This novel, published in 1856, was one of the popular and beloved novels in the Victorian era. It is told in the first person by Phineas Fletcher, an invalid son of a Quaker tanner who is presented to us in the beginning as a lonely youth. John Halifax, the first friend he ever had, is a poor orphan who is taken in by his father to help in the work which his sickly son can't constantly do. Phineas tells us in an unforgettable way how John succeeded in rising from his humble beginning and become a wealthy and successful man. But with the money come horrible troubles... In an unforgettable manner, we learn to know all the characters of the novel as if they really lived.
Stephen Glennard's career is falling apart and he desperately needs money so that he may marry his beautiful fiancee. He happens upon an advertisement in a London magazine promising the prospect of financial gain. Glennard was once pursued by Margaret Aubyn, a famous and recently deceased author, and he still has her passionate love letters to him. Glennard removes his name from the letters and sells them, making him a fortune and building a marriage based on the betrayal of another.
This is the story of Miriam, an orphan Christian woman living in Rome in the first century. She falls in love with a Roman officer, but knows that her Jewish childhood playmate loves her too- and will do anything in order to get her love in return.
Most times, especially in the time when this book was written (1895), it is just as nature and society would wish: a man and woman "fall in love" and get married. But it is not so for Herminia Barton and Alan Merrick. They do indeed fall in love, but Herminia has a deeply held belief in freedom for women, and she holds immutable views against what she perceives as the slavery of marriage.
Alan unwillingly agrees to her strong wish to remain unmarried and to live together as "close and dear friends". When the birth of their child is imminent, they go to his beloved Italy to avoid the condemnation of English society.
From this point on, many questions are raised: is marriage indeed so important? Is strong will always good? Is it right to go against society? And if it is, when should we stop and consider the effects on other people? What should a child do when she is raised to be what her mother dreams and develops her own dreams in the process? And, finally, how much should parents sacrifice for their children?
The Jubilee marks the fiftieth year of the reign of Queen Victoria. Dickensian in its sweeping scope of London life, Jubilee depicts the harsh and disreputable conditions of lower-middle class life at the end of the 19th century.
Once more Chet, Walt and Diane are united in a wild ride to the Dark Moon—but this time they go as prisoners of their deadly enemy Schwartzmann.
Sir Thomas Henry Hall Caine, CH, KBE (14 May 1853 – 31 August 1931), usually known as Hall Caine, was a British author. He is best known as a novelist and playright of the late Victorian and the Edwardian eras. In his time he was exceedingly popular and at the peak of his success and his novels outsold those of his contemporaries. Many of his novels were also made into films. His novels were primarily romantic in nature, involving the love triangle, but they did also address some of the more serious political and social issues of the day.
He was a lover of the Isle of Man and Manx culture and purchased a large house, Greeba Castle, on the island. For a time he was a Member of the House of Keys.
In 1916 The Manxman, which was produced by the London Film Company, was filmed on the Isle of Man and when it was released in 1917 it drew huge crowds in Britain and America.
The Manxman tells the story of two childhood friends, a poor fisherman, Pete Quilliam, and a lawyer, Philip Christian. Pete is in love with Kate but when her father, Old Caesar refuses to consent to their marriage, Pete sets off for Africa to make his fortune, asking Philip to take care of Kate until he returns...
Charley Steele is a successful and brilliant Canadian lawyer. He has a nagging wife, Kathleen, and a lazy brother-in- law, Billy. In spite of his success, he is disillusioned with his life, drinks too much, and is deeply troubled by his agnosticism which leads to trouble and confusion. When Billy embezzles money, Charley discovers the theft and sets out to make things right. Charley however, ends up in a waterfront saloon where he encounters a barroom brawl and becomes unconscious. Charley loses his memory and ends up in the Canadian Northwoods where he falls in love with a pretty postmistress, Rosalie. He finds he is perfectly content with his "new" life but when his memory returns, he is deeply disturbed by his past and ponders whether to return to his old life to make amends. Mystery, romance, and intrigue are interwoven throughout the novel. The Right of Way was made into movies in 1915, 1920, and 1931.
