Wondering if a particular book is available in your country? The following spoiler contains a list of bookstores outside the United States you can search. If you don't see a bookstore on this list for your country, find one that is, send me the link via PM, and I'll add it to the list. In addition, if members let me know that an ebook is unavailable in a particular geographic location, I'll note it in this post, right beside the Inkmesh search for that particular book.
Nominations
*** The Good Earth by Pearl S Buck [caleb72, Synamon, BelleZora]
Amazon (UK) /
Amazon (US) /
B&N /
Kobo
*** The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark [sun surfer, issybird, drofgnal]
No links provided.
Spoiler:
From Amazon:
Muriel Spark’s timeless classic about a controversial teacher who deeply marks the lives of a select group of students in the years leading up to World War II
“Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life!” So asserts Jean Brodie, a magnetic, dubious, and sometimes comic teacher at the conservative Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Edinburgh. Brodie selects six favorite pupils to mold—and she doesn’t stop with just their intellectual lives. She has a plan for them all, including how they will live, whom they will love, and what sacrifices they will make to uphold her ideals. When the girls reach adulthood and begin to find their own destinies, Jean Brodie’s indelible imprint is a gift to some, and a curse to others.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is Spark’s masterpiece, a novel that offers one of twentieth-century English literature’s most iconic and complex characters—a woman at once admirable and sinister, benevolent and conniving.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Muriel Spark including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s archive at the National Library of Scotland.
Also:
"A perfect book." - Chicago Tribune
A short classic novel about an eccentric Edinburgh teacher who inspires cultlike reverence in her young students.
At the staid Marcia Blaine School for Girls, in Edinburgh, Scotland, teacher extraordinaire Miss Jean Brodie is unmistakably, and outspokenly, in her prime. She is passionate in the application of her unorthodox teaching methods, in her attraction to the married art master, Teddy Lloyd, in her affair with the bachelor music master, Gordon Lowther, and—most important—in her dedication to "her girls," the students she selects to be her crème de la crème. Fanatically devoted, each member of the Brodie set—Eunice, Jenny, Mary, Monica, Rose, and Sandy—is "famous for something," and Miss Brodie strives to bring out the best in each one. Determined to instill in them independence, passion, and ambition, Miss Brodie advises her girls, "Safety does not come first. Goodness, Truth, and Beauty come first. Follow me."
And they do. But one of them will betray her.
*** Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens [John F, Billi, sun surfer]
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: EPUB /
IMP /
LRF /
PRC
Spoiler:
From Amazon:
Left penniless after his feckless father's death, young Nicholas Nickleby has no choice but to make his own way in the world. For the sake of his mother and sister, he is forced by his hard-hearted uncle to take a post as an assistant master at Dotheboys Hall, a school for unwanted boys, run by the cruel and tyrannical headmaster, Wackford Squeers. But this is only the beginning of Nicholas's adventures in this most entertaining of Charles Dickens's novels. We follow the progress of Nicholas and his slow-witted companion Smike on their travels and encounter a supporting cast of delectable characters including the rambunctious Crummles theatre company and their talented performing pony, the dastardly Sir Mulberry Hawk, the delightful Mrs. Nickleby, the preposterous Kenwings, and many more. Like many of Dickens's novels, Nicholas Nickleby is characterized by his criticism of cruelty and social injustice, but is above all one of the greatest comic masterpieces of nineteenth-century literature.
*** Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz [Hamlet53, Billi, issybird]
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: EPUB /
LRF /
PRC
Spoiler:
From "Wikipedia":
"Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero", commonly known as "Quo Vadis", is a historical novel written by Henryk Sienkiewicz. Quo vadis is Latin for "Where are you going?" and alludes to a New Testament verse (John 13:36). The verse, in the King James Version, reads as follows,
"Simon Peter said unto him, Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus answered him, Whither I go, thou can not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards."
Quo Vadis tells of a love that develops between a young Christian woman, Ligia (or Lygia), and Marcus Vinicius, a Roman patrician. It takes place in the city of Rome under the rule of emperor Nero around AD 64.
Sienkiewicz studied the Roman Empire extensively prior to writing the novel, with the aim of getting historical details correct. As such, several historical figures appear in the book. As a whole, the novel carries a powerful pro-Christian message.
Published in installments in three Polish dailies in 1895, it came out in book form in 1896 and has since been translated into more than 50 languages. This novel contributed to Sienkiewicz's Nobel Prize for literature in 1905.
Several movies have been based on Quo Vadis. The most famous movie is the Hollywood production "Quo Vadis" filmed in 1951.
*** Crime and Punishment by F.M. Dostoevsky [orlok, Billi, BelleZora]
Amazon UK /
Amazon US (free) /
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: LRF
*** Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton [Synamon, issybird, Kevin8or]
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: PRC /
Gutenberg EPUB /
Amazon UK /
Amazon US /
Barnes & Noble /
Dymocks Australia /
Kobo /
Sony Reader Store
*** I, Robot by Isaac Asimov [JSWolf, John F, Moe The Cat]
B&N /
BooksOnBoard /
Kobo /
Sony
*
Don Juan by Lord Byron [Spinnenmonat]
No links provided.
*** Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons [RoccoPaco, BelleZora, Hamlet53]
Amazon /
Inkmesh /
Kobo
*** Flush by Virginia Woolf [pynch, Synamon, sun surfer]
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: IMP /
LRF /
PRC /
EPUB (in the Complete Works)
*** Little Women by Louisa May Alcott [Bookatarian, RoccoPaco, fantasyfan]
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: PRC /
Project Gutenberg
**
The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K.Chesterton [fantasyfan, caleb72]
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: IMP /
LRF /
PRC
Spoiler:
This is probably Chesterton's best-known novel. It is a wild, surreal, Kafka-esque work which differs from Kafka in that it shows that the apparently whirling chaos actually does have a centre. About.Com describes this classic as
" . . . a book caught up in the question of whether it places itself inside or outside of the sphere of its narrative chaos, yet at the same time a book perfectly content to lose itself in that chaos and, borne by the momentum of its own energy, to keep upping the narrative and metaphysical ante until the end--no matter the cost."
"The story is told within a frame of 'real life' opening with a grim and lurid sunset in Saffron Park where the hero, a poet named Gabriel Syme, has come to a social discussion group . . . He meets another poet, an anarchist, who has an intelligent sister. The two poets argue . . . then as they leave the meeting to walk home, they fall into a wild adventure upon which hinges the fate of London."
The novel involves "sword fights and a mad chase across . . .London, . . . a love story" and blends "the format of an adventure/detective story. . . "
From The Outline of Sanity by Alzina Stone Dale
It's a remarkable allegory loaded with remarkable ideas.
**
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley [drofgnal, fantasyfan]
No links provided.