Dead Souls Nikolai Gogol http://www.feedbooks.com/book/12 urn:isbn:0679776443 en 1842 Novels Since its publication in 1842, Dead Souls has been celebrated as a supremely realistic portrait of provincial Russian life and as a splendidly exaggerated tale; as a paean to the Russian spirit and as a remorseless satire of imperial Russian venality, vulgarity, and pomp. As Gogol's wily antihero, Chichikov, combs the back country wheeling and dealing for "dead souls"--deceased serfs who still represent money to anyone sharp enough to trade in them--we are introduced to a Dickensian cast of peasants, landowners, and conniving petty officials, few of whom can resist the seductive illogic of Chichikov's proposition. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/12.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/12.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/12.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/12.mobi The Precipice Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov http://www.feedbooks.com/book/11 urn:isbn:1406938084 en 1869 Novels http://www.feedbooks.com/book/11.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/11.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/11.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/11.mobi Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2042 urn:isbn:0192840398 en 1857 Novels Romance Madame Bovary scandalized its readers when it was first published in 1857. And the story itself remains as fresh today as when it was first written, a work that remains unsurpassed in its unveiling of character and society. It tells the tragic story of the romantic but empty-headed Emma Rouault. When Emma marries Charles Bovary, she imagines she will pass into the life of luxury and passion that she reads about in sentimental novels and women's magazines. But Charles is an ordinary country doctor, and provincial life is very different from the romantic excitement for which she yearns. In her quest to realize her dreams she takes a lover, Rodolphe, and begins a devastating spiral into deceit and despair. And Flaubert captures every step of this catastrophe with sharp-eyed detail and a wonderfully subtle understanding of human emotions. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2042.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2042.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2042.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2042.mobi The House of the Seven Gables Nathaniel Hawthorne http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1513 urn:isbn:0553212702 en 1851 Novels Romance Gothic In a sleepy little New England village stands a dark, weather-beaten, many-gabled house. This brooding mansion is haunted by a centuries-old curse that casts the shadow of ancestral sin upon the last four members of the distinctive Pyncheon family. Mysterious deaths threaten the living. Musty documents nestle behind hidden panels carrying the secret of the family’s salvation—or its downfall. Hawthorne called The House of the Seven Gables “a Romance,” and freely bestowed upon it many fascinating gothic touches. A brilliant intertwining of the popular, the symbolic, and the historical, the novel is a powerful exploration of personal and national guilt, a work that Henry James declared “the closest approach we are likely to have to the Great American Novel.” http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1513.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1513.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1513.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1513.mobi The Arabian Nights Andrew Lang http://www.feedbooks.com/book/208 urn:isbn:1605896403 en 1898 Novels Young Readers One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of stories collected over many centuries by various authors, translators and scholars in various countries across the Middle East and South Asia. These collections of tales trace their roots back to ancient Arabia and Yemen, ancient Indian literature and Persian literature, ancient Egyptian literature and Mesopotamian mythology, ancient Syria and Asia Minor, and medieval Arabic folk stories from the Caliphate era. Though the oldest Arabic manuscript dates from the fourteenth century, scholarship generally dates the collection's genesis to somewhere between AD 800–900. This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+70 and in the USA. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/208.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/208.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/208.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/208.mobi The Art of War Sun Tzu http://www.feedbooks.com/book/168 urn:isbn:0762415983 en -514 Non-Fiction Philosophy War The Art of War is a Chinese military treatise that was written during the 6th century BC by Sun Tzu. Composed of 13 chapters, each of which is devoted to one aspect of warfare, it has long been praised as the definitive work on military strategies and tactics of its time. The Art of War is one of the oldest books on military strategy in the world. It is the first and one of the most successful works on strategy and has had a huge influence on Eastern and Western military thinking, business tactics, and beyond. Sun Tzu was the first to recognize the importance of positioning in strategy and that position is affected both by objective conditions in the physical environment and the subjective opinions of competitive actors in that environment. He taught that strategy was not planning in the sense of working through a to-do list, but rather that it requires quick and appropriate responses to changing conditions. Planning works in a controlled environment, but in a competitive environment, http://www.feedbooks.com/book/168.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/168.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/168.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/168.mobi Moby-Dick Herman Melville http://www.feedbooks.com/book/54 urn:isbn:0553213113 en 1851 Novels Adventure Moby-Dick is an 1851 novel by Herman Melville. The story tells the adventures of the wandering sailor Ishmael and his voyage on the whaling ship Pequod, commanded by Captain Ahab. Ishmael soon learns that Ahab seeks one specific whale, Moby-Dick, a white whale of tremendous size and ferocity. Comparatively few whaling ships know of Moby-Dick, and fewer yet have encountered him. In a previous encounter, the whale destroyed Ahab's boat and bit off his leg. Ahab intends to exact revenge. