Showing titles in World Literature

One of the best-known Irish playwrights, John Millington Synge premiered The Playboy of the Western World in 1907. It immediately provoked controversy, eventually resulting in the infamous "Playboy" riots. It has been recorded and adapted many times, but this timeless recording stars the Irish actors who made it a classic, including Siobhan McKenna and Cyril Cusack.

Starting in 1948 and reaching its climax during the Six-Day War of 1967, The Hope begins the story of Israel, a country fighting for its life - outmatched and surrounded by enemies. Zev Barak, Sam Pasternak, Don Kishote, and Benny Luria are all officers in the Israeli Army, caught up in the sweep of history, fighting the desperate desert battles and meeting the larger-than-life personalities that shaped Israel’s fight for independence.

Lydia Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. When Lydia’s husband’s tell-all profile of Javier, the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city, is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.

Twenty-five-year-old Takano has never liked reading, although the Morisaki bookshop has been in her family for three generations. It is the pride and joy of her uncle Ojisan, who has devoted his life to the bookshop since his wife Momoki left him five years earlier. When Takano's boyfriend reveals he's marrying someone else, she reluctantly accepts her eccentric uncle's offer to live rent-free in the tiny room above the shop. Hoping to nurse her broken heart in peace, Takano is surprised to encounter new worlds within the stacks of books lining the Morisaki bookshop.

A collection of full-cast dramatisations and readings from the best-selling author. Maeve Binchy was one of Britain's best-loved storytellers, and this compilation of her finest fiction, as heard on BBC Radio, demonstrates all the warmth, wit and compassion that made her so popular.

Beowulf is considered the finest heroic poem in Old English. It celebrates the character and exploits of Beowulf, a young nobleman and warrior, as he proves his superhuman strength and endurance. He also represents the ideal lord and vassal, rewarding his men generously and accomplishing glorious deeds to honor his king.

In an era of public versus private personas, a young woman decides to shake up her ordinary life by becoming a contestant on a reality television show. The manufactured paradise has no clocks, no way to contact the outside world, and nothing but time, a pool, and gorgeous people. As the days or weeks or months pass by, she discovers more about herself through the people around her and challenges her notions of identity and love. In a paradise where the only game is to fall in love, what will she do to win?

The devastating rediscovered classic written from the horrors of Nazi Germany, as one Jewish man attempts to flee persecution in the wake of Kristallnacht. Berlin, November 1938. With storm troopers battering against his door, Otto Silberman must flee out the back of his own home. He emerges onto streets thrumming with violence: it is Kristallnacht, and synagogues are being burnt, Jews rounded up and their businesses destroyed.

In the famous tones of Sir John himself this magnificent autobiography in verse poignantly describes the pains and pleasures of growing up. "Summoned by Bells can hardly help being a landmark....one seems to be living his childhood and boyhood with him." -Stephen Spender

The last word anyone would use to describe Stella St. Vincent is adventurous. She's perfectly comfortable with the familiar, strict routines of her life as a copyeditor in New York. That is until she receives a mysterious note from her late mother and a one-way plane ticket to Paris. Alone and overwhelmed in a foreign city, Stella avoids new people and ventures out as little as possible. But then she meets Jules, an octogenarian art collector with very different ideas about how she should spend her time.

Relinquishing thoughts of a materially rewarding life, the respectably educated Felix Holt returns to his native village in North Loamshire and becomes an artisan. He is a forceful young man of honor, integrity, and idealism, burning to participate in political life so that he may improve the lot of his fellow artisans.

The first of Ayckbourn's darkly comic masterpieces involves a relentlessly cheerful handyman in a disastrously fractured marriage. Two couples develop an unlikely friendship in this painfully funny portrait of British suburban life.

Kay Lynn Brooke is a wife and mother in Berkeley, California, building a solid future with her husband and family. Then on December 7, 1941, the bombing of Pearl Harbor throws Kay Lynn’s life, and the lives of everyone she knows and loves, into chaos.

On her eighteenth birthday, Honor Harris meets Sir Richard Grenvile: he is proud, reckless—and utterly captivating. They have a rare connection, and with her beauty and sharp wit, she intrigues him too. But days before their wedding, tragedy strikes and Honor must reconcile herself to a life alone. Fifteen years later, war forces Honor to shelter with her sister at the Cornish estate of Menabilly. There, she meets Richard, who has risen through the ranks to become a general in the king's army.

Reservation "bad boy" Thomas Begay is found dead drunk under the La Plata Bridge, which is not unusual for him. What is unusual, however, is that beautiful BIA investigator Patsy Greyhorse is found lying beside him, not drunk or even a Navajo but very dead nonetheless. Charlie Yazzie, fresh from law school, risks his career and even his life to help his old friend. The answer seems to lie with the Yeenaaldiooshii...should one choose to believe in such things.

London-based Georgia Carter, professional lie-detector and body-language savant, has long been estranged from her infuriating, close-minded, wealthy South Carolina family. After a falling-out years ago, the chasm runs deep between the black sheep - Georgia and her gay, alcoholic brother - and their parents and elder siblings. But when their father dies suddenly, Georgia returns to the States for the funeral ... where she comes face-to-face with Sam Penny, her brother's AA sponsor.

Celtic mythology, Arthurian romance, and an intriguing interpretation of British history - these are just some of the themes embraced by the anonymous authors of the eleven tales that make up the Welsh medieval masterpiece known as The Mabinogion. They tell of Gwydion the shape-shifter, who can create a woman out of flowers; of Math the magician whose feet must lie in the lap of a virgin; of hanging a pregnant mouse and hunting a magical boar.

Originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4, Jeremy Irons' perceptive reading illuminates the poetry of T. S. Eliot in all its complexity. Major poems range from 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' through the post-war desolation of 'The Waste Land' and the spiritual struggle of 'Ash-Wednesday', to the enduring charm of 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats'.

Paris, 1941: as Coco Chanel’s assistant, Adèle lives side by side with German officers in the splendour of The Ritz hotel. But Adèle has a secret. She is working for the resistance, right under the German’s noses. As occupied Paris becomes more and more dangerous, Adèle will have to decide if she can risk everything to save innocent lives and protect the man she loves. Present day: Chloé’s grandmother has never spoken about the war and avoids questions about the legendary designer she once worked for. Now Chloé has come to Paris, to uncover the truth about Adèle’s life.

Mr. Darcy has finally accepted that he wishes only for Elizabeth, and when they meet at Pemberley, he speaks plainly of his devotion. Despite their uncertain future, he is determined to assist the Bennet family – surely no young lady, however foolish, deserves to be Mrs. Wickham. And Darcy has a plan. Jane falls prey to bewilderment and anger as Bingley returns to Hertfordshire. He hopes to renew their courtship, but Jane’s world was shaken by his departure and the cruelty of his sisters, and her views of those around her have changed considerably.