Description Details
When Sylvia Tebrick, the 24-year-old wife of Richard Tebrick, suddenly turns into a fox while they are out walking in the woods, Mr. Tebrick sends away all the servants in an attempt to keep Sylvia's new nature a secret. Both then struggle to come to terms with the problems the change brings about.(Summary by Annise )...

Description Details
The American Senator is a novel written in 1875 by Anthony Trollope. Although not one of Trollope's better-known works, it is notable for its depictions of rural English life and for its many detailed fox hunting scenes. In its anti-heroine, Arabella Trefoil, it presents a scathing but ultimately sympathetic portrayal of a woman who has abandoned virtually all scruples in her quest for a husband. Through the eponymous Senator, Trollope offers comments on the irrational aspects of English life. (Description by Wikipedia)...

Excerpt Details
Fiction

Description Details
Dickens' last complete novel was published serially 1864-5. It begins with an intriguing fortune offered to John Harmon by his late father, a rich dust contractor, in his will. To receive the money, John must marry a certain Bella Wilfer who he does not know from Eve. He is returning from the exile enforced by his father and confides in a ship's mate who attempts to murder him. The mate gets killed instead, leaving one inconvenient corpse. Because John is considered dead (the body is found with his papers), the money passes to Mr Boffin, old Harmon's foreman. Harmon adopts Bella and John comes into his employ disguised as John Rokesmith. Bella does not fall for John but through kindly Boffin's contrivances learns to hate money and fall for her suitor under his false name. Eventually she learns of his true identity as the Boffins had previously, and the villainous one-legged Silas Wegg's plot to blackmail Mr Boffin is brought to light. There is also a story running behind the main plot about a certain Eugene Wrayburn and his love for Lizzie Hexam, and his rival's attempt to murder him. The two plots are only really connected through ...

Excerpt Details
Fiction

Description Details
Clodagh, 18 years old, is the eldest daughter of Dennis Asshlin, an Irish gentleman who lives in an area of Ireland called Orristown. Dennis is passionate, proud and indebted to no one. But, Dennis has an obsession with gambling that is leading the family to ruin. When tragedy strikes, Clodagh finds herself in a situation where she must defend the family honor because “no Asshlin is ever obliged to anyone”. She marries a man she does not love who is many times her age and is thrust from adolescence to adulthood literally overnight. Clodagh travels to Europe and mingles with people of society and fashion which through her immaturity, she believes is her right. She finds instead uncertainty, despondency, and deceit. Her emotions are constantly in battle with reality as she discovers her society acquaintances are not the “friends” she believes them to be. During her visit to Europe, Clodagh discovers that she too is burdened with the Asshlin curse for gambling which eventually leads to more heartbreak. A chance encounter seems to change her life and she returns to Ireland, only once again to be thwarted by the Asshlin curse. A surprise...

Excerpt Details
Fiction

Description Details
The Gambler is a short novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky about a young tutor in the employment of a formerly wealthy Russian general. The novella reflects Dostoevsky's own addiction to roulette, which was in more ways than one the inspiration for the book: Dostoevsky completed the novella under a strict deadline so he could pay off gambling debts. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

Excerpt Details
Fiction

Description Details
The plot concerns two – literally starcrossed – lovers: Swithin St. Cleeve, a very young amateur astronomer, and Viviette Constantine, an unhappily married and abandoned woman 8 or 9 years his senior. Each night Swithin climbs the old tower of the title, in the grounds of the Constantine estate. Lady Constantine, whose husband has been absent some years on an extended hunting and exploring journey to Africa, joins the young man in his stargazing, and supports his astronomical ambitions by buying him equipment, though his dreams of scientific renown are disappointed.Their relationship then deepens and takes several twists and turns.(Summary by Tadhg)...

