Involution & Evolution is an anti-war novel focussing on Alfred Freeman, a World War One conscientious objector whose character is based on Jesus and Buddha. It stabs away at the hypocrisy at the centre of modern religion and politics, in a uniquely rhythmic and colourful manner....

A collection of 48 wonderful English language stories from Sholem Alechem, I. L. Perez, Shalom Asch, and others. Tales of humour and drama, tragedy and pathos set mostly in the Jewish communities of 19th-century eastern Europe, Russia, and the Ukraine. Translated from Yiddish by Helena Frank. (Summary by Adrian Praetzellis)...

Short stories

Not only is The House of the Vampire (1907) one of the first known gay vampire stories, but it is also one of the first psychic vampire stories—where a vampire feeds off more than just blood....

Horror/Ghost stories

Involution & Evolution is an anti-war novel focussing on Alfred Freeman, a World War One conscientious objector whose character is based on Jesus and Buddha. It stabs away at the hypocrisy at the centre of modern religion and politics, in a uniquely rhythmic and colourful manner....

This novel is based on the plot that describes the life of a young lady having worked as Assistant Professor at the University level. These days, she is engaged by a Trust, interested in promoting `mental illumination through peace of mind and self-confidence. She is going places to deliver lectures, keep in mind the aims of the organization as well as the composition of the audiences. In fact, since her infancy she is on the move from one part of India to another, even having no idea of the identity of the couple who parented her. Having been reared up by a domestic maid, she was obliged to inherit this type of job to earn for her livelihood. The onset of puberty in the proximity of unrelated men was to be withstood with caution and care for her chastity. These tours of lecturing around, once make her find a known lady in her audience in Delhi. This incident opens her the way to meet many people in this big city and take her to the person who fathered her. Here, she also gets the truthful information about her mother....

Dear Madhu Ji, On my way back home I recapitulated, as my routine exercise, the discussions at the Coffee House. Can you recall the reaction of Mr Malik to Lal's outburst against the final outcome of Dhananjay Chakrovarty's legal battle to ward off the Capital punishment pronounced on him for rape and murder of a minor girl, when he himself was just 21 years? ……………..." I suppose Mr. Malik came out with some amusing retort, which made almost the entire group at the table giggle and I could not make out anything but only observe Mr. Malik move towards the toilets. Respected Sir, I clearly heard your `Guruji`, I mean Mr Malik, murmur aloud, “Is there any punishment available to your civilized society to punish an errant woman who voluntarily and actively seduces and commits rape on an innocent, uninitiated and in the prime of his youth?” “Do you mean a rape amongst a Lesbian fraternity?” Mr. Lal Singh speaks out smilingly. Mr. Malik simply hung his head down and spoke in his normal pitch, “I mean, on a companion belonging to the opposite sex.” Having uttered these words Guruji peacefully got up and moved in a gentle pace towards pu...

This story whirls around plot that opens up when two ex-classmates happen to meet inadvertently, one on his official duty, while the other on past-time, enjoying holiday touring alone. Their next meeting, brings a female classfellow of theirs at the hill-station to make them enjoy one another’s company. This re-union continues to grow further during the years that follow. The author portrays just an account of certain events taking shape in the social sectors of these persons, making, breaking or remaking a marriage based on the choice of the persons involved into matrimony. ...

Hemant's intention in going to the H.P.T.D.C. hotel was, at the moment, influenced by the desire to meet Mr. Manmeet Malhotra, the manager. He also wanted thereby to express his gratitude to Mr. Malhotra who had arranged accommodation for him last night. Hemant was already under obligation of Mr Malhotra for his kind and affectionate treatment of Hemant when three years ago Hemant happened to meet him at the H.P.T.D.C. hotel at Manali where Manmeet Malhotra was working as an Astt Manager, those days. They were seeing each other after almost a decade since their graduation as students of S.R.C.C., Delhi. …………………….. "Well, how is `Bhabhiji`?" Hemant asked. For a few moments Manmeet held up his tongue tightly and only stared at Hemant with a smile on his face. Hemant thought that he had made a mistake. Perhaps, Triplem is still a bachelor like him. "But when I met him in Manali, he had told me that he had got married only three months before.” But Manmeet was quick enough to read the signs of perplexity in his friend's face and lost no time in explaining his position. ……………. He was not interested in knowing more about Ma...

This is the philosophical novel that was my Master's degree thesis

Steven, you should DEFINITELY continue to give your life to . . . literary novels (notice I omitted “obscure”).  What you have produced is a phenomenal work.  Others, in the past, have attempted to do something like you have done, but they did not come close to creating a work with such breadth and depth as you.   I apologize for taking so very long to complete the reading of your work, but it is very densely written in some sections, while others seem to be as lucid as anything I have ever read.  Your vocabulary probably exceeds my own (“fulgurant”), for which I am thankful, as I always enjoy being taught the existence of words I have not yet incorporated into my own lexicon.   The most successful parts of your work—for me—were the interactions between Luk, Aus, and the central character, as those passages moved the story along.  I think using the unrest and waging of police action in Bangkok sets up the intellectual discontent in the rest of the novel, but I would wish for a more balanced unfolding of the story with the intellectual ruminations.  The least successful passages for me were sometimes extremely lengthy sen...

