Great Stories - Fiction And Others - Top-selling Classics

Discover the best books of all time - top-selling fiction and other classics...

Showing posts with label best seller. Show all posts
Showing posts with label best seller. Show all posts

Alexandre Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo - classic fiction

How sudden wealth doesn't mean your problems are solved...



About this book:

The Count of Monte Cristo (French: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo) is an adventure novel by French author Alexandre Dumas (père). Complete in 1844, it is one of the author's most popular works, along with The Three Musketeers. Like many of his novels, it is expanded from plot outlines suggested by his collaborating ghostwriter Auguste Maquet.

The story takes place in France, Italy, islands in the Mediterranean, and in the Levant during the historical events of 1815–1838. It begins from just before the Hundred Days period (when Napoleon returned to power after his exile) and spans through to the reign of Louis-Philippe of France. The historical setting is a fundamental element of the book. An adventure story primarily concerned with themes of hope, justice, vengeance, mercy and forgiveness, it focuses on a man who is wrongfully imprisoned, escapes from jail, acquires a fortune and sets about getting revenge on those responsible for his imprisonment. However, his plans have devastating consequences for the innocent as well as the guilty.

Jack London's Call of the Wild classic fiction

Of all of Jack London's books, why does this cross-bred dog story wind up his best?



About this book:

The Call of the Wild is a novel by American author Jack London published in 1903. The story is set in the Yukon during the 19th-century Klondike Gold Rush—a period when strong sled dogs were in high demand. The novel's central character is a dog named Buck, a domesticated dog living at a ranch in California as the story opens. Stolen from his home and sold into the brutal existence of an Alaskan sled dog, he reverts to atavistic traits. Buck is forced to adjust and survive cruel treatments, fight to dominate other dogs, and survive in a harsh climate. Eventually he sheds the veneer of civilization, relying on primordial instincts through lessons he learns, to emerge as a leader in the wild.

London lived for most of a year in the Yukon and gained from that experience material for the book. The story was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post in the summer of 1903; a month later it was released in book form. The novel's great popularity and success made a reputation for London. Much of its appeal derives from the simplicity with which London presents the themes in an almost mythical form.

The story opens with Buck, a large and powerful St. Bernard-Scotch Collie, living happily in California's Santa Clara Valley as the pet of Judge Miller. However he is stolen by the gardener's assistant and shipped to Seattle. Put in a crate, Buck is unfed and beaten by the "man in the red sweater". When released, he attacks the man but is badly beaten and taught to respect the law of the club. Buck is then sold to a pair of French-Canadian dispatchers from the Canadian government, François and Perrault, who take him with them to the Klondike region of Canada. There they train him as a sled dog. From his teammates, he quickly learns to survive cold winter nights and the pack society. A rivalry develops between Buck and the vicious, quarrelsome lead dog, Spitz. Buck eventually beats Spitz in a fight "to the death". Spitz is killed by the pack after his defeat and Buck becomes the leader of the team.

The team is then sold to a "Scottish half breed" man working the mail service. The dogs must carry a heavy load to the mining areas, and the journey they make is tiresome and long. Some of the dogs become sickly and are shot.

Buck's next owners are a trio of stampeders—Hal, Charles, and a woman named Mercedes—inexperienced at surviving in the Northern wilderness. They struggle to control the sled and ignore warnings that the spring melt poses dangers. They overfeed the dogs and starve them when the food runs out. On their journey they meet John Thornton, an experienced outdoorsman, who notices that the dogs have been poorly treated and are in a weakened condition. He warns the trio against crossing the river, but they refuse his advice and order Buck to move on. Exhausted, starving, and sensing the danger ahead, Buck refuses and continues to lie unmoving in the snow... (source: Wikipedia)

About the author:

John Griffith "Jack" London (born John Griffith Chaney, January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916)was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone. He is best remembered as the author of The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire", "An Odyssey of the North", and "Love of Life".[citation needed] He also wrote of the South Pacific in such stories as "The Pearls of Parlay" and "The Heathen", and of the San Francisco Bay area in The Sea Wolf. (source: Wikipedia)

About the Midwest Journal Writers' Club:

This was created by popular request to enable any beginning or established author to improve their skills by studying quality editions of classic bestselling fiction. Join at http://midwestjournalpress.com
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Related Sites

