The Lodger is the first known novelization of the Jack the Ripper story. It follows the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Bunting, a maid and butler. An eccentric lodger, Mr. Sleuth, arrives at their lodging-house just as a wave of horrific murders begins to sweep London.
Marie Belloc Lowndes · Mystery · 28 ch
Benjamin Disraeli was a remarkable historical figure. Born into a Jewish family, he converted to Anglican Christianity as a child. He is now almost certainly most famous for his political career.
Benjamin Disraeli · Drama · 72 ch
Robert “Bobby” Merrick, a college-aged only child from a wealthy Michigan family, is neither expected nor inclined to do anything with his life except “loaf.” But when he indirectly causes the death of an esteemed Detroit brain surgeon, Bobby decides to change his ways dramatically to compensate for his role in the tragedy. In the course of this he discovers the deceased surgeon’s secret journal, which reveals a spiritual obsession that will transform Bobby’s life even further. Lutheran Christian minister Lloyd C.
Lloyd C. Douglas · Drama · 22 ch
Young Philip Haldane has been living a happy life with his beloved older sister Helen, their parents having died some years previously. But when his sister meets a childhood sweetheart—now a widower—and marries him, Philip is plunged into anger and bitter resentment. He extends this resentment to Lucy, the daughter of Helen’s new husband.
E. Nesbit · Fantasy · 16 ch
Trying to escape from her boring life, Hortense Daniel meets the mysterious Prince Rénine (or should we say Arsène Lupin?) who enlists her help to solve eight mysteries, starting with one that is for her very close to home. The pair’s travels take them across northern France as they help ease the path of true love, bring thieves and murderers to justice, and eventually to recover something very dear to Hortense’s heart. The Eight Strokes of the Clock is an Arsène Lupin novel by any other name, with Maurice Leblanc admitting as much in an opening note.
Maurice Leblanc · Drama · 9 ch
Adam Jeffson, the narrator of The Purple Cloud, is recruited to join a polar expedition after the suspicious death of another crewmate. Jeffson and the rest of crew of the Boreal are hoping to claim a multimillion dollar prize for the first expedition to reach the North Pole. During the long voyage, Jeffson discovers an ominous purple cloud which transforms his Arctic adventure.
M. P. Shiel · Sci Fi · 18 ch
Philo Vance is a snobbish art collector who happens to be the longtime friend of John Markham, the New York County District Attorney. When a wealthy Wall Street broker is found shot in his own home, Vance finds himself drawn into the case. Seeing both Markham and the police content to accept the superficial evidence of the crime scene, Vance must intervene, and elucidate an entirely different approach to solving the mystery.
S. S. Van Dine · Mystery · 30 ch
Wild Animals I Have Known, a collection of short stories published in 1898, was Ernest Thompson Seton’s most popular work and one of the most popular fiction books of its day. The stories are largely independent of each other, with each one following the life of a different animal. They explore themes of survival in a world populated by humans and other creatures, and the challenges that each animal faces in its efforts to thrive.
Ernest Thompson Seton · Drama · 9 ch
In Looking Backward, well-to-do Julian West of Boston falls asleep for 113 years and awakes to find the world of 2000 fundamentally changed. An old man and his daughter care for him and take him on a tour of the new world. In the new society, a single nationalized corporation-state under a single political party guarantees work, comfort, and luxury to everyone in the “industrial army.” Looking Backward is a watershed utopian novel following in the path laid by books like Thomas More’s Utopia, Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World, and Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s The Year 2440.
Edward Bellamy · Sci Fi · 29 ch
The Magnificent Ambersons, winner of the 1919 Pulitzer prize, is considered by many to be Booth Tarkington’s finest novel and an American classic. The story is set in the Midwest, where George, the spoiled and oblivious scion of an old-money family, must cope with their waning fortunes and the rise of industry barons in the automobile age. George’s antiheroic struggles with modernity encapsulate a greater theme of change and renewal—specifically, the very American notion of a small community exploding into a dark and dirty city virtually overnight by virtue of industrial “progress.” Tarkington’s nuanced portrayal of the often-unlikable Amberson family and his paradoxical framing of progress as a destroyer of family, community, and environment, make The Magnificent Ambersons a fascinating and forward-thinking novel—certainly one with a permanent place in the American social canon.
