A shy and dowdy country girl, Berenice feels socially inept beside her vivacious and sophisticated cousin, Marjorie. But Marjorie decides to groom her and when Berenice turns out better than she expected, Marjorie is delighted, till Berenice catches the eye of one of Marjorie's own faithful admirers. Will Berenice remain the timid and diffident country girl, or will her newfound success give her courage?
Lois, a young girl engaged to be married, suddenly becomes unsure about the relationship with her fiancé Howard. She decides to visit Keith, her much older brother who has been a Jesuit priest for many years. In the church, Lois suddenly has an intense spiritual experience, ...
This is volume 1 of 2.
One of the most quirky, eccentric and endearing heroes to ever be depicted in fiction, the chivalrous Don Quixote is sure to capture hearts while bringing tears of laughter to your eyes. If you've never encountered the Knight from La Mancha before, get set for a delightful sojourn through the Spanish countryside, across the fertile countryside of Central Spain. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was an immediate success when it was first published in 1605 and won huge financial and literary success for its creator, an impoverished writer and poet.
Cervantes' own life was extremely eventful and colorful. The son of a poor army doct...
Banned in the United States and United Kingdom throughout the 1920s, Ulysses turned conventional ideas of the novel inside out with its bold new form, style and theme. Deeply rooted in the Greek myth of the hero of the Trojan War, Joyce bases his novel on Ulysses or Odysseus, who is doomed to voyage for ten years before returning home to Ithaca. Joyce had been deeply influenced by the Iliad and the Odyssey, which he had read from Charles Lamb's adaptations as a child. In fact, he considered him the epitome of the heroic ideal and constantly thought of giving the myth a new dimension in modern literature.
However, the reader must be cautioned that it is not an easy bo...
A masterly mix of romance, drama, mystery, suspense, love and jealousy, The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux will haunt you long after you've turned the last page.
Today the world knows it by Andrew Lloyd-Webber's long running musical on stage and its 2004 film adaptation, and earlier from Lon Chaney's screen portrayal of the dark intruder who roams the Paris Opera House. However, Gaston Leroux's novel was first released as a serial in the French magazine, La Gaulois over four months in 1909-10.
Gaston Leroux, himself led an extremely colorful life. Born into an immensely wealthy family, he had to abandon his early dreams of becoming a writer and began...
First published in Blackwood’s magazine as a three part serial in 1899 and published in 1902, Heart of Darkness centers on the experiences of protagonist Charles Marlow as he is assigned the duty to transport ivory down the Congo River. Conrad cleverly uses foreshadowing as a technique to convey the novella’s themes of hypocritical imperialism, the contradictory views on civilized as opposed to barbaric societies, racism, and the conflict between reality and darkness.
Set in the second half of the nineteenth century, the story begins with the introduction of protagonist Charles Marlow, who is on board a boat harbored in the River Thames. Marlow proceeds to recount his ...
The Short Ghost Story Collection contains ten classic spooky tales written by such master craftsmen as Algernon Blackwood, Charles Dickens, Bram Stoker and Saki among others. The stories range from haunted houses to reincarnation (as a predatory otter), ancient curses in which marble statues come alive and wreak a horrible revenge and a long narrative poem that describes a dialog between a ghost and a human being.
This anthology features authors like Lewis Carroll and E Nesbit who are traditionally regarded as children's writers and other practitioners of the paranormal like American writer Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.
Ghost stories generally deal with anything that's...
Science fiction (abbreviated SF or sci-fi with varying punctuation and case) is a broad genre of fiction that often involves sociological and technical speculations based on current or future science or technology. This is a reader-selected collection of short stories originally published between 1931 and 1963, that entered the US public domain when their copyright was not renewed.
Summary by Cori Samuel, with Wikipedia input.
Midnight. A lonely courtyard. The dead body of a stranger—a prosperous looking, well dressed, elderly man is found in Middle Temple Lane, London. This is one of England's ancient Inns of Court where barristers were traditionally apprenticed and carried on their work. Middle Temple is just a few minutes walk away from busy Fleet Street and the Thames Embankment. In the dead man's pocket is a piece of paper with the name and address of a young barrister. One of the first people to reach the crime scene is the investigative reporter, Frank Spargo, who writes for a leading London newspaper, The Watchman. Spargo is puzzled. Why would such a person be wandering about here at this hour...