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The mystery of a secret room, scene of many murders, is unraveled by Carlos Paredes, the Panamanian Sherlock Holmes. (Summary by manybooks.net)

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Fiction, Mystery

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Written by Louisa May Alcott under her pseudonym, A. M. Barnard, this Christmas story deals with the themes of love and defending one's honor. Although he is disinherited and poor, Maurice Traherne tries to win the hand of his love, Octavia.(Summary by Jennifer Stearns)...

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Fiction, Romance

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One of Dickens' Christmas stories, this was first published as part of the Christmas number of Household Words for 1854. The first chapter relates Dickens' visit to the ancient Richard Watts's Charity at Rochester. The second chapter is the touching story of Richard Doubledick, which Dickens supposedly told the travellers, and Dickens' journey home on Christmas morning provides the short concluding chapter. (Summary by Ruth Golding)...

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Fiction, Holiday

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Twice-Told Tales is a short story collection in two volumes by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The first was published in the spring of 1837, and the second in 1842. The stories had all been previously published in magazines and annuals, hence the name....

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Fiction, Short stories

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A Concrete Verse poem which may be considered an elegiac Idyll on Beauty as Idée was written over a Thirty-year Entr'acte. It was composed of and with occurrences that began in 1963 of which some lines may be found in poems from "Miss Crabtree's Daughters" and "On the Nature of Existence"....

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Light as ponderous settling fog obscures | Reflections of flesh once was | Hundred-year mirror | Age has | photographs belied | They silently exist | by prusse Moon lit: | forgotten | were Reminiscences to be found; | Sorrows in Solitude solace consoled by one not seen; | embraces and caresses adumbrated | by Presence; | Existence frolicked imp-like: | Revelments paled | Resplendences paled | The currents set by Chronos slowed in the dark of Chaos; | And Beauty smiling | in | Mémoire | translucide...

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Inhabitants of the small town of Hamilton joke that they are afraid of being the dummy when playing Bridge, for fear of being murdered. Meanwhile, Special Investigator Bonnie Dundee demands a re-enactment of the 'death hand' to try and find out why, and how, the victim was killed during a high society Bridge party. (Summary by Gesine)...

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Mystery

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In the last of the six Palliser novels, the sudden death of his wife, Lady Glencora, leaves Plantagenet Palliser, the Duke of Omnium, finding himself in charge of his three children. The eldest, Lord Silverbridge, has recently been expelled from Oxford; his younger brother, Gerald, is about to enter Cambridge; and the youngest, nineteen-year old Lady Mary, has imprudently formed an attachment to Francis Tregear, who, while certainly a gentleman, unfortunately has no income. Before her death, Glencora knew (and approved) of her daughter's attachment; the Duke, however, does not know of it, and is not at all likely to approve. Mrs. Finn (the former Marie Goesler), who was Glencora's closest friend, learns from Mary of her love for Tregear, and is faced with the question of either keeping silent, thus breaking faith with the Duke (who has entrusted Lady Mary to her care) or telling the Duke, and breaking faith with Mary herself. Somewhat later Lord Silverbridge himself forms an attachment to an unsuitable (because American!) girl. The Duke, whose overriding passions in life are politics and the decimalization of English currency, finds...

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Fiction

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The Peculiar Conundrum is a political allegory, substituting difficult legal concepts with rules of sports. In the fictional country of Aminica (the United Franchises of Aminica), General Managers (Senators) and Head Coaches (Representatives) ignore many of their constraints listed in the Compact (Constitution) and act with impunity. The Sports Commissioner (President) and Referees (Supreme Court Justices) likewise do as they please. The country founded upon sports freedom, where soccer is named as the Supreme Sport of the Land, gets transformed by open corruption into football played to the death, where back-room deals enrich sports politicians and We The People are oppressed. But one man, Brandon Crawford, with the help of his brothers, work tirelessly to understand the peculiar conundrum, the odd phenomenon, of members of Congress and federal officials seemingly acting contrary to founding principles with impunity, so we may finally end the methodical push toward absolute tyranny....

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From the Back Cover: Envision for a moment, the following nonsensical sportscast: “Only seventeen seconds remain on the clock as we near the end of the sixth inning. The soccer ball is caught by Right End Tom King, only 9 yards from home plate. “To keep from being called for ‘Traveling,’ King dribbles the ball but still manages to get past the Goalie without being tackled. Moments later he slam-dunks the ball through the basket to score a touchdown and the Cattails win the game.” It wouldn’t take much of a sports enthusiast to realize something was strangely amiss with this “game,” as the rules and terms from soccer, baseball, basketball and football were all intermixed into one bewildering event. And, with millions of die-hard sports fans across America who intricately know every rule and regulation of their favored sport, there is about zero chance any huckster would succeed in passing this off as a legitimate game. But, replace the game with politics, law and government, and tragically the most sacred of our country’s founding legal and moral principles may be substituted by their polar opposites with nothing but the weak...

