KtoCzyta.pl Literatura - książki, ebooki i audiobooki

„Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown” is a time-tested adage that suits Peter Pentecost, a young monk and legitimate claimant to England’s Throne. But he is not alone as others are vying for power too. Soon a plot is hatched against the present King Henry VIII and Peter is sucked into the intrigue... Buchan’s description of the ruthless king is compelling. His knowledge of the time of Henry’s reign and his love of the Oxfordshire countryside are apparent. This histori...

In the mid-sixteenth century, Jean de Rohaine, a middle-aged French nobleman, journeys to Scotland in search of adventure and a new beginning. In Scotland he meets up with his old friend, Quentin Kennedy, who informs him of a great battle to be waged. Having witnessed Royalist troops butchering suspected Covenanters, he follows the example of ‘godly’ refugees and escapes to the safety of the hills around Eskdalemuir and the head of Ettrick Water. Whilst staying at the Manse...

Although this book was listed in a collection of Richard Hannay stories, Hannay makes only a brief appearance at the beginning. Begins in the pleasant atmosphere of a country house in the Scottish borders, where Richard Hannay is the guest of his old friend, Sandy Arbuthnot. The action is set in Olifa, a fictional country on the west coast of South America. When Sandy Arbuthnot’s friend John Blenkiron discover that a charismatic industrial tycoon is plotting to rule the wor...

Vernon Milbourne, orphaned since childhood and haunted by a recurring dream, is friends with the protective lawyer and MP Sir Edward Leithen. An Aegean cruise takes them to the mysterious island of Plakos, where Vernon is fascinated by the island’s myths. Local superstitions turn to menace as Vernon’s encounter with a beautiful woman results in obsession and adventure. „The Dancing Floor” centres on a young English woman, Kore Arabin, who inherits a house on a remote Greek ...

Set during the Napoleonic Wars, „The Free Fishers” is classic Buchan and his last historical novel. It’s a fast-paced tale of treason, espionage and romance. Anthony Lammas, a professor at the St. Andrews University, finds himself involved in a web of intrigue that threatens the whole country. A conspiracy to betray England’s defences to Napoleonic agents is discovered by Lammas, a young professor who sets out to save his former students appearing to be in grave danger. You...

In John Buchan’s thrill-a-minute novel „Salute to Adventurers”, hero Andrew Garvald makes his way from the dreary moors of his native land to the deceptively bucolic landscape of early colonial America. A novel set during the beginning of the Jamestown Colony, „Salute To Adventurers” is an enthralling saga about one man’s struggle to survive and even find love in a land beset by trade controls with England enforced by pirates, religious strife manifested through a fanatic w...

Set in the closing years of the nineteenth century, „The Half-Hearted” tells the story of Lewis Haystoun, a dilettante and coward. Part I of the novel is a story of manners and romance in upper class Scotland. Part II is an adventure story on the North West frontier of India where Lewis saves the British Empire. The novel follows the life of Lewis Haystoun, a young Scottish laird, who finds himself unable to commit wholeheartedly to any course of action. His failure to seiz...

Regarded as one of the finest historical novels ever written, Jacobites, spies and thrilling intrigue are brought together by the master of suspense. As Bonnie Prince Charlie marches his army into England, his confidant Alastair Maclean is despatched on a secret mission. He is befriended by two extraordinary men – Dr. Samuel Johnson, an aspiring man of letters, and the shadowy figure known only as „Midwinter.” As he travels to rally the west of England to the Prince’s cause...

Written in 1925, the novel opens with three gentleman friends – lawyer Sir Edward Leithen, banker John Palliser-Yeates, and Cabinet member Charles Lord Lamancha – discovering that they all suffer a common and debilitating malady, a loss of zest for life, all desperate to relieve the ennui that has engulfed them. The solution can only be something devilish, with a dash of daring. Enlisting the aid of another friend, Scottish landowner Sir Archibald Roylance, the trio contriv...

A true adventure story involving the unlikely hero Dickson McCunn, retired successful businessman and former greengrocer who sets out on a walking holiday in the Scottish Borders. There he meets a young English poet, and both soon become embroiled in the plot of an international gang to capture a Russian princess. With the help of the Gorbals Die-hards, an indomitable gang of urchins from Glasgow, they frustrate and finally defeat the gang. And in the process Dickson happen...

„John Burnet of Barns” was Buchan’s first fully realised, full-length work of fiction. The author’s third novel is story of adventure, treachery and revenge, set in the Scottish Borders in the 17th century, telling of a young nobleman who sets out to gain an education abroad, only to find himself betrayed in his absence by his cousin. Not just a romance, but adventures of a Scottish gentleman around the Netherlands and the wildest highlands of Scotland to find himself, rega...

„Castle Gay” is the second of Buchan’s three Dickson McCunn books and is set in south west Scotland in the Dumfries and Galloway region in the 1920s. The plot revolves around the self-discovery of a media mogul named Craw, who is firstly the subject of mistaken identity and then the target of Balkan extremists who wish to use his newspapers to influence their political cause. Mr. Craw’s journey is overseen by Jaikie Galt, one of the young scamps in „Huntingtower”, who is no...