Excerpt Details
Fiction

Description Details
An American heiress nicknamed the Manitou Princess (after her daddy's richest silver mine) is devastated to find that her fiancé only loves her money, so she does what anyone might do: she bolts for Europe, dons male attire and sets out on a walking tour of the Alps, passing as a teenage boy. Though professing hatred of all men, she soon falls in with a just-jilted English lord, aptly named Monty Lane, who is attempting to walk off a broken heart of his own. The Princess Passes presents the ups and downs of their alpine relationship through the unpenetrating eyes of Lord Lane. Why, he wonders, is he thus drawn to this beautiful youth? And has the boy a sister? Co-author Alice Livingston, of Poughkeepsie, New York, mentions in her memoirs that she sailed for Europe after a boyfriend tried to shoot her. In London she met literary editor Charles Williamson and began writing for the story magazines of media mogul Lord Northcliffe. At one point she found herself scribbling six serials simultaneously, on the income from which she and Williamson married. She later spun some of her husband's detailed descriptive notes made during their moto...

Description Details
Join the Oldest Member...whether you like it or not...and be carried on a magic carpet ride through the world of golf, love, and...aunts...as seen through the eyes of the creator of Jeeves and Wooster and Blandings Castle, the inimitable Pelham (Plum) Grenville Wodehouse. (Summary by Jonathan Burchard)...

Excerpt Details
Comedy, Fiction, Humor

Description Details
A Damsel in Distress is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the U.S. on October 4, 1919 by George H. Doran, New York, and in the U.K. by Herbert Jenkins, London, on October 17 1919. It had previously been serialised in The Saturday Evening Post, between May and June that year. Golf-loving American composer George Bevan falls in love with a mysterious young lady who takes refuge in his taxicab one day; when he tracks her down to a romantic rural manor, mistaken identity leads to all manner of brouhaha. (summary from wikipedia)...

Excerpt Details
Fiction, Romance, Humor

Description Details
A Study in Scarlet is a detective mystery novel written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which was first published in 1887. It is the first story to feature the character of Sherlock Holmes, who would later become one of the most famous literary detective characters, with long-lasting interest and appeal. The book's title derives from a speech given by Holmes to his companion Doctor Watson on the nature of his work, in which he describes the story's murder investigation as his study in scarlet: There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

Excerpt Details
Mystery, Fiction

Description Details
In 1877, two gentlemen, Messrs Tonnison and Berreggnog, head into Ireland to spend a week fishing in the village of Kraighten. While there, they discover in the ruins of a very curious house a diary of the man who had once owned it. Its torn pages seem to hint at an evil beyond anything that existed on this side of the curtains of impossibility. This is a classic novel that worked to slowly bridge the gap between the British fantastic and supernatural authors of the later 19th century and modern horror fiction. Classic American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft lists this and other works by Hodgson among his greatest influences....

Excerpt Details
Fiction, Horror/Ghost stories

Description Details
Real men don't take guff from snotty kids. Neither does Disko Troop, skipper of the We're Here, a fishing schooner out of Gloucester, Massachusetts, when his crew fishes Harvey Cheyne out of the Atlantic. There's no place on the Grand Banks for bystanders, so Harvey is press-ganged into service as a replacement for a man lost overboard and drowned. Harvey is heir to a vast fortune, but his rescuers believe none of what he tells them of his background. Disko won't take the boat to port until it is full of fish, so Harvey must settle in for a season at sea. Hard, dangerous work and performing it alongside a grab-bag of characters in close quarters is a life-changing experience. And when Harvey at last is reunited with his parents, who have thought him dead for months, he must face the hard decisions of how he will allow his experience to change his life. (Summary Mark F. Smith)...

Excerpt Details
Fiction

Description Details
Lulu Bett is a spinster, living at the turn of the 20th century essentially as a servant with her sister Ina and brother-in-law Dwight. She is, uncomplainingly, the family beast of burden, living in the background and tending to the family's needs. It therefore surprises everyone, Lulu included, when Dwight's visiting brother Ninian proposes to her, and she accepts. The surprise is even greater when Lulu returns home alone from their homeymoon trip, with the news that Ninian was already legally married before he married her. What follows brings Lulu into conflict with the self-satisfied Dwight, forcing her to choose how she defines herself, with unexpected results. This novel is the basis of the 1921 play for which Zona Gale became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama. The original ending of the play, in which Lulu gains freedom by walking away from the security of the family, was considered so controversial that a new ending was written. In this, the book, we see the author's original intent. (Summary by Christine Dufour)...

