Small town middle America in early 1900's---Ne'er-do-well Joe Louden loves daughter of wealthy judge, from afar---leaves town, goes to law school--returns to scandalize all by defending impossible cases---wins over town. Story of small town mores, social inequity, changing times, honor and greed. Summary by Bob Rollins.
“How various is man! How multiplied his experience, his outlook, his conclusions!”—H. Belloc.“And every single one of them is right.”—R. Kipling.Written while Macaulay worked in the Propaganda Department of the War Office, and reflecting her own mysticism and skepticism of organized religion, The Making of a Bigot follows young Eddy Oliver from Cambridge University as he meets people whose stronger personalities influence his weaker one, with their persuasive arguments. ( Lynne Thompson) Thompson
"No man who has not endured solitude in long doses knows how vivid, real, and necessary people and things of the imagination may become." (from the book).
The touching story of a wrongly convicted youth with a creative imagination.
"Traveling men have a poor opinion of it. Ministers of the gospel have been known to despair of it. Socially ambitious matrons move out of it, or, if that is not possible, despise it. Real estate men can not get rich in it. And humorless folk sometimes have a hard, sad time of it in Green Valley". This is an authentic novel about a small town in the USA. A book about what people tell and don't tell, loves and losses, and the importance of community. Community life which did not go away.
Eccentric and wealthy New York widow Ursula Pell loves playing cruel jokes on her guests and particularly on her niece and nephew who are destined to inherit the millions in gems left to her by her late husband. Therefore when she is found brutally murdered in a locked room the morning after a dinner party her niece Iris the most recent victim of Ursula's humiliating pranks is first suspected until all the clues point to her nephew. Where did she stash the gemstones and the much mentioned diamond pin promised Iris. Enter Fleming Stone, famous detective who hopefully can prove the innocence of the nephew, the true value of the diamond pin and discover WHO killed Mrs. Pell.
The story of a plucky, optimistic newsboy, Michael O’Halloran, who has been orphaned from a young age and asks nothing of the world but to “Be Square!” This is a warm and joyous story of how Michael makes life sunnier for those around him, bringing joy to all who know him.
The novel follows the lives of Rose and her widowed Aunt, Madame Francesca Bernard, along with young visitor and cousin Isabel, whose lives are changed by the return of an old friend and neighbour Colonel Kent, and his grown son, Allison. Other characters that help shape their lives in significant ways are the Crosby twins, unconventional and uninhibited youths that set society at naught, and an unconventional doctor who specializes in the impossible. Through the limited "wide-scope" descriptions the reader is not sure of the historical setting or even in which decade it's set, but it helps to understand the focus of the story; after all it's about their own little world, and how their own hearts and lives fit together in the tight confines of their town, their garden, their friendships and lives.
The story of a love so strong that neither the rigid rules of Society in California in the 1800s nor the very bowels of hell could keep a young woman from the love she had found. A story rich in fashion ad feminism showing how determination and love could overcome all obstacles.
This 1915 novella was published as the First World War raged. "Belgium lies bleeding. Across her level, lush meadows the harsh-shod hosts of war have marched. Beside her peaceful waters the sons of God have spilled each other’s blood. Beneath her noble trees have raged the fires of human hate. Her king and his brave warriors have fought to save that which was their own and, driven back, have left their smiling land to suffer the desolation which has ever been the conqueror’s boast. Her ancient cities smoke. The inspired craftsmanship of an elder day has been destroyed forever. Belgium lies moaning. Across the winter sea we have heard the wailing of men and women among their ruined homes—honest townsfolk, simple Walloon and Flemish peasants, who had borne no malice and had done no wrong. And amid the cries of anguish and despair there have come to me the weeping of a little girl named Lisa and the voice of a faithful dog whining for his master."
A multitude of very short stories populated with things that lurk in the dark corners of human imagination. Wonderfully crafted and sometimes ending with an unexpected outcome, these stories are well rooted in mythology and speak of things beyond the thin veil of reality.
Anne Shirley is grown up and married, and her six children are off having their own adventures with the Merediths - the four children of a widowed, absent-minded minister. Whether they're hiding a runaway home girl and plotting to save her from the orphanage or organizing a day of fasting to punish themselves for singing an awful song in the graveyard, their adventures and misadventures make this seventh Anne novel a different, but still delightful, story.
