European Literature

The Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda are our oldest written sources for Norse mythology. When it comes to the norse myths, they are the closest thing we have to listening these stories as the vikings actually told them, around those ancient campfires so long ago. It is my hope that you will enjoy this collection, and that the two books will work in tandem to broaden and deepen your appreciation for these epic and mystical stories, and the enigmatic culture that spawned them.

When Louis Trevelyan's young wife meets an old family acquaintance, his unreasonable jealousy of their friendship sparks a quarrel that leads to a brutal and tragic estrangement.

"La aldea, cuando se cría uno en ella y no sale de allí jamás, envilece, empobrece y embrutece." "Los pazos de Ulloa" es considerada una de las obras más importantes del siglo XIX español. Su autora Emilia Pardo Bazán retrata las contradicciones sociales de una Galicia rural y recóndita, marcadas por el poder de la Iglesia, el caciquismo y la decadencia de la aristocracia.

Mary Jekyll’s life has been peaceful since she helped Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson solve the Whitechapel Murders. Beatrice Rappaccini, Catherine Moreau, Justine Frankenstein, and Mary’s sister Diana Hyde have settled into the Jekyll household in London, and although they sometimes quarrel, they can always rely on Mrs. Poole. But when Mary receives a telegram that Lucinda Van Helsing has been kidnapped, the Athena Club must travel to the Austro-Hungarian Empire to rescue yet another young woman who has been subjected to horrific experimentation.

Claudine et son père ont quitté leur village de Montigny pour s'installer à Paris, où la jeune fille va découvrir la vie parisienne avec le soutien de son cousin Marcel, son ami, son confident et son complice. Elle finit par s'habituer à la vie dans cette ville qu'elle trouvait dure au début, et commence à sortir et à mener une vie mondaine. Elle ne tarde pas de tomber amoureuse de Renaud, chroniqueur de la vie mondaine, un grand séducteur aux tempes grisonnantes. Malgré l'hostilité de Marcel dont c'est... le père, elle finit par épouser Renaud.

Finnegans Wake is the greatest challenge in 20th-century literature. Who is Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker? And what did he get up to in Phoenix Park? And what did Anna Livia Plurabelle have to say about it? In the rich nighttime and the language of dreams, here are history, anecdote, myth, folk tale and, above all, a wondrous sense of humor, colored by a clear sense of humanity. In this exceptional reading by the Irish actor Barry McGovern, with Marcella Riordan, the world of the Wake is more accessible than ever before.

Italo Calvino's unbounded curiosity and masterly imagination are displayed in peak form in Collection of Sand, the last of his works published during his lifetime. Here he applies his graceful intellect to the delights of the visual world in essays on subjects ranging from cuneiform and antique maps to Mexican temples and Japanese gardens.

The Count of Monte Cristo (French: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo) is an adventure novel written by French author Alexandre Dumas (père) completed in 1844. It is one of the author's most popular works, along with The Three Musketeers. Like many of his novels, it was expanded from plot outlines suggested by his collaborating ghostwriter Auguste Maquet. The story takes place in France, Italy, and islands in the Mediterranean during the historical events of 1815–1839: the era of the Bourbon Restoration through the reign of Louis-Philippe of France.

Meeting by chance at a gambling hall in Europe, the separate lives of Daniel Deronda and Gwendolen Harleth are immediately intertwined. Daniel, an Englishman of uncertain parentage, becomes Gwendolyn's redeemer as she finds herself drawn to his spiritual and altruistic nature after a loveless marriage. But Daniel's path was already set when he rescued a young Jewess from suicide.

By acclaimed Forward Prize-winner, novelist, and poet, Kei Miller's linked collection of essays blends memoir and literary commentary to explore the silences that exist in our conversations about race, sex, and gender.

From his 1935 debut with "The Universal History of Iniquity", through his immensely influential collections Ficciones and The Aleph, these enigmatic, elaborate, imaginative inventions display Borges' talent for turning fiction on its head by playing with form and genre and toying with language.

The Riviera means indulgence - if you’ve got money. For Sadie Reynolds, a down-on-her-luck student, the Riviera means dingy hostels and back streets. When a wrong turn puts her in jeopardy, the last thing she expects is to be saved by the most handsome stranger she’s ever locked eyes with. When she later wakes up in a luxury suite with a Mediterranean view, she’s in the tender care of her rescuer: Olivier Dumont, France’s most eligible bachelor, billionaire hotelier, and heir to the Dumont fashion fortune.

Gogol's great Russian classic is the Pickwick Papers of Russian literature. It takes a sharp but humorous look at life in all its strata but especially the devious complexities in Russia, with its landowners and serfs. We are introduced to Chichikov, a businessman who, in order to trick the tax authorities, buys up dead 'souls', or serfs, whose names still appear on the government census. Despite being a dealer in phantom crimes and paper ghosts, he is the most beguiling of Gogol's characters.

Real French people don’t speak like your textbook…so it’s no wonder you feel unprepared when it’s your turn to speak! Try the StoryLearning Method, and dive into a real-world, gripping drama between six characters that helps you learn authentic spoken French in the process.

With great originality and wit, Orwell unfolds his views on subjects ranging from a revaluation of Charles Dickens to the nature of Socialism, from a comic yet profound discussion of naughty seaside postcards to a spirited defense of English cooking. Displaying an almost unrivalled mastery of English plain prose, Orwell’s essays created a unique literary manner from the process of thinking aloud and continue to challenge, move, and entertain.

This unique fairy tale filled with whimsy and satire is much more than a story for the nursery. The tale begins with two old philosophers who live in a dark pine wood with their companions the Grey woman of Dun Gortin and the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath. When the wife of farmer MacMurrachu loses her washing board, the farmer comes to ask the philosophers for advice. They direct the old farmer not to a washboard, but to a tree containing a pot of gold.

"Castle Richmond" (1860) is a novel by Anthony Trollope. It is set in southwestern Ireland at beginning of the Irish famine. Castle Richmond is situated on the banks of the Blackwater River in County Cork. The plot features the competition of two Protestant cousins of English origin, Owen and Herbert Fitzgerald, for the hand of Clara Desmond, the noble but impoverished daughter of the widowed Countess of Desmond, providing the novel’s principal dramatic interest.

Suite à une épidémie de peste, les autorités décident de fermer la ville d'Oran. Les habitants s'organisent pour survivre au siège de cette maladie mortelle et en particulier le docteur Rieux. Il est l'un des premiers à identifier les symptômes de la maladie et devient une figure centrale dans l'organisation sanitaire de la ville.

Charles Strickland, a conventional stockbroker, abandons his wife and children for Paris and Tahiti, to live his life as a painter. While his betrayal of family, duty and honour gives him the freedom to achieve greatness, his decision leads to an obsession which carries severe implications.

Secular humanism has triumphed. Everything the late Victorians and Edwardians believed would bring human happiness has been achieved: Technology has made it so no one needs to work for a living, the social sciences ensure a smooth-running social order, and, in the name of tolerance, religious beliefs have been uprooted and eliminated except for a single holdout - a largely discredited and rapidly shrinking Catholic Church. Yet people are unhappy.