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Ultimate Best Books

All :: Novels

    Hamlet

    Hamlet

    William Shakespeare

    4.09 (11)

    <B>Act 1, Scene 1</B><BR><I>Enter</I> <B>Barnardo</B> <I>and</I> <B>Francisco</B><I>, two sentinels.</I><BR><BR><B>Barnardo</B><BR>Who's there?

    #39
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    14,654
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    Sister Carrie

    Sister Carrie

    Theodore Dreiser

    4.0 (3)

    When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago, her total outfit consisted of a small trunk, a cheap imitation alligator-skin satchel, a small lunch in a paper box, and a yellow leather snap purse, containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister's address in Van Buren Street, and four dollars in money.

    #333
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    1,694
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    Death Comes for the Archbishop

    Death Comes for the Archbishop

    Willa Cather

    4.0 (2)

    One summer evening in the year 1848, three Cardinals and a missionary Bishop from America were dining together in the gardens of a villa in the Sabine hills, overlooking Rome.

    #355
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    1,515
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    The Sea, the Sea

    The Sea, the Sea

    Iris Murdoch

    3.5 (2)

    The sea which lies before me as I write glows rather than sparkles in the bland May sunshine.

    #450
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    879
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    The French Lieutenant's Woman

    The French Lieutenant's Woman

    John Fowles

    4.0 (2)

    An easterly is the most disagreeable wind in Lyme Bay - Lyme Bay being that largest bite from the underside of England's outstretched south-western leg - and a person of curiosity could at once have deduced several strong possibilities about the pair who began to walk down the quay at Lyme Regis, the small but ancient eponym of the inbite, one incisively sharp and blustery morning in the late March of 1867.

    #236
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    2,837
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    The Pillars of The Earth

    The Pillars of The Earth

    Ken Follett

    4.6 (10)

    The small boys came early to the hanging. (Preface)In a broad valley, at the foot of a sloping hillside, beside a clear bubbling stream, Tom was building a house. (Chapter 1)

    #175
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    4,295
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    Dhalgren

    Dhalgren

    Samuel R. Delany

    2.0 (3)

    To wound the autumnal city.

    #505
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    597
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    Swallows and Amazons

    Swallows and Amazons

    Arthur Ransome

    4.5 (2)

    Roger, aged seven, and no longer the youngest of the family, ran in wide zigzags, to and fro, across the steep field that sloped up from the lake to Holly Howe, the farm where they were staying for part of the summer holidays.

    #367
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    1,420
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    History of the Peloponnesian War

    History of the Peloponnesian War

    Thucydides

    4.0 (2)

    Thucydides the Athenian wrote the history of the war fought between Athens and Sparta, beginning the account at the very outbreak of the war, in the belief that it was going to be a great war and more worth writing about than any of those which had taken place in the past.

    #368
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    1,391
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    The Picture of Dorian Gray

    The Picture of Dorian Gray

    Oscar Wilde

    4.56 (18)

    The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amid the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink flowering thorn.La fragancia de las rosas llenaba el estudio y, al soplar entre los árboles del jardín la suave brisa estival, entraba por la puerta abierta el fuerte olor de las lilas o el perfume más sutil del rosado espino en flor.

    #69
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    10,859
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