“The House of Stairs”: Probing the Depths of a Manipulative Mind


"The House of Stairs" By Ruth Rendell (Writing as Barbara Vine) (Source: http://www.penguinreaders.com/pdf/downloads/pr/teachers-notes/9781405879620.pdf) About the author ‘Barbara Vine’ is the pen name of the world-famous crime writer Ruth Barbara Rendell. Rendell was born in 1930 in London, the only child of an English mother and a Swedish father. She spent many holidays in Scandinavia and …

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The Magnificent Pearl


"THE PEARL" John Steinbeck Context (Source: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/pearl/context.html) John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California, in 1902. He was the third of four children and the only son of John Steinbeck, Sr. and Olive Hamilton Steinbeck. Growing up in a rural valley near the Pacific coast, Steinbeck was an intense reader, and both his father, a …

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Falling Leaves and a Chinese Cinderella


ALL THE FACTS MENTIONED IN THIS BLOG ARE ALL BASED UPON TRUE AND ACTUAL EVENTS. “Falling Leaves: The True Story of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter” By Adeline Yen Mah (Source: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54529.Falling_Leaves) Born in 1937 in a port city a thousand miles north of Shanghai, Adeline Yen Mah was the youngest child of an affluent Chinese family …

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“Angels and Demons:” Pride Comes Before a Fall


Angels & Demons From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Angels & Demons is a 2000 bestselling mystery-thriller novel written by American author Dan Brown and published by Pocket Books and then by Corgi Books. The novel introduces the character Robert Langdon, who is also the protagonist of Brown's subsequent 2003 novel, The Da Vinci Code; his 2009 novel, The Lost Symbol; and the 2013 novel Inferno. Angels and Demons shares many stylistic literary elements with …

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