A Fire - format ePub

Brazilian Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis was the finest storyteller of nineteenth-century Latin America. "Midnight Mass and Other Stories" offers a selection of Machado's tales, from the oft-translated...

Martinha, in her forties, finds herself alone. She has only the old aunt she lives with. One day, going through the mementos of her youth, she comes across a dried flower and reminisces about the circumstances...

In Montevideo, on shore leave, a naval officer comes across a burning dressmaker's shop. Ever the chivalrous gentleman, he ignores the flames and the smoke and rushes up the stairs to the burning workshop.Translated...

"At forty, he was disabused of his ambitions, but his temper remained the same, and, his conjugal vocation notwithstanding, he still couldn't find a bride. More than one would have would have accepted...

"People recall an abyss with pleasure; it is impossible to recall a bore without dread. Sooner the Tarpeian Rock than an author of ill repute."Genre: short storyLength: 1,500 wordsTranslated from Portuguese...

"Our disagreement has a natural explanation. I am a single girl, full of complications, dreams, ambitions, and poetry; you are already a woman of the house, a calm and happy wife, soon to be a mother;...

The aging clerk Coimbra no longer believes in much. Not even his long-standing faith in the lottery--"I'm no longer of the age to hope," he admits--is entirely steadfast. He resolves, then, to buy one...

Inácio Ramos is a cellist. His young wife, daughter of a poor shopkeeper, does not understand his art. She is drawn instead to popular music and those who play it, above all to a mediocre law student...

"'Now, you've played cards with so many people, but only once, a long time ago, have you played with me, écarté. Isn't écarté the name of that game you taught me? Let's play a game.' Xavier started laughing."So...

In "Trio in A Minor," Machado's classic tale of a love triangle in Brazilian high society, the intrigue plays out to the tune of the old sonata of the absolute.Genre: short storyLength: 2,900 wordsTranslated...

When Luís Negreiros returns home from the office one evening, he finds a fine watch and chain on a table in his bedroom. The watch isn't his and can't be his young and beautiful wife Clarinha's, either....

The disquieting pleasures of a forty-year-old man are gradually made clear to a young doctor in this short story by the great Brazilian Machado de Assis.Length: 4,000 words.Date of English translation:...

Baron Sigismundo de Kernoberg, a single Swede of thirty-nine, wedded to science alone, suddenly finds himself roped into giving botany lessons to a neighbor's lovely young niece.Translated from Portuguese...

"Her gaze was not absent, as it had been shortly before; instead, it was fixed on the flowers on the wallpaper that lined the room. She noticed, for the first time, that the flowers were daisies. And...

Brazilian Tales is a collection of six short stories selected by Isaac Goldberg as best representative of the Brazilian Literature of his period - the end of the 19th century. His comprehensive preface...

"Mes doigts frôlaient la nuque de la fillette ou ses épaules vêtues d'indienne, et c'était une sensation délicieuse. Mais enfin, bien malgré moi, les cheveux tiraient à leur fin, alors que je les aurais...

“Et voyez maintenant avec quelle dextérité, avec quel art, j’effectue la plus grande des transitions de ce livre.Voyez : mon délire commença en présence de Virgilia Virgilia fut mon grand péché de jeunesse...

Simon Bacamarte, aliéniste diplômé, s'installe dans une paisible bourgade brésilienne et, au nom de la science, fonde un asile d'aliénés.Il classe d'abord et enferme tous les lunatiques, mais son emprise...

Une montre en or apparaît sur une table de nuit les bras d’une femme troublent un adolescent ; une cartomancienne révèle un avenir radieux ; un miroir ne reflète plus un jeune homme et permet la naissance...

Rubiao, modeste professeur hérite une fortune du philosophe Quincas Borba, sous réserve de prendre soins de son chien. Mais avec la richesse il hérite de la folie de son ami.Sa fortune se disperse dans...

Le livre se présente comme le journal intime d'un diplomate revenu à Rio après trente années de service en Europe. Ces notes couvrent une période importante où l'esclavage est enfin aboli au Brésil.L'événement...

Young José Martins, let out of class early one day, heads home with his uncle and his older sister. On the way, he and his sister try to guess the reason--a party? a birthday? an election victory?--for...

A classified ad is offering a large reward for the return of a lost greyhound. Mendonça, a single young doctor who has found the dog, makes his way to a house on Rua de Mata-cavalos, where the reward...

"I felt an acute pain in the top part of my skull; a foreign object went in to the inside of my brain. I know nothing else. I think I fainted. When I came to, the laboratory was empty. Father and daughter...

Chekhov noted that if, early in a story, mention was made of a rifle hanging on the wall, it would eventually have to go off. Hanging on the window frame of the schoolhouse in Machado de Assis's "A School...

Máximo, an impoverished young poet and student, inherits a fortune on the unexpected death of his godfather. His own fortunes, however, are not greatly improved.Genre: short storyLength: 5,400 wordsTranslated...

Failed composer Maestro Romão, ill, is seeking desperately to complete a piece of music he had abandoned in 1779, shortly after his marriage. In this brief and moving tale by the Brazilian master Machado...

It's Christmas Eve, 1861 or 1862. Seventeen-year-old Nogueira, a native of the provinces living in Rio de Janeiro for his studies, has arranged with a neighbor to go to midnight mass. Into the parlor...

"And over the years, in other loves, more real and longer lasting, he never experienced a feeling like that of that Sunday on Rua da Lapa, when he was fifteen years old."Fifteen-year-old Inácio has been...

Brazilian Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis was the finest storyteller of nineteenth-century Latin America. "Midnight Mass and Other Stories" offers a selection of Machado's tales, from the oft-translated...

This volume collects the complete writings of Virginia Woolf: 8 novels, 3 'biographies,' 46 short stories, 606 essays, 1 play, her diary and some letters. Contents: THE NOVELS The Voyage Out Night...

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A heart-wrenching grim cozy pirate's tale with a little bit of romance. This is not 'Cozy' in the traditional sense, unless you find misery and betrayal to be as comforting as a cup of hot cocoa."This...

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As the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds its way through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people: Ada and Richard Clare, whose inheritance is gradually being...

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Fame. Fashion. Friendship. Hollie can't catch a break. She's broke, she's back living with her family, and her career prospects are precisely zero. So when the chance arises for her and her best friend...

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Meg is the eldest and on the brink of love. Then there’s tomboy Jo who longs to be a writer. Sweet-natured Beth always puts others first, and finally there’s Amy, the youngest and most precocious. Together...

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Jonathan Harker, a young London solicitor travels to Transylvania to help a rich nobleman, Count Dracula, purchase an estate in England. Dracula is planning to immigrate to England, and wants Harker to...

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