Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction and biting social commentary earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature.
Her plots, though fundamentally comic, highlight the dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security. Her work brought her little acclaim during her lifetime, and biographical information is scarce — only some personal and family letters remain.
At the top of today’s Buffet is Pride and Prejudice, a story set at the turn of the 19th century that is a favorite among modern readers and scholars alike. The book has sold more than 20 million copies and has spawned numerous dramatic adaptations and many novels and stories imitating Austen’s memorable characters or themes.
The book is about the one thing that all great novels ponder: the search for self, says author Anna Quindlen in an introduction for Modern Library. “And it is the first great novel to teach us that that search is as surely undertaken in the drawing room making small talk as in the pursuit of a great white whale or the public punishment of adultery.”
The novel centers on the Bennet family, consisting of the bookish Mr Bennet, his wife, a woman somewhat lacking in social graces and primarily concerned with her family’s fortunes, and their five daughters. The youngest, Lydia, most takes after Mrs Bennet; the eldest, Jane, is kind-hearted and proper; and the central character, Elizabeth Bennet, is the second-eldest and most takes after her father, sharing his keen wit and occasionally sarcastic outlook.
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Pride and Prejudice
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
With this famous declaration, Jane Austen launches into the story of the five Bennet sisters. It is a story that on first reading is full of suspense, surprise and, ultimately, satisfaction, and which on re-reading commands, in addition, admiration for the author’s supreme skill in managing a deceptively complex plot to its triumphant conclusion.
First published in 1813, and Austen’s most popular novel in her own lifetime, Pride and Prejudice has since been widely recognized as one of the finest novels in the English language.
Some of Austen’s best comedy comes from mixing and matching these characters from different classes and economic strata, demonstrating the hypocrisy at the heart of so many social interactions. And though the novel is rife with romantic misunderstandings, rejected proposals, disastrous elopements, and a requisite happy ending for those who deserve one, Austen never gets so carried away with the romance that she loses sight of the hard economic realities of 19th-century matrimonial maneuvering.
Good marriages for penniless girls such as the Bennets are hard to come by, and even Lizzy, who comes to sincerely value Mr. Darcy, remarks when asked when she first began to love him: “It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.” She may be joking, but there’s more than a little truth to her sentiment, as well.
Jane Austen considered Elizabeth Bennet “as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print.” Readers of Pride and Prejudice would be hard-pressed to disagree.
Reunion (A Supernatural Thriller)
Horror
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Twenty years after a school shooting, six of the victims gather to heal their wounds. Their lives have been torn apart by varying degrees of post-traumatic stress disorder after David Ray changed everything the morning he went on a shooting rampage. Discover what drove the killer to do what he did and join Tanner Khan and the survivors of the Crescent Falls massacre as they reunite in the haunted school to unravel a dark secret from their past.
A DEAD RED CADILLAC
Humor
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“I’ve been married so many times, they should revoke my license,” says NY model and reluctant pilot Lalla Bains. Running her dad’s Crop-Dusting business in Modesto, California she’s hoping to dodge the inevitable fortieth birthday party. But when her trophy red ’58 Cadillac is found tail-fins up in a nearby lake, the police ask why a widowed piano teacher, who couldn’t possibly see beyond the hood ornament, was found strapped in the driver’s seat.
Reeling from an interrogation with local homicide, Lalla is determined to extricate herself as a suspect in this strange murder case. Unfortunately, drug running pilots, a cross-dressing convict, a crazy Chihuahua, and the dead woman’s hunky nephew throw enough road blocks to keep Lalla neck deep in an investigation that links her family to a twenty-year old murder only she can solve.
Gluten-Free Made Easy As 1,2,3: Essentials For Living A Gluten-Free Life
Cooking, Food & Wine
Author: Angela McKeller
Disclaimer: This is not just a cookbook, though it does contain amazing recipes. Its a guide on how to live a gluten-free life of indulgence and freedom and includes recipes that will bring back delicious comfort foods you miss.
