Rediscovered Classics – serie

During a trip to a nearby village, the proudly unmarried Sir Ashleigh Carruthers attends an evening service in the small local church. There, he finds himself seated next to the alluring and hypnotically beautiful Woman in Black and is instantly enraptured. But when the vicar collapses mid-sermon after looking upon the Woman’s face, Carruthers is left to wonder: Who is this mysterious woman? And should he be worried about her pointed ears, her pointed teeth, and her ability to vanish into thin air? Featuring a bewitching and depraved antiheroine who leaves a pile of bloody bodies in her wake, The Woman in Black is the not-quite-living embodiment of every Victorian man’s worst nightmare.

Also published as The Beautiful Widow, Mary Shelley’s penultimate novel explores the web of relationships between three women bound together by the exacting Lord Lodore: Cornelia, Lodore’s estranged wife, ruled by her mother and the norms of aristocratic society; Ethel, his daughter, raised in the wilderness of Illinois and utterly reliant on her father; and finally, the independent and highly educated Fanny Derham, the daughter of Lodore’s childhood friend. Long considered the most Austen-like and socially oriented of Mary Shelley’s novels, Lodore is an essential read for anyone seeking to understand this brilliant feminist writer.

One of the first dystopian novels ever written, The Last Man traces the impact of an unstoppable pandemic as it slowly overtakes the world. Beginning in the year 2073, the story follows Lionel Vesey—the titular last man—and his circle of friends as the disease creeps from continent to continent and erodes the foundations of civilization. Published in 1826, after the death of Shelley’s husband, her stepsister, and her two children, The Last Man is both an eerily accurate story about humanity wrestling with disaster and a moving fable about surviving personal grief.

“If it had not rained on a certain May morning, Valancy Stirling’s whole life would have been entirely different. . .” One day, Valancy Stirling, a quiet, shy old maid, decides to stop listening to her nosy, small-minded relatives and start doing exactly as she pleases. Over the next year, Valancy’s choices will transform her life, outrage her family, confuse the entire town of Deerwood—and bring her into close contact with the mischievous, mysterious, violet-eyed Barney Snaith. This is a heartwarming romance with a bold, contemporary message—a life spent appeasing other people is a wasted one—from the beloved author of the Anne of Green Gables series.

The World’s Desire begins with Odysseus utterly alone. His kingdom of Ithaca is an empty, abandoned wasteland. His beloved wife Penelope is dead. His patron goddess Athena has forsaken him.But then Aphrodite visits Odysseus and sends him on a quest to find the world’s desire, the face that launched a thousand ships: the woman he once knew as Helen of Troy. Armed with his legendary bow, Odysseus’s final journey takes him to a court riven by murderous factions, ruled by a queen who is haunted by dreams of Odysseus’s face . . .

Five men survive a South Seas shipwreck and wash up on a seemingly deserted beach, only to discover that five beautiful, winged women inhabit the island. Dazzled and soon in love, the men will do anything to possess these flying women . . . but what they plan, and how the magical women respond, is tellingly—and predictably—human. First published in 1914, and praised by Ursula K. LeGuin as “a real rediscovery—romantic, satiric, funny, fanciful, and a good read,” Angel Island is an adventure story and a genre-defining tale about women’s rights.