Briefly appearing in 1915, then banned and taken out of circulation for its adult treatment of sexuality, Lawrence's visionary novel The Rainbow attempts to situate the lives of three generations of the Brangwen family within the continuous social change marking the Victorian transformation of Britain. Farmer Tom and his Polish wife Lydia, whose peaceful rural existence re-enacts the potent myths of Genesis; artisan Will and the matriarch Anna, who go to live among the industrial and mining communities so rapidly sprung up around Nottingham; finally the restless Ursula who, moving to the city, seeks sexual and emotional fulfilment with the Polish-descended Skrebensky - the three couples are not merely illustrative of the changing times, but allow the author to study in depth the conflict between the outer 'social' selves of those individuals and what he curiously calls the 'inhuman' essential being, the 'is-ness' at the core of their psychical life.
Lawrence evokes this dark, unconscious 'vital core' through a language of breathtaking poetic beauty; a rhythmic incantatory prose which listeners to this recording will find perfectly rendered by Tony Foster, in all its nuances. Like Paul Morel, the hero of the earlier Sons and Lovers, Ursula survives her losses to face a future of uncertain but radiant hope: "She saw in the rainbow the earth's new architecture, the old, brittle corruption of houses and factories swept away, the world built up in a living fabric of Truth, fitting to the over-arching heaven."
Henry James considered The Ambassadors his best, or perhaps his best-wrought, novel. It plays on the great Jamesian theme of the American abroad, who finds himself in an older, and some would say richer, culture that that of the United States, with its attractions and dangers. Here the protagonist is Lambert Strether, a man in his fifties, editor of a small literary magazine in Woollett, Massachusetts, who arrives in Europe on a mission undertaken at the urging of his patron, Mrs. Newsome, to bring back her son Chadwick. That young man appears to be enjoying his time in Paris rather more than seems good for him, at least to those older and wiser. The novel, however, is perhaps really about Strether's education in this new land, and one of his teachers is the city of Paris -- a real Paris, not an idealized one, but from which Strether has much to learn. Chad Newsome, of course is there too, and so are a scattering of other Americans, his old friend Waymarsh and his new acquaintance Maria Gostrey among them. Had Strether his life to live over again, knowing what he has now learned,. how different would it be? and what are the lessons he takes home with him?
The Golden Bowl is a 1904 novel by Henry James. Set in England, this complex, intense study of marriage and adultery completes what some critics have called the "major phase" of James' career. The Golden Bowl explores the tangle of interrelationships between a father and daughter and their respective spouses. The novel focuses deeply and almost exclusively on the consciousness of the central characters, with sometimes obsessive detail but also with powerful insight.
A framing story is told in the first person by Darrell Standing, a university professor serving life imprisonment in San Quentin State Prison for murder. Prison officials try to break his spirit by means of a torture device called "the jacket," a canvas jacket which can be tightly laced so as to compress the whole body, inducing angina. Standing discovers how to withstand the torture by entering a kind of trance state, in which he walks among the stars and experiences portions of past lives.
The jacket itself was actually used at San Quentin at the time and Jack London's descriptions of it were based on interviews with a former convict named Ed Morrell, which is also the name of a character in the novel. For his role in the Sontag and Evans gang which robbed the Southern Pacific Railroad in the 1890s, Morrell spent fourteen years in California prisons (1894-1908), five of them in solitary confinement. London championed his pardon. After his release, Morrell was a frequent guest at London's Beauty Ranch.
"The People of the Black Circle" is one of the original novellas about Conan the Cimmerian, written by American author Robert E. Howard and first published in Weird Tales magazine in three parts over the September, October and November 1934 issues. It is set in the pseudo-historical Hyborian Age and concerns Conan kidnapping a regal princess of Vendhya (pre-historical India) and foiling a nefarious plot of world domination by the Black Seers of Yimsha. Due to its epic scope and atypical Hindustan flavor, the story is considered an undisputed classic of Conan lore and is often cited by Howard scholars as one of his best tales. It is also one of the few Howard stories where the reader is treated a deeper insight on magic and magicians beyond the stereotypical Hyborian depiction as demon conjurer-illusionist-priests.
