The Dead Secret is Wilkie Collins’ fourth novel. It first appeared in serial form in Charles Dickens’ Household Words magazine during 1856. Like many of Collins’ books, it features incidents and themes which were considered to be sensational at the time; in this case, sex before marriage, illegitimacy, and fraud.
Wilkie Collins · Drama · 30 ch
Alvina Houghton is the only daughter of James Houghton, a merchant in the English Midlands whose business sense is insufficient to ensure his family’s prosperity. Alvina is independent-minded and struggles to fit in with the society around her—none of the available men spark her interest, and she begins training as a maternity nurse more out of a sense of obligation than of duty. As her father’s business continues to do poorly, he decides to open a theater, with Alvina helping by playing the piano.
D. H. Lawrence · Drama · 18 ch
Can You Forgive Her? is the story of Alice Vavasor and her cousins. On her father’s side are Kate and George Vavasor, brother and sister.
Anthony Trollope · Drama · 81 ch
The Song of the Lark, Willa Cather’s third novel, was written in 1915. It is said to have been inspired by the real-life soprano Olive Fremstad, a celebrated Swedish-American singer who, like the protagonist, was active in New York and Europe during the time period depicted in the novel. The work explores how an artist’s early life influences their work.
Willa Cather · Drama · 62 ch
The young narrator of The Arrow of Gold, a British seaman called Monsieur George, finds himself in Marseilles, France, in the 1870s during the time of the Third Carlist War. Supporters of the pretender are smuggling arms into Spain, and the narrator soon becomes entangled in this undercover plot. His benefactor is the mysterious Doña Rita, and their relationship is the plot’s focal point.
Joseph Conrad · Drama · 27 ch
Henry Whalley is an aging but once-famous merchant captain in Southeast Asia. He made a name for himself in the age of sail, when he commanded clipper ships and even made some minor geographical discoveries. When a banking crash wipes out his life savings, he retires with enough funds to sail on his own small ship.
Joseph Conrad · Drama · 14 ch
Peter Willems is a successful clerk in a Dutch East Indies trading company until he’s caught for embezzlement. He turns to Tom Lingard, his erstwhile benefactor, who sends him to work in a commercial outpost on a river settlement. There, Willems meets a young and beautiful native girl.
Joseph Conrad · Drama · 27 ch
Charles Swinburne and his friend, the private detective Rupert Grant, are startled when Major Brown recounts the things that happened to him that morning. Along with Rupert’s brother, the ex-judge Basil Grant, they launch headlong into their investigation only to discover that the antagonist is a member of the Club of Queer Trades. Over the course of six short stories, the secrets of the Club come to light in surprising ways.
G. K. Chesterton · Drama · 6 ch
The first anthology of short stories by Jack London, Lost Face tells seven stories about the Klondike gold rush. In “Lost Face,” the fur thief Subienkow faces gruesome torture and execution by a tribe of Indians, armed with only his wits. “Trust” is a story about the dangers of the Yukon River.
Jack London · Drama · 8 ch
Frank Fenwick is in many ways a model clergyman. He takes seriously the cure of souls in his Wiltshire parish, extending to the material as well as spiritual well-being of his flock, while upholding his convictions without doctrinaire excess. But in his ministry, as well as his friendships, his good intentions embroil him in unwonted controversy.
Anthony Trollope · Drama · 56 ch
Three young members of the crew of a merchant ship sailing in the South Pacific are the sole survivors of its wreck in a storm. Swept ashore an uninhabited island, their initial efforts to survive soon lead them to a settled life in what seems to be a tropical paradise. However, their enjoyment of their new island home doesn’t dampen their desire to return to England, their homeland.
R. M. Ballantyne · Adventure · 37 ch
The Small House at Allington was originally serialized in Cornhill Magazine between July and December 1862. It is the fifth book in Trollope’s Chronicles of Barsetshire series, being largely set in that fictious county of England. It includes a few of the characters from the earlier books, though largely in very minor roles.
Anthony Trollope · Drama · 61 ch
Wet Magic was the last novel for children published by E. Nesbit. It was originally serialized in The Strand Magazine in 1912, with a book version published in 1913.
E. Nesbit · Fantasy · 15 ch
McTeague is an enormously strong but dim-witted former miner now working as a dentist in San Francisco towards the end of the nineteenth century. He falls in love with Trina, one of his patients, and shortly after their engagement she wins a large sum in a lottery. All is well until McTeague is betrayed and they fall into a life of increasing poverty and degradation.
Frank Norris · Drama · 22 ch
At the end of the nineteenth-century, a group of wheat growers in California’s San Joaquin Valley fights back when the railroad monopoly attempts to take possession of their farms. United in the local Farmer’s League, they try to retain the land that they’ve been improving for years, while the railroad company threatens them with increased shipping rates and eviction from their homes. When political opposition, court cases, and bribery all fail, the conflict comes to an explosive conclusion.
Frank Norris · Drama · 27 ch
Bellarion, a young orphan, leaves the abbey he was raised in to attend university and learn Greek. He quickly learns the dangers of life in fifteenth-century Italy, as he is robbed, caught in a riot, and chased through town by the authorities. He tangles himself in a plot against the local regent, plays one side against the other, and declares his service to the beautiful but uninterested Valeria.
Rafael Sabatini · Adventure · 47 ch
Young Elfride falls in love for the first time with an architect who is sent to make plans to renovate the local church. She supposes Stephen to be a professional man from London, but finds he comes from more humble origins. Stephen must go away and make something of himself before he can claim her.
Thomas Hardy · Drama · 42 ch
The Country of the Pointed Firs was first published in serial form in 1896 in The Atlantic, then later expanded into a novel. The narrator, like Jewett, is a middle-aged female writer. She goes to the fictional coastal town of Dunnet Landing in Maine to find time and space to write.
Sarah Orne Jewett · Drama · 21 ch
The Conjure Woman is a collection of fantastical stories narrated by Julius, a former slave, about life on the nearby plantations prior to the Civil War. Each involves an element of magic, be it a vine that dooms those who eat from it or a man transformed into a tree to avoid being separated from his wife. Julius’s audience, a married couple who have just moved to the South to cultivate grapes, listen on with mixed sympathy and disbelief.
Charles W. Chesnutt · Drama · 12 ch
Alice Adams is Booth Tarkington’s second novel to win a Pulitzer Prize, just three years after his novel The Magnificent Ambersons won it. The novel tells the story of Alice, a Midwestern girl who grows up in a lower-middle-class family just after World War I. Alice meets a wealthy young man and tries to win his affection, despite her lower-class upbringing.
Booth Tarkington · Drama · 25 ch