Thomas Hardy’s moving story of star-crossed lovers shows human beings at the mercy of forces beyond their control, setting a tragic drama of human passion against a backdrop of space and scientific discovery.Unhappily married, Lady Constantine defies social standards when she falls in love with the youthful and socially inferior Swithin St. Cleeve. In an ancient monument converted into an astronomical observatory, they isolate themselves from society and create their own private un...

The author tells us her horrific and courageous story when she was a little girl crying on the wooden steps on the front porch. She was crying for her biological parents starting at two years old. She reveals how children long to be with their parents in a way that Wanda knows first hand. You will be amazed at how her story during her teenager years continues to show us how important it is to settle those emotions, and confront them. Her transparency and venerability is helping others to h...

While the remit of social work professionals is, in general, locality-based, social work has a long tradition of concern about international issues. Broadening Horizons provides an engaging and original contribution to the debate on how to tackle social work problems on a global scale. Filling both a theoretical and a practice gap in the literature, the book discusses the experiences of academics, practitioners and students involved in international exchanges in social work. It draws on a ...

This story reminds us that God is always with us, no matter what we are going through. As Kade is sick and sad, she feels as though her day will continue to be saddened until her Nana and Granddaddy remind her that God will heal us from any situation. As Kade learns about God and His power, she is told of her Granddaddy’s special socks which his mother used to put on him as she read scriptures from the Bible. Kade puts on the socks and is read scriptures from her Granddaddy. She then reali...

In the barren moor of Egdon Heath, a wild tract of country in the southwest of England, one native yearns to escape to city life while another has just returned from that life, unimpressed.Clym Yeobright, a former diamond merchant in Paris, returns home to become a schoolmaster in Egdon, where he falls passionately in love with the sensuous, free-spirited Eustacia Vye. Infatuated with his seeming glamour, she marries him in hopes of greater adventure—but when her hopes are disappoi...

In the tumultuous era of the English Civil War, a young woman's destiny intertwines with the fate of a nation. Lady Alice Lee, a staunch Royalist, finds herself trapped in the clutches of the Parliamentarian forces. As the war rages around her, she must navigate a treacherous path, torn between her loyalty to her family and her growing attraction to a dashing enemy officer. Amidst the clash of swords and the roar of cannons, Alice's courage and resilience are tested as she witnesses the ho...

The great poetic tradition of pre-Christian Scandinavia is known to us almost exclusively though the Prose Edda, a collection of narrative literature, and its companion, the Poetic Edda. The poems originated in Iceland, Norway, and Greenland between the ninth and 13th centuries, when they were compiled in a unique manuscript known as the Codex Regius. The poems are primarily lyrical rather than narrative. Terry's fine translation includes the magnificent cosmological poem, "The Völuspá", d...

Paula Power, the daughter of a wealthy railway magnate, inherits De Stancy Castle, an ancient castle in need of modernization. She commissions a young architect from London, George Somerset, to undertake the work. Somerset falls in love with Paula. But Paula, the Laodicean of the title, meaning a person who is lukewarm or halfhearted, is torn between George’s admiration and that of Captain De Stancy, whose old-world romanticism contrasts with Somerset’s forward-looking outlook.Paul...

Hardy’s third novel, A Pair of Blue Eyes, follows the story of Elfride Swancourt. The daughter of the Rector of Endelstow, a sparse sea-swept parish in Cornwall, Elfride is caught between two suitors of very different backgrounds: Stephen Smith, a young architect restoring the old parish church, and the respectable, older man of London society, Henry Knight. The blue-eyed and high-spirited protagonist must untangle the conflicting messages of her heart and her mind.

Set in the tiny hamlet of Little Hintock, The Woodlanders tells of love, deception, ambition and tragedy, all unfolding themselves against the background of the majestic forest where the simple inhabitants live in harmony with nature. Two sets of characters, the woodlanders and the sophisticated outsiders, meet and interact, and learn too late to distinguish emotional truth from falsehood. Filled with his familiar themes and characters, this is a classic Hardy novel in which human care and...

One of the most popular of Hardy’s novels, this charming pastoral idyll is a lightly humorous depiction of life in an early Victorian rural community. Drawn from Hardy’s childhood memories, it represents, he said, “a true picture at first hand of the personages, ways, and customs which were common in the villages.”The story delicately balances the concerns of the Mellstock parish choir with a romance between Dick Dewy, a member of the choir, and Fancy Day, the village schoolmistres...

When the Countess Narona meets Agnes Lockwood, the woman jilted by her fiancé, she feels a great sense of foreboding. After Countess Narona’s marriage, she moves with her husband, Lord Montbarry, to Venice. There, disowned by his family, the lord apparently becomes a recluse and falls fatally ill. As much as Agnes tries to forget the episode of her broken engagement, her fate and that of the countess seem to be inextricably woven. Both are relentlessly drawn to the Palace Hotel in Venice f...