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/54.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/54.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/54.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/54.mobi Jude The Obscure Thomas Hardy http://www.feedbooks.com/book/753 urn:isbn:0486452433 en 1895 Novels Hardy's masterpiece traces a poor stonemason's ill-fated romance with his free-spirited cousin. No Victorian institution is spared — marriage, religion, education — and the outrage following publication led the embittered author to renounce fiction. Modern critics hail this novel as a pioneering work of feminism and socialist thought. This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+70 and in the USA. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/753.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/753.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/753.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/753.mobi Fathers and Sons Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1922 urn:isbn:0192833928 en 1862 Novels When a young graduate returns home he is accompanied, much to his father and uncle's discomfort, by a strange friend "who doesn't acknowledge any authorities, who doesn't accept a single principle on faith." Turgenev's masterpiece of generational conflict shocked Russian society when it was published in 1862 and continues today to seem as fresh and outspoken as it did to those who first encountered its nihilistic hero. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1922.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1922.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1922.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1922.mobi War and Peace Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy http://www.feedbooks.com/book/83 urn:isbn:067003469X en 1869 Novels History War War and Peace is a novel by Leo Tolstoy, first published from 1865 to 1869 in Russkii Vestnik, which tells the story of Russian society during the Napoleonic Era. It is usually described as one of Tolstoy's two major masterpieces (the other being Anna Karenina) as well as one of the world's greatest novels. War and Peace offered a new kind of fiction, with a great many characters caught up in a plot that covered nothing less than the grand subjects indicated by the title, combined with the equally large topics of youth, marriage, age, and death. Though it is often called a novel today, it broke so many conventions of the form that it was not considered a novel in its time. Indeed, Tolstoy himself considered Anna Karenina (1878) to be his first attempt at a novel in the European sense. This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+70 and in the USA. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/83.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/83.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/83.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/83.mobi Postsingular Rudy Rucker http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1918 urn:isbn:0765317419 en 2007 Novels Science Fiction It all begins next year in California. A maladjusted computer industry billionaire and a somewhat crazy US President initiate a radical transformation of the world through sentient nanotechnology; sort of the equivalent of biological artificial intelligence. At first they succeed, but their plans are reversed by Chu, an autistic boy. The next time it isn't so easy to stop them. Most of the story takes place in a world after a heretofore unimaginable transformation, where all the things look the same but all the people are different (they're able to read each others' minds, for starters). Travel to and from other nearby worlds in the quantum universe is possible, so now our world is visited by giant humanoids from another quantum universe, and some of them mean to tidy up the mess we've made. Or maybe just run things. Please read the legal notice included in this e-book and/or check the copyright status in your country. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1918.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1918.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1918.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1918.mobi The Trial Franz Kafka http://www.feedbooks.com/book/9 urn:isbn:0805210407 en 1925 Novels Horror Fantasy The Trial (German: Der Process) is a novel by Franz Kafka about a character named Josef K., who awakens one morning and, for reasons never revealed, is arrested and prosecuted for an unspecified crime. According to Kafka's friend Max Brod, the author never finished the novel and wrote in his will that it was to be destroyed. After his death, Brod went against Kafka's wishes and edited The Trial into what he felt was a coherent novel and had it published in 1925. This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+70. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/9.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/9.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/9.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/9.mobi The Possessed (The Devils) Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky http://www.feedbooks.com/book/368 urn:isbn:0199540497 en 1872 Novels The Possessed (In Russian: Бесы, tr. Besy), also translated as The Devils or Demons, is an 1872 novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky. For an explanation of the marked difference in the English-language title, please see the section "Note on the title" below. An extremely political book, The Possessed is a testimonial of life in Imperial Russia in the late 19th century. As the revolutionary democrats begin to rise in Russia, different ideologies begin to collide. Dostoevsky casts a critical eye on both the left-wing idealists, exposing their ideas and ideological foundation as demonic, and the conservative establishment's ineptitude in dealing with those ideas and their social consequences. This form of intellectual conservativism tied to the Slavophil movement of Dostoevsky's day, is seen to have continued on into its modern manifestation in individuals like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Dostoevsky's novels focusing on the idea that utopias and positivists ideas, in being utilitarian, were unrealistic and unobtainable. The book has five primary ideological characters: Verkhovensky, Shatov, Stavrogin, Stepan Trofimovich, and Kirilov. Through their philosophies, Dostoevsky describes the political chaos seen in 19th-Century Russia. