plants from seed and explains how to grow and care for the traditional garden flowering plants, bulbs, trees, and shrubs. There are sections covering all aspects of ornamental gardens including water gardens and caring for house plants in the winter. The author has lots of unexpected but good advice in her chapter of Don’ts, for example: “ Don’t supply with cut flowers, plants and the like, people who spend more money for unnecessary luxuries than you do for your whole ...

Sequel to The Girls of Friendly Terrace (or Peggy Raymond's Success). As the summer opens the girls fan themselves on the porch, wishing for a get away. As it happens, opportunity knocks, leading them into a country vacation along with a few more members to the party. (Summary by Daryl Wor)

This book is in no degree an attempt to relate the involved and intricate history of the Middle Ages. Its plan is, rather, to present pictures of the manner of life and habits of thought of the people who lived between the eighth and fifteenth centuries. Our writings and our everyday conversation are full of their phrases and of allusions to their ideas. Many of our thoughts and feelings and instincts, of our very follies and superstitions, have descended to us from them. To become better acquainted with them is to explain ourselves. (Summary from the Preface of When Knights Were Bold.)

An entertaining history for "young folks", covering the history of Germany from the ancient tribes of pre-Roman times to Wilhelm I (1870-1877). - Summary by Kara

Written primarily for children, James Baikie's 'peep' at ancient Egypt is a really well done, historical account of the ways of that fascinating land so many years ago. It has stood well the test of time, being both well researched and well written. It's a fun book for everyone, and families especially will enjoy listening together.

When the price of Ginseng advanced some years ago hundreds engaged in the business who knew little or nothing of farming, plant raising and horticulture. That they largely failed is not to be wondered at. Later many began in a small way and succeeded. Many of these were farmers and gardeners. Others were men who had hunted, trapped and gathered "seng" from boyhood. They therefore knew something of the peculiarities of Ginseng. It is from the experience of these men that this work is largely made up — writings of those who are in the business. Many other plants are destined to soon become ...

Written in a purgative frenzy of pure imagination (“They came, and I wrote them, that’s all”), Stephen Crane’s The Black Riders and Other Lines is a strange, enigmatic, and sparsely-written collection of free verse that bristles with Old Testament fury, seethes with cosmic cynicism, and touches on themes of lost faith and existential terror. - Summary by ChuckW

"Canon Spratte saw himself as he thought others might see him: mediocre, pompous, self-assertive, verbose." Maugham could have added ambitious, hypocritical, and vain. In this engrossing social satire, Theodore Spratte, a cleric, motivated by an obsessive desire to be elevated to bishop, embellishes his family history and intrudes upon his son's and daughter's courtships. A reviewer in 1906 wrote, "The whole book is an admirable blend of cynical gaiety and broadly farcical comedy; it is the smartest and most genuinely humorous novel that the season has yet given us." -- Lee Smalley

The Roaring Girl is a rip-roaring Jacobean comedy co-written by Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker and first published in 1611. The play is a fictionalized dramatization of the life of Mary Frith, known as "Moll Cutpurse", a woman who had gained a reputation as a virago in the early 17th century. (The term "roaring girl" was adapted from the slang term "roaring boy", which was applied to a young man who caroused publicly, brawled, and committed petty crimes.) The play combines the exploits of the cross-dressed Moll with the amorous adventures of a trio of merchants' wives, and the forbidden ...

Eve's Diary is a comic short story by Mark Twain. It was first published in the 1905 Christmas issue of the magazine Harper's Bazaar, and in book format in June 1906 by Harper and Brothers publishing house. It is written in the style of a diary kept by the first woman in the Judeao-Christian creation myth, Eve, and is claimed to be "translated from the original MS." The "plot" of this novel is the first-person account of Eve from her creation up to her burial by, her mate, Adam, including meeting and getting to know Adam, and exploring the world around her, Eden. The story then jumps 40 years ...

