This series offers engaging, abridged retellings of globally renowned literary masterpieces. Each volume presents a classic tale from diverse cultures in a format accessible to younger readers. It serves as an excellent introduction to the richness of world literature, broadening horizons for many. These books act as a gateway to original texts, enriching language learners and casual readers alike.
The Life And Death of a Man of Character
The moving, humane tragedy of a deeply flawed and self-destructive man, The Mayor of Casterbridge is the story of Michael Henchard, who sells his wife and baby daughter at a country fair in a fit of drunken anger.
HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics. 'She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.' Written at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Persuasion is a tale of love, heartache and the determination of one woman as she strives to reignite a lost love. Anne Elliot is persuaded by her friends and family to reject a marriage proposal from Captain Wentworth because he lacks in fortune and rank. More than seven years later, when he returns home from the Navy, Anne realises she still has strong feelings for him, but Wentworth only appears to have eyes for a friend of Anne's. Moving, tender, but intrinsically 'Austen' in style, with it's satirical portrayal of the vanity of society in eighteenth-century England, Persuasion celebrates enduring love and hope.
Though Aladdin's childhood had been full of beauty, comfort and happiness, without any trace of sadness or sorrow, he entirely failed to learn the lessons of hard work and responsibility.
Well's science fiction of time travel, and his protagonist's adventures in the future.
I had been given a simple but enormous task. This was the role for which I had spent my whole life preparing.
A retelling for students of English of one of Dickens's best-known novels, this is an upper intermediate-level Macmillan Reader. One bleak and windy evening, 8-year-old Pip meets an escaped convict on the marshes. Shortly afterwards, he is summoned to Satis House, the derelict, gloomy home of the strange, reclusive Miss Havisham.
Depicts the joyless existences of the citizens of the imaginary mid-Victorian city of Coketown, whose workers toil endlessly for factory owner Josiah Bounderby, and whose students drudge for utilitarian educator Thomas Gradgrind
While enjoying a stay in fashionable Bath, the young and callow Catherine Morland is introduced to the delights of high society. A satire on the gothic mode typified by the novels of Ann Radcliffe, 'Northanger Abbey' is a witty comedy of manners in the style of Jane Austen's later novels.
If there ever was an epic that touches upon every conceivable human emotion and poses the most complex of questions, it has to be the Mahabharata, the most famous of stories from India.
`It seems pretty clear to me that sooner or later we'll be at war with Germany, whether we like it or not.'
Dickens's classic tale of Ebenezer Scrooge and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come.
Can the path to the ultimate truth about human life be found by leaving behind wealth, comfort, family and security?
Fanny Price, a teenaged girl of low social rank brought up on her wealthy relatives' countryside estate, feels the sharp sting of rejection when her cousin Edmund, the only person who treats her as an equal, is won over by a flirtatious, exciting--and unprincipled--London girl.
'Oh! Mama, how spiritless, how tame was Edward's manner in reading to us last night! I felt for my sister most severely. Yet she bore it with so much composure, she seemed scarcely to notice it. I could hardly keep my seat.' Spirited and impulsive, Marianne Dashwood is the complete opposite to her controlled and sensible sister, Elinor. When it comes to matters of the heart, Marianne is passionate and romantic and soon falls for the charming, but unreliable Mr Willoughby. Elinor, in contrast, copes stoically with the news that her love, Edward Ferrars is promised to another. It is through their shared experiences of love that both sisters come to learn that the key to a successful match comes from finding the perfect mixture of rationality and feeling.
Gandhi never wavered in his belief in non-violent protest. In 1915 he took up the struggle for independence from Britain, which became a reality in 1947. In this narrative biography, Gandhi also offers his life story as a reference for those who would follow in his footsteps.
If there ever was an epic that touches upon every conceivable human emotion and poses the most complex of questions, it has to be the Mahabharata, the most famous of stories from India.
Here is a test, a puzzle for you. It is a faithful account of two most gruesome murders. Can you work out what actually happened in the early hours of one fateful morning in the Rue Morgue?
A strange figure stood in front of him, dressed from head to foot in white clothing. The moonlight showed her pale, youthful face.
In ancient China a magical monkey appears, creating chaos everywhere he goes. The only way to put his tricks and talents to good use is to make him protector of Xuanzang, a young and handsome monk determined to travel from China to India in search of the precious scriptures.
[Longman Structural Readers Stage 3] David Copperfield's happy life suddenly changes when his mother marries again. Her new husband, Mr Murdstone, does not like David at all. He is cruel to him and then sends him away to school. Here David makes friends, but he is unhappy. When David is ten, his mother dies and Mr Murdstone sends him to work in London. David hates his job so he decides to run away to his father's aunt. He starts his journey with no money for the coach or for food. But his life of adventure, love and friendship has begun.
After ten long years of war and the fall of Troy, the Greek hero Odysseus sets sail for his homeland. His voyage, however, is destined to take much longer than he expects.
Conan Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes mystery. This book also includes another Sherlock Holmes mystery, The Speckled Band.
Although Song Jiang is only a lowly local government official, he is loyal to the emperor and kind to all the citizens in his care. But Song is in trouble. A series of unfortunate incidents have led to him being arrested, and his political enemies are keen to see him sentenced to death.
The arrival of a gold bug leads the three men on an exciting adventure towards skeletons, a skull and a hunt for buried treasure.
The blackness of eternal night encompassed me. The intense darkness oppressed and stifled me so that I struggled for breath.
My darkness lifted, never to return. This man was truly the light of the world.
Makes a portrait of India. In this book, these unabridged observations of the British in India and Indian life were originally commissioned for The Civil and Military Gazette where the author worked as a journalist in the 1880s.
Catching fish. That's what I was doing on the day that changed my life for ever.
Emma tries to impose her match making ideas on everyone and finds that sometimes she should desist. As daughter of the richest, most important man in the small provincial village of Highbury, Emma Woodhouse is firmly convinced that it is her right--perhaps even her "duty"--To arrange the lives of others. Considered by most critics to be Austen's most technically brilliant achievement, "Emma" sparkles with ironic insights into self-deception, self-discovery, and the interplay of love and power
Although the shortest of George Eliot's novels, Silas Marner is one of her most admired and loved works. It tells the sad story of the unjustly exiled Silas Marner - a handloom linen weaver of Raveloe in the agricultural heartland of England - and how he is restored to life by the unlikely means of the orphan child Eppie. Silas Marner is a tender and moving tale of sin and repentance set in a vanished rural world and holds the reader's attention until the last page as Eppie's bonds of affection for Silas are put to the test.
A classic novel about the Chancery court and its cases while dwelling upon the romanic side of familiar things.
`Send the brat home? Oh no we won't! Her mother must have met some rich man - we can make a load of money out of this.'
Rachel opened the box and lifted out the diamond. She held it up in a ray of sunlight that poured through the window, and cried out in amazement.
If there ever was an epic that touches upon every conceivable human emotion and poses the most complex of questions, it has to be the Mahabharata, the most famous of stories from India.
A storm, a shipwreck, an enchanted island ...