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/368.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/368.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/368.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/368.mobi The Idiot Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky http://www.feedbooks.com/book/367 urn:isbn:0679642420 en 1868 Novels Romance Returning to Russia from a sanitarium in Switzerland, the Christ-like epileptic Prince Myshkin finds himself enmeshed in a tangle of love, torn between two women—the notorious kept woman Nastasya and the pure Aglaia—both involved, in turn, with the corrupt, money-hungry Ganya. In the end, Myshkin’s honesty, goodness, and integrity are shown to be unequal to the moral emptiness of those around him. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/367.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/367.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/367.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/367.mobi The Monk Matthew Lewis http://www.feedbooks.com/book/331 urn:isbn:0192833944 en 1796 Novels Romance Sexuality Gothic The Monk is remembered for being one of the more lurid and "transgressive" of Gothic novels. It is also the first book to feature a priest as the villain. The story concerns Ambrosio - a pious, well-respected monk in Spain - and his violent downfall. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/331.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/331.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/331.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/331.mobi Crime and Punishment Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky http://www.feedbooks.com/book/38 urn:isbn:0679420290 en 1866 Novels Psychology The poverty-stricken Raskolnikov, believing he is exempt from moral law, murders a man only to face the consequences not only from society but from his conscience, in this seminal story of justice, morality, and redemption from one of Russia's greatest novelists. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/38.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/38.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/38.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/38.mobi The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde http://www.feedbooks.com/book/6 urn:isbn:0375751513 en 1891 Novels Oscar Wilde's story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is one of his most popular works. Written in Wilde's characteristically dazzling manner, full of stinging epigrams and shrewd observations, the tale of Dorian Gray's moral disintegration caused something of a scandal when it first appeared in 1890. Wilde was attacked for his decadence and corrupting influence, and a few years later the book and the aesthetic/moral dilemma it presented became issues in the trials occasioned by Wilde's homosexual liaisons, trials that resulted in his imprisonment. Of the book's value as autobiography, Wilde noted in a letter, "Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be--in other ages, perhaps." http://www.feedbooks.com/book/6.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/6.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/6.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/6.mobi I, Robot Cory Doctorow http://www.feedbooks.com/book/337 urn:isbn:1560259817 en 2005 Short Fiction Science Fiction "I, Robot" is a science-fiction short story by Cory Doctorow published in 2005. The story is set in the type of police state needed to ensure that only one company is allowed to make robots, and only one type of robot is allowed. The story follows single Father detective Arturo Icaza de Arana-Goldberg while he tries to track down his missing teenage daughter. The detective is a bit of an outcast because his wife defected to Eurasia, a rival Superpower. Please read the legal notice included in this e-book and/or check the copyright status in your country. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/337.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/337.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/337.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/337.mobi The Gambler Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky http://www.feedbooks.com/book/3 urn:isbn:0812966937 en 1867 Novels The Gambler was written under the pressure of crushing debt. It is a stunning psychological portrait of a young man’s exhilarating and destructive addiction, a compulsion that Dostoevsky–who once gambled away his young wife’s wedding ring–knew intimately from his own experience. In the disastrous love affairs and gambling adventures of his character, Alexei Ivanovich, Dostoevsky explores the irresistible temptation to look into the abyss of ultimate risk that he believed was an essential part of the Russian national character. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/3.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/3.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/3.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/3.mobi The Man in the Iron Mask Alexandre Dumas http://www.feedbooks.com/book/3601 urn:isbn:0192838423 en 1850 Novels History Romance Adventure The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later (Le Vicomte de Bragelonne ou Dix ans plus tard) is a novel by Alexandre Dumas, père. It is the third and last of the d'Artagnan Romances following The Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After. It appeared first in serial form between 1847 and 1850. The Man in the Iron Mask is the fourth and final volume. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/3601.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/3601.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/3601.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/3601.mobi