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No great composer’s story is more predominantly happy than Haydn’s, though even his has its share of clouds. A classic rags-to-riches tale, it sees him move from humble beginnings through decades as a liveried servant to his emergence as the most popular and successful composer of his time. One of the healthiest and least neurotic artists in musical history, he did more than any other single figure to pioneer the symphony, the piano sonata and the string quartet - and he was the first truly great practitioner of each.

In the middle of the 18th century, a ship docks at Bristol with an extraordinary cargo: two young elephants. Bought by a wealthy landowner, they are taken to his estate in the English countryside. A stable boy, Tom Page, is given the task of caring for them. The Elephant Keeper is Tom's account of his life with the elephants.

Arriving too late, Amos Cotswold cannot decipher what the dying Lord Marston is desperately trying to convey, and his failure threatens to destroy the villagers’ way of life. What will become of the estate? Amos and Lord Marston’s son had been friends, but Crispin hasn’t been seen for 40 years and no one knows if he’s still alive. As the estate disintegrates, Amos finds himself haunted by the Marston ghosts. Merely finding the rightful heir won’t be enough to save his village; Amos must also determine how the legend ended.

In Rome, the severed hand of a retired MI6 head of station is found at one of the city's landmarks. The hand is grasping a bag containing 30 silver pieces. Meanwhile, in London, MI6 agent Paul Aston is on the point of quitting. When he is approached to head up a new task force, he jumps at the chance. His first mission is to investigate the murder in Rome. When one of MI6's directors dies suddenly, Aston realises there is more going on than meets the eye.

Here are the favorites from Lewis Carroll, Jonathan Swift, William Shakespeare, and more. And that is not to forget perhaps the greatest of them all: Anon. There are ballads, sonnets, proverbs, and nonsense verse. Poems to inform, divert, satirize, castigate and praise. A collection to make all listeners smile, laugh, remember and discover.

Picardie, 1963. A truck drops a group of illegal workers by a deserted stretch of canal in the dead of night, desperate travellers in a pipeline, searching for a better life. Days later, one of them surfaces, stabbed to death. For Inspector Lucas Rocco, finding the victim's fellow travellers presents problems. Most Algerian immigrants are welcome, but trawling for any who aren't is a sensitive issue loaded with threats of civil unrest - something which terrifies his bosses in the Ministry.

1963, France: A farmer reports a truck ramming into a car near Picardie, followed by gunfire. A group of Englishmen are brought in after a bar fight. A tramp's body is discovered in a burnt out truck. All this occurring after multiple attempts on the President's life. Inspector Lucas Rocco knows there's a connection somewhere, and is recruited by Colonel Saint-Cloud to assist with the President's Security.

David Morris lives the quiet life of a book-valuer for a London auction house, travelling every day by omnibus to his office in the Strand. When he is asked to make a trip to rural Somerset to value the library of the recently deceased Lord Buff-Orpington, the sense of trepidation he feels as he heads into the country is confirmed the moment he reaches his destination, the dark and impoverished village of Ashbrittle.

Plug in and prepare for your A-Level English Literature examination with this comprehensive audio study guide to Dracula. Includes the entire, unabridged audio narration of Dracula, as well as in-depth analysis on the text, covering the key areas of: characters, themes, structure and form, historical context and popular criticism - as well as detailed chapter summaries and key quotations for your exam.

This beautifully presented, highly collectible anthology features ghost stories that have enthralled, terrified and inspired, decade after decade. Some are relatively well known; others are long-lost treasures, awaiting rediscovery. The selection includes tales of terror by Bram Stoker, H. P. Lovecraft and Percival Landon; studies of creeping dread by Edgar Allan Poe and Henry James; short, sharp shockers by Ambrose Bierce, M.R. James and Lafcadio Hearn; and comedic masterpieces by Oscar Wilde and Saki.

In this hilarious, inspiring and provocative series of essays, Kingsley Amis introduces every listener to the wonders and value of science fiction writing. From the extraordinary ideas, but sexless science, of Jules Verne to the power of H. G. Wells's terrifying storytelling; from the brilliance of bad science fiction writing to the potency of their important ideas; from a portrait of the average SF listener to Amis's sad prediction that this genre will never make it in film or television, New Maps of Hell is a warm and witty exploration of a world many may be yet to discover.

Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language. Now Collins has adapted her famous detective novels for English language learners. These readers have been carefully adapted using the Collins COBUILD grading scheme to ensure that the language is at the correct level for an intermediate learner. This book is Level 4 in the Collins ELT Readers series. Level 4 is equivalent to CEF level B2 with a word count of 20,000-26,000 words.

Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language. Now Collins has adapted her famous detective novels for English language learners. These carefully abridged versions are shorter with the language targeted at learners of English.

The only full-length novel which Chekhov authored, The Shooting Party revolves around Olga, the pretty young daughter of a drunken worker on a country estate, and her relationships with the men in her life. Loved by Urbenin, whom she eventually marries; desired by the Count Karneyev; and adored by Zinovyev, who knows the sadness at the heart of her marriage, a murderous attack begins a spiral of alarm, mistrust, and deceit.

The Olympic Games have become the single greatest festival of a universal and cosmopolitan humanity. Seventeen days of sporting competition watched and followed on every continent and in every country on the planet. Simply the greatest show on earth. Yet when the modern games were inaugurated in Athens in 1896, the founders thought them a 'display of manly virtue', an athletic celebration of the kind of amateur gentleman who would rule the world. How was such a ritual invented?

When the aging Russian Prince Prince K. arrives in the town of Mordasov, Marya Alexandrovna Moskaleva, a doyenne of local society life, takes him under her protection with the aim of engineering his marriage with her 23-year-old daughter Zina. Yet with many rivals for the hands of both parties, events are not guaranteed to run smoothly. A rare foray into comedy by the giant of Russian literature, this tale still possesses all the hallmarks of Dostoevsky's psychological and philosophical writing.

Upon its first publication in 1846, Poor Folk was an immediate critical triumph. Composed entirely of an exchange of letters between a middle-aged copy clerk and a young seamstress who live on opposite sides of a Petersburg tenement courtyard, the novel explores the emotional and psychological effects of a threatening urban environment on the psyches of poor people struggling to survive.

The Double was published in 1846. A classic of doppelgänger literature, it is conidered one of Dostoyvesky's most significant shorter works. Our protagonist, Golyadkin senior, is persecuted by his double, Golyadkin junior, who resembles him closely in almost every detail. The latter abuses the former with mounting scorn and brutality as the tale proceeds toward its frightening denouement.

The Charles Dickens Non-Fiction Collection contains all of Charles Dickens' major published works of non-fiction. Although lesser known than the novels for which he is remembered, Dickens' eye for detail and character observation is seen just as clearly in his travelogues, essays, and letters, giving us an insight into Dickens and 1800s London, America, and Europe.

The young Sergei is summoned from St Petersburg by his uncle, the retired colonel Yegor Rostanev, to the remote country estate of Stepanchikovo. Rostanev’s household, populated by a medley of remarkable characters, is dominated by the figure of Foma Opiskin, a devious, manipulative hanger-on who has everyone in thrall and plots to marry the colonel to the woman of his choice, Tatyana Ivanovna. When Opiskin finds that his plans are being thwarted, a confrontation with Rostanev ensues, and all hell is let loose.