検索キーワード： 著者 "Beauty_23" すべてのカテゴリー

"The wrongdoing of one generation lives into the successive ones and... becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief." Hawthorne's moral for "The House of the Seven Gables," taken from the Preface, accurately presages his story. The full weight of the gloomy mansion of the title seems to sit on the fortunes of the Pyncheon family. An ancestor took advantage of the Salem witch trials to wrest away the land whereon the house would be raised... but the land's owner, about to be executed as a wizard, cursed the Pyncheon family until such time as they should make restitution.Now, almost two centuries...

The Sign of the Four (1890), also called The Sign of Four, is the second novel featuring Sherlock Holmes written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle wrote four novels and 56 stories starring the fictional detective.The story is set in 1888. The Sign of the Four has a complex plot involving service in East India Company, India, the Indian Rebellion of 1857, a stolen treasure, and a secret pact among four convicts ("the Four" of the title) and two corrupt prison guards. It presents the detective's drug habit and humanizes him in a way that had not been done in the preceding novel A Study in Scarlet...

This warm and witty novel presents itself as the first person narration of an immensely likeable and resourceful woman who, born in the most shameful of circumstances, comes to be desired by, and indeed married to, many men, in the course of her life — some of whom she inveigles into marriage on false pretences — who, when all else fails, resorts to an extraordinarily successful life of crime, pulling many ingenious heists until at last she is nabbed and faced with a real prospect of being hanged. Moll's descriptions of the amorous inclinations of males are often very funny — and not the...

In 1908, the National Monetary Commission was established by Congress to study financial boom-and-bust cycles. Senator Nelson Aldrich (Republican-RI) was chair of the commission. He, in secret enclave with a group of bankers, drafted what was called The Aldrich Plan, which provided for a central "bank" that would hold funds individual banks could borrow in the case of a bank run, print currency, and act as the fiscal agent of the US government. However, the plan gave little power to the government and seemed to give almost absolute control of the country's currency to Wall Street financiers. ...

A Tale of Two Cities is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. With well over 200 million copies sold, it ranks among the most famous works in the history of fictional literature. The novel depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the revolution, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats in the early years of the revolution, and many unflattering social parallels with life in London during the same time period. It follows ...

What really killed Sir Charles Baskerville? Is his nephew, Sir Henry, in danger from the legendary family curse, a gigantic black hound? Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are on the case in this classic mystery, set on lonely Dartmoor in Devonshire. Neolithic ruins, a perilous quagmire, eerie sounds in the night, and (of course) fog all add to the fun, with an escaped convict thrown in for good measure. (Summary by Laurie Anne Walden)

The story is told almost entirely from the point of view of the first person narrator, David Copperfield himself, and was the first Dickens novel to be written as such a narration. The story deals with the life of David Copperfield from childhood to maturity. David's father had died six months before he was born, and seven years later, his mother remarries but David and his step-father don’t get on and he is sent to boarding school. As David settles into life we are taken along with him and meet a dazzling array of characters, some of whom we will never forget and some of whom we won't want ...

Dr. Watson sits down again to ruminate over his notes of all the mysteries he has joined Sherlock Holmes in investigating. In the “Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes”, he has gathered twelve more of the most interesting puzzles for the public’s appreciation. He concludes with the bittersweet note that he believes the last story will be his final collaboration with the famous sleuth. -

Bleak house is one of Dickens finest achievements. It was written for serialisation in 1853 when Dickens was at the peak of his career. Monthly sales substantially exceeded his previous bestseller David Copperfield.Dickens' mastery of the English language comes to the fore in this book. It is an energetic book: a complex mystery story revolving around the heroine Esther Summerson and her path from childhood to marriage. During the course of Esther’s narration Dickens introduces some wonderful and unforgettable characters, and at the same time provides a searing indictment of the laws’ ...

If it is a truth universally acknowledged that a good-looking girl cannot fail of attracting a clever young man does it follow that the reverse is also true? If the man comes of a terrifyingly dysfunctional family and the girl in question likes to see spooks and horrors round every corner, yes. Morland by name, Lackland by nature, Catherine, not altogether addicted to the heroine role in general, finds this greatness thrust upon her in the (fortunately, principally financial) fantasies of her would-be inamorato's father, the General. When the General finds she is the artless, simple girl that ...

Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen's first published novel, focuses on the lives and loves of two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. The sensible Elinor and the sensitive Marianne both fall for men whose affections are otherwise engaged. The novel includes a wonderful cast of colorful supporting characters, as well as Austen's trademark dry wit and ironic narration. (Summary by Elizabeth Klett)

"Please sir, I want some more," the famous line spoken by Oliver Twist at age nine, becomes the tipping point of a huge change in Oliver's life. He is soon captured into the service of Fagin and his gang of pick-pocketing boys. But, Mr. Brownlow saves him from arrest, and for the first time in his young life Oliver finds comfort and caring. Unfortunately, he is recaptured into the seedy and disgusting world he had escaped, and meets with Bill Sykes, a dangerous criminal. There are numerous delightful or wicked characters that carry the story along, such as the Artful Dodger-- a boy of the ...

Miss Frances, the youngest Ward sister, "married, in the common phrase, to disoblige her family, and by fixing on a lieutenant of marines, without education, fortune, or connexions, did it very thoroughly. She could hardly have made a more untoward choice." Some years later, pregnant with her ninth child, Mrs. Price appeals to her family, namely to her eldest sister and her husband, Sir Thomas Bertram, for help with her over-large family. Sir Thomas provides assistance in helping his nephews into lines of work suitable to their education, and takes his eldest niece, Fanny Price, then ten years...

In a little town of Buckskin, population 100, or 200 depending on who did the counting, all kinds of trouble is brewing. See, there was a rivalry going on between Buckskin and a nearby town, Perry's Bend. That rivalry had turned sour, and involved the four nearby ranches. Hopalong Cassidy lives on the Bar-20, and the cows from the C 80 were mixing with his herd. There are gun fights, barroom brawls and stampedes to make live exciting out there on the Texas-New Mexico line!

This is a collection of 23 poems read by LibriVox volunteers for February 2018

The first chapter of a book is often the hook to draw a reader in. It could make you eager for more or realize it isn't for you. Here we offer the seventh "First Chapter Collection" in which readers share the first chapters of a variety of fiction and non-fiction works.

The book was first published in February 1905 by McClure, Phillips & Co. (New York) then on March 7, 1905 by Georges Newnes, Ltd. (London) and was the first Holmes collection since 1893, when Holmes had "died" in The Final Problem. Having published The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1901–1902 (setting it before Holmes' death) Doyle came under intense pressure to revive his famous character.The first story is set in 1894 and has Holmes returning in London and explaining the period from 1891–94, a period called "The Great Hiatus" by Sherlockian enthusiasts. Also of note is Watson's statement ...

Having left Sherlock Holmes apparently deceased at the conclusion of The Final Problem (in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes), we now find that he is alive after all! In this collection, first published in 1905, the great detective causes Watson to faint (The Empty House), demonstrates that cryptography is elementary (The Dancing Men), and gets engaged (Charles Augustus Milverton). Join in the fun as Holmes deduces his way through these thirteen adventures. (summary by Laurie Anne Walden)

The first chapter of a book is often the hook to draw a reader in. It could make you eager for more or realize it isn't for you. Here we offer the sixth First Chapter Collection" in which readers share the first chapters of a variety of fiction and non-fiction works.

This is Charles Johnston's translation of and commentary on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Johnston's interpretation of this seminal yogic text focuses on "the birth of the spiritual from the psychical man." - Summary by Maggie Russell