Booth Tarkington · Drama · 35 ch
Having spent his life roving faraway seas, Peyrol returns to his birthplace on the French coast to retire on a small fortune acquired through piracy. Meanwhile, the historical events of the French Revolution and France’s war with England make Peyrol reconsider his withdrawal to undertake a patriotic mission. The Rover, published in 1923, is the last novel Conrad completed before his death in 1924.
Joseph Conrad · Historical · 18 ch
Passengers and crew aboard a river barge trade stories that range from comedy to the uncanny. The collection includes Jacobs’s best-known tale, about a talisman that grants its owner three wishes.
W. W. Jacobs · Drama · 16 ch
Otto likes to hunt and enjoy life, while leaving the rule of his small kingdom in the hands of his wife and her trusted advisor. He hears talk of socialist revolution in his land, and when he tries to take charge, he finds that it’s not so easy to resume his rule. With intrigue and betrayal at every corner, all the players must figure out where they really stand.
Robert Louis Stevenson · Drama · 24 ch
Life at the writer Mr. Britling’s estate in the Essex countryside is idyllic. Guests arrive, games are played, and minor love affairs play out. During the early summer of 1914 Germany is discussed, but talk of war is dismissed as fanciful and less important than the situation happening at the same time in Ireland.
H. G. Wells · Drama · 148 ch
The Old Wives’ Tale, considered to be one of Bennett’s finest works, begins in the 1860s, in the industrial “Five Towns” of the English Midlands, where he set many of his partially autobiographical stories. The novel follows the prosperous Baines family, who live above the successful clothing shop they own in the town of Bursley (based on Burslem, in Staffordshire). Even when the two Baines daughters were still young, their characters are already formed.
Arnold Bennett · Drama · 107 ch
Grub Street is the name of a former street in London synonymous with pulp writers and low-quality publishers. New Grub Street takes its name from that old street, as it follows the lives and endeavors of a group of writers active in the literary scene of 1880s London. Edwin Reardon is a quiet and intelligent writer whose artistic sensibilities are the opposite of what the London public wants to read.
George Gissing · Drama · 37 ch
The Blacker the Berry, Wallace Thurman’s debut novel, follows the life of Emma Lou, a dark-skinned young woman from Boise, as she graduates high school and enters adult life as a college student. After being the target of colorist prejudice from her fellow African-American students at the University of Southern California, Emma Lou decides to drop out and move to Harlem—where she’s swept into a torrid love affair that only deepens her sense of color-consciousness. Written and set during the height of the Harlem Renaissance, The Blacker the Berry was one of the first African-American novels to address the themes of colorism and homosexuality.
Wallace Thurman · Drama · 6 ch
Uneducated and regularly mistreated by his master, his filth only matched by his moral and spiritual baseness, Tom is a typical Victorian chimney sweep. While on a special job at a noble’s estate, prejudice pins a crime on him and he flees in fear of retaliation. The chase eventually takes him to a stream in which he bathes for the first time and, doing so, finds himself reborn as a water-baby.
Charles Kingsley · Fantasy · 10 ch
Kipps is the story of Arthur “Artie” Kipps, an illegitimate orphan raised by his aunt and uncle on the southern coast of England in the town of New Romney. Kipps falls in love with neighbor friend Ann Pornick but soon loses touch with her as he begins an apprenticeship at a drapery establishment in the port town of Folkestone. After a drunken evening with his new friend Chitterlow, an aspiring playwright, Kipps discovers he is to inherit a house and sizable income from his grandfather.
H. G. Wells · Comedy · 20 ch
Grace Melbury, daughter of a rich local wood-trader, has been raised beyond her family through years of expensive education. Coming home, she finds herself pulled between her love for her childhood friend Giles Winterborne, and the allure of the enigmatic Doctor Fitzpiers. Giles and Edgar have their own admirers too, and the backdrop of the bucolic pastures and woodlands of an impressionistic take on south-west England provides the perfect setting for their story.
Thomas Hardy · Drama · 48 ch