Showing results for "the-names" in Classics

This hugely engaging story of murder, superstition, religious politics and drama in a medieval monastery was one of the most striking novels to appear in the 1980s. The Name of the Rose is a thrilling story enriched with period detail and laced with tongue-in-cheek allusions to fictional characters, the most striking of which is the Franciscan friar William of Baskerville, who displays many characteristics of Sherlock Holmes.

Magdalen and Norah Vanstone have known only comfort and affluence for their entire lives. Orphaned suddenly following the unexpected deaths of their parents, the illegitimate sisters find themselves flung into the other extreme of living: their father had neglected to amend his will following their parents' recent marriage, leaving them with nothing, and their bitter, estranged uncle, the legal inheritor of the family fortune, mercilessly refuses them support.

From the thrilling imagination of best-selling, award-winning Colm Tóibín comes this ambitious, violent and modern retelling of one of our oldest and most enduring stories. On the day of his daughter's wedding, Agamemnon orders her sacrifice. His daughter is led to her death, and Agamemnon leads his army into battle, where he is rewarded with glorious victory. Three years later he returns home, and his murderous action has set the entire family - mother, brother, sister - on a path of intimate violence.

After a tragic accident kills their father and their mother perishes during childbirth, sisters Norah and Magdalen discover their parents had only been married a matter of months and therefore the girls were actually illegitimate. Their uncle inherits the entirety of the family fortune, refusing to provide the girls with anything as they make their way out into the world. Using her love of the stage and all things dramatic, Magdalen enlists the help of her distant relative, Captain Wragge, a known professional swindler, to regain her inheritance and the right to her name.