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Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest is a narration of his life story by Abel, a Venezuelan, to a comrade. Once a wealthy young man, he meddled in politics to the extent of provoking a revolution... which failed. Escaping into the tropical forests of Guyana Abel takes up gold hunting, then journal-writing, and fails at both. Now with no aim for his life, he drifts until he takes up residence with a remote Indian tribe. Soon he learns of a wood the Indians avoid, as it is inhabited by a dangerous Daughter of the Didi, who, they say, slew one of them with magic. The fellow was in fact hit with a poisoned dart by accident, but his dying belief that she had caught the dart and hurled it at him survived him. Intrigued, Abel visits the wood repeatedly, and eventually encounters Rima. She indeed is something magical. She seems to have a pact with nature: animals don't molest her, she speaks in a melodious birdsong (as well as Spanish), and she even makes her garments of spider silk. When Abel is bitten by a venomous snake that acts protective of her, she and her grandfather Nuflo nurse Abel back to health. Both Abel and Rima ar...

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Romance

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Meet Molly: a quirky, spirited twenty-five-year old, widowed for 6 years, living in picturesque Hillsboro with her aunt amidst gossipy neighbors, on a strict diet, and in serious boy trouble. There's Arthur, her childhood sweetheart; then, there's the enigmatic, charming Judge Wade; and of course, there's her cousin Tom; and then, her infuriating neighbor, John Moore... But who will melt her heart? It is Arthur's return, and his seemingly simple request of wanting to see her in the same blue dress she wore when he left, that throws everything into turmoil... Sometimes, one can only find some solace in one's garden. Narrated in a refreshingly modern and playful style by none other than Molly herself, this book is the British magazine version; there’s a significantly different American novel version. (Summary by Elli, Julie VW and Stav Nisser)...

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Fiction, Romance

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volunteers bring you 17 recordings of You Bid Me Try by Austin Dobson . This was the Weekly Poetry project for April 24, 2011. Henry Austin Dobson , commonly Austin Dobson, was an English poet and essayist. His official career was uneventful, but as a poet and biographer he was distinguished. Those who study his work are struck by its maturity. It was about 1864 that he turned his attention to writing original prose and verse, and some of his earliest work was his best. It was not until 1868 that the appearance of St Paul's, a magazine edited by Anthony Trollope, gave Harry Dobson an opportunity and an audience; and during the next six years he contributed some of his favourite poems, including Tu Quoque, A Gentleman of the Old School, A Dialogue from Plato, and Une Marquise. Many of his poems in their original form were illustrated—some, indeed, were written to support illustrations. (summary from Wikipedia)...

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Humor, Romance, Poetry

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The Three Musketeers (Les Trois Mousquetaires) is a novel by Alexandre Dumas, père. It recounts the adventures of a young man named d'Artagnan after he leaves home to become a musketeer. D'Artagnan is not one of the musketeers of the title; those are his friends Athos, Porthos, and Aramis -- inseparable friends who live by the motto, One for all, and all for one. The Three Musketeers was first published in serial form in the magazine Le Siècle between March and July 1844. Dumas claimed it was based on manuscripts he had discovered in the Bibliothèque Nationale. It was later proven that Dumas had based his work on the book Mémoires de Monsieur D'Artagnan, capitaine lieutenant de la première compagnie des Mousquetaires du Roi (Memoirs of Mister D'Artagnan, Lieutenant Captain of the first company of the King's Musketeers) by Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras (Cologne, 1700). Dumas' version of the story covers the adventures of D'Artagnan and his friends from 1625 to 1628, as they are involved in intrigues involving the weak King Louis XIII of France, his powerful and cunning advisor Cardinal Richelieu, the beautiful Queen Anne of Austria, ...

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Adventure, Romance

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volunteers bring you 19 recordings of The Window on the Hill by Madison Julius Cawein. This was the Weekly Poetry project for April 22, 2012. Madison Julius Cawein was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the fifth child of William and Christiana (Stelsly) Cawein. His father made patent medicines from herbs. Cawein thus became acquainted with and developed a love for local nature as a child. After graduating from high school, Cawein worked in a pool hall in Louisville as a cashier in Waddill's New-market, which also served as a gambling house. He worked there for six years, saving his pay so he could return home to write. His output was thirty-six books and 1,500 poems. His writing presented Kentucky scenes in a language echoing Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats. He soon earned the nickname the Keats of Kentucky. He was popular enough that, by 1900, he told the Louisville Courier-Journal that his income from publishing poetry in magazines amounted to about $100 a month...

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Nature, Romance, Poetry

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Set in Victorian England, North and South is the story of Margaret Hale, a young woman whose life is turned upside down when her family relocates to northern England. As an outsider from the agricultural south, Margaret is initially shocked by the aggressive northerners of the dirty, smoky industrial town of Milton. But as she adapts to her new home, she defies social conventions with her ready sympathy and defense of the working poor. Her passionate advocacy leads her to repeatedly clash with charismatic mill owner John Thornton over his treatment of his workers. While Margaret denies her growing attraction to him, Thornton agonizes over his foolish passion for her, in spite of their heated disagreements. As tensions mount between them, a violent unionization strike explodes in Milton, leaving everyone to deal with the aftermath in the town and in their personal lives.Elizabeth Gaskell serialized North and South between September 1854 and January 1855 in Charles Dickens’s magazine Household Words . Upon its publication, Gaskell established herself as a novelist capable of serious discourse on social responsibility and advocacy for ...

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Literature, Romance

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Stephen Glennard's career is falling apart and he desperately needs money so that he may marry his beautiful fiancee. He happens upon an advertisement in a London magazine promising the prospect of financial gain. Glennard was once pursued by Margaret Aubyn, a famous and recently deceased author, and he still has her passionate love letters to him. Glennard removes his name from the letters and sells them, making him a fortune and building a marriage based on the betrayal of another....

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Fiction, Romance