Subject: Fiction (page 1)

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A Bride from the Bush E. W. Hornung

Today, a family would think nothing of the fact that one of their sons had fallen in love with an Australian woman. In the stodgy nineteenth century, however, the news was taken somewhat differently. Indeed, for the proper British Bligh family in E. W. Hornung's A Bride From the Bush, a dispatch delivering this info…Read More »
A Clergyman's Daughter George Orwell

Intimidated by her father, the rector of Knype Hill, Dorothy performs her submissive roles of dutiful daughter and bullied housekeeper. Her thoughts are taken up with the costumes she is making for the church school play, by the hopelessness of preaching to the poor and by debts she cannot pay in 1930s Depression En…Read More »
Across the River and Into the Trees Ernest Hemingway

In the fall of 1948, Ernest Hemingway made his first extended visit to Italy in thirty years. His reacquaintance with Venice, a city he loved, provided the inspiration for Across the River and into the Trees, the story of Richard Cantwell, a war-ravaged American colonel stationed in Italy at the close of the Second …Read More »
Adventure Jack London

This novel, a devastating portrayal of colonialism and slavery set in the Solomon Islands, has generated considerable controversy since its publication over the question of whether London shared the racist beliefs of his characters or, on the contrary, was merely presenting them accurately.
Alice Edward Bulwer-Lytton

This is another outstanding occult, Rosicrucian, novel that emphasizes one of Lytton's famous esoteric principles-vibration A sequel to the disenchanted recluse poet Ernest Maltravers. Although Alice is by far more action-driven than its predecessor, there are still some wonderful reflective passages. After Florence…Read More »
A Lodge in the Wilderness John Buchan

An imaginary conference is arranged by a multi-millionaire, Francis Carey, at a lodge, Musuru, located on the East Kenyan Plateau some 9000 feet above sea level, to discuss Empire. The conference is made up of nine men and nine women, taken from the upper and professional classes.
A Man's Woman Frank Norris

Our heroine is a girl decidedly out of the ordinary. Dramatic, and containing some tremendous descriptions of the daring of the men who are trying to reach the North Pole, but at the same time it's essentially a woman's book, and the story works itself out in the solution of a difficulty that is continually presente…Read More »
A Moveable Feast Ernest Hemingway

Among these small, reflective sketches are unforgettable encounters with the members of Hemingway's slightly rag-tag circle of artists and writers, some also fated to achieve fame and glory, others to fall into obscurity. Here, too, is an evocation of the Paris that Hemingway knew as a young man - a map drawn in his…Read More »
And Now Goodbye James Hilton

The Redford rail smash was a bad business. On that cold November morning, glittering with sunshine and a thin layer of snow on the fields, the London-Manchester express hit a wagon that had strayed on to the main line from a siding. Engine and two first coaches were derailed; scattered cinders set fire to the wrecka…Read More »
Ann Vickers Sinclair Lewis

Some reviewers were outraged by Ann Vickers when it first appeared in 1933. "Persons unused to horrid and filthy things had better stay at a safe distance from this book," wrote one. Lewis's Ann Vickers is a complex character: a strong-minded prison superintendent dedicated to enlightened social reform, she also s…Read More »
Antic Hay Aldous Huxley

When inspiration leads Theodore Gumbril to design a type of pneumatic trouser to ease the discomfort of sedentary life, he decides the time has come to give up teaching and seek his fortune in the metropolis. He soon finds himself caught up in the hedonistic world of his friends Mercaptan, Lypiatt and the thoroughly…Read More »
A Passage to India E. M. Forster

When Adela Quested and her elderly companion Mrs Moore arrive in the Indian town of Chandrapore, they quickly feel trapped by its insular and prejudiced 'Anglo-Indian' community. Determined to escape the parochial English enclave and explore the 'real India', they seek the guidance of the charming and mercurial Dr A…Read More »
A Prayer for my Son Hugh Walpole

My homeward course led up a long ascent, Where the road's watery surface, to the top Of that sharp rising, glittered to the moon And bore the semblance of another stream Stealing with silent lapse to join the brook That murmured in the vale. All else was still: No living thing appeared in earth or air, And, save th…Read More »
A Prince of the Captivity John Buchan

This is the epic story of one man's courage. Adam Melfort is an officer and a gentleman. A brilliant career lies ahead of him until he is imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. Afterwards, Adam embarks on daring missions in the service of his country. Dangerous work behind enemy lines in World War I and espionage…Read More »
Armance Stendhal

Stendhal's first novel is a romance novel set during the Bourbon Restoration and published anonymously in 1827. Octave de Malivert, a taciturn but brilliant young man barely out of the Ecole Polytechnique is attracted to Armance Zohiloff, who shares his feelings. The novel describes how a series of misunderstandings…Read More »
A Set of Six Joseph Conrad

