Books in Akasha Classics series

Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw - Akasha Classics, AkashaPublishing.Com - As will be seen later on, Pygmalion needs, not a preface, but a sequel, which I have supplied in its due place. The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. They spell it so abominably that no man can teach himself what it sounds like. It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him. German and Spanish are accessible to foreigners: English is not accessible even to English-men. The reformer England needs today is an energetic phonetic enthusiast: that is why I have made such a one the hero of a popular play. There have been heroes of that kind crying in the wilderness for many years past. When I became interested in the subject towards the end of the eighteen-seventies, Melville Bell was dead; but Alexander J. Ellis was still a living patriarch, with an impressive head always covered by a velvet skull cap, for which he would apologize to public meetings in a very courtly manner. He and Tito Pagliardini, another phonetic veteran, were men whom it was impossible to dislike. Henry Sweet, then a young man, lacked their sweetness of character: he was about as conciliatory to conventional mortals as Ibsen or Samuel Butler. His great ability as a phonetician (he was, I think, the best of them all at his job) would have entitled him to high official recognition, and perhaps enabled him to popularize his subject, but for his Satanic contempt for all academic dignitaries and persons in general who thought more of Greek than of phonetics. Once, in the days when the Imperial Institute rose in South Kensington, and Joseph Chamberlain was booming the Empire, I induced the editor of a leading monthly review to commission an article from Sweet on the imperial importance of his subject. When it arrived, it contained nothing but a savagely derisive attack on a professor of language and literature whose chair Sweet regarded as proper to a phonetic expert only. The article, being libelous, had to be returned as impossible; and I had to renounce my dream of dragging its author into the limelight. When I met him afterwards, for the first time for many years, I found to my astonishment that he, who had been a quite tolerably presentable young man, had actually managed by sheer scorn to alter his personal appearance until he had become a sort of walking repudiation of Oxford and all its traditions. It must have been largely in his own despite that he was squeezed into something called a Readership of phonetics there. The future of phonetics rests probably with his pupils, who all swore by him; but nothing could bring the man himself into any sort of compliance with the university, to which he nevertheless clung by divine right in an intensely Oxonian way. I daresay his papers, if he has left any, include some satires that may be published without too destructive results fifty years hence. He was, I believe, not in the least an ill-natured man: very much the opposite, I should say; but he would not suffer fools gladly.

The Island of Doctor Moreau, by Wells, H. G. - Akasha Classics, AkashaPublishing.Com - Join H.G. Wells for a spine-tingling classic of science fiction. When Edward Prendick is shipwrecked in the South Pacific, he is picked up by a ship loaded with animals and bound for a strange island. Once there Prendick finds himself under the power of Dr. Moreau, who has turned the island into a haven where he can indulge in dark experiments. As he discovers the horrors which Dr. Moreau has created, Prendick finds that his own life is now at stake. Criticized as blasphemous when it was first published in 1896, The Island of Dr. Moreau prefigures modern issues surrounding genetic engineering and the ethical problems of technology.

In The Return of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle brings back one of his greatest characters for more sleuthing adventures. Sherlock Holmes is dead - or so everyone thinks, including his old friend Watson. But the great detective still has a few surprises up his sleeve, including a nasty shock for the criminals who thought to profit by his absence! This collection of thirteen cases features missing persons, forced marriage, secret codes, black-hearted sailors, and much more. Written in Conan Doyle's straightforward but elegant style, the stories are steeped in mystery and the atmosphere of Victorian England. See for yourself why so many people find them addictive!

When identical twins wash upon the shore of Ilyria confusion, mistaken identities and misplaced infatuations are sure to follow in this delightful comedy. The shipwrecked twins Viola and Sebastian, each believing the other dead, make their separate ways to the court of Duke Orsinio. Viola protects herself by disguising herself as a boy, Cesario, and enters the Duke's services. He pines for Lady Olivia, but she becomes smitten with the messenger, the disguised Viola, who has herself developed stirrings for the Duke. Add in another suitor, a scheming uncle and the arrival of Sebastian and the hilarious confusion reaches its climax. A wonderful play that is one of Shakespeare's most popular and performed comedies.

Heroes sometimes come in unlikely packages. Someone is sneaking aristocrats out of France before they can be executed by Robespierre's revolutionaries. French agent Chauvelin is determined to catch this mysterious character, known only as the Scarlet Pimpernel. To do so he blackmails a beautiful French actress, recently married to a dimwitted English baronet, Sir Percy Blakeney. Marguerite Blakeney must make a choice between her brother and an unknown hero - with many more lives at stake! The Scarlet Pimpernel, an exhilarating story by the Baroness Orczy, was a sensation when it first appeared. It spawned an entire series of novels featuring the masked rescuer.

The Rainbow Trail is a tale of survival, rescue, and revenge, all steeped in the atmosphere of the Wild West. Twenty years ago, Jane Withersteen and her adopted daughter Fay Larkin were trapped in a remote canyon by evil men, and have not been heard from since. John Shefford, a preacher from Illinois, is determined to find out what happened to Jane and Fay. But will he be able to overcome all of the obstacles in his way – including a harsh landscape, vicious outlaws, and hostile villagers? The Rainbow Trail is Zane Grey’s sequel to Riders of the Purple Sage, but stands as an exciting adventure in its own right.

The Call of the Wild, by Jack London - Akasha Classics, AkashaPublishing.Com - Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the frost. Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. Judge Miller's place, it was called. It stood back from the road, half hidden among the trees, through which glimpses could be caught of the wide cool veranda that ran around its four sides. The house was approached by gravelled driveways which wound about through wide-spreading lawns and under the interlacing boughs of tall poplars. At the rear things were on even a more spacious scale than at the front. There were great stables, where a dozen grooms and boys held forth, rows of vine-clad servants' cottages, an endless and orderly array of outhouses, long grape arbors, green pastures, orchards, and berry patches. Then there was the pumping plant for the artesian well, and the big cement tank where Judge Miller's boys took their morning plunge and kept cool in the hot afternoon.