Plot summary
The eponymous heroine, Isabel Thorne, is a young woman, half British, half Italian, who works for the Italian Secret Service. She has been commissioned to bring about the signing of a secret contract, in the capital of the enemy, by representatives of all countries involved, both European and American. Her brother, an inventor, has devised a secret weapon by which missiles can be fired from submarines (see also depth charge) which will, it is hoped, secure military domination over the rest of the world.
Members of the U.S. Secret Service, who have been alerted, are assigned to prevent the signing of this "Latin compact" and bring to justice those involved who have no diplomatic immunity. One young representative named Grimm, however, although absolutely loyal to his government, falls in love with the beautiful foreign agent, Thorne.
In the end Thorne, who reciprocates her admirer's love, becomes estranged from her employer, the Italian government, because she does not want Grimm, who has been captured by the conspirators and knows all their secrets, to be murdered. Stripped of all her power and possessions, she unites with him at the end of the novel, no longer elusive.
Elusive Isabel is now in the public domain.
Isabel Angélica Allende Llona is a Chilean-American writer. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the genre magical realism, is known for novels such as The House of the Spirits and City of the Beasts, which have been commercially successful. Allende has been called "the world's most widely read Spanish-language author." In 2004, Allende was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2010, she received Chile's National Literature Prize. President Barack Obama awarded her the 2014 Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Democracy: An American Novel is a political novel written by Henry Brooks Adams and published anonymously in 1880. Only after the writer's death in 1918 did his publisher reveal Adams's authorship although, upon publication, the novel had immediately become popular. Contemporaneous conjecture placed the book under the joint authorship of Clarence King, John Hay and Henry Adams and their spouses who lived side by side on H street in Washington, D.C., and were collectively sometimes called "the Five of Hearts."
"Bluebeard" is a French folktale, the most famous surviving version of which was written by Charles Perrault and first published by Barbin in Paris in 1697 in Histoires ou contes du temps passé. The tale tells the story of a wealthy man in the habit of murdering his wives and the attempts of the present one to avoid the fate of her predecessors. "The White Dove", "The Robber Bridegroom", and "Fitcher's Bird" are tales similar to "Bluebeard". The notoriety of the tale is such that Merriam-Webster gives the word Bluebeard the definition of "a man who marries and kills one wife after another". The verb bluebearding has even appeared as a way to describe the crime of either killing a series of women, or seducing and abandoning a series of women.
"Rapunzel" is a German fairy tale most notably recorded by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812 as part of Children's and Household Tales. The Brothers Grimm's story was developed from the French literary fairy tale of Persinette by Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force (1698), which itself is an alternative version of the Italian fairy tale Petrosinella by Giambattista Basile.
The Evil Queen, also called the Wicked Queen or the Queen, is a fictional character and the main antagonist of "Snow White," a German fairy tale recorded by the Brothers Grimm; similar stories exist worldwide. Other versions of the Queen appear in subsequent adaptations and continuations of the fairy tale, including novels and films. One particularly notable version is Disney's depiction, sometimes known as Queen Grimhilde. The character has also become an archetype that inspired unrelated works.
Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard is a 1904 novel by Joseph Conrad, set in the fictitious South American republic of "Costaguana". It was originally published serially in monthly instalments of T.P.'s Weekly.
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The House of the Spirits is the debut novel of Isabel Allende. The novel was rejected by several Spanish-language publishers before being published in Buenos Aires in 1982. It became an instant best-seller, was critically acclaimed, and catapulted Allende to literary stardom. The novel was named Best Novel of the Year in Chile in 1982, and Allende received the country's Panorama Literario award. The House of the Spirits has been translated into over 20 languages.
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Doctor Thorne is the third novel written by Anthony Trollope in his Chronicles of Barsetshire series, between Barchester Towers and Framley Parsonage. It was published by Chapman and Hall in London in 1858. The idea of the plot was suggested to Trollope by his brother Thomas. Though set in Barsetshire, Barchester and its residents take little part in the proceedings. The novel is mainly concerned with money and position.
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Por Amor is a Brazilian telenovela created by Manoel Carlos, starring Regina Duarte and Gabriela Duarte in the main roles. It replaced A Indomada and preceded Torre de Babel, and was the 55th telenovela to be aired by TV Globo.
Celia Logan was an American actress, playwright, and writer, and a member of the Logan family of actors and writers. She became a correspondent of American journals and wrote for magazines. During the American Civil War, she resided in Milan, Italy, translating the war news for newspapers. Afterwards she settled in Washington, D.C., where she became associate editor of The Capital. She wrote several dramas, including An American Marriage.
Chains, written by Laurie Halse Anderson, is the first novel in the Seeds of America trilogy, a series of young-adult historical novels, first published in the United States on October 21, 2008. The trilogy follows the story of Isabel, a teenaged African-American slave striving for and her younger sister's freedom during the American Revolutionary War. Chains takes place mainly in New York City in 1776 into 1777, at a time when slavery was legal and common in the Thirteen Colonies. The book is followed by sequels Forge (2010) and Ashes (2016). This book is also the subject of Academic Pentathlon's 2022-2023 Literature curriculum as one of the main works.
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda is a 2015 young adult novel and the debut book by American author Becky Albertalli. The coming-of-age story focuses on its titular protagonist Simon Spier, a closeted, gay, high school-aged boy who is forced to come out after a blackmailer discovers Simon's e-mails written to another closeted classmate with whom he has fallen in love.
Wonder is a 2017 American coming-of-age family drama film directed by Stephen Chbosky, who co-wrote the screenplay with Steven Conrad and Jack Thorne. It is based on the 2012 novel of the same name by R. J. Palacio and stars Julia Roberts, Owen Wilson, Jacob Tremblay, Mandy Patinkin, and Daveed Diggs.