Phil Thurston was born on the range where the trails are dim and silent under the big sky. It was the place his father loved, the place he had to be. After the death of his father when he was five, his mother brought him back to the city, where he grew up and became a writer. To revive his stale writing, he returns to the West, and may just find what he is really missing.
Merton of the Movies is a comedy that centers around Merton Gill, an aspiring dramatic artist from Simsbury, Illinois who makes his way to Hollywood to become a serious actor. How could Merton fail in attaining his dreams after finishing a correspondence course from the General Film Production Company of Stebbinsville, Arkansas, certifying him to be a competent screen actor?
Harry Leon Wilson, the author, was a very popular humor writer in the first decades of the 20th century. This book was made into film several times, the last in 1947 starring Red Skelton. (Summary written by Margaret.)
"I doubt that anyone who reads [Born Again] will ever forget it: it is quite singularly bad, with long undigestible rants against the evils of the world, an impossibly idealistic Utopian prescription for the said evils, and - as you will have gathered - a very silly plot." - oddbooks.co.uk
Alfred Lawson was a veritable Renaissance man: a professional baseball player, a luminary in the field of aviation, an outspoken advocate of vegetarianism and economic reform, and the founder of a pseudo-scientific crackpot philosophy called Lawsonomy. Born Again, his only novel, is a bizarre, delirious, and delightfully silly utopian science-fiction novel that lays the groundwork for the philosophy that would later dominate Lawson's life. It tells the story of John Convert, a wayward, seafaring soul (based loosely on Lawson, minus the conveniently symbolic initials) who is tossed overboard by his crewmen after a physical altercation. Convert awakens on an island inhabited by a race of superhuman giants -- called the Sagemen -- who slumber in their subterranean city. He then meets Arletta, a giantess who takes Convert on a journey that will change his life in ways too fantastically strange to imagine.
A villainous vicar insinuates himself into the life of a wealthy but foolish widow, ruining the fortunes and happiness of her three children, until they begin to fight back. Published in 1837 by the mother of the better-known Anthony Trollope, this highly readable romance portrays the evangelical movement of the Anglican church in a shocking light that may remind readers of some of the religious abuses of the present day.
Written just before Prohibition to entail the possible troubles that might happen en route. Both sides of the argument, or battle as the case may be, strike out with various over-top methods like legislating most fruits and vegetables as unsafe or intoxicating large groups with breathable alcohol.
Paul is a poor boy who grew up in London, in the household of his mother and stepfather. His journey to greatness is the subject of our story. But his desired success comes at a very high price.
John Dene comes to England with a great invention, and the intention of gingering-up the Admiralty. His directness and unconventional methods bewilder and embarrass the officials at Whitehall, where, according to him, most of the jobs are held by those "whose great-grandfathers had a pleasant way of saying how-do-you-do to a prince."
Suddenly John Dene disappears, and the whole civilised world is amazed at an offer of £20,000 for news of him. Scotland Yard is disorganised by tons of letters and thousands of callers. Questions are asked in the House, the Government becomes anxious, only Department Z. retains its equanimity.
By the way, what did happen to John Dene of Toronto?
Ruth Levice, the daughter of a rich San Francisco Jewish merchant, meats Dr. Herbert Kemp, and they slowly fall in love. However, she is Jewish and he is not. Can love overcome such an obstacle? And what is more important, duty or love?
With but two years of service in the RNMP Philip Raine finds himself somewhat unwillingly on the trail of Bram Johnson, wanted for murder and a wild, untamed and savage man who commands a pack of wolves as his brethren.
But most peculiar of all is the snare which Bram had had in his posession and had somehow lost. It was a golden snare intricately woven out of the finest, most delicate flaxen hair of a woman. But what could possibly be the relationship between this half-human murderer and a woman who could have borne a crown of such beauty and elegance? The mystery of Bram Johnson and his wolves and the golden snare becomes one which Raine feels compelled to unravel even as he pursues the wild man and his pack among his own territory of the Canadian barren lands.
