Publisher: 8
The Confidence-Man. His Masquerade
Herman Melville
A post-modern masterpiece; a century ahead of its time. The novel portrays a Canterbury Tales-style group of steamboat passengers whose interlocking stories are told as they travel down the Mississippi River toward New Orleans. The novel is written as cultural satire, allegory, and metaphysical treatise, dealing with themes of sincerity, identity, morality, religiosity, economic materialism, irony, and cynicism. And the novel itself tests the confidence of the reader as each character slides away beneath the muddy prose waters of the river. Melville introduces characters who change identities so rapidly that the reader is confronted with a portrait of the American frontier as perceived through a series of disguises.
Alexandre Dumas
In the center of the novel is the fate of Adjutant Bonaparte Roland de Montrevel, and already in connection with this story we are faced with the image of Napoleon himself. But this does not stop Dumas from paying him much attention in the novel. And if at the beginning of the novel Napoleon appears as a very young general of the period of the Egyptian campaign and subsequent events, then in the finale he already measures the crown after Marengo and his other brilliant victories.
The Cooks Wedding and Other Stories
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
Many stories from this collection about animals and children. This is perhaps the cutest collection, with unusual animals and kittens. This story you can live and feel through the eyes of a child. The choice of the main character leaves a lot of question in the future, but we ourselves can guess the reason for this choice.
The Copilot Cowork Playbook. 10 practical workflows to turn Microsoft Copilot into your AI coworker
Zsolt Zombik
What if you stopped treating Microsoft Copilot as a tool to ask questions and started treating it as a coworker you can hand over real work to? The Copilot Cowork Playbook shows you how to make that shift through 10 practical, real-world workflows built around Copilot Cowork. Instead of collecting isolated prompts, you'll discover how to delegate complete pieces of work, move information across Microsoft 365 apps, and turn recurring tasks into repeatable AI-powered workflows.You'll see how Copilot Cowork can help you triage your inbox, prepare for meetings, create and transform documents, turn notes into multiple deliverables, manage stakeholder communications, conduct research, automate recurring work, and build team-specific capabilities.Each workflow is designed around a familiar business problem and focuses on the outcome, so you can quickly identify where Cowork can save time and reduce busywork in your own role.Whether you're just beginning to explore Copilot Cowork or already using Copilot regularly, this playbook will help you move from one-off prompting to meaningful AI collaboration.
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
This is an excellent collection of softly written short stories set in early 20th century New England. In all the first stories of the collection, the main characters are children. Many of these stories are about ordinary peoples lives and the ways they find a way out of a difficult life.
Fred M. White
This is a mysterious story about The Corner House, where there are many secrets and various rumors about it. Some time ago, the Corner House was the center of what could be an exciting tragedy. Some of the neighbors could hear about the night cry, how to stamp their feet, about a beautiful woman with poison in her hand. No one ever revealed her secret, no one crossed her threshold. However, there is always someone brave who will do it.
Alexandre Dumas
The bonds that tie family together are among the strongest on earth. But what of those between two brothers born as Siamese twins? The Corsican Brothers is a richly drawn tale of fraternal love and revenge. Alexandre Dumas weaves the compelling story of Siamese twins who are separated physically but never in spirit. They have a truly remarkable psychic link, and can feel each others pains and triumphs. When one of the brothers is murdered, the other leaves Corsica for Paris to avenge the killing. Dumas, a master storyteller, brings this thrilling tale to life with his fascinating descriptions of Italy and France and his powerful portrayal of the undying love of brother for brother. One of Dumas earliest novels, and set in the present (1841), the book falls outside of Dumas historical canon.
Leo Tolstoy
The main character of the story, Dmitry Olenin, is close to the author both in spiritual experience and in moral aspirations. Like Tolstoy, he finds himself in the Caucasus in an attempt to start a new life, "in which there will be no more mistakes, there will be no remorse, and probably there will be only happiness." But instead of imagining paintings on the way to the Caucasus in the spirit of Russian romantic literature, the hero of the story had to see real life and feel like a stranger in a world untouched by civilization.