The famous Castlecourt Diamonds have gone missing and the story surrounding their disappearance is strange indeed. To help sort out the mystery, you will hear eye witness statements given by the various participants in this curious case now, for the first time, given to the public.
Robert Chambers was a contemporary of Lovecraft, and this book consists of "weird supernatural tales" in a somewhat similar manner, except that the emphasis is on humor rather than horror. The narrator works for the newly opened Bronx Zoo in New York. He describes his adventures trying to obtain various rare specimens for the zoo's collection, animals that range from the merely extinct to the considerably more unusual. Along the way, he invariably finds a beautiful woman to fall in love with.
Three Lives tells the stories of three women from the same fictitious town of Bridgeport. The first story is of Anna, a servant to the wealthy, or those who seem to be wealthy. She finds herself taking on "projects" in an effort to better the people around her. Story number two is of Melanctha, a mixed-race character who is looking for ways to increase her knowledge and power over others, but mostly finds herself dealing with rejection and betrayal. The final story is of Lena, a German immigrant who leads a rather ordinary life as a married woman.
The Magician is a novel by British author W. Somerset Maugham, originally published in 1908. In this tale, the magician Oliver Haddo, a caricature of Aleister Crowley, attempts to create life. Crowley wrote a critique of this book under the pen name Oliver Haddo, where he accused Maugham of plagiarism. Maugham wrote The Magician in London, after he had spent some time living in Paris, where he met Aleister Crowley. The novel was later republished with a foreword by Maugham entitled A Fragment of Autobiography. (Wikipedia)
Lawrence summarised the plot of Sons and Lovers in a letter to Edward Garnett in 1912:
“It follows this idea: a woman of character and refinement goes into the lower class, and has no satisfaction in her own life. She has had a passion for her husband, so her children are born of passion, and have heaps of vitality. But as her sons grow up she selects them as lovers — first the eldest, then the second. These sons are urged into life by their reciprocal love of their mother — urged on and on. But when they come to manhood, they can't love, because their mother is the strongest power in their lives, and holds them...”
The present reader tells the story in his authentic regional English, featuring the East Midlands dialect used by Lawrence in the more intimate exchanges between characters. (Summary prepared by Martin Geeson.)
Before Adam is a mixture of sound science and sci-fi speculation. It is based around Darwin's theory of evolution and the idea of racial memory. The main character lives in the current world but has dreams and nightmares that he relives the pre-stone age life of one of his proto-human ancestors. Those who are scientifically inclined may enjoy this novel more than fans of "standard" science fiction such as Edgar Rice Burroughs.
A collection of short stories.
An romantic comedy. A pretty young American girls tours English Cathedrals, with her very blue-blooded Aunt. Then boy meets girl. Boy chases girl. Boy loses girl. Boy finds girl. Finally, girl catches boy with the help of a mad bull.
The Old Wives' Tale is a novel by Arnold Bennett, first published in 1908. It deals with the lives of two very different sisters, Constance and Sophia Baines, following their stories from their youth, working in their mother's draper's shop, into old age. It is generally regarded as one of Bennett's finest works. It covers a period of about 70 years from roughly 1840 to 1905, and is set in Burslem and Paris.
This 1918 book consists of five short stories or novelettes by Galsworthy. They are The First and Last (1914), A Stoic, The Apple Tree (1916), The Juryman, Indian Summer of a Forsyte (1918) This last became part of the trilogy The Forsyte Saga.
Sybella: "There is no plot in this story, because there has been none in my life or in any other life which has come under my notice. I am one of a class, the individuals of which have no time for plots in their life, but have all they can do to get their work done without indulging in such a luxury". Like the author Miles Franklin, Sybella grows up in the bush, and as her family's fortunes decline, so her feelings rise that life should hold more for her than the relentless hard physical work farming marginal land in times of drought.
Five ghost stories, published in 1920, by the early twentieth century master of ghostery.
When Sylvia Tebrick, the 24-year-old wife of Richard Tebrick, suddenly turns into a fox while they are out walking in the woods, Mr. Tebrick sends away all the servants in an attempt to keep Sylvia's new nature a secret. Both then struggle to come to terms with the problems the change brings about.