With international book sales in the millions, Ralph Connor was the best-known Canadian novelist of the first two decades of the Twentieth Century. Glengarry School Days (1902), hugely popular in its time, is based on his memories of growing up in rural Ontario around the time of Canadian confederation. Although Connor saw himself as writing moral fiction for adults, generations of younger readers have also enjoyed these affectionate and gently amusing sketches, and excerpts from Glengarry School Days have appeared in school anthologies.
After his father’s death Gerard Roylake returns from Germany to take up his inheritance at Trimley Deen. On one evening he meets his childhood friend, Cristel Toller. They fall in love, but there is a crux. A deaf man, called The Lodger is obsessed with Cristel. He invites Gerard to tea with evil intentions… and Gerard accepts the invitation.
The book is written in the first person and tells the story from Gerard's point of view.
"Christina is a story of two people: Christina, a strong young and poor woman who searches for work and finds more than she bargained for, and Rupert, a middle class man who is pressured to marry and settle down. These 2 people meet frequently and start to confide in each other. But can they really help one another put their wounds from the past to rest and start a new life? And will their new life include one another? Lucy Gertrude Moberly was an English popular novelist whose wonderful writing style deserves attention."
This book is a parody of the famous swashbuckling novel, She, by H. Rider Haggard.
The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today is an 1873 novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner that satirizes greed and political corruption in post-Civil War America. The term gilded age, commonly given to the era, comes from the title of this book. Twain and Warner got the name from Shakespeare's King John (1595): "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily... is wasteful and ridiculous excess." Gilding a lily, which is already beautiful and not in need of further adornment, is excessive and wasteful, characteristics of the age Twain and Warner wrote about in their novel. Another interpretation of the title, of course, is the contrast between an ideal "Golden Age," and a less worthy "Gilded Age," as gilding is only a thin layer of gold over baser metal, so the title now takes on a pejorative meaning as to the novel's time, events and people.
Although not one of Twain's more well-known works, it has appeared in more than 100 editions since its original publication in 1873. Twain and Warner originally had planned to issue the novel with illustrations by Thomas Nast. The book is remarkable for two reasons–-it is the only novel Twain wrote with a collaborator, and its title very quickly became synonymous with graft, materialism, and corruption in public life.
Originally published in 1873, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today is the only novel Twain co-wrote (C.D. Warner was a good friend and neighbor of the Clemens family in Hartford, and the collaboration sprang from their wive's challenge and encouragement). The title, "The Gilded Age" became synonymous with graft, materialism and corruption in public life, which are well represented in this work. Like others of his works, this one reflects truths about American Society that remain pertinent today. Many of the characters and incidents that occur in the Gilded Age had their real-life origins in Clemens relatives and history, a fact which he revealed in his newly published (2011) Autobiography.
Amanda McKittrick Ros, a Northern Irish writer, did for the novel what William McGonagall did for poetry and Florence Foster Jenkins for the coloratura voice. She published a number of novels (all at her own expense) and in addition to being a novelist was a poet, her best known being 'Visiting Westminster Abbey' which begins
Holy Moses!
Take a look!
Flesh decayed in every nook!
Some rare bits of brain lie here,
Mortal loads of beef and beer.
Elizabeth Gaskell's last novel was serialized in Cornhill Magazine from 1864 to 1866, and completed by her editor posthumously. It looks at English life in the 1830s through the experiences of Molly Gibson, the daughter of a widowed doctor growing up in the provincial town of Hollingford. When Mr. Gibson decides to marry again, Molly is forced to contend with a pretentious stepmother, but consoled by a close friendship with Cynthia, her new stepsister. The girls' relations with the local residents, particularly the Squire of Hamley Hall and his family, make for incidents comic, romantic, and tragic, by turns.
What is the secret of the old boarded up house? And what is the answer to the mystery of the long lost letter that is found in it? Best friends Joyce and Cynthia - along with their dog "Goliath", are determined to find out in this pre-Nancy Drew juvenile mystery for girls.
