Download or read book The House of Mirth Diversion Classics written by Edith Wharton and published by Diversion Books. This book was released on 2015-12-15 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring an appendix of discussion questions, the Diversion Classics edition is ideal for use in book groups and classrooms. In this novel of manners, Lily Bart's life is changed forever when she rejects a millionaire's marriage proposal in favor of Lawrence Selden, the man she loves. After Lily is suspiciously gifted a large sum of money and Selden flees, she begins a downward spiral through New York City's social classes. THE HOUSE OF MIRTH is at once a sharp critique of New York society life and a classic tragedy.
Download or read book A Hazard Of New Fortunes written by William Dean Howells and published by Jazzybee Verlag. This book was released on 2020 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No one can complain that in this story Mr. Howells has taken his type from the commonplace. It is a study of life in New York, and the author has brought together such a gallery of odd and strongly differentiated characters as could perhaps be found in no other city on the continent, while the conditions and phases of social life represented are not less distinctive and peculiar. The Marches, it is true, are from Boston, but they serve the purpose of external points of observation, whence to note and sufficiently to emphasize those features of our city life which of necessity strike strangers and outsiders most forcibly and with the greatest freshness of suggestion. A new magazine is founded with the money of old Dryfoos, a "natural gas millionaire," whose primary object is to give his son Conrad — a youth of saint-like character and dominant altruism — opportunity to become a businessman. The prime mover of the venture is Fulkerson, a true Western Yankee, if the phrase be allowable, whose engaging impudence, fluent slang, indomitable assurance, and substantial loyalty and goodness of heart are sure to make him as great a favorite with the reader as he is with all who know him in the story. The Marches, too, are fantastic, and nowhere has Mr. Howells better presented that peculiar American humor which finds motives for half-sarcastic jest and quip in even the most serious things, less out of lightness of heart than from an almost desperate conscious ness of hopeless incongruities and perplexities inherent in the general scheme. The picture is in itself a condemnation of and protest against that rank growth of naked materialism which is the most depressing feature of our time. The character and the faults of society are shown plainly but temperately — the spirit of levity, the love of spectacle, the repugnance to serious thinking, the absence of jealousy of popular rights, constantly encroached upon, ignored and subordinated to selfish corporate or individual interests. The aspects of the city are also most graphically and admirably described in many a wandering of the Marches, and the book exhibits an amount of local study undertaken by the author which speaks well for his conscientiousness, and adds much to the charm and permanent interest of the story. There is, as we have intimated, an unwonted variety and an unwonted force in " A Hazard of New Fortunes." If it can hardly be said to have a dominant note, it is none the less a faithful and carefully elaborated study of New York life, and it presents some of the most salient characteristics of that life in a very impressive and artistic manner. Most readers will, we think, agree with us that the change in method here shown is a change for the better. Never, certainly, has Mr. Howells written more brilliantly, more clearly, more firmly, or more attractively, than in this instance. The reversion to these strong individualizations seems to have put new vigor into his hands, and he deals with the deeper tragedies, the graver emotions of life, with a power which may perhaps be regarded as a practical demonstration of the ultimate supremacy destined to be attained by Nature over Art ; by the true over the false Realism.
Download or read book Gilded Age written by Claire McMillan and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-06-12 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intelligent, witty, and poignant, Gilded Age presents a modern Edith Wharton heroine—dramatically beautiful, socially prominent, and just a bit unconventional—whose return to the hothouse of Cleveland society revives rivalries, raises eyebrows, and reveals the tender vulnerabilities of a woman struggling to reconcile her desire for independence and her need for love. ELEANOR HART had made a brilliant marriage in New York, but it ended in a scandalous divorce and thirty days in Sierra Tucson rehab. Now she finds that, despite feminist lip service, she will still need a husband to be socially complete. A woman’s sexual reputation matters, and so does her family name. Ellie must navigate the treacherous social terrain where old money meets new: charitable benefits and tequila body shots, inherited diamonds and viper-bite lip piercings, country house weekends and sexting. She finds that her beauty is a powerful tool in this world, but it has its limitations, even liabilities. Through one misstep after another, Ellie mishandles her second act. Her options narrow, her future prospects contract, until she faces a desperate choice. With a keen eye for the perfect detail and a heart big enough to embrace those she observes, Claire McMillan has written an assured and revelatory debut novel about class, gender, and the timeless conundrum of femininity.
Download or read book A Wife of Noble Character written by Yvonne Georgina Puig and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2016-08-02 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Raised by a cold and regal aunt who has taught her to rely on her beauty and Texas tradition to secure a wealthy husband, thirty-year-old Vivienne Cally both attracts and repels a respected architectural graduate who cannot see himself fitting into her high-society circles.