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Well, Robin, on what folly do you employ yourself? Do you cut sticks for our fire o' mornings? Thus spoke Master Hugh Fitzooth, King's Ranger of the Forest at Locksley, as he entered his house. Robin flushed a little. These are arrows, sir, he announced, holding one up for inspection. Dame Fitzooth smiled upon the boy as she rose to meet her lord. What fortune do you bring us to-day, father? asked she, cheerily. Fitzooth's face was a mask of discontent. I bring myself, dame, answered he, neither more nor less. Surely that is enough for Robin and me! laughed his wife. Come, cast off your shoes, and give me your bow and quiver. I have news for you, Hugh, even if you have none for us. George of Gamewell has sent his messenger to-day, and bids me bring Robin to him for the Fair. She hesitated to give the whole truth. (Summary by Vallabh Papdiwala)...

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Adventure, Fiction, Historical Fiction

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The Princess Priscilla of Lothen Kunitz finds court life stifling and runs away to England with the elderly court librarian. Her intention is to live a pure and simple life filled with good works. But life among ordinary people in an English village is not what she expects it to be... (Introduction by Tabithat)...

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Fiction, Comedy

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Some time after Three Men in a Boat, George, Harris and Jerome decided to go on a cycling holiday through Germany.This relaxed and gently humorous story of the three friends wandering in and around the Black Forest is coloured by anecdotes, odd tales and Jerome's comments on the German people and their way of life.(Published in 1914. Summary by Peter Yearsley)...

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Fiction, Comedy

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Excerpt: ?WHAT do you think she?d do if she caught us? We oughtn?t to have it, you know,? said Maisie. ?Beat me, and lock you up in your bedroom,? Dick answered, without hesitation. ?Have you got the cartridges?? ?Yes; they?re in my pocket, but they are joggling horribly. Do pin-fire cartridges go off of their own accord?? ?Don?t know. Take the revolver, if you are afraid, and let me carry them.? ?I?m not afraid.? Maisie strode forward swiftly, a hand in her pocket and her chin in the air. Dick followed with a small pin-fire revolver....

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Excerpt: Barnaby Rudge, A Tale of the Riots of ?Eighty by Charles Dickens.

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Excerpt: The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf.

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. The Boarding-House. Mrs. Tibbs was, beyond all dispute, the most tidy, fidgety, thrifty little personage that ever inhaled the smoke of London; and the house of Mrs. Tibbs was, decidedly, the neatest in all Great Coram-street. The area and the area-steps, and the street-door and the street-door steps, and the brass handle, and the door-plate, and the knocker, and the fan-light, were all as clean and bright, as indefatigable white-washing, and hearth-stoning, and scrubbing and rubbing, could make them....

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Introduction: Among the notable books of later times-we may say, without exaggeration, of all time--must be reckoned The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau. It deals with leading personages and transactions of a momentous epoch, when absolutism and feudalism were rallying for their last struggle against the modern spirit, chiefly represented by Voltaire, the Encyclopedists, and Rousseau himself--a struggle to which, after many fierce intestine quarrels and sanguinary wars throughout Europe and America, has succeeded the prevalence of those more tolerant and rational principles by which the statesmen of our own day are actuated....

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Excerpt: The Talisman by Sir Walter Scott.

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Excerpt: The Sentimentalists by George Meredith.

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HOMEWARE. PROFESSOR SPIRAL. ARDEN,............................................ In love with Astraea. SWITHIN,................................................... Sympathetics. OSIER. DAME DRESDEN............................ Sister to Homeware. ASTRAEA,........... Niece to Dame Dresden and Homeware. LYRA,..................................................................... A Wife. LADY OLDLACE. VIRGINIA. WINIFRED....

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Excerpt: One, two, three, four, five. There were five of them. Five couriers, sitting on a bench outside the convent on the summit of the Great St. Bernard in Switzerland, looking at the remote heights, stained by the setting sun as if a mighty quantity of red wine had been broached upon the mountain top, and had not yet had time to sink into the snow....

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. Passing over Ickleworth Bridge and rounding up the heavily shadowed river of our narrow valley, I perceived a commotion as of bathers in a certain bright space immediately underneath the vicar?s terrace-garden steps. My astonishment was considerable when it became evident to me that the vicar himself was disporting in the water, which, reaching no higher than his waist, disclosed him in the ordinary habiliments of his cloth. I knew my friend to be one of the most absentminded of men, and my first effort to explain the phenomenon of his appearance there, suggested that he might have walked in, the victim of a fit of abstraction, and that he had not yet fully comprehended his plight; but this idea was dispersed when I beheld the very portly lady, his partner in joy and adversity, standing immersed, and perfectly attired, some short distance nearer to the bank....