We of the Never Never is the second book written by Jeannie Gunn under the name of “Mrs Aeneas Gunn”. It is considered by many as a classic of Australian writing. The book was published as a novel but draws on the author’s own experience in settling on the Elsey Station way out in the "back blocks" of the Katherine region of the Northern Territories of Australia early in the 20th century. The primary concession to fiction was that she fictionalised the names of many of the real-life characters that featured in her life at the time, giving them names like "the Sanguine Scott", "the Fizzer", "the Quiet Stockman" and "the Dandy". Shortly after their marriage, Jeannie Gunn (to be dubbed "the Missus") and her husband, Aeneas Gunn "the Maluka", travelled to Darwin then into the Katherine to take up the management of the Elsey Cattle Station. The idea of introducing a white woman into the outback of the Northern Territory of the time met with opposition from all directions, and with flurries of telegrams from the men of the Elsey, but on she travelled, proving to be resilient and energetic. What follows is a rural romance, punctuated with occasional lyrical descriptions of the surrounds of the Elsey. We of the Never Never covers the time that Jeannie and Aeneas Gunn lived at the Elsey in 1902 and 1903.
NOTE: The book is a product of its time and the descriptions of aboriginal people and their treatment reflect the attitudes of early 20th century whites. However, Chapters 19 and 20 go beyond this and describe preparation for and execution of a hunt down the rivers for aboriginal people -- described repeatedly with a racist epithet that was commonly used in that time but is completely unacceptable now.
"The Regeneration of Lord Ernie is a story about a young man with no passion for life, he was very capable and the heir to a large family fortune but just not interested in life. His father employs a teacher, John Hendricks, to take him on a world tour and try to inspire him. In the final stage of the tour in desperation he takes him to the Jura mountains, where he went as a young man, to visit a pastor he stayed with. During the stay they get involved with pagan worship that involves the transforming power of wind and fire, up in the mountains.
Algernon Blackwood manages to evoke the atmosphere and tensions that carry Lord Ernie through transformation to lead a new life. But like a shooting stars he burns bright but ...... "( Patrick79)
A funny and touching account of the imaginative Mr. Polly who, bored and trapped in his conventional life, makes a U-turn –- and changes everything.
H.G. Wells’ early life as the son of a semi-insolvent shopkeeper and as a draper’s apprentice fueled his novels of the lower middle class: The Wheels of Chance (1896), Kipps (1905), and The History of Mr. Polly (1910). These works evoke the desperation of apprentices, clerks, and small traders in their monotonous toil behind shop counters. And, like Mr. Polly, his protagonists make a break from their mundane lives with more or less success.
H. G. Wells (1866-1946) was a prolific writer in history, general and science fiction, and politics. He was a lifelong socialist.
Eighteen short stories by a master story teller.
Fresh from school, mistreated and neglected by her father and stepmother, sixteen-year-old Dawn consents to marry a friend of her father's whom she has only met, but the wedding does not go as planned. Scared and confused, she runs away after the ceremony. Many adventures follow lovely and resourceful Dawn on her journey to becoming an independent woman.
Six short stories and a novella by the Russian master. (david wales)
"Mr. Britling Sees It Through" is H. G. Wells' attempt to make sense of World War I. It begins with a lighthearted account of an American visiting England for the first time, but the outbreak of war changes everything. Day by day and month by month, Wells chronicles the unfolding events and public reaction as witnessed by the inhabitants of one house in rural Essex. Each of the characters tries in a different way to keep their bearings in a world suddenly changed beyond recognition. This book was published in 1916 while the war was still in progress, so no clear resolution was possible. Wells did not know how long the war would last or which side would ultimately win, but he hoped that somehow, something good might eventually come of it.
Based on the author's own life, this book tells the story of "little sister". The youngest of eleven, she is unwanted in the beginning. The brother who loved her most, and whom she loved most in the world, is Laddie. She is almost lonely, and it's hard for her to study, so her comfort is nature. In an unforgettable way, which is funny and sad, little sister tells us her story.
