The Comedy of Errors is one of William Shakespeare's earliest plays, believed to have been written between 1592 and 1594. It is his shortest and one of his most farcical comedies, with a major part of the humour coming from slapstick and mistaken identity, in addition to puns and word play. The Comedy of Errors tells the story of two sets of identical twins that were accidentally separated at birth. Antipholus of Syracuse and his servant, Dromio of Syracuse, arrive in Ephesus, which turns out to be the home of their twin brothers, Antipholus of Ephesus and his servant, Dromio of Ephesus. When the Syracusans encounter the friends and families of their twins, a series of wild mishaps based on mistaken identities lead to wrongful beatings, a near-seduction, the arrest of Antipholus of Ephesus, and accusations of infidelity, theft, madness, and demonic possession....

Comedy

On the surface, this short play is a slice-of-life story about a murder investigation in the rural United States. However, it is also a story about the relationships between men and women, husbands and wives, and the often-overlooked trifles which can say so much about a person's life. (Summary by Arielle Lipshaw)...

Play

The story of a man’s deep connection with nature and his wife’s fear of it. –Summary by Amy Larch Gramour

Fiction, Nature

Excerpt: The Iliad of Homer, translated by Alexander Pope with notes by the Rev. Theodore Alois Buckley, M.A., F.S.A.

Märchen über ein Feenwesen, dass in einem Myrtenbaum lebt und einem Prinzen, der das Feenwesen liebt.(Summary by Wassermann)

Fairy tales

The first of the Fu-Manchu novels, this story follows the two characters who are set against the machinations of the insidious doctor.(Summary by FNH)

Fiction, Mystery, Adventure

Antony Gillingham arrives at the Red House moments after a gunshot is heard. The room is locked, the murderer has disappeared and, in Antony's opinion, the police are going about it the wrong way. Antony, who was looking for a new profession anyway, decides to solve the murder himself, with a little help from his friend Bill. (Summary by Kristin Hughes)...

Mystery

An exciting tale of gun play, brave deeds and romance as Jerry Lambert, the Duke tries to protect the ranch of the lovely and charming Vesta Philbrook from thieving neighbors and other evil doers. (Summary by Mike Vendetti)...

Adventure, Westerns, Romance

This is volume 5 of 5. -- An ex-convict breaks parole and starts a new life as a righteous man, but is pursued by a police inspector. Along the way, the ex-convict joins a revolution, adopts a daughter, and beats people up. Hooray. (Summary by smileyman457)...

Fiction, Romance

Excerpt: Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Excerpt: Chapter 1. Well, when I had been dead about thirty years I begun to get a little anxious. Mind you, had been whizzing through space all that time, like a comet. Like a comet! Why, Peters, I laid over the lot of them! Of course there weren?t any of them going my way, as a steady thing, you know, because they travel in a long circle like the loop of a lasso, whereas I was pointed as straight as a dart for the Hereafter; but I happened on one every now and then that was going my way for an hour or so, and then we had a bit of a brush together....

Novelle per un anno è una raccolta di 241 novelle scritte da Luigi Pirandello. Originariamente sono state pubblicate sul Corriere della Sera, successivamente ripubblicate in 15 raccolte. Inizialmente erano previste 24 raccolte contenenti 365 novelle, tuttavia la prematura morte dell'autore ha impedito il raggiungimento del traguardo. Postume sono state pubblicate altre novelle scritte dall'autore. Le raccolte sono state pubblicate tra il 1922 e il 1938. La quarta raccolta è stata pubblicata nel 1922. (Riassunto di Filippo Gioachin) Questo libro è stato promosso dal gruppo Volontari del Libro di aNobii....

This comic novel relates the first-person adventures in New York City of Jefferson Poindexter, personal assistant to Cobb's famous Judge Priest, while the judge is vacationing abroad. (Introduction by Grant Hurlock)...

Fiction, Humor

The First Epistle of John is a book of the Bible New Testament, the fourth of the catholic or general epistles. It was written in Ephesus about 90-110 AD, apparently by the same author or authors who wrote the Gospel of John and the other two epistles of John. Not actually a letter, it is a sermon written to counter the heresy that Jesus did not come in the flesh but only as a spirit. It also defines how Christians are to discern true teachers: by their ethics, their proclamation of Jesus in the flesh, and by their love. (Wikipedia)...

Religion

This is a collection of stories collected over thousands of years by various authors, translators and scholars. They are an amalgam of mythology and folk tales from the Indian sub-continent, Persia, and Arabia. No original manuscript has ever been found, but several versions date the collection’s genesis to somewhere between AD 800-900. The stories are wound together under the device of a long series of cliff-hangers told by Shahrazad to her husband Shahryar, to prevent him from executing her. Many tales that have become independently famous come from the Book, among them Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and the voyages of Sinbad the Sailor. This collection comes from the first of sixteen volumes translated by Richard Francis Burton. The Book of A Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 01 )...

Fairy tales, Myths/Legends

Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, recalls growing up in early 19th Century Massachusetts. (Introduction by Veronica Jenkins)

Biography

Excerpt: That homely proverb, used on so many occasions in England, viz. ?That what is bred in the bone will not go out of the flesh,? was never more verified than in the story of my Life. Any one would think that after thirty-five years? affliction, and a variety of unhappy circumstances, which few men, if any, ever went through before, and after near seven years of peace and enjoyment in the fullness of all things; grown old, and when, if ever, it might be allowed me to have had experience of every state of middle life, and to know which was most adapted to make a man completely happy; I say, after all this, any one would have thought that the native propensity to rambling which I gave an account of in my first setting out in the world to have been so predominant in my thoughts, should be worn out, and I might, at sixty one years of age, have been a little inclined to stay at home, and have done venturing life and fortune any more....

An ex-convict breaks parole and starts a new life as a righteous man, but is pursued by a police inspector. Along the way, the ex-convict joins a revolution, adopts a daughter, and beats people up. Hooray. (Summary by smileyman457)...

Fiction, Romance

The Song of Songs (Hebrew title שיר השירים, Shir ha-Shirim), is a book of the Hebrew Bible—Tanakh or Old Testament—one of the five megillot (scrolls). It is also known as the Song of Solomon or as Canticles, the latter from the shortened and anglicized Vulgate title Canticum Canticorum, Song of Songs in Latin. It is known as Aisma in the Septuagint, which is short for Αισμα ᾀσμτων, Aisma aismatôn, Song of Songs in Greek. (From Wikipedia)...

Religion

Excerpt: An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids by Anthony Trollope.