eBooks „novels“
6647 eBooks were found for the search term „novels“.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Treasure Island
- Adventure
- English
- 67801 Words
- Ages 6 and up
- 398
- 2
Treasure Island is an adventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, narrating a tale of "buccaneers and buried gold". Traditionally considered a coming-of-age story, Treasure Island is a tale noted for its atmosphere, characters and action, and also as a wry commentary on the ambiguity of morality — as seen in Long John Silver — unusual for children's literature. It is one of the most frequently dramatized of all novels. The influence of Treasure Island on popular perceptions of pirates is enormous, including such elements as treasure maps marked with an "X", schooners, the Black Spot, tropical islands, and one-legged seamen bearing parrots on their shoulders.
Bones becomes a long-term lodger at the inn, only paying for about the first week of his stay. Jim quickly realizes that Bones is in hiding, and that he particularly dreads meeting an unidentified seafaring man with one leg. Some months later, Bones is visited by a mysterious sailor named Black Dog. Their meeting turns violent, Black Dog flees and Bones suffers a stroke. While Jim cares for him, Bones confesses that he was once the mate of a notorious late pirate, Captain Flint, and that his old crewmates want Bones' sea chest. Some time later, another of Bones' crew mates, a blind man named Pew, appears at the inn and forces Jim to lead him to Bones. Pew gives Bones a paper. After Pew leaves, Bones opens the paper to discover it is marked with the Black Spot, a pirate summons, with the warning that he has until ten o'clock to meet their demands. Bones drops dead of apoplexy (in this context, a stroke) on the spot. Jim and his mother open Bones' sea chest to collect the amount due to them for Bones' room and board, but before they can count out the money that they are owed, they hear pirates approaching the inn and are forced to flee and hide, Jim taking with him a mysterious oilskin packet from the chest. The pirates, led by Pew, find the sea chest and the money, but are frustrated that there is no sign of "Flint's fist". [more]
Keywords: treasure island, robert louis stevenson, action and adventure, pirate story, pirates
$2.99
Charles Dickens
The Pickwick Papers
- Fiction
- English
- 298275 Words
- Ages 8 and up
- 197
- 2
The Pickwick Papers is Charles Dickens's first novel is a sequence of loosely related adventures. The novel's main character, Samuel Pickwick, Esquire, is a kind and wealthy old gentleman, and the founder and perpetual president of the Pickwick Club. To extend his researches into the quaint and curious phenomena of life, he suggests that he and three other "Pickwickians" (Mr. Nathaniel Winkle, Mr. Augustus Snodgrass, and Mr. Tracy Tupman) should make journeys to places remote from London and report on their findings to the other members of the club. Their travels throughout the English countryside by coach provide the chief theme of the novel. A distinctive and valuable feature of the work is the generally accurate description of the old coaching inns of England. Its main literary value and appeal is formed by its numerous memorable characters. Each character in The Pickwick Papers, as in many other Dickens novels, is drawn comically, often with exaggerated personality traits. Alfred Jingle, who joins the cast in chapter two, provides an aura of comic villainy. His devious tricks repeatedly land the Pickwickians in trouble. These include Jingle's nearly-successful attempted elopement with the spinster Rachael Wardle of Dingley Dell manor, misadventures with Dr. Slammer, and others.
Further humor is provided when the comic cockney Sam Weller makes his advent in chapter 10 of the novel. First seen working at the White Hart Inn in The Borough, Weller is taken on by Mr. Pickwick as a personal servant and companion on his travels and provides his own oblique ongoing narrative on the proceedings. The relationship between the idealistic and unworldly Pickwick and the astute cockney Weller has been likened to that between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Other notable adventures include Mr. Pickwick's attempts to defend a lawsuit brought by his landlady, Mrs. Bardell, who (through an apparent misunderstanding on her part) is suing him for breach of promise. Another is Mr. Pickwick's incarceration at Fleet Prison for his stubborn refusal to pay the compensation to her — because he doesn't want to give a penny to Mrs. Bardell's lawyers, the unscrupulous firm of Messrs. Dodson and Fogg. The generally humorous tone is here briefly replaced by biting social satire (including satire of the legal establishment). This foreshadows major themes in Dickens's later books. [more]
Keywords: the pickwick papers, charles dickens, comic fiction, humor, social satire, english literature, adventure
$2.99
Jane Austen
Mansfield Park
- Fiction
- English
- 159802 Words
- Ages 8 and up
- 421
- 3
Mansfield Park is the third novel by Jane Austen. Mansfield Park is a pygmalion morality epic. The events of the story are put in motion by three sisters: Lady Bertram, Mrs. Norris, and Mrs. Price. Of the three sisters, Lady Bertram married extremely well, to a wealthy baronet; Mrs. Norris married a parson, who is given the living at the local parsonage by Sir Thomas Bertram, Lady Betram's husband. This allows them to live comfortably, yet far below the standards set by the Bertram's lifestyle. The third sister married a naval officer who shortly afterwards was wounded in battle and pensioned as a Lieutenant at half pay. They then proceeded to have nine children, which they could scarcely afford. Mrs. Norris, always wishing to appear to do right, proposes that Lady Bertram take one of the children to live with her at Mansfield Park. They choose Fanny Price, the eldest daughter, who is the protagonist of the novel. Thus, at age 10, Fanny is sent to live with her wealthy relatives.
