The story of Tzu Hsi is the story of the last Empress in China. In this audio book, Pearl S. Buck recreates the life of one of the most intriguing rules during a time of intense turbulence. Tzu Hsi was born into one of the lowly ranks of the Imperial dynasty. According to custom, she moved to the Forbidden City at the age of seventeen to become one of hundreds of concubines. But her singular beauty and powers of manipulation quickly moved her into the position of Second Consort. Tzu Hsi was feared and hated by many in the court, but adored by the people. The Empress’s rise to power (even during her husband’s life) parallels the story of China’s transition from the ancient to the modern way. Pearl S. Buck’s knowledge of and fascination with the Empress’s life are contagious. She reveals the essence of this self-involved and infamous last Empress, at the same time she takes the listener through China’s struggle for freedom and democracy.
Elizabeth Gaskell's masterpiece Wives and Daughters is an enchanting tale of romance, scandal, and intrigue in the gossipy English town of Hollingford around the 1830s.
When Margaret Hale moves with her father from the comfort of the south of England to the industrial north, she is at first repulsed by what she sees; and then when she discovers the conditions under which the workers are forced to live, she is outraged. But this throws her into direct conflict with the powerful young mill-owner, John Thornton. Using personal passions to explore deep social divisions, North and South is a great romance - and one of Elizabeth Gaskell's finest works.
Dissolute, disenchanted Dmitri Olénin decides to join the Army as a cadet and is despatched to the Caucasus. There, he is transformed by seeing how the indigenous people live in harmony with nature, how their lives have more meaning than those of the superficial social elite in Moscow, and he finds a new sense of self and purpose. But nothing is ever quite that simple. Love and loyalty are tested to the very limits in this semi-autobiographical novella, which is one of Tolstoy's best-loved works. Translated by Aylmer and Louise Maude.
Seventeen-year-old David Balfour's villainous uncle has him kidnapped in order to steal his inheritance. David escapes only to fall into the dangerous company of rebels who are resisting British redcoats in the Scottish highlands.
Introduction by Diane Johnson Commentary by G. K. Chesterton, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Rigby, George Saintsbury, and Anthony Trollope
Initially published under the pseudonym Currer Bell in 1847, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre erupted onto the English literary scene, immediately winning the devotion of many of the world's most renowned writers, including William Makepeace Thackeray, who declared it a work "of great genius." Widely regarded as a revolutionary novel, Brontë's masterpiece introduced the world to a radical new type of heroine, one whose defiant virtue and moral courage departed sharply from the more acquiescent and malleable female characters of the day. Passionate, dramatic, and surprisingly modern, Jane Eyre endures as one of the world's most beloved novels.
Includes a Modern Library Reading Group Guide
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Tales from the Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night is a magnificent collection of ancient tales from Arabia, India, and Persia translated by Richard F. Burton.
Jerome K. Jerome's comic masterpiece---and one of the best-known classics of English humor---follows the misadventures of three bungling, Victorian-era bachelors who take off on a rowing excursion up the Thames.
When Margaret Hale moves with her parents from the comfort of the south of England to the industrial north, she is at first repulsed by what she sees; and then when she discovers the conditions under which the workers are forced to live, she is outraged. But this throws her into direct conflict with the powerful young mill-owner, John Thornton. Using personal passions to explore deep social divisions, North and South is a great romance - and one of Elizabeth Gaskell's finest works.
**Please contact member services for additional documents**
One of Joseph Conrad's greatest works, Nostromo is a gripping tale of capitalist exploitation and rebellion that employs flashbacks and glimpses of the future to depict the lure of silver and its effects on men.
Considered by many to be W. Somerset Maugham's masterpiece, Of Human Bondage traces the travels of Philip Carey to Germany, Paris, and London while exploring his intellectual, emotional, and psychological development and, later, his destructive relationship with a tawdry waitress.
** Please contact Member Services for Additional documents.
With a horse between his thighs and a weapon in his grip, the dashing Brigadier Etienne Gerard, Colonel of the Hussars of Conflans, gallops through the Napoleonic campaigns on secret missions for his beloved Emperor and his country. He encounters danger and hair-breadth escapes but never loses his bravado, his eye for a pretty girl, his boastfulness or his enormous vanity. Gerard is Conan Doyle's most lovable character. At times hilarious, at times touching, these stories are amongst Conan Doyle's most popular.
![Wives and Daughters [With eBook] Audiobook](https://covers.audiobooks.com/images/covers/large/9781452670584.jpg)
![Of Human Bondage [With eBook] Audiobook](https://covers.audiobooks.com/images/covers/large/9781400189762.jpg)