Certain individualities grow into fame through their vices and their virtues, or simply by their actions, which may have a temporary importance; and then they become forgotten. The names of a few leaders alone survive the end of armed strife and are further pre- served in history; so that, vanishing from men's activ…Read More »
As I Lay Dying William Faulkner

The death and burial of Addie Bundren is told by members of her family, as they cart the coffin to Jefferson, Mississippi, to bury her among her people. And as the intense desires, fears and rivalries of the family are revealed in the vernacular of the Deep South, Faulkner presents a portrait of extraordinary power …Read More »
Bethel Merriday Sinclair Lewis

On her sixth birthday Bethel's mother caught her imitating the slouching, slow walk of an old woman and rebuked her for generally showing off, speaking up in Church and in this case for copying people. Bethel said, "Oh! I'm not copying her. I'm trying to be her. I can be a lot of different people." Sinclair Lewis's …Read More »
Between the Acts Virginia Woolf

The author's last novel, written during the early years of World War II, was completed just before her death. The action takes place on a single summer's day at a country house, Pointz Hall, in the heart of England. In the garden the villagers are presenting their annual pageant - on this occasion scenes from Englis…Read More »
Blix Frank Norris

This short romance was based on Norris's courtship of his wife. It features a San Francisco journalist, Condy Rivers, who falls in love with the daughter of a wealthy family that believes him to be very much beneath her. Willa Cather praised the novel as 'all wheat and no chaff'.
Brave New World Revisited Aldous Huxley

When the novel Brave New World first appeared in 1932, its shocking analysis of a scientific dictatorship seemed a projection into the remote future. Here, in one of the most important and fascinating books of his career, Aldous Huxley uses his tremendous know…Read More »
Burmese Days George Orwell

Set in the days of the Empire, with the British ruling in Burma, Burmese Days describes both indigenous corruption and Imperial bigotry, when 'after all, natives were natives ? interesting, no doubt, but finally only a subject people, an inferior people with black faces'. Against the prevailing orthodoxy, Flory, a…Read More »
Captain Nicholas Hugh Walpole

The story about a evil brother who comes back to his family for a visit and the devastation he reaps on his contented London family. This novel is a study of human conflict within a conventional family of the 1930's, tested by the invasion of ideas in the person of the family's black sheep, Captain Nicholas. A seque…Read More »
Cass Timberlane Sinclair Lewis

Cass Timberlane, which explores themes of love, marriage, heartache, trust & redemption in the small city of Grand Republic in Central Minnesota, is entirely imaginary, as are all the characters. The characters will be 'identified,' each of them with several different real persons in each of the Minnesota cities: …Read More »
Certain People Edith Wharton

A collection of six short stories. The book starts with Atrophy, a neat study of near desperation in tight social surroundings as Nora Frenway bravely seeks to visit her gravely ill lover Christopher only to come up against the polite rebuff presented by his domineering sister Jane Aldiss. The final story, _Mr. Jo…Read More »
Coming Up For Air George Orwell

George Bowling, the hero of this comic novel, is a middle-aged insurance salesman who lives in an average English suburban row house with a wife and two children. One day, after winning some money from a bet, he goes back to the village where he grew up, to fish for carp in a pool he remembers from thirty years befo…Read More »
Decline and Fall Evelyn Waugh

Expelled from Oxford for indecent behaviour, Paul Pennyfeather is oddly unsurprised to find himself qualifying for the position of schoolmaster at Llanabba Castle. His colleagues are an assortment of misfits, including Prendy (plagued by doubts) and captain Grimes, who is always in the soup (or just plain drunk). Th…Read More »
Don Quixote, Part 1 Miguel de Cervantes

Don Quixote has become so entranced by reading chivalric romances, that he determines to become a knight-errant himself. In the company of his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, his exploits blossom in all sorts of wonderful ways. While Quixote's fancy often leads him astray – he tilts at windmills, imagining them to be…Read More »
Don Quixote, Part 2 Miguel de Cervantes

Alonso Quixano is a minor landowner who has read so many stories of chivalry that he descends into fantasy and becomes convinced he is a knight errant. Together with his companion Sancho Panza, the self-styled Don Quixote de la Mancha sets out in search of adventures. His 'lady' is Dulcinea del Toboso, an imaginar…Read More »
Driftwood Spars P. C. Wren

"Peace, fool Art blind as Ibrahim Mahmud the Weeper," growled that burly Native Officer as the zealous and overanxious young sentry cried out and pointed to where, in the moonlight, the returning reconnoitering-patrol was to be seen as it emerged from the lye-bushes of the dry river-bed. A recumbent comrade of the o…Read More »