Ape and Essence

Ape and Essence

Aldous Huxley

Literature & Fiction / Poetry / Nonfiction

In February 2108, the New Zealand Rediscovery Expedition reaches California at last. It is over a century since the world was devastated by nuclear war, but the blight of radioactivity and disease still gnaws away at the survivors. The expedition expects to find physical destruction but they are quite unprepared for the moral degradation they meet. Ape and Essence is Huxley's vision of the ruin of humanity, told with all his knowledge and imaginative genius.
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The City

The City

John Stevenson

Fiction / Poetry / Horror

Simeon prepares to begin the revolution, as Nicholas races towards the city to warn him that the rebellions plans are known.It’s been a year since the initial outbreak of the zombie apocalypse, and for the survivors in the suburbs of Philadelphia, everything is about to change. When a mysterious man shows up at the gate of their safe zone, proclaiming to have “a product of vital interest and importance”, more than a few residents wanted answers, including Connor. Venturing to the nearby Chemcorp facility, survivors throughout the region gather and are introduced to a chemist named Abe Morrow . . . and to a product that would change everything.
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Under Milk Wood

Under Milk Wood

Dylan Thomas

Poetry / Literature & Fiction / Nonfiction

The definitive new edition of Thomas's famous radio playUnder Milk Wood is the masterpiece "radio play for voices" Dylan Thomas finished just before his death in 1953. First commissioned by the BBC and broadcast in 1954, it has been performed and celebrated by Anthony Hopkins, Richard Burton, Elton John, Tom Jones, Catherine Zeta Jones, Elizabeth Taylor, Peter O'Toole, and many others. In Under Milk Wood, Thomas gave fullest expression to his sense of the magnificent flavor and variety of life. A moving and hilarious account of a spring day in a small Welsh town, the play begins with dreams and ghosts before dawn and closes "as the rain of dusk brings on the bawdy night."This new edition contains the definitive version of the play, edited by the noted Dylan Thomas scholars Walford Davies and Ralph Maud, with an in-depth introduction by Davies as well as extensive and helpful textual and explanatory notes.
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Blake's Selected Poems

Blake's Selected Poems

William Blake

Poetry / Art

Regarded by a contemporary as a "brilliant eccentric whose works skirted the outer fringes of English art and literature," William Blake (1757–1827) is today recognized as a major poet and artist. This collection of 104 poems, carefully chosen by noted Blake scholars David and Virginia Erdman, reveals the lyricism, mystical vision, and consummate craftsmanship that have earned the poet his preeminent place with both critics and the general public. Among the selections included here are "Proverbs of Hell" from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell ― a satire on religion and morality considered Blake's most inspired and original work; "A Song of Liberty," "The Argument," "The Mental Traveller," "Gwin, King of Norway," "The Land of Dreams," "William Bond," "To the Evening Star," and many more.
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Illuminations

Illuminations

Alan Moore

Comics & Graphic Novels / Literature & Fiction / Poetry

From New York Times bestselling author Alan Moore-one of the most influential writers in the history of comics-"a wonderful collection, brilliant and often moving" (Neil Gaiman) which takes us to the fantastical underside of reality.In his first-ever short story collection, which spans forty years of work, Alan Moore presents a series of wildly different and equally unforgettable characters who discover—and in some cases even make and unmake—the various uncharted parts of existence. In "A Hypothetical Lizard," two concubines in a brothel of fantastical specialists fall in love with tragic ramifications. In "Not Even Legend," a paranormal study group is infiltrated by one of the otherworldly beings they seek to investigate. In "Illuminations," a nostalgic older man decides to visit a seaside resort from his youth and finds the past all too close at hand. And in the monumental novella "What We Can Know About Thunderman," which...
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A Blossom of Love

A Blossom of Love

Emily Murdoch

Young Adult / Literature & Fiction / Poetry

Abigail Bryant is the youngest of the Bryant tribe, and the most ignored – which is just how she likes it. Tending her herb garden is the way that she can support the growing town without talking too much to anyone, but the arrival of the new doctor demands a different kind of herb, and she needs seeds. Enter Laken Weston, a travelling tinker who refuses to put down roots but has the exact seeds that Abigail needs, along with the know-how to get them to grow. Her embarrassment almost overcomes her, but they strike a deal: he stays for the growing season, and he receives free bed and board. And then he leaves. But affection, like their seeds, finds a warm and welcoming home, and soon love starts to blossom between them. But like any new plant, without God's face to smile upon it, that growth can wither and die. Abigail's fear and Laken's restlessness threaten to become the weeds that may smother any joy that may thrive between them, and without...
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A Laodicean : A Story of To-day

A Laodicean : A Story of To-day

Thomas Hardy

Fiction / Poetry

One of Hardy's most unusual novels, A Laodicean features a heroine torn between the dilapidated aristocratic romance of the past and the energetic technocracy of the modern world. Paula Power's two suitors, a patrician Army officer, and an architect, representative of the new nobility of talent and enterprise & comically illustrates the great social changes that were taking place as Hardy wrote the novel.
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Springtime in a Broken Mirror

Springtime in a Broken Mirror

Mario Benedetti

Literature & Fiction / Nonfiction / Poetry

An extraordinary story of love and exile, from one of the great masters of the Latin American novel, translated into English for the first time Santiago is trapped. Taken political prisoner in Montevideo after a brutal military coup, he can do nothing but write letters to his family, and try to stay sane. Far away, his nine-year-old daughter Beatrice wonders at the marvels of 1970s Buenos Aires, but her grandpa and mother - Santiago's beautiful, careworn wife, Graciela - struggle to adjust to a life in exile. Graciela fights to retain the fiery passion that suffused her marriage, her politics, her whole life, as day by day Santiago edges closer to freedom. But Santiago's rakish, reckless best friend is a constant, brooding presence in the exiles' lives, and Graciela finds herself drawn irresistibly towards him. A lucid, heart-wrenching saga of a family torn apart by the forces of history, Spring with a Broken Corner tells with tenderness and fury of the indelible imprint politics leaves on individual lives. Generous and unflinching, it asks whether the broken bonds of family and history can ever truly be mended.
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My Life Had Stood a Loaded Gun

My Life Had Stood a Loaded Gun

Emily Dickinson

Poetry

'It's coming - the postponeless Creature'Electrifying poems of isolation, beauty, death and eternity from a reclusive genius and one of America's greatest writers. One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.
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