The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, published in 1927, collects the final set of Sherlock Holmes stories authored by Arthur Conan Doyle. All of the included stories appeared previously in The Strand Magazine between October 1921 and April 1927. As usual, the mysteries generally purport to be accounts written by Holmes’s friend Dr. John Watson.
Arthur Conan Doyle · Mystery · 13 ch
Chemist Robin Gaunt believes he’s discovered the key to lasting world peace—in the form of the horrific poison gas he’s just perfected. Gaunt is certain that once the British government has the formula, no nation will ever dare start a war, for fear of the consequences. But Gaunt vanishes before can turn over the formula, and people start turning up dead—victims of some unknown poison.
H. C. McNeile · Adventure · 14 ch
The Return of Sherlock Holmes is the third collection of Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, published in 1905. It includes stories published in The Strand Magazine in 1903 and 1904, bringing Holmes for the first time into the twentieth century. Doyle had memorably “killed off” Holmes in a struggle with his nemesis Professor Moriarty in the story “The Final Problem,” which had appeared in 1893 (and which is included in the collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes ).
Arthur Conan Doyle · Mystery · 13 ch
The Valley of Fear is the final novel in the Sherlock Holmes series by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The story originally appeared over several issues of the monthly Strand Magazine in late 1914 before being published as a standalone work. While Doyle would continue to publish Sherlock Holmes short stories until 1927, The Valley of Fear remains Holmes’ final long-form appearance.
Arthur Conan Doyle · Mystery · 15 ch
His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes is the fourth collection of Sherlock Holmes stories published by Arthur Conan Doyle. It begins with a preface by Dr. John Watson, supposedly written in 1917, assuring the reader that Holmes is still alive but living in quiet retirement in Sussex. This collection contains the well-known stories “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans,” in which Holmes has to track down stolen plans for a new kind of submarine; and “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot” in which a Cornish family is found one morning driven mad or dead, with expressions of horror on their faces.
Arthur Conan Doyle · Mystery · 8 ch
Aubrey, a young gentleman moving in London society of the early 1800s, meets the mysterious Lord Ruthven, recently arrived to London, at a party. Aubrey finds himself intrigued by the cold and expressionless Ruthven, and soon finds himself agreeing to travel with him on a trip across the continent. As their trip progresses, Aubrey is shocked at Ruthven’s sadistic and degenerate behavior, and can’t help but note how anyone who Ruthven meets ends up debauched and ruined.
John William Polidori · Horror · 3 ch
Choirmaster John Jasper has two secrets: an addiction to opium, and a burning love for Rosa, the fiancée of his nephew, Edwin Drood. When Edwin vanishes without a trace one night, his uncle becomes just one of the suspects in Edwin’s disappearance, as it turns out that several other residents of the town of Cloisterham also seek Rosa’s affections. Who’s the real murderer?
Charles Dickens · Mystery · 24 ch
Lewis claimed to have written The Monk in just ten weeks, when he was twenty-one years of age. He published the first edition anonymously, sensing that the controversial and then-pornographic nature of the novel would stun society. And so it did—the book was so sensational, so salacious, and so scandalous, that after he put his full name (and title, as a member of Parliament) on the second edition, his reputation hardly recovered for the rest of his life.
M. G. Lewis · Horror · 19 ch
In the fictional town of Roulettenberg, Germany, a Russian tutor to the children of a seemingly wealthy general is enticed to play roulette at the local casino. First playing for others (including his beloved Polina Alexandrovna), he soon gets a taste for the experience himself, which can lead in only one direction. Dostoevsky wrote this story based at least partially on personal experience.
Fyodor Dostoevsky · Drama · 17 ch
Sometimes described as thrilling, sometimes as comic, and sometimes as metaphysical or spiritual, The Man Who Was Thursday is perhaps a little of each. The tale begins when an undercover policeman infiltrates a mysterious Anarchist group. As the novel progresses, things become more comic and improbable, and eventually evolve in to a sort of abstract, dreamlike state.