Call of the Wild | - Magazine - College of Charleston - Call of the Wild. June 20, 2013 · class1. It's that small moment between dawn and day, dusk and dark. It's the mosquitoes swarming, the heron hunting, the frogs chirping. It's the subtle rustle picking up in the trees' leaves. The precise cast in ...
Call of the Wild Movie, LLC v. Does 1-1,062 | JOLT Digest - Federal Court Upholds Subpoenas Compelling ISP to Identify Over 1000 Alleged File-Sharers By Paul Cathcart - Edited by Jad Mills. Call of the Wild Movie, LLC v. Does 1-1,062, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 29153 (D.D.C. March ...
Fire's call of the wild | A Fire History of America (1960-2010) - Fire's call of the wild. Mountains, forests, burns - the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. Between extremities. Man runs his course; A brand, or flaming breath. Comes to destroy. All those antinomies- - William Butler Yeats ...
Oil executives tune out the call of the wild Arctic | Financial Post - The high Arctic, once the irresistible frontier for oil and gas exploration, is quickly losing its appeal as energy firms grow fearful of the financial and public relations risk of working in the pristine icy wilderness.
The Call of the Wild - Banned Books Awareness - Critic Maxwell Geismar, in 1960, referred to The Call of the Wild as "a beautiful prose poem," and Editor Franklin Walker said that it "belongs on a shelf with Walden and Huckleberry Finn." But, as one might expect, such a ...
Loyola Magazine » Call of the Wild - Call of the Wild. Sean Mann captures lifelong love in hunting business. Page 1 of 2. By Magazine staff | Photos courtesy of Sean Mann. Sean Mann with ducks. Sean Mann, '84, was riding in his father's car when he first heard the honking of a ...

Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Another Midwest Journal Writers' Club Selection

 


About this book:
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (commonly shortened to Alice in Wonderland) is an 1865 novel. Written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures. The tale plays with logic, giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as children. It is considered to be one of the best examples of the literary nonsense genre, and its narrative course and structure, characters and imagery have been enormously influential in both popular culture and literature, especially in the fantasy genre.

Alice is feeling bored while sitting on the riverbank with her sister, when she notices a talking, clothed White Rabbit with a pocket watch run past. She follows it down a rabbit hole when suddenly she falls a long way to a curious hall with many locked doors of all sizes. She finds a small key to a door too small for her to fit through, but through it she sees an attractive garden. She then discovers a bottle on a table labelled "DRINK ME", the contents of which cause her to shrink too small to reach the key which she has left on the table. A cake with "EAT ME" on it causes her to grow to such a tremendous size her head hits the ceiling...

Lester Levenson – Releasing Your Way to Personal Freedom

Lester Levenson, discoverer of the Releasing Technique.

Lester Levenson was sent home to die at the age of 42. The doctor gave him days, weeks at most.

He had been a success at nearly everything he tried.  Brilliant, he earned a full scholarship and received several degrees.  Turning his hand to manufacturing, mining, and sales, all his businesses usually turned out successful as long as he was running them directly.

Yet, his health continued to worsen, almost to spite all his success.  Chronic migraines, perforated ulcers, and major coronaries (heart attacks) – these finally led his doctor to tell him to simply go home and rest.  With the medicine at that time, he was told that any effort could be his last.

 Lester Levenson   Releasing Your Way to Personal FreedomSo he was left with only his mind to work things out.  Throwing away all that he had studied in school, he started simply analyzing himself from the inside out.  In three months, he worked out what was bothering him and incidentally solved his health problems as well.

What he discovered left him in such a high state that it took many years of study after that, studying all manner of religious and philosophical texts just to understand what he had achieved.

This breakthrough is discussed in the recent release, “Freedom Is – (period.)

Max Freedom Long – The Secret Science Behind Miracles

 Max Freedom Long – The Secret Science Behind Miracles Arriving in Hawaii in 1917, psychology-trained teacher Max Freedom Long was fascinated by tales of the kahunas and their ability to heal at a distance, walk on barely-cooled lava with bare feet, and even raise the dead. However, no native would tell him the secret behind these miracles – which were commonplace in the backwater areas he travelled to.

Study as he might, he ultimately had to return to the States, unable to find out how this ancient belief-system could work these miracles. In 1935, he got inspiration from a dream and began to crack this code… And now the secrets are yours to learn – if you will walk in his footsteps.

Two books are included from Long’s pioneer work which has brought Huna to the Western world. These have been edited and republished in the hope that you and yours are able to continue his work and make miracles commonplace in our modern world again.

Paperback, 341 pages

Available from Lulu.com

Napoleon Hill’s Law of Success

review Napoleon Hill’s Law of Success Before his Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill had already created this 16-volume master work, exactly 20 years after Andrew Carnegie commissioned Hill to a find the secrets of over 500 successful businessmen and millionaires.

In 16 lessons, this book lays out the primary principles necessary to gaining success, wealth, and happiness.This edition has been edited from the original to fit into a single volume.

Paperback, 459 pages.

Available from Lulu.com

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