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    Atonement

    Atonement

    Ian McEwan

    4.1 (10)

    The play – for which Briony had designed posters, programs and tickets, constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side, and lined the collection box in red crepe paper – was written by her in a two-day tempest of composition, causing her to miss a breakfast and a lunch.

    #102
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    Nostromo

    Nostromo

    Joseph Conrad

    3.67 (6)

    In the time of Spanish rule, and for many years afterwards, the town of Sulaco—the luxuriant beauty of the orange gardens bears witness to its antiquity—had never been commercially anything more important than a coasting port with a fairly large local trade in ox-hides and indigo. The clumsy deep-sea galleons of the conquerors that, needing a brisk gale to move at all, would lie becalmed, where your modern ship built on clipper lines forges ahead by the mere flapping of her sails, had been barred out of Sulaco by the prevailing calms of its vast gulf. Some harbours of the earth are made difficult of access by the treachery of sunken rocks and the tempests of their shores. Sulaco had found an inviolable sanctuary from the temptations of a trading world in the solemn hush of the deep Golfo Placido as if within an enormous semi-circular and unroofed temple open to the ocean, with its walls of lofty mountains hung with the mourning draperies of cloud.

    #340
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    The House of Mirth

    The House of Mirth

    Edith Wharton

    4.5 (6)

    Selden paused in surprise.

    #234
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    The Brothers Karamazov

    The Brothers Karamazov

    Fyodor Dostoevsky

    4.56 (9)

    Alexey Fyodorovich Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his tragic and obscure death, which happened just thirteen years ago, and of which I shall speak in its proper place. (Garnett, 1912)Aleksei Fyodorovich Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, a landowner of our district, extremely well known in his time (and to this day still remembered in these parts) on account of his violent and mysterious death exactly thirteen years ago, the circumstances of which I shall relate in due course. (Avsey 1994)Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place. (Garnett, Great Books, 1952)Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov was the third son of a landowner from our district, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, well known in his own day (and still remembered among us) because of his dark and tragic death, which happened exactly thirteen years ago and which I shall speak of in its proper place. (Pevear/Volokhonsky, 1990)

    #135
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    The Good Soldier

    The Good Soldier

    Ford Madox Ford

    3.57 (7)

    This is the saddest story I have ever heard.

    #281
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    The Name of the Rose

    The Name of the Rose

    Umberto Eco

    4.08 (12)

    In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

    #131
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    The Shipping News

    The Shipping News

    Annie Proulx

    3.63 (8)

    Here is an account of a few years in the life of Quoyle, born in Brooklyn and raised in a shuffle of dreary upstate towns.

    #165
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    The Woman in White

    The Woman in White

    Wilkie Collins

    4.43 (7)

    This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve.

    #199
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    Herzog

    Herzog

    Saul Bellow

    3.0 (3)

    If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.

    #277
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    The Counterfeiters

    The Counterfeiters

    Andre Gide

    4.2 (5)

    "The time has now come for me to hear a step in the passage," said Bernard to himself.

    #378
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