G. K. Chesterton · Thriller · 16 ch
Father Brown is a Catholic priest, but a slightly unusual one in that he’s also an amateur detective. Unlike his more famous literary cousin Sherlock, Father Brown takes a less analytical and more intuition-oriented approach to solving the many murders that he happens to come across. This collection of short murder mysteries is Brown’s first appearance on the literary stage.
G. K. Chesterton · Mystery · 12 ch
The Portrait of a Lady is widely held to be the outstanding work of Henry James’s “early” period, and among the finest novels of his entire career. When the eccentric Mrs. Touchett “takes up” her charming American niece, Isabel Archer, and returns with her to England, her husband and son, the invalid Ralph, are first mystified, then bemused. Soon, however, they are smitten, as also is their aristocratic neighbor, Lord Warburton.
Henry James · Drama · 56 ch
Edgar Allan Poe is famed for his unsettling short stories, but he also wrote a full-length novel, his only one: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Framed as the recollections of an adventurous stowaway, Pym begins as a swashbuckling adventure novel, and after growing increasingly weirder, ends on a surreal note worthy of the best of Poe’s short stories. Despite Poe himself calling it a “a very silly book,” Pym went on to become one of his most-translated and influential works, coloring the themes of future adventure and weird fiction writers like Jules Verne and H.
Edgar Allan Poe · Adventure · 27 ch
The Story of Doctor Dolittle, the first installment in Hugh Lofting’s beloved Doctor Dolittle series, centers on a kindhearted British physician, John Dolittle, who has an extraordinary gift: the ability to communicate with animals. Set in early 20th-century England, the novel begins with Dolittle’s life in the quiet town of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh, where his unconventional methods and growing fascination with the animal kingdom spark curiosity and skepticism among his peers. When he discovers he can understand and converse with creatures in their own language, he’s propelled toward an adventure to Africa, where he seeks to cure a monkey epidemic just as he faces bankruptcy.
Hugh Lofting · Adventure · 22 ch
Charles Dexter Ward is the heir of a wealthy family from Providence, Rhode Island, whose family wealth allows him to dedicate himself to scholarly pursuits. As a young man, he starts to research antiquarianism and architecture. During his genealogical research, he comes across the name of Joseph Curwen, a man who lived in the early 18th century and to whom Ward discovers he is related.
H. P. Lovecraft · Horror · 6 ch
An ambitious young man of humble birth tries to rise in Restoration France by talent, love affairs, and calculated hypocrisy. A sharp portrait of desire colliding with a society built to contain it.
Stendhal · Drama · 76 ch
The Last Man chronicles the last days of humanity in the 21st century as it is slowly obliterated by a global pandemic. Radical changes and events across Europe—the king abdicates, turning England into a Republic; war erupts between Greece and Turkey—weaken the fabric of society, allowing an unknown and deadly disease to quickly spread across the world. Political leaders are disorganized; spiritual figures offer little comfort; science yields no answers.
Mary Shelley · Sci Fi · 31 ch
Philammon is a young monk living in an isolated Egyptian monastery circa 400 AD. He feels a longing to see the world, so he embarks on a trip to Alexandria, a city teeming with culture and learning. On his way he meets Pelagia, a beautiful courtesan traveling up the Nile with a band of Goths in search of Asgard.
Charles Kingsley · Historical · 32 ch
Published in 1860, The Mill on the Floss was the second novel published by George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans). Set in the late 1820s or early 1830s, it tells the story of two young people, Tom and Maggie Tulliver, from their childhood into early adulthood. Their father, Jeremy Tulliver, owns Dorlcote Mill on the river Floss, and the children grow to adolescence in relative comfort.
George Eliot · Drama · 59 ch
By the mid-nineteenth century, the transition of textile production in England from a cottage craft to mechanized factories was complete. Still, the effects of the industrial revolution remain distant from the idyllic rural parish in the New Forest where Margaret Hale grows up. But with her father’s crisis of conscience in ministry, the country lanes of Hampshire give way to the crowded urban streets of the industrial North of England.
Elizabeth Gaskell · Drama · 52 ch