Mansfield Park is the most controversial of Austen's major novels. Regency critics praised the novel's wholesome morality, but many modern readers find Fanny's timidity and disapproval of the theatricals difficult to sympathize with and reject the idea (made explicit in the final chapter) that she is a better person for the relative privations of her childhood. Jane Austen's own mother thought Fanny "insipid", and many other readers have found her priggish and unlikeable. Other critics point out that she is a complex personality, perceptive yet given to wishful thinking, and that she shows courage and grows in self-esteem during the latter part of the story. Austen biographer Claire Tomalin, who is generally rather critical of Fanny, argues that "it is in rejecting obedience in favour of the higher dictate of remaining true to her own conscience that Fanny rises to her moment of heroism." But Tomalin reflects the ambivalence that many readers feel towards Fanny when she also writes: "More is made of Fanny Price's faith, which gives her the courage to resist what she thinks is wrong; it also makes her intolerant of sinners, whom she is ready to cast aside." The story contains much social satire, targeted particularly at the two aunts. [more]
Keywords: mansfield park, jane austen, historical romance, satire, historical fiction, classic literature, romantic novel
$2.99
Quentin Miller
The Great American Novelist (Early Chapters)
- Fiction
- English
- 2 Words
- No Age Recommendation
- 357
- 2
Scott Anderson is a disgruntled graduate student who prefers browsing through used bookstores to writing his dissertation. Scott always assumed that he would become a literature professor, but when a member of his committee criticizes his work, Scott is as angry and ashamed as any spurned lover, and he seeks out the pleasures of reading (as opposed to studying) books. One day he discovers a novel called Lesser Revolutions by a 1960s author he has never heard of named Richard Morton. Scott is so moved by Morton’s work that he decides to quit his Ph.D. program and to ask his father for a loan so he can write Morton’s biography.
The novel humorously intersperses chapters of Scott’s life with the life of Richard Morton as it shuffles together memoir with literary biography (both of which are fictional, in this case). Part of the humor comes from Scott’s inability to refrain from telling his own story while he tells Morton’s: all biographies, he insists, are really autobiographies. More of the humor comes from the fact that Morton really isn’t as good as Scott thinks he is: a self-centered alcoholic who abandons his family and who callously rejects love in favor of art, Morton comes across as a cad, and probably a cheap imitator of his literary hero, Jack Kerouac. Morton only managed to produce two novels and a handful of short stories, and he died obscurely at the age of 36. Still, Scott defends his subject as long as he can, realizing that he has staked his own career on Morton’s.
Scott, a native of Mason City, Iowa, moves to the wealthy coastal town of Marblehead, Massachusetts in order to research Morton’s life. Frustrated by his inability to discover anything about Morton by poking around the author’s native town, Scott is ready to give up when he stumbles across a woman named Sarah Taylor reading Lesser Revolutions on the beach. Sarah is unhappily married. She is beautiful and rich. And, Scott learns at an awkward moment, she is Richard Morton’s illegitimate daughter. She has taken pains to reinvent herself as a member of Marblehead’s upper-class yachting community, but she is clearly unfulfilled. Scott becomes her lover, and she becomes his unofficial patron as well as his editor, partly to control what he will say about the father who abandoned her and partly to give herself a sense of purpose.