Download or read book The House of the Seven Gables Diversion Classics written by Nathaniel Hawthorne and published by Diversion Books. This book was released on 2016-05-24 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring an appendix of discussion questions, the Diversion Classics edition is ideal for use in book groups and classrooms. Alone in a quiet New England village stands a solitary, brooding mansion with a dark past. Within its walls dwell the dwindling and doomed Pyncheon family. Descendants of Puritans, it is rumored their home and family has been cursed by a wizard unjustly put to death by the greedy Colonel Pyncheon. Since then, their family line has been choked by misfortune, poverty, and gruesome deaths. The spinster Hepzibah, one of the last Pyncheons, struggles to make ends meet, opening a cent shop on the porch of the Pyncheon home just to survive. Her existence is solitary until both the mysterious Holgrave and sweet young relative, Phoebe, from the countryside arrive, but the struggles do not end even as a strange romance blooms. Are the Pyncheon’s misfortunes mere coincidence—or has the curse come to consume them all for the greed of those who came before them? For more classic titles like this, visit www.diversionbooks.com/ebooks/diversion-classics
Download or read book Love Me Back written by Merritt Tierce and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2015-06-09 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Sharp and dangerous and breathtaking.... A defiant story about a young woman choosing the life and motherhood that is best for her, without apology.” —Roxane Gay, bestselling author of Bad Feminist Marie is a waitress at an upscale Dallas steakhouse, attuned to the appetites of her patrons and gifted at hiding her private struggle as a young single mother behind an easy smile and a crisp white apron. It’s a world of long hours and late nights, and Marie often gives in to self-destructive impulses, losing herself in a tangle of bodies and urgent highs as her desire for obliteration competes with a stubborn will to survive. Pulsing with a fierce and feral energy, Love Me Back is an unapologetic portrait of a woman cutting a precarious path through early adulthood and the herald of a powerful new voice in American fiction.
Download or read book The Buccaneers written by Edith Wharton and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1994-10-01 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edith Wharton's spellbinding final novel tells a story of love in the gilded age that crosses the boundaries of society—soon to be an original series on AppleTV+! “Brave, lively, engaging...a fairy-tale novel, miraculouly returned to life.”—The New York Times Book Review Set in the 1870s, the same period as Wharton's The Age of Innocence, The Buccaneers is about five wealthy American girls denied entry into New York Society because their parents' money is too new. At the suggestion of their clever governess, the girls sail to London, where they marry lords, earls, and dukes who find their beauty charming—and their wealth extremely useful. After Wharton's death in 1937, The Christian Science Monitor said, "If it could have been completed, The Buccaneers would doubtless stand among the richest and most sophisticated of Wharton's novels." Now, with wit and imagination, Marion Mainwaring has finished the story, taking her cue from Wharton's own synopsis. It is a novel any Wharton fan will celebrate and any romantic reader will love. This is the richly engaging story of Nan St. George and Guy Thwarte, an American heiress and an English aristocrat, whose love breaks the rules of both their societies.
Download or read book Unconventional Warfare Special Forces Book 1 written by Chris Lynch and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2018-11-27 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "All the sizzle, chaos, noise and scariness of war is clay in the hands of ace storyteller Lynch." -- Kirkus Reviews for the World War II series Discover the secret missions behind America's greatest conflicts.Danny Manion has been fighting his entire life. Sometimes with his fists. Sometimes with his words. But when his actions finally land him in real trouble, he can't fight the judge who offers him a choice: jail... or the army.Turns out there's a perfect place for him in the US military: the Studies and Observation Group (SOG), an elite volunteer-only task force comprised of US Air Force Commandos, Army Green Berets, Navy SEALS, and even a CIA agent or two. With the SOG's focus on covert action and psychological warfare, Danny is guaranteed an unusual tour of duty, and a hugely dangerous one. Fortunately, the very same qualities that got him in trouble at home make him a natural-born commando in a secret war. Even if almost nobody knows he's there.National Book Award finalist Chris Lynch begins a new, explosive fiction series based on the real-life, top-secret history of US black ops.
Download or read book Look at Me written by Jennifer Egan and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2009-12-23 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • In this ambitiously multilayered novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad, a fashion model named Charlotte Swenson emerges from a car accident in her Illinois hometown with her face so badly shattered that it takes eighty titanium screws to reassemble it. She returns to New York still beautiful but oddly unrecognizable, a virtual stranger in the world she once effortlessly occupied. With the surreal authority of a David Lynch, Jennifer Egan threads Charlotte’s narrative with those of other casualties of our infatuation with the image. There’s a deceptively plain teenaged girl embarking on a dangerous secret life, an alcoholic private eye, and an enigmatic stranger who changes names and accents as he prepares an apocalyptic blow against American society. As these narratives inexorably converge, Look at Me becomes a coolly mesmerizing intellectual thriller of identity and imposture.
