Steppenwolf

Steppenwolf

Hermann Hesse

Fiction / Poetry

A new translation by David Horrocks. At first sight Harry Haller seems like a respectable, educated man. In reality he is the Steppenwolf: wild, strange, alienated from society and repulsed by the modern age. But as he is drawn into a series of dreamlike and sometimes savage encounters - accompanied by, among others, Mozart, Goethe and the bewitching Hermione - the misanthropic Haller discovers a higher truth, and the possibility of happiness. This haunting portrayal of a man who feels he is half-human and half-wolf became a counterculture classic for a disaffected generation. Yet it is also a story of redemption, and an intricately-structured modernist masterpiece. This is the first new translation of *Steppenwolf* for over eighty years, returning to the fresh, authentic language of Hesse's original.
Read online
  • 4 615
I Capture the Castle

I Capture the Castle

Dodie Smith

Literature & Fiction / Children's Books

One of the 20th Century's most beloved novels is still winning hearts! I Capture the Castle tells the story of seventeen-year-old Cassandra and her family, who live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle old English castle. Here she strives, over six turbulent months, to hone her writing skills. She fills three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries. Her journals candidly chronicle the great changes that take place within the castle's walls, and her own first descent into love. By the time she pens her final entry, she has "captured the castle"-- and the heart of the reader-- in one of literature's most enchanting entertainments. “This book has one of the most charismatic narrators I've ever met.” -- J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series
Read online
  • 4 578
Walden

Walden

Henry David Thoreau

Philosophy / Biographies & Memoirs / Nonfiction

by Henry David Thoreau is one of the best-known non-fiction books written by an American. Published in 1854, it details Thoreau's sojourn in a cabin near Walden Pond, amidst woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau lived at Walden for two years, two months, and two days, but Walden was written so that the stay appears to be a year, with expressed seasonal divisions. Thoreau did not intend to live as a hermit, for he received visitors and returned their visits. Instead, he hoped to isolate himself from society in order to gain a more objective understanding of it. Simplicity and self-reliance were Thoreau's other goals, and the whole project was inspired by Transcendentalist philosophy. However the house was not in wilderness but at the edge of town, 1. 5 miles (2. 4 km) from his family home, and his mother cooked him meals and cleaned the house.
Read online
  • 4 567
The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle

Philip K. Dick

Science Fiction & Fantasy / Literature & Fiction / Nonfiction

It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco, the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some twenty years earlier the United States lost a war—and is now occupied by Nazi Germany and Japan. This harrowing, Hugo Award-winning novel is the work that established Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction while breaking the barrier between science fiction and the serious novel of ideas. In it Dick offers a haunting vision of history as a nightmare from which it may just be possible to wake.
Read online
  • 4 557
Shōgun

Shōgun

James Clavell

Historical Fiction

Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here A bold English adventurer. An invincible Japanese warlord. A beautiful woman torn between two ways of life, two ways of love. All brought together in an extraordinary saga of a time and a place aflame with conflict, passion, ambition, lust, and the struggle for power...
Read online
  • 4 525
Siddhartha

Siddhartha

Hermann Hesse

Fiction / Poetry

This classic novel of self-discovery has inspired generations of seekers. With parallels to the enlightenment of the Buddha, Hesse's *Siddhartha* is the story of a young Brahmin's quest for the ultimate reality. His quest takes him from the extremes of indulgent sensuality to the rigors of ascetism and self-denial. At last he learns that wisdom cannot be taught — it must come from one's own experience and inner struggle. Steeped in the tenets of both psychoanalysis and Eastern mysticism, *Siddhartha* presents a strikingly original view of man and culture, and the arduous process of self-discovery that leads to reconciliation, harmony, and peace.
Read online
  • 4 474
James and the Giant Peach

James and the Giant Peach

Roald Dahl

Children's Books / Literature & Fiction / Short Stories

*James and the Giant Peach* is a favourite tale of the most marvelous adventure by Roald Dahl. An enormous escaped rhinoceros from London Zoo has eaten James's parents. And it gets worse! James is packed off to live with his two really horrible aunts, Sponge and Spiker. Poor James is miserable, until something peculiar happens and James finds himself on the most wonderful and extraordinary journey he could ever imagine . . .
Read online
  • 4 453
The Last Unicorn

The Last Unicorn

Peter S. Beagle

Science Fiction & Fantasy / Literature & Fiction / Nonfiction

The unicorn wants to find other unicorns. Mage Schmendrick, whose magic seldom works, never as he intendsed, rescues unicorn from Mommy Fortuna's Midnight Carnival. Only some mythical beasts displayed are illusions. Molly Grue believes in legends despite Robin Hood wannabe and his unmerry men. King Haggard and his Bull banish unicorns into sea. This Deluxe Edition of the ebook also includes the Two Hearts novella, a sequel of sorts to the Last Unicorn.
Read online
  • 4 444
I Am Legend

I Am Legend

Richard Matheson

Science Fiction & Fantasy / Horror / Mystery & Thrillers

Robert Neville is the last living man on Earth. . . but he is not alone. Every other man, woman and child on the planet has become a vampire, and they are hungry for Neville's blood. By day he is the hunter, stalking the undead through the ruins of civilisation. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn. How long can one man survive like this?
Read online
  • 4 410
Childhood's End

Childhood's End

Arthur C. Clarke

Science Fiction & Fantasy / Science

This novel tells the tale of the last generation of mankind on Earth. All man's development in space and travel are stopped by alien "overlords" who take over Earth, establishing a benevolent dictatorship which eliminates poverty, ignorance and disease. This golden age ends abruptly as the overlords bend to the will of a superior intelligence which demands Earth's destruction.
Read online
  • 4 359
The Origin of Species

The Origin of Species

Charles Darwin

Science / Evolution / Biographies & Memoirs

Darwin's theory of natural selection issued a profound challenge to orthodox thought and belief: no being or species has been specifically created; all are locked into a pitiless struggle for existence, with extinction looming for those not fitted for the task. Yet The Origin of Species (1859) is also a humane and inspirational vision of ecological interrelatedness, revealing the complex mutual interdependencies between animal and plant life, climate and physical environment, and - by implication - within the human world. Written for the general reader, in a style which combines the rigour of science with the subtlety of literature, The Origin of Species remains one of the founding documents of the modern age.
Read online
  • 4 338
Go Ask Alice

Go Ask Alice

Beatrice Sparks

Young Adult / Fiction / Classics

A teen plunges into a downward spiral of addiction in this classic cautionary tale. **January 24th After you've had it, there isn't even life without drugs....** * It started when she was served a soft drink laced with LSD in a dangerous party game. Within months, she was hooked, trapped in a downward spiral that took her from her comfortable home and loving family to the mean streets of an unforgiving city. It was a journey that would rob her of her innocence, her youth -- and ultimately her life. **Read her diary. Enter her world. You will never forget her.** * For thirty-five years, the acclaimed, bestselling first-person account of a teenage girl's harrowing decent into the nightmarish world of drugs has left an indelible mark on generations of teen readers. As powerful -- and as timely -- today as ever, Go Ask Alice remains the definitive book on the horrors of addiction.
Read online
  • 4 276
183