Nadia May
1) Cranford
Author
Language
English
Description
A portrait of life in a quiet English country town in the mid-nineteenth century follows the adventures of Miss Matty and Miss Deborah, two middle-aged spinster sisters living in reduced circumstances.
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 6 - AR Pts: 5
Language
English
Description
Rowland Mahler, dean and professor at College Sunrise, a disreputable finishing school in Lausanne, Switzerland, becames trapped in a web of jealousy, attraction, and theft when he encounters a seventeen-year-old student whose novel has already generated more interest than Rowland's own work-in-progress.
3) Emma
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 9.3 - AR Pts: 30
Lexile measure
710L
Language
English
Description
"The Marjolein Bastin Classics Series is a chance to rediscover classic literature in collectible, luxuriously illustrated volumes. For the first time ever, the internationally celebrated artwork of Marjolein Bastin graces the pages of the timeless classic, Emma, the story of the well-meaning matchmaker of High bury village. Beyond bringing these stories to life, Bastin's series adds elaborately designed ephemera, such as letters, invitations, and...
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 9.6 - AR Pts: 69
Lexile measure
1080L
Language
English
Description
Considered by some to be the greatest novel ever written, this book is Tolstoy's classic tale of love and adultery set against the backdrop of high society in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. A rich and complex masterpiece, the novel charts the disastrous course of a love affair between Anna, a beautiful married woman, and Count Vronsky, a wealthy army officer. Tolstoy seamlessly weaves together the lives of dozens of characters, and in doing so captures...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
The Return of the Soldier recounts the return of the shell shocked Captain Chris Baldry from the trenches of the First World War from the perspective of his cousin Jenny. The novel grapples with the soldier's return from World War I with mental trauma and its effects on the family, and sheds light on their fraught relationships. The successful treatment of the traumatised returned soldier is a fundamental element of The Return of the Soldier. Unlike...
Author
Language
English
Description
"When seventeen-year-old Molly Gibson's widowed father remarries, her life is turned upside down by the arrival of her vain, manipulative stepmother. She also acquires an intriguing new stepsister, Cynthia, glamorous, sophisticated, and irresistible to every man she meets. The two girls begin to confide in one another and Molly soon finds herself a go-between in Cynthia's love affairs--but in doing so risks losing both her own reputation and the man...
8) Trilby
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Trilby (1894) is a novel by George du Maurier. Originally serialized in Harper's Monthly the novel went on to become an international bestseller, attracting controversy and interest for its depiction of bohemian life in 19th-century Paris. Although Trilby has been criticized by such readers as George Orwell for its anti-Semitic depiction of Svengali, the novel has been adapted countless times for theater and film, including a 1931 motion picture starring...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
A novel on the hardship of the Industrial Revolution through the eyes of an Englishwoman forced to be a prostitute to make ends meet. A potter's assistant during the day, she changes at night into a gown, rented by her pimp to walk the narrow streets. It is cold and business is slow. By the author of A Stolen Tongue.
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 7.9 - AR Pts: 23
Lexile measure
1140L
Language
English
Formats
Description
In South Africa, where Blacks and whites are caught in the winds of change, a young woman tries to uphold the radical heritage she received from her martyred parents while carving out a sense of self.
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor, allowing for exceptions..." Thus begins Muriel Spark's tragic and rapier-witted portrait of a London ladies' hostel just emerging from the shadow of World War II. Like the May of Teck Club building itself—"three times window shattered since 1940 but never directly hit"—its lady inhabitants do their best to act as if the world were back to normal, practicing elocution and jostling
...Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
The Ballad of Peckham Rye is the wickedly farcical fable of a blue-collar town turned upside down. When the firm of Meadows, Meade & Grindley hires Dougal Douglas (a.k.a. Douglas Dougal) to do "human research" into the private lives of its workforce, they are in no way prepared for the mayhem, mutiny, and murder he will stir up. In fact, this Music Man of the thoroughly modern corporation changes the lives of all the eccentric characters he meets,...
13) Wishes and Tears
Author
Language
English
Description
When a naïve encounter at a Coronation party leaves sixteen-year-old Janet Slater pregnant, there's no question in her scandalized parents' mind of her keeping the baby. Bundled off to a home for unmarried mothers in South London, Janet is about to face the hardest moment of her sheltered life, alone. Forced to give her tiny daughter up for adoption, Janet promises her that one day, come what may, she'll find her… In the years that follow, Janet...
Author
Language
English
Description
Schoolteacher Barbara Covett follows a solitary lifestyle until a new teacher, Sheba Hart, draws her into a touching confidence. But unbeknownst to their colleagues, Sheba begins an affair with an underage male student. When the facts come to light, Barbara comes to her friend's defense, revealing Sheba's secrets and her own as well.
Author
Language
English
Description
Through her description of the lives of two Greek traders, Bryher creates a common man's view of the greatest struggle in the ancient Roman Republic's history: the Second Punic War. Bryher, born Winifred Ellerman in England in 1894, was praised for her historical vision and her passion for moral beauty.
16) The Bachelors
Author
Language
English
Description
A barrister, a “priest,” a detective, a lovelorn Irishman, a handwriting expert, a heinous spiritual medium…the very British bachelors of Muriel Spark's supreme 1960 novel come in every stripe. First found contentedly chatting in their London clubs and shopping at Fortnum's, the cozy bachelors are not set to stay cozy for long. Soon enough, the men are variously tormented—defrauded, stolen from, blackmailed, or pressed to attend horrid séances—and...
17) Katie's Kitchen
Author
Language
English
Description
When her friend and business partner Edwin Brown dies, it seems like Katherine Carter's own world has ended. Not only has her closest companion been taken from her, but she's also lost the successful restaurant they built up together and the comfortable home they shared with her young son, for Edwin has left no will. And his lecherous brother, Gerald, presumes he's inherited Katherine along with the house. With little money but full of determination,...
Author
Series
Lexile measure
1220L
Language
English
Description
Raised in the idyllic setting of Dorlcote Mill, the wild and wilful Maggie Tulliver adores her elder brother Tom and is forever trying to gain the approbation of her parents. Yet, as she grows older and the family struggle under the weight of severe pecuniary difficulties, she becomes increasingly caught between the divergent expectations of the four men in her life: a doting father, an obdurate and vengeful brother, a good-looking and frivolous suitor...
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 12.8 - AR Pts: 23
Lexile measure
960L
Language
English
Formats
Description
"No better introduction to William Shakespeare's dramatic masterpieces exists than the delightful prose adaptations of Charles and Mary Lamb. Charles Lamb, perhaps the preeminent essayist in English lierature, and his gifted sister selected twenty of Shakespeare's best-known plays and set out to make them accessible to children and to pay enthusiastic homage to the original works." -- Book jacket.