Download or read book Livre Des Sans foyer written by Edith Wharton and published by NEw York, C. Scribner. This book was released on 1916 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In the course of fund-raising for civilian victims of World War I, Edith Wharton assembled this monumental benefit volume by drawing upon her connections to the era's leading authors and artists. The unique compilation forms a 'Who's Who' of early 20th century culture, featuring poetry, stories, illustrations, music and other contributions from scores of luminaries. ... Much of the text is presented in both English and French. Includes an Introduction by former U. S. President Theodore Roosevelt."--
Download or read book The Second Life of Mirielle West written by Amanda Skenandore and published by Kensington Books. This book was released on 2021-07-27 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The glamorous world of a silent film star’s wife abruptly crumbles when she’s forcibly quarantined at the Carville Lepers Home in this page-turning story of courage, resilience, and reinvention set in 1920s Louisiana and Los Angeles. Based on little-known history, this timely book will strike a chord with readers of Fiona Davis, Tracey Lange, and Marie Benedict. Based on the true story of America’s only leper colony, The Second Life of Mirielle West brings vividly to life the Louisiana institution known as Carville, where thousands of people were stripped of their civil rights, branded as lepers, and forcibly quarantined throughout the entire 20th century. For Mirielle West, a 1920’s socialite married to a silent film star, the isolation and powerlessness of the Louisiana Leper Home is an unimaginable fall from her intoxicatingly chic life of bootlegged champagne and the star-studded parties of Hollywood’s Golden Age. When a doctor notices a pale patch of skin on her hand, she’s immediately branded a leper and carted hundreds of miles from home to Carville, taking a new name to spare her family and famous husband the shame that accompanies the disease. At first she hopes her exile will be brief, but those sent to Carville are more prisoners than patients and their disease has no cure. Instead she must find community and purpose within its walls, struggling to redefine her self-worth while fighting an unchosen fate. As a registered nurse, Amanda Skenandore’s medical background adds layers of detail and authenticity to the experiences of patients and medical professionals at Carville – the isolation, stigma, experimental treatments, and disparate community. A tale of repulsion, resilience, and the Roaring ‘20s, The Second Life of Mirielle West is also the story of a health crisis in America’s past, made all the more poignant by the author’s experiences during another, all-too-recent crisis. PRAISE FOR AMANDA SKENANDORE’S BETWEEN EARTH AND SKY “Intensely emotional…Skenandore’s deeply introspective and moving novel will appeal to readers of American history.” —Publishers Weekly
Download or read book The Kitchen House written by Kathleen Grissom and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-10-21 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In 1790, Lavinia, a seven-year-old Irish orphan with no memory of her past, arrives on a tobacco plantation where she is put to work as an indentured servant with the kitchen house slaves. Though she becomes deeply bonded to her new family, Lavinia is also slowly accepted into the world of the big house, where the master is absent and the mistress battles opium addiction. As time passes she finds herself perilously straddling two very different worlds and when loyalties are brought into question, dangerous truths are laid bare and lives are at risk."--Publisher's description.
Download or read book Persuasion Diversion Classics written by Jane Austen and published by Diversion Books. This book was released on 2015-07-21 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring an appendix of discussion questions, the Diversion Classics edition is ideal for use in book groups and classrooms. Forced to reject a marriage proposal from a penniless suitor in her youth, Anne Elliot now finds herself on the brink of spinsterhood. But when her former fiancé, Frederick Wentworth, now wealthy from his career in the military, reenters society in Bath, Anne's life takes a startling turn. Austen's last completed novel, a tale of reclaimed love, is as witty as it is heartwarming.
Download or read book Halloween Horror Diversion Classics written by Bram Stoker and published by Diversion Books. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring an appendix of discussion questions, the Diversion Classics edition is ideal for use in book groups and classrooms. From ghost stories to spine-chilling mysteries, the horror genre is perfect reading for the Halloween season and year-round. Including Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN, Robert Louis Stevenson's THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, and Bram Stoker's DRACULA, these terrifying tales will stay with you long after they're finished.
Download or read book The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Diversion Classics written by Robert Louis Stevenson and published by Diversion Books. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring an appendix of discussion questions, the Diversion Classics edition is ideal for use in book groups and classrooms. When the monstrous Mr. Hyde begins a campaign of crime and terror, the lawyer Mr. Utterson is compelled to investigate. He finds a hideously disfigured villain bent on achieving his own ends, a man with a puzzling link to the otherwise respectable Dr. Jekyll. THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE is at once a monster novel, a work of Gothic horror, and a fascinating look at human psychology.
Download or read book Jane Austen Anthology Diversion Classics written by Jane Austen and published by Diversion Books. This book was released on 2015-07-21 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring an appendix of discussion questions, the Diversion Classics edition is ideal for use in book groups and classrooms. Jane Austen's novels have enchanted readers for centuries. These tales of love, family, and English society abound with unforgettable characters and Austen's trademark satirical wit. Including all of Austen's published novels, SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, MANSFIELD PARK, EMMA, NORTHANGER ABBEY, and PERSUASION, this anthology is perfect for Austen aficionados and new readers alike.
Download or read book Sense and Sensibility Diversion Classics written by Jane Austen and published by Diversion Books. This book was released on 2015-07-21 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring an appendix of discussion questions, the Diversion Classics edition is ideal for use in book groups and classrooms. Jane Austen's sparkling debut follows the Dashwood sisters as they court, fall in love, and experience heartbreak. Passionate Marianne falls immediately for the dashing John Willoughby, but Willoughby is more dangerous than meets the eye. Elinor, guarded and cautious, attempts to guide her sister even while her own courtship with Edward Ferrars seems doomed. This exploration of romance and marriage in eighteenth-century London will charm readers of any age.