Celiac disease and gluten-sensitivity bring a lot of emotions to the surface for many people; shame, confusion, frustration, and a sense of loss, to name a few. Author, Angela McKeller has written a book that not only helps you overcome these negative emotions by helping you gain control of what seems out of control, but by also providing this easy-to-follow “road map” of information in a book for your kindle to help you get the answers you need without waiting – eliminate the confusion and frustration today.
Late Bloomer Millionaires: A Financial Story and Investment Guide for Late Starters
Business & Investing
Building a comfortable and secure retirement is by no means only for the youthful and brilliant. Many have achieved millionaire status later in life after starting late, making gut-wrenching investing mistakes, enduring losses—then learning a strategy that makes a difference and still retire early. These financial newbies regroup in their 50s with a non-competitive, holistic, long-term and low-cost investment strategy that rejects Wall Street’s shenanigans and contrasting values.
This book shows how two teachers on educators’ salaries retired early with financial freedom. They discovered and rejected the unbelievable high costs of inappropriate retirement products and unethical advice.
The Tourist Trail: A Novel
Action & Adventure
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Biologist Angela Haynes is accustomed to dark, lonely nights as one of the few humans at a penguin research station in Patagonia. She has grown used to the cries of penguins before dawn, to meager supplies and housing, to spending most of her days in one of the most remote regions on earth. What she isn’t used to is strange men washing ashore, which happens one day on her watch.
The man won’t tell her his name or where he came from, but Angela, who has a soft spot for strays, tends to him, if for no other reason than to protect her birds and her work. When she later learns why he goes by an alias, why he is a refugee from the law, and why he is a man without a port, she begins to fall in love—and embarks on a journey that takes her deep into Antarctic waters, and even deeper into the emotional territory she thought she’d left behind.
MASS MURDER
Mystery & Thrillers
When a woman is found dead, hanging by her bra strap in the supply closet of the Catholic monastery, Detective Giorgio Salvatori is called in to handle the case. As a veteran New York police detective, he’s been faced with some of the worst humanity has to offer. In fact, he moved to this small town in Southern California to get away from the dirt and crime of New York after a shooting nearly killed him. But he has a bad feeling about this case. Soon, his suspicions are borne out when a second body is found buried on the property, and days later, one of the monks is found floating face down in the duck pond.
The 25 Weirdest Animals in the World! Amazing facts, photos and video links to the strangest creatures on the planet
Children’s eBooks
This book is great for newly independent readers and not-so-newly independent readers alike. The animals are accompanied by pictures and facts plus video links so children can see the animals and how they behave.
Unquenched
Contemporary Fiction
She was Jewish. He was German. Something that might ultimately separate them. But there were other deep hidden secrets that made her question what Tristan was hiding.“Despite our differences and my fear of the unknown, I was determined to see him again.” The deceit began. Tristan came to New York.
Tristan left New York to return to Germany but promised to visit soon. And when he returned, when she least expected it, the truth unfolded immediately. Tristan was not alone. He arrived at her door and when their eyes met, it had all become blatantly clear.
Background Check (How to do your own professional background check.)
Advice & How-to
Finally, a hot comprehensive how-to instruction manual for doing extensive and deep search background checks that will take you on the road to revealing the truth by using methods known to hiring professionals and secrets only known to private investigators. Make sure you’re hiring the right person for the job, checking out a potential renter or the dating perfect mate.
For hiring employees, land lords, lovers and protective parents. Learn to do extensive background checks legally with many up to date methods and research innovations used by human resource pro’s today.
The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Sleaze-Free Selling: The 3-Step Sales Formula For Growing Your Business … Without Being Pushy, Obnoxious or Rude
Business & Investing
As a business owner, you know there is no more powerful tool in your arsenal than the ability to effectively sell your products and services. Sales is the lifeblood of your business.
This book is going to help you by leaps and bounds; but the first thing you need to do is quit beating yourself up for whatever you’re doing (or not doing) now. Make a profound shift in the way you approach your customers. And by so shifting, begin to sell a lot more of your products and services.
