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The fragility-and the durability-of human life and art dominate this story of American expatriates in Italy in the mid-nineteenth century. Befriended by Donatello, a young Italian with the classical grace of the "Marble Faun," Miriam, Hilda, and Kenyon find their pursuit of art taking a sinister turn as Miriam's unhappy past precipitates the present into tragedy. Hawthorne's 'International Novel' dramatizes the confrontation of the Old World and the New and the uncertain relationship between the 'authentic' and the 'fake' in life as in art. The author's evocative descriptions of classic sites made The Marble Faun a favorite guidebook to Rome for Victorian tourists, but this richly ambiguous symbolic romance is also the story of a murder, and a parable of the Fall of Man. As the characters find their civilized existence disrupted by the awful consequences of impulse, Hawthorne leads his readers to question the value of Art and Culture and addresses the great evolutionary debate which was beginning to shake Victorian society.

一个海员到非洲刚果一个贸易公司去做跑船，带领一群人开着破船去河流的上游找一个神奇的同事，一个非常有能力的连土著人都佩服他的 kurtz 先生。他们费劲力气找到先生后却发现他完全不是想象中的样子，而是做了土著人的神，压根不想回公司把自己找到的很多象牙交出去，那位先生是个（天才）疯子。疯子先生病死了他们则返回了河口。

一个来自芝加哥南部的小女孩，是如何发现自己，并积蓄足够的力量去影响更多人的。希望自己的人生经历能够鼓舞读者，让他们有勇气去成为他们想成为的人。本书记录了米歇尔生活中的所有重要细节，包括在芝加哥南部度过的童年、成年后的职业生涯和作为母亲的经历，以及她在白宫的经历、在公共卫生领域展开的运动，奥巴马执政中的重要时刻。书中首次公开描述了她的婚姻生活，尤其是她与贝拉克·奥巴马结婚的早些年，分享她如何在丈夫政治生涯的快速上升期寻求职场与家庭间的平衡。她向我们展露了他们二人关于要不要参加美国总统竞选的私下争论，以及她在贝拉克竞选期间所扮演的既备受欢迎又饱受指责的角色。米歇尔以优雅、诙谐、坦率的口吻，引人入胜的叙事手法，向我们讲述他们如何历史性地进入白宫，成为美国有史以来第一个非洲裔第一家庭，以及在白宫生活的八年，她终于了解她的国家，她的国家也终于了解她的八年。

知更鸟（Mockingbird）在字面上与情节没什么联系，但在小说中具有强大象征性。它代表了天真无辜者。而“杀死一只知更鸟”的故事就是一个罪恶毁灭天真无辜者的故事。小说中的杰姆（Jem）、汤姆·鲁滨逊（Tom Robinson）、迪尔（Dill）、布（Boo）、雷蒙德先生（Mr. Raymoud）、梅耶拉·尤厄尔（Mayella Ewell）都是“知更鸟”。

大仲马所著小说《黑郁金香》以十七世纪荷兰资产阶级革命时期激烈的政治斗争与动荡生活为背景,描写一对青年男女的爱情故事：医生拜尔勒因故被捕入狱,在狱中与看守的女儿萝莎发生纯洁、真挚的感情,二人合作,培育出黑郁金香。

Magic turns up in the most unexpected places in E. Nesbit's madcap fairy tales--and so do dragons: One flies out of the pages of an enchanted book and eats an entire soccer team.... Two children try to wake St. George when a plague of dragons descends on modern England.... Wicked Prince Tiresome sets forth to hunt a fiery dragon with a pack of trained hippopotamuses.... One hundred years after its first publication, this collection of 8 of Nesbit's most delightful fantasy stories returns and is still every bit as fun as when it was first published. Its original 16 black-and-white illustrations are also included in this must-have for all Nesbit fans.

With "Can You Forgive Her?" Trollope begins his masterful series of Parliamentary novels, but here he is concerned with the politics of love and the demands of society. Alice Vavasor, lovely, intelligent and just a bit prudish, is torn between two men -- the upright if plodding John Gray, and the evasive yet alluring George Vavasor. She has accepted and rejected their proposals of marriage, uncertain of her own worthiness and the worth of her love. Alice's dilemma makes for a sharp exploration of free choice, a woman's role in a constricted society, and self-examination to the point of emotional stalemate. Add to this the predicament, on a grander scale, of Lady Glencora Palliser, Alice's cousin. The energetic, vivacious and utterly charming Glencora is married to Plantagent Palliser, heir to a ducal throne, who is a man who finds passion in Parliamentary proceedings, not people. Glencora is still pining for the beautiful ne'er-do-well, Burgo Fitzgerald, whom she was forced to leave behind in order to marry as she had been groomed to. Glencora feels that her young marriage is a sham. She feels she cannot live a life without ardent love, that the future for her is bleak without a burning, almost tragic, passion. Here, Trollope examines a marriage in its first tentative stages (in the Palliser novels he gives us the most discerning and moving portrait of a marriage in literature), with all of the self-sacrifice, compromise and reluctant devotion that marriage entails. The novel's third subplot, involving Alice's aunt's choice between somewhat unsuitable suitors, provides a comic, yet still subtly touching, foil to the two main stories. Throughout, Trollope brilliantly evokes the power of society on its players, their private tumult, their public displays of decorum or disgrace. One scene in particular, at a fabulous ball, is among the most thrilling in literature, because Trollope manages to convey, amid the throngs of idle partygoers, the despair, the conflicted psychological motivations, the terror and anguish of two star-crossed lovers, Glencora and Burgo, whose passions are so different: hers a naive yet heartfelt romance, his a self-centered quest for an end to financial woe whatever the emotional cost and public scandal. Neither party is self-aware enough to change here, but one eventually learns to, and finds hope by overcoming the hestitation of commitment brought on by misdirected ardor. The only way to grow is through sacrifice, and fearless self-knowledge. The only way truly to live is through doing the next right thing, publicly and privately. Trollope takes us through the agonizing conflicts of his characters, drawn with a depth and nuance matched by few in literature. This is a towering achievement.

护戒联盟中的哈比人梅里与皮平被奥克斯掳走，护戒使者们不得不分头行事。弗拉多与好友山姆继续向索隆领地莫都进发，途中他们制服了也在疯狂寻找魔戒的怪物古鲁姆，魔戒曾经为他带来了长寿与隐身之道直到弗拉多的前辈毕尔博拿走了这枚戒指。由于通向莫都的路途十分艰险，而末日山就在莫都的北面，所以弗拉多与山姆不得不依靠古鲁姆的帮助。除了要时刻提防心怀鬼胎的古鲁姆，以及强大的魔戒幽灵，弗拉多还要抵御魔戒对其心灵愈来愈强的侵蚀。 另一面护戒使者阿拉贡、莱格拉斯与金雳则与成功逃离奥克斯营地的梅利与皮平会合，并加入人类族群罗翰国的队伍准备对邪恶的白衣术士萨鲁曼的领地伊森加德发动进攻。而此时黑魁首索隆也策动其奥克斯部队向罗翰的首都埃多拉斯进发，精灵族与人类的联盟将遭到黑魔法兽兵强大战斗力与萨鲁曼邪恶魔法的双重挑战，紧要关头甘道夫再度现身，更从灰衣法师升至法力无边的白衣法师，双方一场恶战在所难免。