Our Book Catalog (page 38)

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Scenes of Clerical Life George Eliot

When Scenes of Clerical Life, George Eliot's first novel, was published anonymously in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1857, it was immediately recognized, in the words of Saturday Review, as `the production of a peculiar and remarkable writer'. The first readers, including Dickens and Thackeray, were struck by it…Read More »
Beyond Lies the Wub Philip K. Dick

Spaceman Peterson buys a "wub" from a local before his departure from Mars and takes it back aboard the ship on which he is a crew member. But the captain Franco cites his concerns about the extra weight of having this huge pig-like creature on-board, although he really seems more interested in how it might taste. O…Read More »
What Maisie Knew Henry James

What Maisie Knew represents one of James's finest reflections on the rites of passage from wonder to knowledge, and the question of their finality. The child of violently divorced parents, Maisie Farange opens her eyes on a distinctly modern world. Mothers and fathers keep changing their partners and names, while sh…Read More »
Sarrasine Honoré de Balzac

Ostensibly a tale of sexual androgyny, the power of love, and its bitter aftermath, this volume is in fact a study of the force of art on society and the deadly immortality of beauty. The nameless narrator attends a ball held by a wealthy Parisian family whose fortune comes from a work of art, and there meets an ext…Read More »

At the Sign of the Cat and Racket Honoré de Balzac

The plot for At the Sign of the Cat and Racket, if such a stately name can be given to so delicate a sketch, is of course open to downright British judgment to pronounce the self-sacriiice of Lebas more ignoblethan touching, the conduct of Théodore too childish to deserve the excuses sometimes possible for passion…Read More »
The Lifted Veil George Eliot

The tale of a man who is incapacitated by visions of the future and the cacophony of overheard thoughts, and yet who can’t help trying to subvert his vividly glimpsed destiny, it is easy to read The Lifted Veil as being autobiographically revealing—of Eliot’s sensitivity to public opinion and her awareness that he…Read More »
Typhoon Joseph Conrad

Captain McWhirr is a serious man who runs his steamer, the Nan-Shan, with efficiency and solidity. When a storm appears to be headed in their direction, MacWhirr is not concerned about his ship’s ability to weather it, but, when the storm turns out to be a powerful typhoon which surges in across the Pacific Ocean he…Read More »
Captain Sharkey Arthur Conan Doyle

Careening was a very necessary operation for the old pirate. On his superior speed he depended both for overhauling the trader and escaping the man-of-war. But it was impossible to retain his sailing qualities unless he periodically–once a year, at the least–cleared his vessel's bottom from the long, trailing plan…Read More »
The Ballad of the White Horse G. K. Chesterton

The Ballad of the White Horse is one of the last great epic poems in the English language. On the one hand it describes King Alfred’s battle against the Danes in 878. On the other hand it is a timeless allegory about the ongoing battle between Christianity and the forces of nihilistic heathenism. Filled with colorfu…Read More »
The Mirror of the Sea Joseph Conrad

Although Joseph Conrad achieved acclaim as one of the masters of English-language fiction, his own life story is as fascinating and engaging as Heart of Darkness or Lord Jim. The volume The Mirror of the Sea is a collection of several autobiographical sketches, remembrances and essays that Conrad originally publishe…Read More »
Stolen Treasure Howard Pyle

One of the best swashbuckling adventures ever written: As for Captain Morgan, he went about his work with the utmost coolness and deliberation imaginable, unbuttoning the waistcoat and the shirt of the man he had murdered with fingers that neither twitched nor shook. There were a gold cross and a bunch of silver med…Read More »
Montezuma's Daughter H. Rider Haggard

This remarkable novel by adventure writer H. Rider Haggard can be enjoyed on many levels. As a tale of adventure, it takes the reader through 16th-century England, Spain, and Mexico at the time of the Spanish Conquest. But on a deeper level, the author's hopes for humanity shine through the darkness of this time to …Read More »
All Things Considered G. K. Chesterton

All Things Considered features more than thirty columns that G. K. Chesterton wrote for the London Daily News in the years before World War I. Covering a variety of themes, each is written with the same high quality that readers have come to expect of Chesterton. In an essay on canvassing, Chesterton ponders some …Read More »
Maggie Stephen Crane

This harrowing tale of a young girl in the slums is a searing portrayal of turn-of-the-century New York, and Stephen Crane's most innovative work. When published, it broke new ground with its vivid characters, its brutal naturalism, and its empathic rendering of the lives of the poor. It remains both powerful, sever…Read More »
The Disintegration Machine Arthur Conan Doyle

The Disintegration Machine is a short story written about Professor Challenger by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Professor Challenger is arguing with people who are persistently calling him on the telephone when his young friend Malone, a reporter for the Gazette, enters and requests Challenger accompany him to inspect the…Read More »
Felix Holt, The Radical George Eliot