The Great American Novelist involves a number of topics: the value of literary biography weighed against fiction, the cost of literary fame, the choice between career and family, and the difficulty outsiders face when they try to break into closed communities. Above all, though, it is a story about a romantic intellectual who believes in love and in fiction and a cynical socialite who won’t allow herself to believe in either. Having risked everything to write this biography and to pursue a life with Sarah, Scott learns that love doesn’t conquer all, at least not in Marblehead: money does. Still, he isn’t completely jaded by the end of the novel. He has grown up enough to lose some of his priggishness, but he has not completely given up on his original love: literature. [more]
Keywords: Literary biography, parody, graduate school
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L. Frank Baum
The Wonderful World of OZ Complete (Illustrated)
- Fairy Tale
- English
- 625398 Words
- Ages 6 and up
- 257
1 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Dorothy and her little dog, Toto, get swept into the Land of Oz by a cyclone. She meets a living Scarecrow, a man made entirely of tin, and a Cowardly Lion while trying to get to the Emerald City to see the great Wizard. Also reprinted by various publishers under the names The New Wizard of Oz and The Wizard of Oz with occasional minor changes in the text. It was originally written as a one-shot book.
2 The Marvelous Land of Oz 1904
A little boy, Tip, escapes from his evil guardian, the witch Mombi, with the help of a walking wooden figure with a jack-o'-lantern head named Jack Pumpkinhead (brought to life with the magic Powder of Life Tip stole from Mombi), as well as a living Sawhorse (created from the same powder). Tip ends up on an adventure with the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman to help Scarecrow to recapture his throne from General Jinjur's army of girls.
3 Ozma of Oz 1907
While traveling to Australia with her Uncle Henry, Dorothy is swept overboard with a hen named Billina. They land in Ev, a country across the desert from Oz, and, together with new-found mechanical friend Tik-Tok, they must save Ev's royal family from the evil Nome King. With Princess Ozma's help, they finally return to Oz.
4 Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz 1908
On her way back from Australia, Dorothy visits her cousin, Zeb, in California. They are soon swallowed up by an earthquake, along with Zeb's horse Jim and Dorothy's cat Eureka. The group soon meets up with the Wizard and all travel underground back to Oz.
5 The Road to Oz 1909
Dorothy meets the Shaggy Man, and while trying to find the road to Butterfield, they get lost on an enchanted road. As they travel they meet the rainbow's daughter, Polychrome, and a little boy, Button-Bright. They have all sorts of strange adventures on the way to Oz.
6 The Emerald City of Oz 1910
Dorothy Gale and her Uncle Henry and Aunt Em come to live in Oz permanently. While they tour through the Quadling Country, the Nome King is tunneling beneath the desert to invade Oz. This was originally intended to be the last book in the series.
7 The Patchwork Girl of Oz 1913
A Munchkin boy named Ojo must find a cure to free his Uncle Nunkie from a magical spell that has turned him into a statue. With the help of Scraps, an anthropomorphic patchwork doll, Ojo journeys through Oz to save his uncle.
8 Tik-Tok of Oz 1914
Betsy Bobbin, a girl from Oklahoma, is shipwrecked with her mule, Hank, in the Rose Kingdom of Oz. She meets the Shaggy Man there and the two try to rescue the Shaggy Man's brother from the Nome King. This book is partly based upon Baum's stage musical, The Tik-Tok Man of Oz, which was in turn based on Ozma of Oz.
9 The Scarecrow of Oz 1915
Cap'n Bill and Trot journey to Oz and, with the help of the Scarecrow, the former ruler of Oz, overthrow the villainous King Krewl of Jinxland. Cap'n Bill and Trot had previously appeared in two other novels by Baum, The Sea Fairies and Sky Island [more]
$9.49
Maksim Gorky
Twenty-six and One and Other Stories
- Short Story
- English
- 29375 Words
- Ages 18 and up
- 3
MAXIME GORKY
Russian literature, which for half a century has abounded in happy
surprises, has again made manifest its wonderful power of innovation.
A tramp, Maxime Gorky, lacking in all systematic training, has suddenly
forced his way into its sacred domain, and brought thither the fresh
spontaneity of his thoughts and character. Nothing as individual or as
new has been produced since the first novels of Tolstoy. His work owes
nothing to its predecessors; it stands apart and alone. It, therefore,
obtains more than an artistic success, it causes a real revolution.
Gorky was born of humble people, at Nizhni-Novgorod, in 1868 or
1869,--he does not know which--and was early left an orphan. He was
apprenticed to a shoemaker, but ran away, a sedentary life not being to
his taste. He left an engraver's in the same manner, and then went to
work with a painter of _ikoni_, or holy pictures. He is next found to
be a cook's boy, then an assistant to a gardener. He tried life in
these diverse ways, and not one of them pleased him. Until his
fifteenth year, he had only had the time to learn to read a little; his
grandfather taught him to read a prayer-book in the old Slav dialect.
