The Bible was first translated into English some time in the 7th century by an unnamed monk known to us as the Venerable Bede. This was the Old English version and the work of translation from Vulgate Latin into Middle English was taken up again in the 14th century by the famous religious dissenter John Wycliffe. Modern translations date from the 16th century onwards and these were sourced from Greek and Hebrew versions as well as Latin.
Most translations are made by a large group of scholars and a committee is set up to review and modify the work as required. This is to avoid any individual biases and assist in cross-checking references and come to a consensus on the closest...
A mystery about a “locked door” murder committed in a house that has a reputation for being haunted. In the first half of the book, the murderer appears to be easy to figure out. The second half of the book, however, is filled with plot twists and mistaken identities and thus complicates the mystery much more.
Present day readers live in a world that's emerged from the Cold War and the endless rivalry of the Super Powers but this book goes back and traces the origins of the conflict and mutual antagonism between nations.
Kim by Rudyard Kipling is set against the background of the Great Game as it was called the tug-of-war between Britain and Russia for the control of Central Asia. The novel's action takes place during the Anglo-Afghan Wars of 1839-42. The novel's sweeping narrative, the depth of character and the sheer historical scale make it a first rate story.
Nobel Prize winning author Rudyard Kipling is not much in fashion today. He is considered a relict of I...
Set in England at the turn of the 20th century, Wallace’s crime novel The Daffodil Mystery follows the mysterious circumstances under which shop owner Lyne has been murdered. Accordingly, it is up to detective Jack Tarling and his trusted Chinese assistant to solve the case and reach an appropriate and just resolution. Moreover, the happenings within the novel are intensified by the colorful set of characters, which are marked by their plausible façade and contribute to the novel’s appeal.
The crime novel opens when womanizer Thornton Lyne, also a wealthy heir and owner of a well-established store, makes an indecent proposition to his beautiful young cashier Odette Ri...
A Murder Whodunit!
Location: Hampstead, England.
Victim: Sir Horace Fewbanks, a distinguished High Court judge. Cause of death: gun shot wound.
Investigator: Private Detective Crewe, a wealthy bachelor who has taken up crime detection as a hobby, because it provides intellectual challenges more satisfying even than playing twelve simultaneous boards against Russian chess champion Turgieff.
His sidekick: Joe is a fourteen year old Cockney boy, whom Crewe saved from a life of crime by hiring him as a messenger-boy and shadower.
Other whodunit elements: clues galore, suspects in abundance, an inquest, a trial, and an elega...
The recent interest that's being generated in the pulp fiction writers of the 1920s has lead to many of the books of that genre being resurrected and read once again. For modern-day readers, these represent what are now called “airport-lounge reads” and ideal for those few hours that you have to kill waiting in an airport or railway station, while traveling or on holiday, when you don't want anything too heavy to weigh you down!
Pulp fiction, so called because the books were generally printed on cheaper paper made from recycled wood pulp, had certain characteristics. The novels were usually around 128 pages long, the size of the book was a handy 7x10 inches and the covers wer...
Robbery, murder and treason. Strange happenings in quiet English villages. A book critic who happens to find a corpse with its head crushed, an Irish freedom fighter framed for a crime, the disappearance of a valuable coin, a strange dispute over a property claim and a host of other intriguing situations make up the contents of G K Chesterton's collection of short stories The Man Who Knew Too Much.
For fans of Chesterton's immortal clerical sleuth, Father Brown, these stories are equally delightful and intricately wrought. The man who knows too much is in fact, the protagonist, Horne Fisher, who is doomed to solve mysteries, but faces a moral dilemma each time he arriv...