When the young nobleman Harold Transome returns to England from the colonies with a self-made fortune, he scandalizes the town of Treby Magna with his decision to stand for Parliament as a Radical. But after the idealistic Felix Holt also returns to the town, the difference between Harold's opportunistic values and …Read More »
The Making of a Saint W. Somerset Maugham

Immerse yourself in the mystery and intrigue of medieval Italy in this engrossing novel from W. Somerset Maugham, the author of such timeless classics as Of Human Bondage and The Razor's Edge. Though the action of the narrative recounts the way that Filippo Bandolini came to be recognized as a saint, the ups and…Read More »
The Madman and the Pirate R. M. Ballantyne

The Madman, Antonio Zeppa, is abandoned on Ratinga, an island in the Pacific, where there later appears a miserable ex-pirate called Richard Rosco. The two start up a sort of love-hate relationship. The natives put Rosco on a fire to burn him at the stake, but he is rescued by Zeppa, who carries him up to his cave i…Read More »
The Secret of Sarek Maurice Leblanc

The war has led to so many upheavals that not many people now remember the Hergemont scandal of seventeen years ago. Let us recall the details in a few lines. One day in July 1902, M. Antoine d'Hergemont, the author of a series of well-known studies on the megalithic monuments of Brittany, was walking in the Bois wi…Read More »
The Night-Born Jack London

This early work on The night born is a fascinating novel of the period and still an interesting read today. Classic Jack London short stories, including The Night-Born - By Jack London - Classic Jack London. Short Stories including: The Night-Born - The Madness of John Harned - When the World was Young - The Benefit…Read More »
Hospital Sketches Louisa May Alcott

Before her wider fame as the author of Little Women, Louisa May Alcott achieved recognition for her accounts of her work as a volunteer nurse in an army hospital. Written during the winter of 1862-63, her lively dispatches appeared in the newspaper Commonwealth, where they were eagerly read by soldiers' friends an…Read More »
Piper in the Woods Philip K. Dick

Under extreme duress, the human mind can come up with an array of impossibly complex coping mechanisms. Is that what's behind the strange epidemic that army physician Henry Harris has noticed overtaking soldiers who have returned from the distant celestial body known as Asteroid Y-3? Harris makes a trip to the aster…Read More »
The Sunny Side A. A. Milne

The Sunny Side gathers the best short works by the inimitable A. A. Milne. Written for the satire magazine Punch, these brief stories and essays perfectly capture Milne's sly humor, beguiling social insight, and scathing wit. From Odd Verses to War Sketches, Summer Days to Men of Letters, Milne takes his r…Read More »
Rainbow Valley L. M. Montgomery

Anne Shirley is grown up, has married her beloved Gilbert and now is the mother of six mischievous children. These boys and girls discover a special place all their own, but they never dream of what will happen when the strangest family moves into an old nearby mansion. The Meredith clan is two boys and two girls, w…Read More »
Eugénie Grandet Honoré de Balzac

This is the question that fills the minds of the inhabitants of Saumur, the setting for Eugénie Grandet, one of the earliest and most famous novels in Balzac's Comédie humaine. The Grandet household, oppressed by the exacting miserliness of Grandet himself, is jerked violently out of routine by the sudden arrival …Read More »
A Journal of the Plague Year Daniel Defoe

A Journal of the Plague Year is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published in March 1722. The novel is a fictionalised account of one man's experiences of the year 1665, in which the Great Plague struck the city of London. The book is told roughly chronologically, though without sections or chapter headings. (source: …Read More »
The White Peacock D. H. Lawrence

Focusing on three relationships - one destructively stillborn, one disastrously unfulfilling and one passionately unspoken - Lawrence exploits the language and conventions of the rural tradition to foreground man's alienation from the natural world. His evocation of the vanishing countryside of the English midlands,…Read More »
Demons Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Although titled The Possessed in the initial English translation, Dostoyevsky scholars and later translations favour the titles The Devils or Demons. An extremely political book, Demons is a testimonial of life in Imperial Russia in the late 19th century. As the revolutionary democrats begin to rise in Russia,…Read More »
Kenilworth Walter Scott

Scott's imagination created Kenilworth, a romance novel of conflicting characters. He has brought to life the character of Queen Elizabeth with the most brilliant and enchanting effect. The novel tells the story of the secret, tragic marriage of Amy Robsart to Robert Dudley that is marred by ambition. The theme of…Read More »
The Little Minister J. M. Barrie

When published, J.M. Barrie's The Little Minister was quickly identified, along with Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, as one of the two great literary events of the year. Within the space of two years the book had sold in excess of 35,000 copies. Set in 'Thrums', the fictional name for the author's nati…Read More »