DescriptionTheir parents away, brother and sister Clarrie and Will must live with their Uncle Len, a ventriloquist on the Victorian music-hall stage. This is a moving, humorous, and beautifully observed tale set in the Victorian music-hall world.
DescriptionHoratio Leavenworth is a New York merchant whose material wealth is matched by his eminence in the community and reputation for good works. He is also the guardian of two striking nieces who share his Fifth Avenue mansion. Mary, her uncle's favorite, is to inherit his fortune at his death. As this mystery opens, that lamentable event has just occurred. Leavenworth has been shot to death and circumstances point to one of his young wards. Circumstantial evidence points in one direction: but is that the trail to follow? Not to give anything away, but Yale University used this book in its law school to demonstrate the fallablllty of such evidence.
DescriptionWhen a brute of a man tramples an innocent girl, apparently out of spite, two bystanders catch the fellow and force him to pay reparations to the girl's family. The brute's name is Edward Hyde. A respected lawyer, Utterson, hears this story and begins to unravel the seemingly manic behavior of his best friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll, and his connection with Hyde. Several months earlier, Utterson had drawn up an inexplicable will for the doctor, naming Hyde as his heir in the event that he disappears. Fearing his friend has been blackmailed into this arrangement, Utterson probes deeper into both Jekyll and his unlikely protege. He is increasingly unnerved at each new revelation. In a forerunner of psychological dramas to come, Stevenson uses Hyde to show that we are both repulsed by and attracted to the darker side of life, particularly when we can experience it in anonymity.
DescriptionTroy Phelan is one of the richest men in the United States. He is also confined to a wheelchair and looking for a way to die. His heirs are circling like vultures. Nate O'Riley is a Washington litigator who's lived too hard, too fast, and he is emerging from his fourth stay in rehab; while Rachel Lane is a young woman who walked away from the modern world and went to live in the jungles of Brazil. In a story of legal suspense, their lives are forever altered by the secret of The Testament.
DescriptionThe Metamorphosis begins as its protagonist, Gregor Samsa, wakes up one morning to find that he has become a huge insect. This change is understandably difficult for Gregor, not to mention his family and business. It ends up costing him his life. The story has been interpreted as everything from religious allegory to psychoanalytic case history, but works because, though written nearly a century ago, Kafka's fantastic imaginings convey a reality of their own. We surrender to Gregor's experience, which in a way becomes ours. Also included are stories by Guy de Maupassant: "The Englishman", "The Piece of String", "The Necklace", "A Crisis", "The Will", "Love", "The Inn" and "Was it a Dream". Translated by Stanley Appelbaum.
