The emotional tale of Little Nell and her doting grandfather was an immediate popular success in 1840-41. Played out against the backdrop of a cold and brutal London, the twosome abandon their home to escape debt and roam the countryside as beggars. Relentlessly pursued by a malicious moneylender and encountering ne'er-do-wells, con artists, and the persevering poor, they also find goodness and generosity, love and loyalty. Dickens' proficiency in creating richly diverse characters are evident in this tale that brims with pathos and villainy.

Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty - Historical novel by Charles Dickens, published in 1841. Barnaby Rudge was Dickens' first attempt at a historical novel. It is set in the late 18th century and presents with great vigor and understanding (and some ambivalence of attitude) the spectacle of large-scale mob violence. In a case of mistaken identification, Barnaby Rudge, the mentally retarded son of a murderer, is arrested as a leader of a mob of anti-Catholic rioters. Subsequently jailed and sentenced to death, he is pardoned at the scaffold.

The Spider has a bad name - to most of us, she represents an odious, noxious animal, which every one hastens to crush under foot. Against this summary verdict the observer sets the beast's industry, its talent as a weaver, its wiliness in the chase, its tragic nuptials and other characteristics of great interest. Yes, the Spider is well worth studying, apart from any scientific reasons; but she is said to be poisonous and that is her crime and the primary cause of the repugnance wherewith she inspires us. Poisonous, if by that we understand that the animal is armed with two fangs which cause the immediate death of the little victims which it catches; but there is a wide difference between killing a Midge and harming a man. However immediate in its effects upon the insect entangled in the fatal web, the Spider's poison is not serious for us and causes less inconvenience than a Gnat-bite. That, at least, is what we can safely say as regards the great majority of the! Spiders of our regions.

This work enlists the services of men who worked in the field of Astronomy. Ball has chronicled the lives of all great astronomers and provided glimpses of their personal lives as well as their interests and their era. This gives a deep understanding of their work and discoveries.Includes detailed discussion on all of the great astronomers, including Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Flamsteed and Herschel. By the mathematician, Irish astronomer to Lord Rosse in 1865, Irish Astronomer-Royal in 1874 and writer of popular science books.

Jules Gabriel Verne (1828-1905) was a French author who pioneered the science-fiction genre. He is best known for novels such as Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). Verne wrote about space, air and underwater travel before air travel and practical submarines were invented, and before practical means of space travel had been devised. He is the third most translated author in the world, according to Index Translationum. Some of his books have been made into films.

They laughed at his ideas of heavier-than-air flying machines. But he had the last laugh with the Albatross -- the most incredible flying machine ever built. Lord of the skies, Robur became the would-be conqueror of the world!Father of modern science fiction and an eminent French novelist, Verne's works gained world-wide popularity and remain popular to this date. Several successful motion pictures have been made from his novels.

This is the first of Jules Verne's novels of imaginative adventures. Much more down to earth-figuratively, if not literally-than his later works, his heroes here encounter no lost civilizations, no anachronistic dinosaurs, and no extraordinary perils beyond that which actual explorers of the era might have met on a balloon voyage across the Dark Continent.

Many of his earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive.Father of modern science fiction and a French novelist, Verne's works gained world-wide popularity and remain popular to this date. Several successful motion pictures have been made from his novels.

Climbing palms. Seven-inch monkeys. Twenty-foot anacondas. Bats with two-foot wingspans. Five-inch spiders. Bloodthirsty insects. Methods of river travel. Torrential downpours. Indigenous peoples. Henry Walter Bates' personal narrative of exploring and naturalizing in the Amazon Basin is both an enjoyable read and one of immense importance to natural history. The reader is easily lured into Bates' descriptive writing style. Energetic, expressive and vigilant, we are right there alongside him traveling through the murky dark waters of the upper Amazon or up close with a scrutinizing eye to observe the ants, monkeys and butterflies. He was a keen and enthusiastic witness to a world slowly disappearing.

When the lawmakers in the State Capital passed an ill-advised law that could potentially bankrupt the state an innovative governor presents a plan to shift some of the burden to the Federal Government. The plan was to form a National Guard unit in a maximum security prison and work a scheme to get the men of that unit on active duty in the army. The scheme worked better than he could ever have imagined. This is the story of those convicts and the active duty army unit they formed. More than that, it is the story of a very special young man. The one of a kind that comes along once or twice in every century and how he was able to make the most of the opportunity offered him as a member of the Expendable Force. Live with them their adventures in ridding a nation of drug lords, fighting a war in the far east and their participation in a war in the middle east. See how they fared in war games in the American desert against units of the regular army.

A transatlantic voyage sets the stage for love and madcap farce in P.G. Wodehouse's 1929 comic tale Three Men and a Maid. Billie Bennett - a lively young American woman on her way to England. On board with Billie are her fiancé, the intellectual and artistic Eustace Hignett, Billie's good pal Bream Mortimer, and Sam Marlowe, Eustace's cousin. Billie gets more than she bargained for as the ship sets sail. Although she is set to marry Eustace, she soon realizes that all three men have feelings for her. Add a rough-and-ready fellow female traveler who just happens to fall head over heels for Eustace, and you have the perfect recipe for confusion of the most amusing Wodehousian sort. Who will end up with whom? As the ship makes its way across the ocean, hearts will be broken and mended in the most interesting and hilarious ways.

Flappers and Philosophers was the first collection of short stories written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1920.Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American writer of novels and short stories, whose works are evocative of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself.

Set in the bohemian cafe society of Paris at the turn of the nineteenth century, Maugham's exploration of hypnotism and the occult was inspired by the sinister black magician Aleister Crowley. At the start of this compulsive gothic horror story, Arthur and his beautiful, innocent fiancee Margaret look forward to an idyllic life together, until they encounter the mesmerising and repulsive Oliver Haddo...

The Jungle is a 1906 novel written by author and socialist journalist Upton Sinclair. It was written about the corruption of the American meatpacking industry during the early 20th century.The novel depicts in harsh tones the poverty, absence of social programs, unpleasant living and working conditions, and hopelessness prevalent among the "have-nots", which is contrasted with the deeply rooted corruption on the part of the "haves". The sad state of turn-of-the-century labor is placed front and center for the American public to see, suggesting that something needed to be changed to get rid of American "wage slavery".

The Doctor's Dilemma is a play by G. Bernard Shaw first staged in 1906.In the play a number of dilemmas crop up, of which the surface one is that of a doctor who has developed a new cure for tuberculosis, but has only enough of it for one patient. He then has to choose which patient he is going to give it to: a kindly poor medical colleague, or an extremely gifted but also very unpleasant young artist with a young and vivacious wife with whom the doctor is somewhat in love, which makes it even harder for the doctor to separate his motives for the decision.