Bouvard and PécuchetGustave Flaubert
Nowhere do Flaubert's explorations of the relation of signs to the objects they signify reach a more thorough study than in this work. Bouvard and Pécuchet systematically confuse signs and symbols with reality, an assumption that causes them much suffering, as it does for Emma Bovary and Frédéric Moreau. Yet... read more »
BoyhoodLeo Tolstoy
In the 1850s Tolstoy also began his literary career with an autobiographical trilogy: Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth. This, the second novel in the trilogy, tells of the early part of his life, when he was living happily with his family in the countryside. It also portrays his first love affair with Sonya and the... read more »
Brat FarrarJosephine Tey
What begins as a ploy to claim an inheritance ends with the impostor’s life hanging in the balance. In this tale of mystery and suspense, a stranger enters the inner sanctum of the Ashby family posing as Patrick Ashby, the heir to the family's sizable fortune. The stranger, Brat Farrar, has been carefully coached... read more »
Brave New WorldAldous Huxley
Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs all its members are happy consumers. Bernard Marx seems alone harbouring an ill-defined longing to break free. A visit to one of the few remaining Savage... read more »
Brave New World RevisitedAldous Huxley
When the novel Brave New World first appeared in 1932, its shocking analysis of a scientific dictatorship seemed a projection into the remote future. Here, in one of the most important and fascinating books of his career, Aldous Huxley uses his tremendous knowledge of human relations to compare the modern-day world... read more »
Brideshead RevisitedEvelyn Waugh
Charles Ryder, a lonely student at Oxford, is captivated by the outrageous and decadent Sebastian Flyte. Invited to Brideshead, Sebastian’s magnificent family home, Charles welcomes the attentions of its eccentric, artistic inhabitants the Marchmains, becoming infatuated with them and the life of privilege they... read more »
Brief CandlesAldous Huxley
This collection of Huxley short stories contains After the Fireworks which is the length of a short novel and deals with the predicament of a well-known writer who finds himself approached as an oldish man, by an importunate female admirer who aspires at all costs to be his mistress. A further three stories are... read more »
Brigands of the MoonRay Cummings
Two planets clash for lunar treasure! Gregg Haljan was aware that there was a certain danger in having the giant spaceship Planetara stop off at the moon to pick up Grantline's special cargo of moon ore. For that rare metal--invaluable in keeping Earth's technology running--was the target of many greedy eyes.
But... read more »
Bring Me His EarsClarence E. Mulford
Early 1840's and the West is opening up. Wagon trains are headed to the Oregon Territories and Texas is still an independent republic. Tom Boyd is pushed into a Santa Fe street by the Mexican governor of New Mexico. Boyd slaps the man's face and runs for his life. Agents are sent after Boyd with one order - "Bring... read more »
Brood of the Witch QueenSax Rohmer
The strange deeds of Antony Ferrara, as herein related, are intended to illustrate certain phases of Sorcery as it was formerly practised (according to numerous records) not only in Ancient Egypt but also in Europe, during the Middle Ages. In no case do the powers attributed to him exceed those which are claimed for... read more »
Brother JacobGeorge Eliot
Brother Jacob is Eliot's literary homage to Thackeray, a satirical modern fable that draws telling parallels between eating and reading. Revealing Eliot's deep engagement with the question of whether there are 'necessary truths' independent of our perception of them and the boundaries of art and the self. read more »
The Brothers KaramazovFyodor Dostoyevsky
Dostoyevsky’s towering reputation as one of the handful of thinkers who forged the modern sensibility has sometimes obscured the purely novelistic virtues–brilliant characterizations, flair for suspense and melodrama, instinctive theatricality–that made his work so immensely popular in nineteenth-century... read more »
The Brown Fairy BookAndrew Lang
The stories in this Fairy Book come from all quarters of the world. For example, the adventures of 'Ball-Carrier and the Bad One' are told by Red Indian grandmothers to Red Indian children who never go to school, nor see pen and ink. 'The Bunyip' is known to even more uneducated little ones, running about with no... read more »
Bulldog DrummondSapper
Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond, wealthy former officer of the Loamshire Regiment, dashing and strong (but not particularly handsome), places an advertisement in The Times expressing his desire for an adventure -- which arrives in the form of a reply from a young woman concerned for her father. Blackmailers, communist... read more »
Bulldog Drummond at BaySapper
While Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond is staying in an old cottage for a peaceful few days of duck shooting, he is disturbed one night by the sound of men shouting, followed by a large stone that comes crashing through the window. When he goes outside to investigate, he finds a patch of blood in the road, and is questioned... read more »
