Класична зарубіжна проза

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a short story about a man who is aging in reverse, from old age to childhood. Benjamin Button was born with the appearance of a 70-year-old man and is already able to speak. When Benjamin turns 20, the Button family realizes that he is getting younger...

Anne of Ingleside is a novel by the Canadian writer Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874–1942), which is a continuation of the novel Anne’s House of Dreams. The children of the happy couple of Anne and Gilbert grow up, study, and find friends—and, they can always be comforted and encouraged by their parents. And, at the end of the novel, the couple is going to celebrate their fifteenth wedding anniversary, which is a nice occasion that calls for a “second honeymoon.”

English writer David Herbert Lawrence (1885—1930) in the novel The Rainbow, tells the story of three generations of the Brangwen family. Tom Brangwen is the personification of the rural English farmer of the 19th century, who leads an oldfashioned way of life. His granddaughter Ursula is a university student and lives in the urban, industrial world of the early 20th century. The novel is based on the description of both rural and urban lifestiles, and the changes that occur over generations.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopia by George Orwell, written in 1948, published in 1949, and is relevant as never before. Today, in the era of the Internet, the social media are monitoring our every gesture, purchase, action, and comment online. They are constantly present in our lives and predict our every desire, our choices being carefully followed. Political organizations also play upon the feelings of network users. Big Brother is no longer a writer’s fiction, but the framework of the modern world.

The Gothic novel The Mysteries of Udolpho by the English writer Anne Radcliffe (1764–1823) is set in the 16th century in Southern France and Northern Italy.
In the second part of the novel, Emily, now an orphan, is forced to live with her aunt, Madame Cheron. The aunt marries Montoni, a nobleman from Italy. He wants his friend Count Morano to become Emily’s husband. Finding Morano almost broke, Montoni takes Emily and her aunt to his castle, Udolfo. Montoni is trying to force his wife to transfer the property to him. Madame Cheron dies. Emily manages to escape...

The White Company is a historical novel by the Scottish writer Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930), which tells about the adventures of the main character, a young squire, as well as English archers.

The Professor is the first novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë’s (1816–1855). Young William Crimsworth is forced to look for work. After an unsuccessful experience as a clerk, and following a friend’s advice, William takes up teaching English. He unexpectedly falls in love with one of his students.

The novel The Law and the Lady by the English writer William Wilkie Collins (1824–1889) has a detective plot. Valeria Brinton marries Eustace Woodville, but a few days after the wedding, she begins to suspect her husband of hiding a dark secret in his past. She discovers that he was on trial for his first wife’s murder. Valeria sets out to save their happiness by proving her husband innocent of the crime.

Ambrose Bierce (1842—1914) was an American writer, journalist, poet, satirist, American Civil War veteran. The short story master, the author of stories on the themes of death and horror. In this genre, his name is placed next to those of Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. Can Such Things Be? is a collection of scary stories, including The Death Of Halpin Frayser, A Psychological Shipwreck, A Diagnosis of Death, among others.

The Strange High House in the Mist is a collection of several mystical stories by the American writer H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937). In the story of the same name, Thomas Olney is intrigued by a strange house on a cliff overlooking the ocean. Local residents are afraid of this place, which no one visits. With great difficulty, Olney climbs the rock, approaches the house and meets the mysterious man who lives there.

The mysterious murder that Sherlock Holmes investigates in the novel The Valley of Fear is connected with ancient events in a distant land. The victim of the persecution manages to happily avoid death, but on his way there is a genius of the criminal world Professor Moriarty.

In the novel The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), the dramatic story of Michael Henchard is described. The life path of Henchard—The Man of Character—was determined by fate at the moment of anger and a cruel joke in his youth. Despite the achievements of all subsequent years of life, a shameful act weighs on him and leads to an inevitable collapse.

Orlando is a poet and English nobleman during the reign of Elizabeth I. He undergoes a mysterious sex change at the age of 30, and continues to live for over 300 years without aging.
Throughout his/her life, Orlando meets famous figures in English literary history.

Agnes Grey (1847) by English writer Anne Brontë is the story of a governess. The novel is based on the author’s own five-year experience. Like Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, the work describes the difficult lives of poor girls who are forced to work for other families.

The novel «Mansfield Park», the third published novel of Jane Austen (1775–1817), belongs to the mature period of her work.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopia by George Orwell, written in 1948, published in 1949, and is relevant as never before. The main character of the novel, Winston Smith, is a censor at the Ministry of Truth. All its employees and he are watched by Big Brother, who sees everything, and everyone is spying upon everyone else even in their homes—citizens are being followed through special screens.

