Showing results for "unabridged" in Literature & Fiction

A workhouse orphan, Oliver experiences the terror and brutality of the criminal underworld. His companions, a thief, a whore, a pickpocket, and a fence, are destined for gruesome ends, but Oliver emerges unscathed from the darkness of the underworld.

Retired academic Martin Pottinger's romantic aspirations for the delectable head of his former university's archaeology department, Professor Mary Blake, seem about to be realised. If only he could devise a plan to manage the demands of his eccentric elderly mother, Edwina. Recently bereaved Grace Cavendish spends her days helping out at All Souls Church, making it her mission to drown out the Reverend Rod's tone-deaf hymn-singing and give each funeral recipient a hearty send-off.

The dreaded friend zone - the last place I ever want to be with college basketball god Jake LaShae.... I am losing my mind trying to figure out what this gorgeous and confident man wants from me. I need to break through his walls. What is it about me that makes him not go there? What am I lacking?

Despite the title, Dickens's portrayal of early industrial society is less relentlessly grim than that in novels by contemporaries such as Elizabeth Gaskell or Charles Kingsley. Hard Times weaves the tale of Thomas Gradgrind, a hard-headed politician who raises his children Louisa and Tom without love and to have no empathy, their lives completely devoid of beauty, culture, or imagination. Only after a series of crises does their father realise that the manner in which he raised his children has ruined their lives.

A Signature Performance: Four-time Emmy Award winner David Hyde Pierce delivers an air of lovable self-importance in his rendition of the classic social satire that remains as fresh today as the day it was published.

When murder strikes at Bathory College's 25-year reunion, the clues to the killing can be found a quarter of a century ago on Graduation Day 2000. Twelve witnesses - or are they suspects? - from the Bathory students and staff recount events in the years 2000 and 2025 while the murder trial unfolds before us.

Set in the world of the Victorian professional and landed classes, the story centres on Mr Harding, a clergyman of great personal integrity who is nevertheless in possession of an income from a charity far in excess of the sum devoted to it.

Until quite recently, Ben Parker was considered, by many, one of the finest bakers on the Isle of Man. Indeed, his wife was once the first to concur with that accolade, directly attributing his culinary skills to her expanding waistline, in fact. So it was ironic, Ben couldn’t help but consider, that she ran off with the dietician he’d hired at her behest.

I had an uncle who left his hometown and the family business there to become a fine actor. His talent was a minor one, but a pretty one. It lasted for 15 years and was gone. He came home with the ashes of it and died 20 years later, poor and, as it happened, drunk.

Mairéad is single, child-free and head of a successful influencer talent agency. The young people at work may be mean to her, she hasn’t seen her only sister for nine years and she’s one bad date away from giving up on men completely–but other than that, she’s got life sorted. Until Sunshine shows up. When her militant, off-grid sister has a mysterious accident, Mairéad’s inscrutable niece comes to stay, turning life upside down. Just for a couple of weeks. Or is it?

He doesn't believe in happy endings. She's lost her faith that they exist. But could they find one together? January is a hopeless romantic who likes narrating her life as if she's the heroine in a blockbuster movie. Augustus is a serious literary type who thinks true love is a fairy-tale. January and Augustus are not going to get on.

P.G. Wodehouse, the master of British humor, produced dozens of books and hundreds of short stories in his long and prolific career. But none of his creations has quite captured the world's imagination as much as his bumbling, empty-headed, man-about-town Bertie Wooster and Bertie's faithful, knight-in-shining-tuxedo Jeeves. Collected here are three of Wodehouse's most beloved "Jeeves and Wooster" tales—including eight short stories from the anthology My Man, Jeeves, as well as the complete novels The Inimitable Jeeves and Right Ho, Jeeves.

Kieran's love life didn't get off to a good start. He threw up after his first kiss; he was beaten up by the first girl to have a crush on him; and after a mix-up with his first love letter, he could only sit back and watch as the entire school mistook him for a brutal murderer. By the time the hormones kicked in, Kieran had all but given up on love, but the worst was yet to come.

The corridor of the Fine Arts Building was deserted, save for two figures at the far end, two men approaching slowly. Rose was about to go into the classroom, where she'd left her purse, when she saw a sign on the door - a crude sign in pencil, on a ragged sheet of paper. "Collapse of Western Civilization - Dr. Norbert Beilstein," it said. "Visitors welcome."

Dermot McEvoy sweeps his listeners into the midst of one of the most heated political races in New York City history, where an unlikely player decides to make her presence known. First it hits the papers that the Virgin Mary has appeared to Jackie Swift, an affable G.O.P. congressman with a couple of nasty habits. She then appears in a dream to Wolfe Tone O'Rourke, a liberal political consultant who is still haunted by the ghost of Bobby Kennedy, whose death he feels responsible for.

Every town has at least one beloved if misunderstood eccentric, and Beanie Bradsher belongs to Mayhew Junction. Some - LouWanda Crump, for example - would call Beanie a spectacle, but Beanie just marches - and dresses - to the beat of a different drum.

From Boston's social underworld emerges Verena Tarrant, a girl with extraordinary oratorical gifts, which she deploys in tawdry meeting-houses on behalf of "the sisterhood of women". She acquires two admirers of a very different stamp: Olive Chancellor, devotee of radical causes, and marked out for tragedy; and Basil Ransom, veteran of the Civil War, with rigid views concerning society and women's place therein. Is the lovely, lighthearted Verena made for public movements or private passions?

An anytime, anywhere listen, Office Shocks is a quirky and comical account of a young, impatient and opinionated B-school graduate who enters the corporate world and discovers it in all its backstage glory. He encounters a stereotypical yet unusual ensemble: the fickle-minded boss, the girl who got fired, the flirtatious colleagues, the dreaded lunch-sharing saint, the erudite two-timing family man, and much more on what turns out to be the most shocking first day at work.

The war is in full swing. Following the unprecedented outcome of the siege at Fort Yimin, both the Republic and the Empire are forced to drastically reevaluate their plans for the conflict. With matters on the western front more or less settled for the moment, the warring nations turn their attention toward the eastern theatre. Winter looms on the horizon, threatening to deadlock the region and put a temporary halt to hostilities.

Michael Young is a brilliant young history student whose life is changed when he meets Leo Zuckerman, an ageing physicist with a theory that can change worlds. Together they realise that they have the power to alter history and eradicate a great evil. But tinkering with time lines is more dangerous than they can imagine, and nothing - past, present or future - will ever be the same again.