Stage 5
The age of Innnocence / Edith Wharton/
Description:Into the narrow social world of New York in the 1870s comes Countess Ellen Olenska, surrounded by shocked whispers about her failed marriage to a rich Polish Count. A woman who leaves her husband can never be accepted in polite society.
Newland Archer is engaged to young May Welland, but the beautiful and mysterious Countess needs his help. He becomes her friend and defender, but friendship with an unhappy, lonely woman is a dangerous path for a young man to follow - especially a young man who is soon to be married.
Sense and Sensibility /Jane Austen/
Description: Sometimes the Dashwood girls do not seem like sisters. Elinor is all calmness and reason, and can be relied upon for practical, common sense opinions. Marianne, on the other hand, is all sensibility, full of passionate and romantic feeling. She has no time for dull common sense - or for middle-aged men of thirty-five, long past the age of marriage.
True love can only be felt by the young, of course. And if your heart is broken at the age of seventeen, how can you ever expect to recover from the passionate misery that fills your life, waking and sleeping?
Wuthering Heights /Emily Bronte/
Description:The wind is strong on the Yorkshire moors. There are few trees, and fewer houses, to block its path. There is one house, however, that does not hide from the wind. It stands out from the hill and challenges the wind to do its worst. The house is called Wuthering Heights.
When Mr Earnshaw brings a strange, small, dark child back home to Wuthering Heights, it seems he has opened his doors to trouble. He has invited in something that, like the wind, is safer kept out of the house.
The Death of Jericho /Colin Dexter/
Description:Chief Inspector Morse is drinking a pint of beer. He is thinking about an attractive woman who lives not far away. The woman he is thinking of is hanging, dead, from the ceiling of her kitchen. On the floor lies a chair, almost two metres away from the woman’s feet.
Chief Inspector Morse finishes his pint, and orders another. Perhaps he will visit Anne, after all. But he is in no particular hurry.
Meanwhile, Anne is still hanging in her kitchen, waiting for the police to come and cut her down. She is in no hurry, either.
Treading on Dreams: Stories from Ireland /retold by Clare West/
Description:
At home we started with an innocent life. Walking home from village dances across pale wet fields, looking at birds on the moonlit lake, playing a tune across the water in the early morning with no other sound in the clear cold air.’
Innocence and experience, loss and longing, humour and sadness run hand in hand through these stories.
The stories in this volume of World Stories are by Irish writers Brian Friel, Edna O’Brien, William Trevor, Lorcan Byrne, Frank O’Connor, Claire Keegan, Eamonn Sweeney, and Somerville & Ross.
This Rough Magic /Mary Stewart/
Description:The Greek island of Corfu lies like a jewel, green and gold, in the Ionian sea, where dolphins swim in the sparkling blue water. What better place for an out-of-work actress to relax for a few weeks?
But the island is full of danger and mysteries, and Lucy Waring’s holiday is far from peaceful. She meets a rude young man, who seems to have something to hide. Then there is a death by drowning, and then another .
The Bride Price /Buchi Emecheta/
Description:When her father dies, Aku-nna and her young brother have no one to look after them. They are welcomed by their uncle because of Aku-nna’s ’bride price’ - the money that her future husband will pay for her.
In her new, strange home one man is kind to her and teaches her to become a woman. Soon they are in love, although everyone says he is not a suitable husband for her. The more the world tries to separate them, the more they are drawn together - until, finally, something has to break.
Heat and Dust /R.P.Jhabvala/
Description:Heat and dust – these simple, terrible words describe the Indian summer. Year after year, endlessly, it is the same. And everyone who experiences this heat and dust is changed for ever.
We often say, in these modern times, that sexual relationships have changed, for better or for worse. But in this book we see that things have not changed. Whether we look back sixty years, or a hundred and sixty, we see that it is not things that change, but people. And, in the heat and dust of an Indian summer, even people are not very different after all.
