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At the turn of the twentieth century, Arctic explorer Edward Mackley sets out to reach the North Pole and vanishes into the icy landscape without a trace. He leaves behind a young wife, Emily, who awaits his return for decades, her dreams and devotion gradually freezing into rigid widowhood. A hundred years later, on a sweltering mid-summer’s day, Edward’s great-grand-niece Julia moves through the old family house, attempting to impose some order on the clutter of inherited belongings and memories from that ill-fated expedition, and taking care to ignore the deepening cracks within her own marriage. But as afternoon turns into evening, Julia makes a discovery that splinters her long-held image of Edward and Emily’s romance, and her husband Simon faces a precipitous choice that will decide the future of their relationship. Sharply observed and deeply engaging, “The Still Point” is a powerful literary debut, and a moving meditation on the distances – geographical and emotional – that can exist between two people.
Kapcsolódó könyvek
James Joyce - Dubliners
'There was no doubt about it: if you wanted to succeed you had to go away. You could do nothing in Dublin.'
From a child coming to terms with the death of a priest to a young woman torn between leading an uneventful life in Dublin and fleeing Ireland with her lover, these fifteen stories bring to life the day-to-day existence of ordinary Dubliners in the early years of the twentieth century. With brutal realism, Joyce lays bare the struggles and desires of the Irish middle classes in a compelling and unique exploration of human experience.
Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale
A gripping vision of our society radically overturned by a theocratic revolution, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid's Tale has become one of the most powerful and most widely read novels of our time.
Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, serving in the household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife. She may go out once a day to markets whose signs are now pictures because women are not allowed to read. She must pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, for in a time of declining birthrates her value lies in her fertility, and failure means exile to the dangerously polluted Colonies. Offred can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost even her own name. Now she navigates the intimate secrets of those who control her every move, risking her life in breaking the rules.
Like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Handmaid's Tale has endured not only as a literary landmark but as a warning of a possible future that is still chillingly relevant.
Angela Carter - The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
Fairy tales retold and interwoven by a master of seductive, luminous storytelling
Jennifer Donnelly - Revolution
BROOKLYN: Andi Alpers is on the edge. She’s angry at her father for leaving, angry at her mother for not being able to cope, and heartbroken by the loss of her younger brother, Truman. Rage and grief are destroying her. And she’s about to be expelled from Brooklyn Heights’ most prestigious private school when her father intervenes. Now Andi must accompany him to Paris for winter break.
PARIS: Alexandrine Paradis lived over two centuries ago. She dreamed of making her mark on the Paris stage, but a fateful encounter with a doomed prince of France cast her in a tragic role she didn’t want—and couldn’t escape.
Two girls, two centuries apart. One never knowing the other. But when Andi finds Alexandrine’s diary, she recognizes something in her words and is moved to the point of obsession. There’s comfort and distraction for Andi in the journal’s antique pages—until, on a midnight journey through the catacombs of Paris, Alexandrine’s words transcend paper and time, and the past becomes suddenly, terrifyingly present.
Jennifer Donnelly, author of the award-winning novel A Northern Light, artfully weaves two girls’ stories into one unforgettable account of life, loss, and enduring love. Revolution spans centuries and vividly depicts the eternal struggles of the human heart.
E. M. Forster - A Room with a View
Lucy has her rigid, middle-class life mapped out for her until she visits Florence with her uptight cousin Charlotte, and finds her neatly ordered existence thrown off balance. Her eyes are opened by the unconventional characters she meets at the Pension Bertolini: flamboyant romantic novelist Eleanor Lavish, the Cockney Signora, eccentric Mr Emerson and. most of all, his passionate son George. Lucy finds herself torn between the intensity of life in Italy and the repressed morals of Victorian England, personified in her terminally dull fiancé Cecil Vyse, until she finally learns to follow the power of her own heart. A Room with a View was brought to life in a film starring Helena Bonham Carter.
Ernest Hemingway - Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises
Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises tells the story of Jake Barnes, an expatriate living in Paris. He was wounded in World War I, and is now a journalist who spends his time drinking with other American expatriates. The group of characters travel from Paris to Pamplona for the running of the bulls.
Toni Morrison - A Mercy
Nobel laureate Morrison returns more explicitly to the net of pain cast by slavery, a theme she detailed so memorably in Beloved. Set at the close of the 17th century, the book details America's untoward foundation: dominion over Native Americans, indentured workers, women and slaves. A slave at a plantation in Maryland offers up her daughter, Florens, to a relatively humane Northern farmer, Jacob, as debt payment from their owner. The ripples of this choice spread to the inhabitants of Jacob's farm, populated by women with intersecting and conflicting desires. Jacob's wife, Rebekka, struggles with her faith as she loses one child after another to the harsh New World. A Native servant, Lina, survivor of a smallpox outbreak, craves Florens's love to replace the family taken from her, and distrusts the other servant, a peculiar girl named Sorrow. When Jacob falls ill, all these women are threatened. Morrison's lyricism infuses the shifting voices of her characters as they describe a brutal society being forged in the wilderness. Morrison's unflinching narrative is all the more powerful for its relative brevity; it takes hold of the reader and doesn't let go until the wrenching final-page crescendo.