Tressa Norne is an American living in China. After her life was spared during a revolution in the area, Tressa finds herself taken as a slave and forced to serve Erlik, a demon-god, and his cult. She ends up escaping back to America, but only to find that she is being followed by the Secret Service, and her former masters. (Ann Boulais)
Seymour Merriman stops at the side of the road 26 miles outside Bordeaux, an action that will change his life forever. The events that follow lead him into mystery, smuggling, murder and love. Two amateur detectives try to unravel the mystery of changing number plates, and everything else that surrounds the pit prop syndicate, before the case is handed over to Inspector Willis of Scotland Yard. (KHand)
Eleven short stories.
The story of three "middle aged ladies". Follow along as they have all sorts of adventures.
Settlers are lured to Montana by a land boom syndicate in a scheme that encroaches on the Flying U Ranch. Members of the Flying U attempt to thwart the land-grab, as its very existence is threatened. So begins a dramatically engrossing novel involving an array of fascinating characters, some innocent, others decidedly not. A spunky child goes missing, a prairie fire is set, and a romance begins. B. M. Bower wrote 57 acclaimed works based on the American Old West, with some of her most popular books centering on the Flying U Ranch. She also scripted several Western movies.
An example of early dystopian science fiction written shortly after World War I, "City of Endless Night" imagines a future with a very different ending to the Great War. Set in 2151 and in an underground Berlin, our protagonist is Lyman De Forrest, an American chemist who enters the city to discover the hidden truths of a forbidden metropolis. The subterranean world hosts a highly-regimented society of 300,000,000 sun-starved humans. As the first outsider to enter, he's horrified by what he finds, but will he accomplish his mission and escape the living tomb?
Royal Highness is the story of Prince Klaus Heinrich, a member of a struggling German duchy and an exotic American heiress who comes to live as his neighbor. The novel is a microcosm of Europe before World War I, with Mann's depiction of a decaying society that is rejuvenated by modern forces. A true modern day fairy tale.
This novel consists of selections from the diary of an author, starting soon after his retirement and continuing until just before his death. There is very little in the way of plot, but a great deal of quiet musing about art, nature, society, and the things that make life worth living. Although this is a work of fiction, there are clear parallels between the narrator's life and Gissing's own life. This leads many commenters to view it as semi-autobiographical.
Machines are infallible. Humans are not. The crew of The Ambassador knew their ship could not possibly fail, but what of themselves? And how could they defend against an unknown enemy with unknown motives and superhuman abilities, intent on driving each one of them beyond his own personal breaking point?
Laura and Cora Madison and their younger brother Hedrick live with their parents in a Midwestern American town that is fairly bursting with Cora’s discarded and would-be beaus. Her flirtatiousness annoys the tempestuous Hedrick but not the reserved Laura. The return to town of a handsome, charming former resident and an encounter with a deranged young person set in motion a roller-coaster of events that interweave and play out to an exciting, emotional climax. Booth Tarkington's writing is exceptionally sensitive and perceptive. A popular American novelist and dramatist, he is best remembered for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novels "The Magnificent Ambersons" and "Alice Adams". – Lee Smalley
Brief Encounter meets Tristan und Isolde - on the Isle of Wight, under a vast sky florid with stars. The consequence is tragic indeed for one of the parties, Siegmund, when he sacrifices family life for a few days’ transcendent rapture. His lover, the self-contained Helena, is strong enough to bear a return to the scruffy suburbs. Redemption of a kind is granted to the deserted wife, Beatrice. But between these robust Lawrentian women Siegmund is cancelled out. His love-death is no cosmic swoon but a sordid exit in an unkempt box-room.
In this very British romance, there is no earthly escape from outworn attachments and life’s deadening routine...
Lilian works in a typewriting office owned by Felix Grig, a middle-aged man of means. The office is run by his spinster sister, Miss Grig, who suspects that Felix is more interested in Lilian than perhaps he should be and gives Lilian the sack.Her plan fails as Felix invites Lilian to dinner – and the book follows the course of their evolving relationship.
The book follows the career of Hugh Paret from youth to manhood, and how his profession as a corporation lawyer gradually changes his values. The book received positive reviews, and was the second best-selling novel in the United States in 1915.