Augusta Huiell Seaman was the author of over 40 historical fiction and mystery novels for older children.
Trent's Last Case (US title The Woman in Black) is actually the first novel in which gentleman sleuth Philip Trent appears. The novel is a whodunit whose unique place in the history of detective fiction is because it is at the same time the first major send-up of that very genre: Not only does Trent fall in love with one of the primary suspects — usually considered a no-no — he also, after painstakingly collecting all the evidence, draws all the wrong conclusions. Convinced that he has tracked down the murderer of a business tycoon who was shot in his mansion, he is told by the real perpetrator over dinner what mistakes in the logical deduction of the solution of the crime he has made. On hearing what really happened, Trent vows that he will never again attempt to dabble in crime detection.
Lucy Maud Montgomery was born at Clifton (now New London), Prince Edward Island, Canada, on November 30, 1874. She achieved international fame in her lifetime, putting Prince Edward Island and Canada on the world literary map. Best known for her "Anne of Green Gables" books, she was also a prolific writer of short stories and poetry. She published some 500 short stories and poems and twenty novels before her death in 1942. The Project Gutenberg collection of her short stories was gathered from numerous sources and is presented in chronological publishing order:
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 (in progress)
The horse is perfect in all its parts—a splendid steed, saddled, bridled, and otherwise completely caparisoned. In it there appears nothing amiss—nothing to produce either wonder or alarm. But the man—the rider? Ah! About him there is something to cause both—something weird—something wanting!
By heavens! it is the head! (Excerpt from the Prologue)
The Headless Horseman is a novel by Mayne Reid written in 1865 or 1866 and is based on the author's adventures in the United States. The Headless Horseman or a Strange Tale of Texas was set in Texas and based on a South Texas folk tale.
Vladimir Nabokov recalled The Headless Horseman as a favourite adventure novel of his childhood years - "which had given him a vision of the prairies and the great open spaces and the overarching sky." At 11, Nabokov even translated The Headless Horseman into French alexandrines.
Framley Parsonage is the fourth novel in Anthony Trollope's series known as the "Chronicles of Barsetshire", first published in serial form in the Cornhill Magazine in 1860.
Andrew Lang's Fairy Books or Andrew Lang's "Coloured" Fairy Books constitute a twelve-book series of fairy tale collections. Although Andrew Lang did not collect the stories himself from the oral tradition, the extent of his sources, who had collected them originally (with the notable exception of Madame d'Aulnoy), made them an immensely influential collection, especially as he used foreign-language sources, giving many of these tales their first appearance in English. As acknowledged in the prefaces, although Lang himself made most of the selections, his wife and other translators did a large portion of the translating and telling of the actual stories.
Many of the books were illustrated by Henry J. Ford, Lancelot Speed, and G. P. Jacomb Hood also contributed some illustrations.
A fable of literally life and death significance, the story explores how the protagonist tries to keep the remembrance of his dead friends, to save them from being forgotten entirely in the rush of everyday events. He meets a woman who shares his ideals, only to find that the past places what seems to be an impassable barrier between them. Although James was not religious in any conventional sense, the story shows a deep spirituality in its treatment of mortality and the transcendent power of unselfish love.
The plot concerns two – literally starcrossed – lovers: Swithin St. Cleeve, a very young amateur astronomer, and Viviette Constantine, an unhappily married and abandoned woman 8 or 9 years his senior. Each night Swithin climbs the old tower of the title, in the grounds of the Constantine estate. Lady Constantine, whose husband has been absent some years on an extended hunting and exploring journey to Africa, joins the young man in his stargazing, and supports his astronomical ambitions by buying him equipment, though his dreams of scientific renown are disappointed.Their relationship then deepens and takes several twists and turns.
“Doc” E.E. Smith pretty much invented the space opera genre, and Triplanetary is a good and well-known example. Physics, time, and politics never stand in the way of a plot that gallops ahead without letup.