Margaret Atwood - Cat's Eye
Herself the daughter of a Canadian forest entomologist, Atwood writes in an autobiographical vein about Elaine Risley, a middle-aged Canadian painter (and daughter of a forest entomologist) who is thrust into an extended reconsideration of her past while attending a retrospective show of her work in Toronto, a city she had fled years earlier in order to leave behind painful memories. Most pointedly, Risley reflects on the strangeness of her long relations with Cordelia, a childhood friend whose cruelties, dealt lavishly to Risley, helped hone her awareness of our inveterate appetite for destruction even while we love, and are understood as characteristically femininea betrayal of other women that masks a ferocious betrayal of oneself. Atwood's portrayal of the friendship gives the novel its fraught and mysterious center, but her critical assessment of Cordelia and the "whole world of girls and their doings" also takes the measure of a coercive, conformist society (not quite as extreme as in the futuristic The Handmaid's Tale ). Emerging "the stronger" for her latecoming understanding of herself, Risley in the final pages rises above the ties that bound her, transcendently alive to the possibilities of "light, shining out in the midst of nothing." (From Publisher's Weekly)
Carol Ann Duffy - The World's Wife
Carol Ann Duffy was born in Glasgow in 1955. She grew up in Stanfford and then attendd the University of Liverpool, where she studied philosophy. She was written for both children and adults, and her poetry has received many awards, incluing the Signal Prize for Children's Verse, the Whitebread and Forever Prizes, and the Lannan Award and the E. M. Foster Prize in America. In 2005, she won the T. S. Eliot Prize for Rapture.
Maxine Hong Kingston - China Men
The author chronicles the lives of three generations of Chinese men in America, woven from memory, myth and fact. Here's a storyteller's tale of what they endured in a strange new land.
Melis Ildikó - Szalay Krisztina - The Joy of Reading
A The Joy of Reading angol és amerikai versek és novellák, valamint ezekhez kapcsolódó feladatok gyűjteménye. Kiknek készült ez a könyv? Mindazoknak a tanároknak és tanulóknak, akik az elmúlt évek más nyelvtanítási módszerei után még mindig hiszik, hogy a nyelv elsajátításának alapvető része az irodalom. A könyv jó kiegészítő anyag lehet a középiskolák haladó osztályaiban, haszonnal forgathatják a felvételire készülők, sőt az újságíró, tanár-, vezető-, és művészképző főiskolák hallgatói is.
A tizenkét fejezetre oszló könyv hat angol és hat amerikai novella és vers teljes szövegének bemutatásával, elemzésével próbálja összekapcsolni a nyelvtanulást az olvasás örömével, az angol-amerikai irodalom megismertetésével.
A művek mellé választott színes illusztrációk jó alkalmat nyújtanak arra, hogy a verseket, novellákat más alkotások tükrében gondolják-értelmezzék tovább a könyv olvasói.
A kötet végén mintatesztek segítik az olvasmányélmény rögzítését, a tanultak elmélyítését.
Ismeretlen szerző - Demons
2011 BRAM STOKER WINNER for Superior Achievement in an Anthology!
This mind-blowing anthology cracks open the lid on demonic lore, from the possessed to fallen angels and the Devil himself. The next book in Black Dog's supernatural series, Demons presents thirty-six terrifying, tantalizing tales in which evil spirits wreak havoc on the world. Neil Gaiman, William Peter Blatty, Kim Harrison and Robert R. McCammon join H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Beaumont, Bentley Little, Maggie Stiefvator, Danielle Trussoni, David J. Schow, Karl Edward Wagner, Richard Christian Matheson, Adram-Troy Castro, Amelia Beamer, Cody Goodfellow, Carlton Mellick III, and dozens more, both old and new. Horror legend John Skipp, editor of Zombies and Werewolves and Shapeshifters, provides fascinating insight into the history and details of demon lore, and its role in popular culture. Between the extensive resource materials and the lovingly selected stories - ranging from fantasy, horror, paranormal romance, and magic realism to full-blown Bizarro - Demons is an indispensable text, and the most fun you'll ever have with the forces of evil.
Carol Ann Duffy - Selected Poems
‘Poetry, like love, depends on a kind of recognition. So often with Duffy does the reader say, “Yes, that’s it exactly,” that she could well become the representative poet of the present day’ Sean O’Brien, Sunday Times.