The novel The Beautiful and Damned (1922) by F. Scott Fitzgerald begins shortly before World War I. Anthony Patch, a twenty five-year-old Harvard University graduate, returns to New York. He is the likely heir to his grandfather’s vast fortune. Anthony meets the beautiful Gloria Gilbert. They fall madly in love and decide to get married. But Gloria and Anthony’s marital happiness is short-lived, as each person’s selfishness comes to the fore.

The wealthy Vanstone family from the novel No name has two daughters—Norah and Magdalen. Suddenly, their parents die in a train accident. It suddenly turns out that the daughters are illegitimate, they have no name, no rights, no property. All the property is inherited by an uncle, who refuses to provide any support to the orphaned nieces.

«Northanger Abbey» is a novel by the English writer Jane Austen (1775–1817), written in the Gothic style fashionable at the time with irony characteristic of the author.

The Forsyte Saga brought the English writer John Galsworthy (1867–1933) the Nobel Prize in Literature (1932).

The Gothic novel The Mysteries of Udolpho by the English writer Anne Radcliffe (1764–1823) is set in the 16th century in Southern France and Northern Italy.
In the first part of the novel, the reader learns about Emily St. Aubert, a young Frenchwoman, the only child in a once wealthy family. After the death of her mother, she accompanies her father on a journey. She meets Valancourt, a handsome man, and falls in love. Emily’s father dies, and Emily, now an orphan, is forced to live with her aunt, Madame Cheron.

«Emma» is the fourth novel penned by the esteemed English writer Jane Austen (1775–1817).

The Financier is a novel by Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945), based on a true story. It is the first part of the «Trilogy of Desire.» Frank Cowperwood, the son of a banker, starts his own business. He married a wealthy widow. Over time, Cowperwood began to misuse municipal funds with the help of the city treasurer. When the Great Chicago Fire causes a stock market crash, he goes bankrupt, and his fraud is exposed. Frank has an affair with Aileen Butler, the daughter of one of his business partners. Aileen promises to wait for him after his imprisonment.

Gone with the Wind is a novel by the American writer Margaret Mitchell (1900–1949), written in 1936.

The Stoic is the third part of Theodore Dreiser’s (1871–1945) «The Desire Trilogy». Frank Cowperwood decides to move to London, where he intends to develop an underground railway system, but soon dies of kidney disease. His inheritance is squandered in lawsuits. His last lover, Berenice, decides to establish a hospital for the poor, as Cowperwood intended.

Hearts of Three novel is a gem of the creative work of the American classic writer Jack London (1876–1916).

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944), a French writer and military aviator, wrote his most famous work, The Little Prince, during World War II. This magical story about a boy from a fairy-tale planet explores important themes such as friendship, love, loneliness, growing up, and the value of every moment in life.

The daughters of the Marquis Mazzini, Emilia and Julia, are beautiful and educated maidens. Julia falls in love with the young and handsome Italian Count de Verez, but her father wants to marry her to the Duke de Luovo. Julia tries to escape with her lover on the night before the wedding. By chance, she learns the terrible secrets of the Mazzini family..

The novel Man and Wife is a drama about a selfish and ambitious man who abandons his wife to marry a wealthier woman, taking advantage of a loophole in marriage law. Under Scottish law at the time, any couple who claimed to be married in front of witnesses was considered legally married in Scotland.

The Titan is the second part of the «Trilogy of Desire» by Theodore Dreiser (1871—1945). After his release from prison, Frank Cowperwood invests in stocks and becomes a millionaire again. He moves to Chicago with Aileen and divorces his first wife. Frank decides to take over the city’s railway system. He makes several competitors bankrupt. Meanwhile, Chicago society learns about his past. Aileen loses faith in him. Cowperwood meets the young Berenice, and she agrees to live with him.

The House by the Churchyard (1863) is a mystery novel by the Irish writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.
During a burial in the churchyard, a skull is accidentally dug up, bearing the marks of two devastating blows to the head and traces of surgical intervention. The story described in the novel takes place a hundred years before the grisly find, and immerses the reader in a whirlpool of intrigue surrounding Dr. Sturk, a military doctor.

The novel by American writer John Kendrick Bangs (1862–1922) Alice in Blunderland: An Iridescent Dream is a political parody of Lewis Carroll’s two Alice books (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass). Alice travels to Blunderland, where everything is communal; children live in the Town Hall, with the Duchess and the town being their parents. The book features familiar characters made famous by Alice in Wonderland, including the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat, among others.

Pickman’s Model is a collection of horror stories by American writer Howard Lovecraft (1890–1937). In the story Pickman’s Model, the artist paints pictures of horrific images that are considered the fruit of his sick imagination. A friend of the artist comes to Pickman’s private secret gallery. The artist shows new painting, a huge image of a red-eyed creature that devours human victims. The friend finds a photograph that proves that Pickman painted the horrible monsters not from imagination, but he used real-life models.