Excerpt Details
Fiction

Description Details
I consider the story as a whole to he good, though I am not aware that the public ever corroborated that verdict. - the author The Claverings is the best wrought of the novels designed for The Cornhill, and as surely conceived as any book he ever wrote. - Sadleir. It is a novel of atmosphere, and the atmosphere is of that sort very dangerous for the English novelist, the atmosphere captured so supremely well by Thackeray the green-lighted, close-scented gambling rooms, the shabby adventures of half-deserted spas, the shelving beaches of foreign watering-places, concealed accents, stolen passports, impoverished counts and impertinent ladies' maids.... Trollope's most serious attempt to escape from his own personality. - Walpole (Summary by )...

Excerpt Details
Fiction

Description Details
Cecelia Loring is alone in the world after the death of her mother and has come to the Kentucky mountains in search of work. Although very depressed from her loss she soon becomes caretaker of the garden at a school and not many days later finds herself quite busy as housemother to a group of energetic boys that keep running away from the school because of homesickness, especially Nucky, who seems to have the weight of the world on his shoulders, worrying about not being at home to help his brother Blant keep lookout for the Cheevers, who have been at war with the Marrses for years over a piece of land. Can she find a way to make the boys feel at home so they will stay and get an education? And can they begin to help her heal the broken places in her heart? Lucy Furman based several of her novels, including Mothering on Perilous, on her years as a teacher and housemother at the Hindman Settlement School in Kentucky. Through her experiences at the school her writing vividly portrays the beauty, but also the harshness of mountain life. (summary by Laura Victoria)...

Excerpt Details
Fiction

Description Details
Another camper tale, this time set in the Canadian wilderness. A hunting party separates to track moose, and one member is abducted by the Wendigo of legend. Robert Aickman regarded this as one of the (possibly) six great masterpieces in the field....

Excerpt Details
Fiction, Horror/Ghost stories

Description Details
A Study in Scarlet is a detective mystery novel written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, introducing his new character of Sherlock Holmes, who later became one of the most famous literary detective characters. He wrote the story in 1886, and it was published the next year. The book's title derives from a speech given by Holmes to his sidekick Doctor Watson on the nature of his work, in which he describes the story's murder investigation as his study in scarlet: There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it. Although Conan Doyle wrote 56 short stories featuring Holmes, A Study in Scarlet is one of only four full-length novels in the original canon. The novel was followed by The Sign of Four, published in 1890. A Study in Scarlet was the first work of fiction to incorporate the magnifying glass as an investigative tool....

Excerpt Details
Mystery

Description Details
An occasional collection of 10 horror stories by various readers. We aim to unsettle you a little, to cut through the pink cushion of illusion that shields you from the horrible realities of life. Here are the walking dead, the fetid pools of slime, the howls in the night that you thought you had confined to your more unpleasant dreams....

Excerpt Details
Horror/Ghost stories

Description Details
One of Maugham's most famous short stories, Rain unfolds in a soggy tropical paradise marred by self-righteous hypocrites trying to force their moral beliefs on a girl who basically just wants to have fun. At a running time of approximately 2 1/2 hours, it is too long for inclusion in a Short Story collection.(Summary by BellonaTimes)...

Excerpt Details
Short stories

Description Details
The Dancing Girls is just one of the 4 excellent short stories in this recording. All written by the master, Edna Ferber for magazines between 1910 and 1919 they naturally contain her unique mix of real people, sadness, joy and always humor. The lead Story, The Dancing Girls, is my favorite for the way she paints a picture of mid America small town society and how good people somehow (and sometimes) can find their way to each other. Other stories in this collection are Old Lady Mandel; Long Distance; and One Hundred Percent (Summary by Phil Chenevert)...

Excerpt Details
Short stories