Barn Stripping and Other Stories
Short Stories
Olson takes readers to rural Minnesota, where children are essential parts in the machinery of everyday life. Portals to wonderment, they must learn the hard way about their own bodies and their own fragility, and yet we recognize it’s their souls that are resilient, because even the marginalized exude a certain magic that cannot be ignored. Young men learn that hard work is its own reward, and that promises can be reaped from the land. However, workaday tragedies lie in wait, and Mother Nature is brutish in her lack of sympathy.
Pie-Rits: A Pirate Adventure
Children’s eBooks
Set sail for a daring pirate adventure like no other. Can a cherry cupcake, a French bread and a flaky croissant battle a crew of assorted pie-rits? Children will delight in the humor, word play, and action of this rhyming pirate adventure that will keep readers laughing from beginning to end. Pirates have never been so deliciously nasty.
Motor City Shakedown (Bright and Fletcher)
Mystery & Thrillers
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When a Detroit man is arrested during a deadly police siege, rookie defense lawyer Issabella Bright rushes off to take the case. Unbeknownst to her, so does Darren Fletcher– a reckless, hard-drinking lawyer who runs his office out of the city’s strangest bar.
Forming an unlikely partnership, Issabella and Darren are soon confronted by a murderous police conspiracy bent on destroying their client. Issabella must stay alive long enough to clear her client’s name. To do that, she’ll have to keep Darren’s erratic schemes from getting her disbarred, all while staying out of the path of Detroit’s most enigmatic killer— the reclusive death-dealer, Malcolm Mohommad.
The Deadliest Cast Member – Disneyland Interactive Thriller Series – EPISODE TWO (Jack Duncan) (SEASON ONE)
Mystery & Thrillers
An interactive family friendly thriller at Disneyland. The action kicks into high gear in Episode Two as former SEAL Team Six member, Jack Duncan, has hours to stop an imminent terrorist threat against Disneyland. Embark on an interactive journey that lets you help shape upcoming events while you learn about the history of Disneyland.
Walk side-by-side with Walt Disney in Fantasyland, 1959, as he talks about the future of Disneyland. What does Kate need to tell Jack? Is Nikolai really alive?
So We Bought the Farm
Humor
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When Steve Riddle moved his family to the country, he never planned on starting a farm. Raised a military brat accustomed to the nomadic life, he never dreamed about putting down roots and raising animals. Most of all, he never imagined he’d write a book about it. In this collection of anecdotes about raising sheep, goats, cattle, and chickens, Mr. Riddle is a storyteller in the classic sense. He takes readers on a frank, personal, and rollicking ride through the challenges, missteps, and disasters he has faced as a beginning farmer.
The Crypt
Horror
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In The Crypt, Sarah Roberts is in Budapest searching for a weapon. While there, a strange man wearing a fedora follows her, but before she can find out who he is, she gets arrested. After her release from the Hungarian jail, she is ordered out of the country.
The man in the fedora shows up at her Budapest hotel before she has a chance to leave for the airport. She learns he is from a psychic research organization and that he wants to take her back to the States with him to further understand her automatic writing abilities. When Sarah refuses to go, she is informed that she does not have a choice because she is now property of the United States government.
Midwife : Liza
Contemporary Fiction
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The year is 1339. Liza’s midwifery skills are needed by the inhabitants of Hollingham. Knowing this keeps the lonely old woman going, together with the occasional ‘trip’ to her long dead husband and children. But she makes one mistake, and the villagers begin to suspect she is using occult spells to harm them. She tries desperately to regain their trust, but time is running short. Rosalind, rich, lonely and naïve, wants to experience true love and falls in love with a monk, by whom she conceives a child. Liza and the Lady Isabella, Rosalind’s mother, must pick up the pieces. None of the three women will ever be the same again.
Distant Relatives
Religious Fiction
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Jack Treglia suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. An unfortunate result of two tours of duty in Vietnam. In an effort to forget, the ex-Marine keeps his Bronze Star tucked away in his underwear drawer—well, he did before the tornado. After one of his Vietnam War flashbacks—the one when he can’t save a small child from enemy fire—he wakes up in a hospital, blind and suffering from partial amnesia. He remembers his wife and children. He just can’t remember what happened to them.
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