"La logique mène à tout, à condition d'en sortir", dit un sage... La trentaine de contes rassemblés dans ce recueil ne lui donneront pas tort ! Pourquoi un département terrien comme l'Eure s'est-il doté d'un phare maritime de première classe ? Vaut-il mieux épouser une jeune fille laide plutôt que s...

Summer nights, romance, music, comedy, pairs of lovers who have yet to confess their feelings to each other, comedy and more than a touch of magic are all woven into one of Shakespeare's most delightful and ethereal creations – A Midsummer Night's Dream. The plot is as light and enchanting as the s...

Léon-Émile Petitdidier, dit Émile Blémont, est un poète et auteur dramatique français. Poète prolifique et dramaturge occasionnel, il fut lié à Victor Hugo ainsi qu'aux poètes du Parnasse et aux poètes symbolistes. Rimbaud lui offrit le manuscrit de son sonnet des Voyelles qui est aujourd'hui au Mu...

Alphonse Allais se considérait comme un auteur pour commis voyageurs. On n'a cessé de colporter ses bons mots, du calembour épais (Monsieur Lecoq-Hue) aux réflexions cyniques (' à la suite d'une chute de cheval,j'avais perdu tout sens moral'), en passant par les considérations absurdes (' Angéline r...

Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; -- the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!' After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the ageing Doctor Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of two very different men, Charles...

A Tramp Abroad is a work of non-fiction travel literature by American author Mark Twain, published in 1880. The book details a journey by the author, with his friend Harris (a character created for the book, and based on his closest friend, Joseph Twichell), through central and southern Europe. Whil...

Jules Gabriel Verne (1828-1905) was a French author who pioneered the science-fiction genre. He is best known for novels such as Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). Verne wrote about space, air and under...

Explorers in a hot-air balloon land on an island, figuring that they must be the only inhabitants. However, they discover a bullet inside a wounded animal--one which must have been fired within the previous three months. The men propose to build a canoe so they can survey the island in search of oth...

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF AN EMIGRANT BETWEEN NEW YORK AND SAN FRANCISCO MONDAY. - It was, if I remember rightly, five o'clock when we were all signalled to be present at the Ferry Depot of the railroad. An emigrant ship had arrived at New York on the Saturday night, another on the Sunday morning,...

En 57 à Corinthe (Grèce), Acté (15 ans) accueille Lucius (20 ans) qui débarque de Rome pour les jeux olympiques, et l'héberge. Lucius remporte la lutte, la course de chars et le chant. Puis il emmène Acté sur son navire et lui offre l'esclave Sabina. Il rentre à Rome en triomphe et Acté découvre que...