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An eccentric poet acts as spiritual detective in eight thought-provoking tales. Gabriel Gale employs his extraordinary gifts of empathy to solve and prevent crimes perpetrated by madmen. His philosophical police-work forms the basis for captivating explorations of poetry, insanity, and sin - all expressed in the author's characteristic paradoxes and soaring flights of rhetoric. Best known as the creator of priest-detective Father Brown, G. K. Chesterton...
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A leading art patron, lecturer, and author of the Victorian era, John Ruskin was also one of the period's foremost art and social critics. This anthology features excerpts from some of his best-known books, including Modern Painters and The Stones of Venice, on the subjects he held most dear: nature, art, and society.
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This comprehensive collection showcases Oscar Wilde's brilliant storytelling skills and his amazing stylistic versatility, ranging from fairy tales and ghost stories to detective yarns and comedies of manners. It includes the complete texts of "The Happy Prince and Other Tales," "A House of Pomegranates," "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories," "Poems in Prose," and the critical essay "The Portrait of Mr. W. H." Originally published in the...
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"One of the first works of fiction published by a Chinese-American author, this collection of 17 short stories offers a revealing look at life in San Francisco's Chinatown during the early 20th century. Deceptively simple tales of family life offer deeper reflections on the tensions that arise in the course of cultural assimilation"--
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This essential anthology of Poe's critical works features items from the Southern Literary Messenger, Graham's Magazine, and other periodicals, reviewing works by Dickens, Hawthorne, Cooper, and many others. The Theory of Poetry - consisting of "The Philosophy of Composition," "The Rationale of Verse," and "The Poetic Principle" - appears as well. Introduction.
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G. K. Chesterton's "The Ballad of the White Horse" is the last great epic poem written in the English tradition. First published in 1911, it tells the heroic tale of Saxon King Alfred the Great and his defeat of the invading Viking army at the Battle of Ethandun. While Chesterton's work was not intended to be completely historically accurate, it is a deeply evocative and detailed account of an ancient and forgotten world. King Alfred has been driven...
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"The first taste I had for books came to me from my pleasure in the fables of the Metamorphoses of Ovid. For at about seven or eight years of age I would steal away from any other pleasure to read them, inasmuch as this language was my mother tongue, and it was the easiest book I knew and the best suited by its content to my tender age." –Michel de Montaigne
Ars Amatoria; or, The Art of Love (2 AD) is an instructional poem by Ovid. Divided into...
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How could the son of a glove-maker, born and bred in an Elizabethan backwater, have developed into the immortal William Shakespeare? How is it possible that someone with no formal education beyond grammar school wrote the world's most read and performed plays? This captivating exploration of the mysteries surrounding Shakespeare's life and work offers a persuasive case for the authenticity of his authorship. Scholarly but readable, the study rests...
10) Songs of Kabir
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A weaver by trade and a mystic by nature, the 15-century poet Kabir created timeless works of enlightenment that combine the philosophies of Sufism, Hinduism, and the Kabbala. Expressed in imagery drawn from common life and the universal experience, Kabir's poems possess an appealing simplicity. This collection of 100 songs reflects nearly every aspect of the mystic's thought and emotions: ecstasy and despair, tranquil beatitude and fervid illumination,...
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"This sweeping, illustrated panorama of horse-related history and lore will appeal to readers of all ages. Starting with the miniature Eohippus, the work follows the evolution of the horse through Greek mythology, the Middle Ages, the American West, and beyond, profiling race horses, working and war horses, and much more"--