„Ania z Wyspy” („Anne of the Island”) to trzecia część z serii o Ani z Zielonego Wzgórza. W tym tomie Ania Shirley zaczyna naukę w Redmond College w Kingsport. Ciężko pracuje, by zdobyć upragniony tytuł magistra. W czasie wolnym od nauki spotyka się z nową przyjaciółką Filipą Gordon, ma też nowego adoratora, niejakiego Roya Gardnera. Nie zaniedbuje też starych znajomości. Kiedy dowiaduje się o chorobie Gilberta, uświadamia sobie, że go kocha…

John Buchan was a Scottish author and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada. He wrote a series of books that follow the adventures of Richard Hannay, an expatriate Scot who was first introduced in the classic novel The Thirty-Nine Steps. Set in Scotland in 1745, during the Jacobite Rebellion, this dark story of loyalty and betrayal on the road to Culloden Moor recounts the adventures of Francis Birkenshaw. The Jacobite cause means nothing to him until...

A classic John Buchan story of espionage during World War I. It contains several familiar Buchan elements: a motley cast of characters, Great War intrigue, the use of disguises and linguistic talents, the concept of gaining inner strength from a beloved spot in nature, man against the forces of nature in less benign settings, a race against time and evil, and sacrifice for a greater good. This is the epic story of one man’s courage. Adam Melfort released from jail just befo...

John Buchan (1875-1940) was a Scottish novelist and historian and also served as Canada’s Governor General. His 100 works include nearly thirty novels, seven collections of short stories and biographies. But, the most famous of his books were the adventure and spy thrillers, most notably „The Thirty-Nine Steps”, and it is for these that he is now best remembered. „A Lodge in the Wilderness” (1906) is a quasi-novel about an imaginary conference arranged by a multi-millionair...

Fabuła dramatu „Król Lear” odwołuje się do legendy o mitycznym królu Brytanii. Władca, ojciec trzech córek, staje przed decyzją o podziale majątku. Postanawia obdarować córki stosownie do ich miłości, którą okazują ojcu, niestety daje się zwieść pozorom. Wierzy słodkim słówkom starszych córek, a młodszą niesłusznie wydziedzicza. Złe decyzje doprowadzają królestwo do ruiny, a odrzuconą miłość trudno odzyskać.

„Miarka za miarkę” Williama Szekspira to utwór odwołujący się do wątków biblijnych – skąd autor wywiódł m.in. tytuł – i w ich kontekście przedstawiający kontrast pomiędzy władzą polityczną a sprawiedliwością. Wybory bohaterów sytuują ich po określonych stronach odwiecznego sporu, a czytelnika skłaniają do refleksji nad kwestiami winy, kary i nagrody za czyny.

Udramatyzowana kronika życia angielskiego króla Ryszarda II, sprawującego rządy w latach 1377–1399. Punktem wyjścia dla utworu jest spór między dwoma królewskimi poddanymi, który to spór król ma za zadanie rozstrzygnąć. Obu poddanych król skazuje na wygnanie, jednak jeden z nich wraca na czele armii, uderza zbrojnie i koronuje się jako nowy król Anglii – Henryk IV.

Kronika życia potępianego przez wielu króla angielskiego Ryszarda III, stanowiącego przez długie wieki ucieleśnienie wszelkiego zła. Szekspir podzielił ten pogląd, przypisując swemu bohaterowi liczne zbrodnie i przedstawiając go w najczarniejszych barwach. Uzasadniał w ten sposób jego obalenie i przejęcie władzy przez kolejną dynastię – Tudorów, którzy władali Anglią w kolejnych wiekach.

Tytułowy Otello jest Maurem i dowódcą weneckiej armii. Poślubia on córkę weneckiego senatora Desdemonę. Za sprawą intryg i sugestii sfrustrowanego życiem Jagona, chorążego weneckiej armii, zaczyna wątpić w lojalność swojej żony i daje się opętać obsesyjnej zazdrości. Choć motywacje Jagona nie zostają ujawnione, jego szatańskie działania doprowadzają do bolesnej tragedii.

Considered one of Wells most successful attempts at a social novel in the vein of Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, Wells’s tale is a panoramic view of an unravelling society. A semi-autobiographical satire of Edwardian advertising and patent-medicines. The story follows the life of a young man, George, and his Uncle Edward. Edward invents an elixir called TONO-BUNGAY and hires his nephew George to help build the company. The medicine becomes a huge commercia...

„You Can’t be Too Careful” is a sketch of one way of life – the life path, cowardly man, in fear, made a lot of dirty tricks. He never forgot that „necessary caution”, and helped unleash the Second world war. He believed everything he was told, he did what he was told. Not it is done by world Affairs, he was only a humble and law-abiding. But he relied all those who would, in the words of wells, „to increase the amount of the world’s evil”. He was one of the men who develop...

„The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman” is a novel set in the era surrounding the days of women’s suffrage. The story revolves around the wife of a baking magnate who goes into hiding after his female employees go on strike. Although the hero of this novel Sir Isaac Harman didn’t think much of the suffragette movement, his female employees certainly did, and he thought it prescient that he too should do his bit for women’s rights. His wife totally agreed, so he locked her up. Howeve...