This is the second half of the novel by Goethe (the first half, Volume 1, has been recorded separately). It describes the completion of Meister's development as a person in the world - Summary by Peter Tucker

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"Satan's Diary", Andreyev's last work, was completed by the great Russian a few days before he died in Finland, in September, 1919. But a few years ago the most popular and successful of Russian writers, Andreyev died almost penniless, a sad, tragic figure, disillusioned, broken-hearted over the tragedy of Russia. In "Satan's Diary", Andreyev summoned up his boundless disillusionment in an absorbing satire on human life. Fearlessly and mercilessly he hurled the falsehoods and hypocrisies in the face of life. He portrayed Satan coming to this earth to amuse himself and play. Having assumed the ...

Science fiction is a genre encompassing imaginative works that take place in this world or that of the author’s creation where anything is possible. The only rules are those set forth by the author. The speculative nature of the genre inspires thought and plants seeds that have led to advances in science. The genre can spark an interest in the sciences and is cited as the impetus for the career choice of many scientists. It is a playing field to explore social perspectives, predictions of the future, and engage in adventures unbound into the richness of the human mind. - Summary by A. ...

Virginia Woolf's most successful novel recounts the extraordinary biography of Orlando from his youth in the reign of Elizabeth I to her life as a successful author and mother in 1928, the year of the book's publication. Over the 350 years of his/her life, Orlando loves and is betrayed by a Russian princess, serves as British ambassador to Constantinople, changes sex, lives among gypsies, narrowly escapes marriage to the Archduchess Harriet/Archduke Harry, enjoys the society of Addison, Dryden and Pope, and finally marries Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmardine with whom she has a child. Over the same...

Science fiction is a genre encompassing imaginative works that take place in this world or that of the author’s creation where anything is possible. The only rules are those set forth by the author. The speculative nature of the genre inspires thought and plants seeds that have led to advances in science. The genre can spark an interest in the sciences and is cited as the impetus for the career choice of many scientists. It is a playing field to explore social perspectives, predictions of the future, and engage in adventures unbound into the richness of the human mind. (A.Gramour)

The Magician follows Oliver Haddo as he attempts to create life. He has a fight with a friend, Arthur, after kicking his fiancees dog. Following this fight, he seduces the fiancee, Margaret, with magic and the newlyweds away to Italy. Arthur returns to England to lick his wounds. Meanwhile, Margaret's former roommate, Susie, has fallen for Arthur, although she knows it is hopeless. Eventually, all four meet up at a dinner party and Arthur rescues Margaret from her loveless marriage. After this novel was published in 1908, he was accused of plagiarism by magician Aleister Crowley. It was ...

Science fiction is a genre encompassing imaginative works that take place in this world or that of the author’s creation where anything is possible. The only rules are those set forth by the author. The speculative nature of the genre inspires thought and plants seeds that have led to advances in science. The genre can spark an interest in the sciences and is cited as the impetus for the career choice of many scientists. It is a playing field to explore social perspectives, predictions of the future, and engage in adventures unbound into the richness of the human mind. ( A. Gramour)

Conan the Barbarian finds himself lusting after and fighting alongside the toughest woman alive, Valeria The Red, a beautiful pirate who out pirates the best of them in her strength and ferocity. This is one of the strangest stories ever written by Robert E. Howard — the tale of a barbarian adventurer, a woman pirate, and a weird enclosed and long dead city now inhabited by the most peculiar race of men ever spawned. Listen and be amazed at Howard's inventive genius. - Summary by phil Chenevert

Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance, a short volume, published by Sheldon & Co., NY in 1871, is Mark Twain's third book. It consists of two stories - First Romance, which had originally appeared in The Express in 1870, and A Burlesque Autobiography (bearing no relationship to Twain's actual life), which first appeared in Twain's Memoranda contributions to the Galaxy. Rather, the content consists of a few short stories of fictional characters who are supposedly part of Twain's lineage. In the final passage, Twain develops the story to a point of crisis, and then abruptly ...