He retained from his first studies only a distaste for anything printed
until the time when, cook's boy on board a steam-boat, he was initiated
by the chief cook into more attractive reading matter. Gogol, Glebe
Ouspenski, Dumas _pere_ were revelations to him. His imagination took
fire; he was seized with a "fierce desire" for instruction. He set out
for Kazan, "as though a poor child could receive instruction
gratuitously," but he soon perceived that "it was contrary to custom."
Discouraged, he became a baker's boy with the wages of three rubles
(about $1.50) a month. In the midst of worse fatigue and ruder
privations, he always recalls the bakery of Kazan with peculiar
bitterness; later, in his story, "Twenty-Six and One," he utilized this
painful remembrance: "There were twenty-six of us--twenty-six living
machines, locked up in a damp cellar, where we patted dough from
morning till night, making biscuits and cakes. The windows of our
cellar looked out into a ditch, which was covered with bricks grown
green from dampness, the window frames were obstructed from the outside
by a dense iron netting, and the light of the sun could not peep in
through the panes, which were covered with flour dust. . . ."
Gorky dreamed of the free air. He abandoned the bakery. Always
reading, studying feverishly, drinking with vagrants, expending his
strength in every possible manner, he is one day at work in a saw-mill,
another, 'longshoreman on the quays. . . . In 1888, seized with
despair, he attempted to kill himself. "I was," said he, "as ill as I
could be, and I continued to live to sell apples. . . ." He afterward
became a gate-keeper and later retailed _kvass_ in the streets. A
happy chance brought him to the notice of a lawyer, who interested
himself in him, directed h [more]
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Samuel Butler
The Way of All Flesh
- Fiction
- English
- 162010 Words
- Ages 12 and up
- 308
- 2
The Way of All Flesh is a semi-autobiographical novel by Samuel Butler that attacks Victorian-era hypocrisy. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Way of All Flesh twelfth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
The story is narrated by Overton, godfather to the central character. The novel takes its beginnings in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to trace Ernest's emergence from previous generations of the Pontifex family. John Pontifex was a carpenter; his son George rises in the world to become a publisher; George's son Theobald, pressed by his father to become a minister, is manipulated into marrying Christina, the daughter of a clergyman; the main character Ernest Pontifex is the eldest son of Theobald and Christina.
The author depicts an antagonistic relationship between Ernest and his hypocritical and domineering parents. His aunt Alethea is aware of this relationship, but dies before she can fulfill her aim of counteracting the parents' malign influence on the boy. However, shortly before her death she secretly passes a small fortune into Overton's keeping, with the agreement that once Ernest is twenty-eight, he can receive it.
As Ernest develops into a young man, he travels a bumpy theological road, reflecting the divisions and controversies in the Church of England in the Victorian era. Easily influenced by others at university, he starts out as an Evangelical Christian, and soon becomes a clergyman. He then falls for the lures of the High Church (and is duped out of much of his own money by a fellow clergyman). He decides that the way to regenerate the Church of England is to live among the poor, but the results are, first, that his faith in the integrity of the Bible is severely damaged by a conversation with one of the poor he was hoping to redeem, and, second, that under the pressures of poverty and theological doubt, he attempts a sexual assault on a woman he had incorrectly believed to be of loose morals. This assault leads to a prison term. His parents disown him. His health deteriorates.
As he recovers he learns how to tailor and decides to make this his profession once out of prison. He loses his Christian faith. He marries Ellen, a former housemaid of his parents, and they have two children and set up shop together in the second-hand clothing industry. However, in due course he discovers that Ellen is both a bigamist and an alcoholic. Overton at this point intervenes and pays Ellen a stipend, and she happily leaves with another for America. He gives Ernest a job, and takes him on a trip to Continental Europe. In due course Ernest becomes 28, and receives his aunt Alethea's gift. He returns to the family home until his parents die: his father's influence over him wanes as Theobald's own position as a clergyman is reduced in stature, though to the end Theobald finds small ways purposefully to annoy him. Ernest becomes an author of controversial literature. [more]
Keywords: the way of all flesh, samuel butler, classic english literature, satire, psychological fiction, epic drama, biographical
$2.99