‘Selected Poems’ contains poetry chosen by Carol Ann Duffy from her acclaimed volumes, ‘Standing Female Nude’ (1985), ‘Selling Manhattan’ (1987), ‘The Other Country’ (1990) and ‘Mean Time’ (1993, winner of the Forward Poetry Prize and the Whitbread Poetry Award), together with three poems from ‘The World's Wife’.
緑川ゆき - 蛍火の杜へ (Hotarubi no Mori E)
「夏目友人帳」の原点と言える傑作読み切り「蛍火の杜へ」。2011年9月からの劇場アニメ化に合わせ発売された愛蔵版。 人でも妖怪でもない不思議な存在の少年と、人間の少女が織りなす、優しく切ない、恋の物語。愛蔵版では「蛍火の杜へ」本編＆描き下ろし特別編＋読み切り「体温のかけら」・「星も見えない」を収録。
Toni Morrison - Sula
Sula and Nel are two young black girls: clever and poor, they grow up together sharing their secrets, dreams and happiness. Then Sula breaks free from their small-town community in the uplands of Ohio to roam the cities of America. When she returns ten years later much has changed. Including Nel, who now has a husband and three children. The friendship between the two women becomes strained and the whole town grows wary as Sula continues in her wayward, vagabond and uncompromising ways.
Jonathan Stroud - The Leap
Charlie is devastated by the tragic accident up at a disused mill pool involving her best friend, Max. Refusing to believe Max is dead, she embarks on an emotional journey in her dreams, where she believes she can see Max just ahead of her on the road. Soon her dreamworld becomes more important to her than anything else until this fantasy and real life begin to merge and give rise to strange events in the everyday world. With the help of her brother James, Charlie steers herself through the dangers and learns to face the truth and find a way of living after Max.
Peter S. Beagle - Return
In Return, master fantasist Peter S. Beagle revisits the world of his extraordinary 1991 novel, The Innkeeper’s Song. The result is an utterly compelling novella filled with its author’s inimitable—and characteristic—magic.
The story begins when Soukyan, narrator and hero, fends off an attack by a trio of Hunters, trained assassins who have tracked him relentlessly for many years. But something about this latest attack is different, and that difference sends Soukyan on an unexpected journey to the source of his most painful memories. In the course of that journey, he encounters some of the central figures from his troubled past and comes face-to-face with a mystery that is both astonishing and lethal.
Return offers a generous helping of the pure narrative pleasure that Peter Beagle’s readers have come to expect. Swift, effortlessly witty, and written, always, with intelligence, grace, and more than a touch of wizardry, it is the work of a consummate storyteller with a unique voice and a wholly original vision of the world.
Michael McCarthy - Felicity O'Dell - English Phrasal Verbs in Use Intermediate
English Phrasal Verbs in Use is a comprehensive reference and practice book suitable for students from good intermediate level onwards. Over 1000 of the most useful and frequent phrasal verbs are clearly explained and practised in typical contexts. The material is designed for self-study, as well as classroom use, and has a student-friendly answer key.
The book has 70 two-page units. The verbs are presented on the left-hand page and are practised on the facing right-hand page. The verbs are divided into units by topic, function, concept, particle and verb. The language is presented in various ways, often in tables, showing the phrasal verbs in a range of natural contexts such as everyday dialogues, e-mails, cartoons and newspaper extracts.
The book includes an invaluable mini dictionary, listing each verb with an easy-to-understand definition. This book is particularly useful for students preparing for a range of examinations.
George Mikes - How to be an Alien (Penguin Readers)
This is the funniest book that you will read about English people! Why are the English different from Europeans? George Mikes' book describes the strange things the English do and say. And the English don't get angry when they read the book. They love it! You will too!
Matthew Quick - The Silver Linings Playbook
Pat Peoples, the endearing narrator of this touching and funny debut, is down on his luck. The former high school history teacher has just been released from a mental institution and placed in the care of his mother. Not one to be discouraged, Pat believes he has only been on the inside for a few months––rather than four years––and plans on reconciling with his estranged wife. Refusing to accept that their apart time is actually a permanent separation, Pat spends his days and nights feverishly trying to become the man she had always desired. Our hapless hero makes a friend in Tiffany, the mentally unstable, widowed sister-in-law of his best friend, Ronnie. Each day as Pat heads out for his 10-mile run, Tiffany silently trails him, refusing to be shaken off by the object of her affection. The odd pair try to navigate a timid friendship, but as Pat is unable to discern friend from foe and reality from deranged optimism, every day proves to be a cringe-worthy adventure. Pat is as sweet as a puppy, and his offbeat story has all the markings of a crowd-pleaser.