Having earned a PhD in chemical engineering, it’s understandable that the heroes of Smith’s story are all scientists. He didn’t want to be constrained by the limits of known science, however, so in his hands the electromagnetic spectrum becomes a raw material to be molded into ever-more amazing and lethal forms, and the speed of light is no bar to traveling through the interstellar void.
Come enjoy this story of yesteryear, set in tomorrow, where real women ignite love at a glance, real men achieve in days what governments manage in decades, and aliens are an ever-present threat to Life-As-We-Know-It!
This first of a trilogy of novels is a coming-of-age story set in the Midlands of Victorian England, following Edwin Clayhanger as he leaves school, takes over the family business, and falls in love.
The books are set in Bennett's usual setting of "the 5 Towns", a thinly-disguised version of the six towns of "the Potteries" which amalgamated (at the time of which Bennett was writing) into the borough (and later city) of Stoke-on-Trent.
In one of the earlier chapters in the book, Bennett writes that Edwin had only heard of a philosopher as 'someone who made the best of a bad job' and in some ways that is what Edwin has to do in the book - survive under a stifling layer of conduct imposed by his father, his church and the society he is part of.
The tales in the Grey Fairy Book are derived from many countries — Lithuania, various parts of Africa, Germany, France, Greece, and other regions of the world. They have been translated and adapted by Mrs. Dent, Mrs. Lang, Miss Eleanor Sellar, Miss Blackley, and Miss Hang. 'The Three Sons of Hali' is from the last century 'Cabinet des Fees,' a very large collection. The French author may have had some Oriental original before him in parts; at all events he copied the Eastern method of putting tale within tale, like the Eastern balls of carved ivory. The stories, as usual, illustrate the method of popular fiction. A certain number of incidents are shaken into many varying combinations, like the fragments of coloured glass in the kaleidoscope. Probably the possible combinations, like possible musical combinations, are not unlimited in number, but children may be less sensitive in the matter of fairies than Mr. John Stuart Mill was as regards music.
A typical early 20th century western. It's a tale of a tough guy who gets involved with an evil man with an angel daughter for whom the tough guy falls. His efforts to recover hers and her father's gold mine claims is the story. Not a lot of shoot em up but enough story to make one want to finish the book to see how things work out.
In the Cage is a novella by Henry James, first published as a book in 1898. This long story centers on an unnamed London telegraphist. She deciphers clues to her clients' personal lives from the often cryptic telegrams they submit to her as she sits in the "cage" at the post office. Sensitive and intelligent, the telegraphist eventually finds out more than she may want to know. (Introduction from Wikipedia)
Almayer’s Folly is about a poor businessman who dreams of finding a hidden gold mine and becoming very wealthy. Kaspar Almayer is a white European. He agrees to marry a native Malayan captured by Captain Tom Lingard, his employer, believing the marriage will bring him riches even though he has no love for the woman. They have one daughter named Nina. Almayer relocates with his wife to Malaysian where he hopes to build a trading company and find gold mines. His hopeless daydreams of riches and splendor cause his native wife to loath him.
Almayer, desperate, hopes to find his salvation in Dain Maroola, a Malayan prince, who arrives on the island one day. Maroola agrees to work with Almayer and Lakamba, the Rajah, to send an expedition in search of the gold mines. In fact, Maroola is interested only in Nina with whom he has fallen in love. They plan to secretly leave the island. I can’t tell you more, or I would spoil the story.
The Bobbsey Twins are the principal characters of what was, for many years, the Stratemeyer Syndicate's longest-running series of children's novels, penned under the pseudonym Laura Lee Hope. The first of 72 books was published in 1904, the last in 1979. The books related the adventures of the children of the middle-class Bobbsey family, which included two sets of fraternal twins: Bert and Nan, who were 12 years old, and Flossie and Freddie, who were six.
Charming Tales about cats and dogs.
Julia Cloud, the oldest--and most responsible--child of her family, helped raise her four siblings due to their mother's long-time illness and father's death. After faithfully nursing two ill brothers (who died), she then cared for her invalid mother for many years. When Julia's mother passes on, her only surviving sibling Ellen fully expects--and nearly demands--that her spinster sister come live with her family. But to earn her keep, Julia must be their live-in housekeeper and babysitter for Ellen's four children. But Julia's college-age niece and nephew arrive unexpectedly from California and offer Aunt Cloudy Jewel a surprise opportunity she never expected in her wildest dreams.