Burmese DaysGeorge Orwell
Set in the days of the Empire, with the British ruling in Burma, Burmese Days describes both indigenous corruption and Imperial bigotry, when 'after all, natives were natives ? interesting, no doubt, but finally only a subject people, an inferior people with black faces'. Against the prevailing orthodoxy, Flory, a... read more »
BurnJames Patrick Kelly
Colonization is the theme of this exciting, complex page-turner that provides a provocative and entertaining look at Thoreau's classic eco-text Walden. Eccentric billionaire Jack Winter has bought the planet Beekman's Pea, renamed it Walden, and created a utopia in which members renounce the technologies of human... read more »
Burning DaylightJack London
Burning Daylight is a novel by Jack London which was one of the best-selling books of that year and it was London's best-selling book in his lifetime. The novel takes place in the Yukon Territory in 1893. The main character, nicknamed 'Burning Daylight' was the most successful entrepreneur of the Alaskan Gold Rush... read more »
Burn, Witch, Burn!A. Merritt
The fabled novel of an eminent physician who agrees to work along side one of the city's most notorious gangsters to put an end to a strange and mysterious series of deaths that have claimed a child, a millionaire, one of the don's men and the doctor's nurse. Investigation leads the pair to the uncanny Madame... read more »
Busman's HoneymoonDorothy L. Sayers
Lord Peter Wimsey and his bride, mystery writer Harriet Vane, start their honeymoon with murder. The former owner of Tallboys estate is dead in the cellar with a misspelled "notise" to the milkman, not a spot of blood on his smashed skull, and £600 in his pocket. read more »
Buzz a BuzzWilhelm Busch
Buzz a Buzz is a story in pictures from the humorous poet and illustrator Wilhelm Busch. In which the bees are humanized. Wilhelm Busch, spent part of his childhood with his uncle, the Reverend George Little, who was also an experienced beekeeper, and incorporated numerous natural history facts in this story. It's a... read more »
By the Shores of Silver LakeLaura Ingalls Wilder
The adventures of Laura Ingalls and her family continue as they move from their little house on the banks of Plum Creek to the wilderness of the unsettled Dakota Territory. Here Pa works on the new railroad until he finds a homestead claim that is perfect for their new little house. Laura takes her first train ride... read more »
Caesar and CleopatraGeorge Bernard Shaw
Set in Egypt, Caesar and Cleopatra, is a drama in which the 50-year-old Roman general meets the childish young Queen and exerts a fatherly influence on her. read more »
The Call of the WildJack London
The Call Of The Wild is the story of Buck, a dog stolen from his home and thrust into the merciless life of the Arctic north to endure hardship, bitter cold, and the savage lawlessness of man and beast. White Fang is the adventure of an animal -- part dog, part wolf --turned vicious by cruel abuse, then transformed... read more »
CandidaGeorge Bernard Shaw
Delve into a hilarious examination of Victorian love, manners, morals, and marriage written by the author of Pygmalion. In Candida, George Bernard Shaw gives us the story of the misbegotten love triangle that springs up between a reverend, his putatively prim and proper wife, and a love-struck and starry-eyed young... read more »
CandideVoltaire
Political satire doesn't age well, but occasionally a diatribe contains enough art and universal mirth to survive long after its timeliness has passed. Candide is such a book. Penned by that Renaissance man of the Enlightenment, Voltaire, Candide is steeped in the political and philosophical controversies of the... read more »
Candle in the WindT. H. White
The fourth book from the collection The Once and Future King by T. H. White. It deals with the last weeks of Arthur's reign, his dealings with his son Mordred's revolts, Guenever and Lancelot's demise, and his perception of right and wrong. read more »
Canoeing in the WildernessHenry David Thoreau
At the time Thoreau made this wilderness canoe trip he was forty years old. The record of the journey is the latter half of his The Maine Woods, which is perhaps the finest idyl of the forest ever written. It is particularly charming in its blending of meditative and poetic fancies with the minute description of the... read more »
Can You Forgive Her?Anthony Trollope
With 'Can You Forgive Her?' Trollope begins his masterful series of Parliamentary novels, but here he is concerned with the politics of love and the demands of society. Alice Vavasor, lovely, intelligent and just a bit prudish, is torn between two men -- the upright if plodding John Gray, and the evasive yet... read more »
Cape CodHenry David Thoreau
Based on several trips to the Cape and originally published as a series of articles, Henry David Thoreau's Cape Cod is a remarkable work that depicts the natural beauty of Cape Cod and the nature that surrounds it. Thoreau, a consummate lover of the outdoors and nature is right at home in the Cape and he details his... read more »