A Study of the Greek Priestess ..

from AlisonY

This was my first Zola novel (definitely won't be my last), and it was as if someone had interwoven the grittiness of Dickens industrial settings with Hardy's expansive sense of place and character into something close to literary perfection. Set in a mining town in rural France, Germinal evolve...

from CBJames

Adventure can rely on character. Robert Lewis Stevenson demonstrates this in his classic novel Treasure Island. There's plenty of adventure in Treasure Island: mysterious strangers arrive on stormy nights; innocent people survive savage attacks; abandoned ships drift out to sea; pirates climb the...

from thequestingvole

Treasure Island Treasure Island is a great book and like many great books, grew out of a small act. Stevenson's step-son was drawing one day and his step-father looking over his shoulder, saw that he was drawing a map. They spent the day naming the places and colouring it. And from the map came t...

from ncgraham

When I was a child I would often peruse a little pamphlet my parents owned. It was titled Hand that Rocks the Cradle and featured "a select list of books to read to children." Most of the commentary about the selections was straightforward and a little bit dull, but I've never forgotten what Mr. ...

from jnwelch

Germinal by Emile Zola takes place in a northern France mining village in the 1860s. It depicts in detail the strained circumstances of woefully underpaid miners that eventually will lead to a divisive strike against the well-heeled mine owners. "All the way from the silent village to the roaring...