A small play in three acts. A kind of comic tragedy. The plot tells the story of the interaction between two very different families in rural England just after the end of the First World War. Squire Hillcrist lives in the manor house where his family has lived for generations. He has a daughter, Jill, who is in her late teens; and a wife, Amy, as well as servants and retainers. He is "old money", although his finances are at a bit of low ebb. The other family is the "nouveau riche" Hornblowers, headed by the single-minded and rich industrialist Hornblower, who throws old retainers the Jackmans out of their home (much to the Squire's disgust), and who plans to surround the Hillcrist's rural estate with factories.
Like The Begum's Millions, which Verne published in 1879, it has the theme of France and the entire world threatened by a super-weapon (what would now be called a weapon of mass destruction) with the threat finally overcome through the force of French patriotism.
A reputedly wealthy and eccentric old man dies in Vermont. His home, the House of a Thousand Candles, so called for the owner's preference to candle light, is left empty save a faithful servant -- his fortune mysteriously vanished, though rumored to still have been hidden in the house somewhere. John Glenarm, the late old man's grandson, stands to inherit the estate (and so the secret fortune) under the stipulation that he live in the house for one year. If he fails, the house will be forfeited and awarded to Marian Devereaux, the niece of the nun who operates the nearby Saint Agatha's School for girls. Mister Pickering, the executor of the estate and childhood rival of John's, decides to find the hidden treasure before young Glenarm does.
Sheen, a member of Seymour's House at Wrykyn School, flees from an unexpected assault by town boys. His colleagues wade into the fight with relish, acquiring bruises and sore heads, but in the fracas, Sheen is missed, and the story makes the rounds of Wrykyn that when blows were traded, Sheen "funked it."Honor in such institutions depends on reliably standing with your House. As punishment for his defection, Sheen is "cut" - treated as if he did not exist.In a later expedition into town, Sheen is set upon by the town bullies and finds that when retreat is no option, he can take their blows and fight against odds. Seeing his pluck, bystander Joe Bevan, an ex-champion boxer, offers to tutor Sheen.Surprisingly, Sheen finds he has a knack for boxing. And with that discovery comes a plan: he will fight for his House in the Lightweight division and win back his honor.But the best-laid plans... may go awry!Wodehouse, a humorist, picks up the sober topic of cowardice but treats it with his customary panache.
Patty, Conny, and Priscilla are the best of friends, and roommates at boarding school. While the teachers might say they are mischievous, even troublemakers, Patty and her friends act only in accordance with their convictions. From forming a labor union to furnishing a house for the neighbors, Patty's ideas are unconventional, yet loads of fun. Just Patty is the prequel to When Patty Went to College, the first novel by the author of Daddy-Long-Legs and Dear Enemy.
When the blue plague appeared on the planet of Dara, fear struck nearby worlds. The fear led to a hate that threatened the lives of millions and endangered the Galactic peace.
He made one mistake in the beginning. He pushed the chestnut too hard the first and second days, so that on the third day he was forced to give the gelding his head and go at a jarring trot most of the day. On the fourth and fifth days, however, he had the reward for his caution. The chestnut's ribs were beginning to show painfully, but he kept doggedly at his work with no sign of faltering. The sixth day brought Andrew Lanning in close view of the lower hills. And on the seventh day he put his fortune boldly to the touch and jogged into the first little town before him..
Arthur Scott Bailey (1877 – 1949) was the author of more than forty children's books. "Mr. Bailey centered all his plots in the animal, bird and insect worlds, weaving natural history into the stories in a way that won educator's approval without arousing the suspicions of his young readers. He made it a habit to never 'write down' to children and frequently used words beyond the average juvenile vocabulary, believing that youngsters respond to the stimulus of the unfamiliar." (Wikipedia)