From preface: In naming this second part of The Forsyte Chronicles "A Modern Comedy" the word Comedy is stretched, perhaps as far as the word Saga was stretched to cover the first part. And yet, what but a comedic view can be taken, what but comedic significance gleaned, of so restive a period as that in which we have lived since the war? An Age which knows not what it wants, yet is intensely preoccupied with getting it, must evoke a smile, if rather a sad one.

In this classic short story, Chekhov takes a snapshot of the Russian life, illuminating the harsh complexities and yet subtle simplicities that interact seamlessly together. The cold and gloom of the Russian environment cannot compare to the relationship that Pavel Andreitch, a rich aristocratic, has with his wife, who is no longer in love, or even tolerant of her husband, although helplessly reliant on his financial support. Their disintegrating relationship is set to the backdrop of the starving peasants of the lower classes, illuminating the perennial tension of an egotistical, self-centered man and the struggling goodness of a woman who cares about more than just herself.

Рассказ вошёл в сборники:The Golden Apples of the Sun (Золотые яблоки солнца)The Stories of Ray Bradbury (И грянул гром: 100 рассказов)

Рассказ вошёл в сборники:Dark Carnival (Тёмный карнавал)The October Country (Октябрьская страна)Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales (Сборник ста лучших рассказов)

Winter of Artifice is a collection of novelettes: ‘Stella,’ ‘Winter of Artifice,’ and ‘The Voice.’“A handful of perfectly fold fables, and prose which is so daringly elaborate, so accurately timed… using words as magnificently colorful, evocative and imagist as any plastic combination on canvas but as mysteriously idiosyncratic as any abstract.”—Times Literary Supplement

Three novelettes by Anaïs Ninn.“A handful of perfectly fold fables, and prose which is so daringly elaborate, so accurately timed… using words as magnificently colorful, evocative and imagist as any plastic combination on canvas but as mysteriously idiosyncratic as any abstract.”—Times Literary Supplement

Steinbeck’s last great novel focuses on the theme of success and what motivates men towards it. Reflecting back on his New England family’s past fortune, and his father’s loss of the family wealth, the hero, Ethan Allen Hawley, characterizes success in every era and in all its forms as robbery, murder, even a kind of combat, operating under “the laws of controlled savagery”.

Anton Checkhov’s The Witch and other stories is one of his many collection of short stories. Included in this book are fifteen of Chekhov’s; The Witch, Peasant Wives, The Post, The New Villa, Dreams, The Pipe, Agafya, At Christmas Time, Gusev, The Student, In the Ravine, The Huntsman, Happiness, A Malefactor, Peasants. ‘Through the monotonous roar of the storm he caught a scarcely audible thin and jingling monotone like the shrill note of a gnat when it wants to settle on one’s cheek and is angry at being prevented.’

Рассказ вошёл в сборники:Quicker Than The Eye (В мгновение ока)Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales (Сборник ста лучших рассказов)

Рассказ вошёл в сборники:The October Country (Октябрьская страна)Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales (Сборник ста лучших рассказов)

Рассказ вошёл в сборники:A Medicine For Melancholy (Лекарство от меланхолии)The Vintage Bradbury (Классический Брэдбери)The Stories of Ray Bradbury (И грянул гром: 100 рассказов)

Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan is a novel which was originally written and published in 1898 by Morgan Robertson. This novel is the story of an ocean liner, called the Titan, which sinks in the North Atlantic ocean after hitting an iceberg.There are many similarities between this novel and the facts in the sinking of the Titanic fourteen years later.Morgan Robertson revised his work in 1912 after the sinking of the Titanic and made the ship larger as well as changing the ending of the story.“...Exciting marine adventure that apparently predicted Titanic disaster 14 years before it actually had happened. 14 years before Titanic gone down this book predicted it to the very smallest technical details (number of propellers, number of funnels, size, tonnage, engine size, number of passengers, etc., etc., etc.). The only differences were: the name was Titan and not Titanic, 3rd and not the 1st Atlantic crossing and it collided with iceberg on the return way from America...”

The Young Lions is a vivid and classic novel that portrays the experiences of ordinary soldiers fighting World War II. Told from the points of view of a perceptive young Nazi, a jaded American film producer, and a shy Jewish boy just married to the love of his life, Shaw conveys, as no other novelist has since, the scope, confusion, and complexity of war.

Julia Lambert is in her prime, the greatest actress in England. On stage she is a true professional, in full possession of her emotions. Off stage, however, she is bored with her husband, less disciplined about her behaviour. She is at first amused by the attentions of a shy but ambitious young fan, then thrilled by his persistence—and at last wildly but dangerously in love… Although Maugham is most celebrated as a novelist and shortstory writer, it was as a playwright that he first knew success. Theatre is both a tribute to a world from which he had retired and a persuasive testimony to his enthusiasm for drama and the stage.