Alice è una donna di umili origini. Ha sposato segretamente il maggiore Shepherd, proveniente da una prestigiosa casata, che non può o non vuole rivelare a nessuno il suo legame con lei, costringendola a una vita nascosta. Un giorno la moglie gli strappa il permesso di visitare la tenuta degli Shepherd, Appleton Park. Qui però, Alice incontra Ethel, la sorella del maggiore. Questa cerca in ogni modo di farle confessare il suo legame con il fratello, mettendo alla prova la fedeltà del suo cuore.
Lungo le acque del Mississippi scorrono vite diverse e affascinanti. La Louisiana di fine Ottocento è una terra di contrasti: vi si alternano inglese e francese, la schiavitù è stata abolita ma la segregazione è radicata nella società, città che paiono copie di quelle europee sono attraversate dalle culture creola e afroamericana. Così, nei racconti di Kate Chopin, ambientati in questi luoghi, si consumano amori felici e infelici, soprusi e storie di riscatto personale.
Il signor Sampson, direttore di una compagnia di assicurazioni, sospetta che un certo Julius Slinkton, che una mattina si presenta nel suo ufficio, non sia esattamente come appare. Il signor Slinkton curiosamente appare nuovamente nella vita di Sampson, due giorni dopo a una festa e mesi dopo nel suo appartamento. Un crimine mostruoso sta per essere commesso, eppure non tutto è come sembra.
WINNER OF THE JOHN CREASEY DEBUT DAGGER AWARD Nominated for the Edgar Award for best first novel An astonishing debut crime thriller about an unforgettable woman who combines the genius and ferocity of Lisbeth Salander with the ruthless ambition of Walter White The Crenshaw Six are a small but up-and-coming gang in South Central LA who have recently been drawn into an escalating war between rival drug cartels. To outsiders, the Crenshaw Six appear to be led by a man named Garcia . . . but what no one has figured out is that the gang's real leader (and secret weapon) is Garcia's girlfriend, a brilliant young woman named Lola. Lola has mastered playing the role of submissive girlfriend, and in the man's world she inhabits she is consistently underestimated. But in truth she is much, much smarter--and in many ways tougher and more ruthless--than any of the men around her, and as the gang is increasingly sucked into a world of high-stakes betrayal and brutal violence, her skills and leadership become their only hope of survival. Lola marks the debut of a hugely exciting new thriller writer, and of a singular, magnificent character unlike anyone else in fiction.
Moving away from the explicitly political content of his previous novels, Victor Hugo turns to social commentary in The Man Who Laughs, an 1869 work that was made into a popular film in the 1920s. The plot deals with a band of miscreants who deliberately deform children to make them more effective beggars, as well as the long-lasting emotional and social damage that this abhorrent practice inflicts upon its victims.
A motley crew of saboteurs wreaks havoc on the corporations destroying America’s Western wilderness in this “wildly funny, infinitely wise” classic (The Houston Chronicle). When George Washington Hayduke III returns home from war in the jungles of Southeast Asia, he finds the unspoiled West he once knew has been transformed. The pristine lands and waterways are being strip mined, dammed up, and paved over by greedy government hacks and their corrupt corporate coconspirators. And the manic, beer-guzzling, rabidly antisocial ex-Green Beret isn’t just getting mad. Hayduke plans to get even. Together with a radical feminist from the Bronx; a wealthy, billboard-torching libertarian MD; and a disgraced Mormon polygamist, Hayduke’s ready to stick it to the Man in the most creative ways imaginable. By the time they’re done, there won’t be a bridge left standing, a dam unblown, or a bulldozer unmolested from Arizona to Utah. Edward Abbey’s most popular novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang is an outrageous romp with ultra-serious undertones that is as relevant today as it was in the early days of the environmental movement. The author who Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove) once dubbed “The Thoreau of the American West” has written a true comedic classic with brains, heart, and soul that more than justifies the call from the Los Angeles Times Book Review that we should all “praise the earth for Edward Abbey!” “Mixes comedy and chaos with enough chase sequences to leave you hungering for more.”—The San Francisco Chronicle
This book contains a selection of 16 finest short stories which have been adapted from originals written by the world's greatest storytellers such as: O. Henry, W.S. Maugham, R. Goldberg and others. There are also 5 mini-stories presented at the beginning of the book as a "warm-up exercise".The stories have been thoroughly adapted (to preserve the gist of the original), translated into Italian language and presented as English - Italian parallel text. The book is intended mainly for Elementary to middle-Intermediate level learners.