Jeeves and Friends short stories
Description: What on earth would Bertie Wooster do without Jeeves, his valet? Jeeves is calm, tactful, resourceful, and has the answer to every problem. Bertie, a pleasant young man but a bit short of brains, turns to Jeeves every time he gets into trouble. And Bertie is always in trouble.
These six stories include the most famous of P. G. Wodehouse’s memorable characters. There are three stories about Bertie and Jeeves, and three about Lord Emsworth, who, like Bertie, is often in trouble, battling with his fierce sister Lady Constance, and his even fiercer Scottish gardener, the red-bearded Angus McAllister .
The Garden Party and other stories
Description:Oh, how delightful it is to fall in love for the first time! How exciting to go to your first dance when you are a girl of eighteen! But life can also be hard and cruel, if you are young and inexperienced and travelling alone across Europe . . . or if you are a child from the wrong social class . . . or a singer without work and the rent to be paid.
Set in Europe and New Zealand, these nine stories by Katherine Mansfield dig deep beneath the appearances of life to show us the causes of human happiness and despair.
The Accidental Tourist /Anne Tyler/
Description:Everyday life in Baltimore, USA, is full of problems – getting the washing done, buying groceries and dog food, avoiding the neighbors . . . After the death of his son and the departure of his wife, Macon’s attempts to run his own life become increasingly desperate – and more and more odd.
Meanwhile, he has to get on with his work, writing tourist guides for business people. Then his dog Edward starts to bite people, and he has to send for Muriel, the dog trainer. And day by day, Macon’s life gets more and more complicated.
Brat Farrar /Josephine Tey/
Description: 'You look exactly like him! You can take the dead boy's place and no one will ever know the difference. You'll be rich for life!'
And so the plan was born. At first Brat Farrar fought against the idea; it was criminal, it was dangerous. But in the end he was persuaded, and a few weeks later Patrick Ashby came back from the dead and went home to inherit the family house and fortune. The Ashby family seemed happy to welcome Patrick home, but Brat soon realized that somewhere there was a time-bomb ticking away, waiting to explode
The Riddle of the Sands /Erskine Childers/
Description: When Carruthers joins his friend Arthur Davies on his yacht Dulcibella, he is expecting a pleasant sailing holiday in the Baltic Sea. But the holiday turns into an adventure of a different kind. He and Davies soon find themselves sailing in the stormy waters of the North Sea, exploring the channels and sandbanks around the German Frisian Islands, and looking for a secret - a secret that could mean great danger for England.
Erskine Childers' novel, published in 1903, was the first great modern spy story, and is still as exciting to read today as it was a hundred years ago.
Ghost Stories /Retold by Rosemary Border/
Description: After dinner we turned the lights out and played 'hide-and-seek'. In the dark, I touched a hand, a very cold hand. Now, because of the game, I had to hide in the dark with . . . with this cold person - not speaking, not knowing who it was. Slowly the others found us, hid with us, until we were all there - all thirteen. Thirteen? But there were only twelve people in the house!
We touched each other in the dark, counting. Thirteen. Quickly, nervously, I lit a match to see . . .
I, Robot - Short Stories /Isaac Asimov/
Description: A human being is a soft, weak creature. It needs constant supplies of air, water, and food; it has to spend a third of its life asleep, and it can't work if the temperature is too hot or too cold.
But a robot is made of strong metal. It uses electrical energy directly, never sleeps, and can work in any temperature. It is stronger, more efficient - and sometimes more human than human beings.
Isaac Asimov was one of the greatest science-fiction writers, and these short stories give us an unforgettable and terrifying vision of the future.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? /Philip K. Dick/
Description: San Francisco lies under a cloud of radioactive dust. People live in half-deserted apartment buildings, and keep electric animals as pets because so many real animals have died. Most people emigrate to Mars - unless they have a job to do on Earth.
Like Rick Deckard - android killer for the police and owner of an electric sheep. This week he has to find, identify, and kill six androids which have escaped from Mars. They're machines, but they look and sound and think like humans - clever, dangerous humans. They will be hard to kill.
The film Blade Runner was based on this famous novel.