Subject: Fiction | Page #4
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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... read more »
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The Silver Spoon John Galsworthy
Fleur and Michael Mont entertain the glittering society characters of the day in their new, elegant, and fashionable house. As always, Fleur’s father—Soames Forsyte—is constantly by the side of his daughter, spoiling and watching over her. But London after the war is a place of carefree attitudes that are... read more »
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Vandover and the Brute Frank Norris
The setting of the story is San Francisco in the 1890s. Vandover, fresh out of college and the son of a wealthy owner of slum properties, has dreams of being an artist but lacks the discipline to fulfill them. His seduction of a young woman results in her suicide and the death of his own father. Cheated by false... read more »
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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... read more »
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The Tangled Skein Emma Orczy
In The Tangled Skein, Baroness Orczy does not paint Queen Mary nearly so black as she is usually portrayed. Indeed Mary is depicted as so passionately loving as to be almost lovable, a woman of strong emotions, invariably swayed by justice. The tangling of the skein is due to Mary’s supposititious love for Robert... read more »
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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 the... read more »
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St. Mawr D. H. Lawrence
The heroine of the story, Lou Witt, abandons her sterile marriage and a brittle, cynical post-First World War England. Her sense of alienation is associated with her encounter with a high-spirited stallion, the St Mawr whose name provides the title for this tale. She eventually settles in a remote ranch set high in... read more »
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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: in... read more »
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The Joyful Delaneys Hugh Walpole
A novel of Spring and Fall, of old love and young, of London and an ancient house about to die. When Fred Delaney wished his lodger, Patrick Munden, revolutionary poet, a Happy New Year, it was with a fervor that echoed the wish for himself because the year held little promise. True, he had his own cheerful family... read more »
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The Blind Man's House Hugh Walpole
The Blind Man's House is Walpole's last book before his death. A psychological study of a village and the people who come into contact with a blind man and his young bride. read more »
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The Prodigal Parents Sinclair Lewis
"The revolt of the parents against the revolt of youth as exemplified by a typical middle-class family of four." Fred Cornplow, shrewd middle-class realist, gradually wakes to find that Sarah, his selfish college graduate daughter, and his son Howard, still irregularly playing football for old Truxon, think of him... read more »
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The Mother's Recompense Edith Wharton
Opening on the French Riviera among a motley community of American expatriates, The Mother's Recompense tells the story of Kate Clephane and her reluctant return to New York society after being exiled years before for abandoning her husband and infant daughter. Oddly enough, Kate has been summoned back by that same... read more »
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The Old Ladies Hugh Walpole
In an old rickety building on the rock above an old grass-grown square in the city of Polchester live three old ladies. The house was a windy, creaky, rain-bitten place where tthe ladies lived as tenants. One of the tenants, Miss Beringer, has a rather nervous personality but is befriended by a kindly neighbour... read more »
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The Man Who Died D. H. Lawrence
In his last novel, published less than a year before his untimely death at the age of forty-five, D.H. Lawrence takes up the theme of Christ's resurrection and his final days on Earth. Lawrence recounts Christ's agonizing journey from death back to life with an alarmingly profane realism, depicting the tale from the... read more »
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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 »
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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... read more »
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The Research Magnificent H. G. Wells
This 1915 novel masquerades as a biography of the fictitious William Porphyry Benham, prepared by friends after his death. From a young age, Benham fixed his sights resolutely upon the idea of expressing a noble quality in every thought and action of his life, forcibly curing himself of fear and other ignoble... read more »
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Kangaroo D. H. Lawrence
Rootless, restless, nomadic, longing to escape the decay of post-war Europe, Richard and Harriet Somers flee to Australia, hoping to begin a new and freer life. Richard, a disillusioned writer, is drawn into an extreme political group headed by the enigmatic Kangaroo. In his search for ideal love, both brotherly and... read more »
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The Autocracy of Mr. Parham H. G. Wells
Mr Parnham is in a quandary. Sir Bussy Woodcock has invited him to a siance and Mr Parnham is more than a little keen to keep the acquaintance going - after all, the great financier might just be his ticket to fame and fortune. But to a siance? Damned silly nonsense all this medium business! Just at the point of... read more »
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To The Lighthouse Virginia Woolf
Set in the summer home of an English family, the novel unfolds through shifting perspectives of each character's stream of consciousness, recalling childhood emotions and highlights of adult relationships. Shifts occur even mid-sentence, and in some sense they resemble the rotating beam of the lighthouse. A landmark... read more »
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Gideon Planish Sinclair Lewis
Gideon Planish is a novel by American writer Sinclair Lewis. The novel tells the story of Gideon Planish, an unprincipled social climber who becomes involved in various shady philanthropic organizations in his quest for stature without accountability. The work did not fare as well with critics as some of Lewis... read more »
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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... read more »
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Twilight Sleep Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton's superb satirical novel of the Jazz Age, a critically praised best-seller when it was first published. Sex, drugs, work, money, infatuation with the occult and spiritual healing -- these are the remarkably modern themes that animate Twilight Sleep. The extended family of Mrs. Manford is determined to... read more »
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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 »
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His Majesty's Well-Beloved Emma Orczy
An Episode in the Life of Mr. Thomas Betteron as told by His Friend John. "After that memorable Day, Mistress, we were like naughty Children who were being punished for playing truant out of School. For Weeks and Months our Lives went on with dreary monotony, with never a chance of seeing Something of that outside... read more »
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The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway
Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Hemingway's magnificent fable is the story of an old man, a young boy and a giant fish. In a perfectly crafted story, which won for Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature, is a unique and timeless vision of the beauty and grief of man's challenge to the elements in... read more »
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The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford
At the fashionable German spa town Bad Nauheim, two wealthy, fin de siecle couples -- one British, the other American -- meet for their yearly assignation. As their story moves back and forth in time between 1902 and 1914, the fragile surface propriety of the pre -- World War I society in which these four characters... read more »
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The Road to Understanding Eleanor H. Porter
How does being a lavishly spoiled child impact one's ability to function as an adult? It's an always-timely topic that Pollyanna author Eleanor H. Porter explores with insight and wit in the charming novel The Road to Understanding. As a boy, Burke Denby was showered with toys and sweets, and as a young man, his... read more »
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Jennie Gerhardt Theodore Dreiser
Dive into a gripping historical romance from master of naturalism Theodore Dreiser. Things appear to be looking up for downtrodden maid Jennie Gerhardt when she meets and falls in love with a dashing senator. However, soon after their romance blossoms, her new lover is ripped away, leaving Jennie destitute and... read more »
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The Turn of the Tide Eleanor H. Porter
Like many impoverished children living in the slums of New York around the turn of the twentieth century, Margaret Kendall has faced more than her fair share of adversity in life. When a series of remarkable coincidences and events serve to reunite her with her mother, she is certain that her problems are over. But... read more »