Frank Lucius Packard (February 2, 1877 – February 17, 1942) born in Montreal, Quebec, was a Canadian novelist. Packard is credited with bridging the gap from the “cozy” style mysteries to the more gritty, hard-boiled style of such writers as Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler. Packard also wrote a series of novels, beginning in 1917, featuring Jimmie Dale. A wealthy playboy by day, at night, Jimmie becomes a crimefighter “The Gray Seal” complete with mask and secret hide-out, “The Sanctuary”. This character certainly influenced later crimefighting characters such as Batman and The Shadow.
In The White Moll (1920) Rhoda Gray, “The White Moll”, an angel of mercy who spends her ti...
The shortest novel by far of Charles Dickens', Hard Times is also one of his most idea based works. In it, he launches a scathing attack on the prevailing fashion of believing in Utilitarianism, a philosophy that proposed the goal of society should be “the greatest good for the greatest number of people.” Dickens felt that such a philosophy saw people as mere statistics and not as individuals.
The novel was published in serial form in his magazine Household Words. It is also the only novel where London is not featured. Set mainly in the fictional industrial town of Coketown, the book is divided into three sections “Sowing,” “Reaping” and “Garnering.”
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The Short Mystery Story Collection by Various is a real treat for intrigue enthusiasts! This volume features such greats as Ambrose Bierce, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Anton Chekov. Some unexpected names like P G Wodehouse and Kate Chopin also crop up, bending their prodigious talents to the genre.
The ten stories contained in this volume range from events as diverse as the mysterious death of a sea-captain in a seedy boarding house, a group of women who deal with a crime committed by a friend, a dashing king who seeks to cover up evidence of his philandering ways, a fatal obsession that consumes a man after his wife's death and many more to delight the midnight reader...
This excellent book contains many great stories from the various mythologies of man throughout the ages.