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- The Man Who Was Thursday
- By G. K. Chesterton
- Novel • 58,817w • English
- Worldwide Classics / November 2004
In the nightmarish and paradoxical world we live in, with ubiquitous secret services and terrorist plots galore, it is time to reread the surreal tale of espionage written a century ago by G. K. Chesterton. About it, Kingsley Amis wrote:
I have read it so many times since that, if a sentence anywhere in it were put in front of me, I bet I could be pretty accurate about what was in the next one. And yet it remains the most thrilling book I have ever read.
A special production to commemorate the IX anniversary of Badosa.com.
«The suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and ragged as a cloud of sunset. It was built of a bright brick throughout; its sky-line was fantastic, and even its ground plan was wild. It had been the outburst of a speculative builder, faintly tinged with art, who called its architecture sometimes Elizabethan and sometimes Queen Anne, apparently under the impression that the two sovereigns were identical. It was described with some justice as an artistic colony, though it never in any definable way produced any art...»
Keys: all, man, professor, face, eyes
- An Autobiography
- By Anthony Trollope
- Biography • 101,034w • English
- Worldwide Classics / November 2003
In our 8th Anniversary, we are proud to announce the first publication in ebook form of the fascinating Autobiography of Anthony Trollope. The book by the Victorian author is a literary biography. Trollope writes about his miserable childhood and about his parents, but, above all, he writes about writing.
Trollope understands literature as a craftsmanship and his Autobiography could be called “A Memoir of the Craft.” He talks with insight about his books and his contemporaries, like Thackery, Eliot, or Dickens, and about the building of a career in the literary world: his early rejections, his relationship with publishers, the economics of publishing. The book is full of advice for the aspiring writer and it’s a pleasurable reading experience even for the reader not acquainted with Trollope’s novels.
«In writing these pages, which, for the want of a better name, I shall be fain to call the autobiography of so insignificant a person as myself, it will not be so much my intention to speak of the little details of my private life, as of what I, and perhaps others round me, have done in literature; of my failures and successes such as they have been, and their causes; and of the opening which a literary career offers to men and women for the earning of their bread...»
Keys: work, man, life
- Adolphe
- By Benjamin Constant
- Novel • 31,524w • French
- Worldwide Classics / February 2000
In this short psychological novel of 1816 by Benjamin Constant, the young and hesitant Adolphe describes his relationship with Elléonore, a woman older than himself. Adolphe is of course Benjamin Constant while for the character of Elléonore he mainly drew inspiration from Anna Lindsay, one of his lovers, and from Madame de Staël, writer, thinker and political figure at that time, with whom Benjamin Constant kept a long and fluctuating passion.
«Ellénore obtint dès son arrivée d’être rétablie dans la jouissance des biens qu’on lui disputait, en s’engageant à n’en pas disposer que son procès ne fût décidé. Elle s’établit dans une des possessions de son père. Le mien, qui n’abordait jamais avec moi dans ses lettres aucune question directement, se contenta de les remplir d’insinuations contre mon voyage...»
Keys: amour, coeur, vie, père
- Mucky Pups
- By Peter Miller
- Novel • 33,809w • English
- Global Fiction / July 2001
Comic novel by Peter Miller set in Scotland. Meet the band: Mitch, Mungo, Flopsy, Honeysuckle, Woody, Tuppenny Rice, Treacle, and, of course, Mister Billington Fox.
«Stewpot head-butted the doorbell. He did it in slow motion. He hair-butted it really. There was no sound. Misjudging the distance, he ended up bent over at a right-angle, staring at the fag-butt floor...»
Keys: dog, hair, head, face
- The Iberian Horseshoe — A Journey
- By Steve Porter
- Autobiography • 37,215w • English
- Global Fiction / December 2007
Travelling through Spain and Portugal. A literary non-fiction work by Steve Porter, from Scotland.
«The Sandeman silhouette, a figure with cape and a broad rimmed hat, was enjoying his eternal glass of port. Illuminated in the evening light but with his back to my camera, his anonymity remained intact...»
Keys: Spanish, time, day
- The Crier’s Sacrifice
- By Nathan Black
- Novel • 68,614w • English
- Global Fiction / October 1999
Nilrid, a young town crier, is thrown into a world of espionage and danger as he tries to stop an evil goddess. A fantasy novel by Nathan Black. Suitable for young readers.
«In the town of Fyr’nay, the Royal News Service was already up and running. The sun had barely managed to peek its rim over the horizon, but in the large, wooden building, messengers and agents were creating a general state of chaos...»
Keys: boy, wizard, king
- Fraudulent Fertilisation
- By Ricardo Ludovico Gulminelli
- Novel • 111,047w • English
- Global Fiction / May 2002
Alicia needs help from Doctor Álvez. But Doctor Álvez has been waiting for a girl like this for several months and now that he has found her, he has a very important, crucial and perverse task for her: he will try to put a revolutionary idea into practice...
Finally in English, the novel by Ricardo Ludovico Gullminelli about the legal and moral consequences of the scientific advance in the field of artificial insemination. Translated from Spanish by Peter Miller.
«To be honest with the readers of this book, I must confess that the story which breathes life into it is not the fruit of my imagination. An old friend told it to me, melancholy and inebriated, on a night out drinking...»
Keys: child, love, life, father
This collection
Ebooks in English and French
- The Man Who Was Thursday
- An Autobiography
- Adolphe
- Mucky Pups
- The Iberian Horseshoe — A Journey
- The Crier’s Sacrifice
- Fraudulent Fertilisation