This moderately sized novel opens before the reader, with an episode that took place when, after having driven over a hundred kilometers relating to the pleasure trip from Delhi to Kosani,a tourist resort situated in the Kumayun Hills a range of the Himalayas in the North of India, being undertaken by a group of very intimate three unwed oldies, all retired college teachers, when one of them is accosted by the owner of the roadside `Dhaba` (an indigenous restaurant) where they had halted for refreshment. It triggers one of them to recall his boyhood days. Again, at their destination, the other one is accosted by an ex-girlfriend of his, in the distant past. The `trio` who are given to such type of tours, happen to meet two other ladies, while staying in a very beautiful zone of Goa. Here, each of these women have had been connected with either of the two other Professors, who hasn’t yet met any such female pupil of his, during the various other tours, undertaken by them the `trio` till then. These chance meetings brings forth during the next few years, a bond of a purpose for a meaningful solidarity, eventually turning int...

Three chronic bachelors, on their way to Kosani (Kumayun Hills), have just completed their breakfast at a roadside modern `Dhaba` and the cashier for this solid group of three looks towards his companions, as if to seek their consent to signal the `boy` to bring the bill. So, in a broader sense, we used to be treating each other as `neighbour`, during those days. He is younger to me by a couple of years, but his physique and mannerism suggested his equaling me in age. Of course, he always remained conscious of my superiority, because at that point of time, I already had schooling for seven years, whereas he was thoroughly illiterate. …………………. Kundan happened to be the only `writer` available, had a brisk business almost for a fortnight. "I think that it was here that I actually began to earn for months at a run. One day, my earnings went to as high as Five Rupees and 14 Annas, I decided to place it before my mother, instead of handing it over to my father, as usual. …………. "Well, Khanna Ji, how long you had to work with this medico, before resuming your interrupted schooling?" This question was asked by Mr Nepali. "Of...

Excerpt: When we think of the enormous number of volumes that have been published on the question as to where Hannibal crossed the Alps, without our being able to decide to-day whether it was (according to Whittaker and Rivaz) by Lyon, Geneva, the Great Saint-Bernard, and the valley of Aosta....

The Gospel According to Matthew is one of the four canonical gospels, one of the three synoptic gospels, and the first book of the New Testament. It tells of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth....

Religion

Parallel Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans is a series of biographies of famous men, arranged in tandem to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings. The surviving lives contain twenty-three pairs of biographies, each pair consisting of one Greek and one Roman, as well as four unpaired, single lives. Plutarch was not concerned with writing histories, as such, but in exploring the influence of character, good or bad, on the lives and destinies of famous men. The first pair of lives the Epaminondas-Scipio Africanus no longer exists, and many of the remaining lives are truncated, contain obvious lacunae and/or have been tampered with by later writers. His Life of Alexander is one of the five surviving secondary or tertiary sources about Alexander the Great and it includes anecdotes and descriptions of incidents that appear in no other source. Likewise, his portrait of Numa Pompilius, an early Roman king, also contains unique information about the early Roman calendar. In this copy-right expired 11-volume translation from the Loeb Classical library, the order of the paired lives is rearranged to present the Greek lives in chr...

Biography, History

Short stories, Poetry

Excerpt: Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief by James Fenimore Cooper.

Excerpt: Typhoon by Joseph Conrad.

This classic 1922 fantasy novel brings you to a strange and lovely world where a young lord wrestles King Gorice for his land's freedom, where unscalable mountains can only be conquered by stubbornness and hippogriffs, where the great explorer Lord Gro finds himself continually driven to betrayal, where sweet young women occasionally fall for evil wizards, and where the heroes actually win their hearts' desire. (Summary by www.archive.org)...

Fantasy, Fiction

volunteers bring you 15 recordings of The Dried-up Fountain by Robert Leighton. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for December 18, 2011. This poem is taken from A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895, Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). (Summary by David Lawrence)...

Fantasy, Myths/Legends, Nature, Romance, Poetry

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89) was an English poet, educated at Oxford. Entering the Roman Catholic Church in 1866 and the Jesuit novitiate in 1868, he was ordained in 1877. Upon becoming a Jesuit he burned much of his early verse and abandoned the writing of poetry. However, the sinking in 1875 of a German ship carrying five Franciscan nuns, exiles from Germany, inspired him to write one of his most impressive poems “The Wreck of the Deutschland.” Thereafter he produced his best poetry, including “God’s Grandeur,” “The Windhover,” “The Leaden Echo,” and “The Golden Echo.” (Summary by http://www.bartleby.com/people/HopkinsG.html Bartleby )...

Poetry

Excerpt: A girl came out of lawyer Royall?s house, at the end of the one street of North Dormer, and stood on the doorstep. It was the beginning of a June afternoon. The springlike transparent sky shed a rain of silver sunshine on the roofs of the village, and on the pastures and larchwoods surrounding it. A little wind moved among the round white clouds on the shoulders of the hills, driving their shadows across the fields and down the grassy road that takes the name of street when it passes through North Dormer....

Excerpt: He was working on the edge of the common, beyond the small brook that ran in the dip at the bottom of the garden, carrying the garden path in continuation from the plank bridge on to the common. He had cut the rough turf and bracken, leaving the grey, dryish soil bare. But he was worried because he could not get the path straight, there was a pleat between his brows. He had set up his sticks, and taken the sights between the big pine trees, but for some reason everything seemed wrong. He looked again, straining his keen blue eyes, that had a touch of the Viking in them, through the shadowy pine trees as through a doorway, at the greengrassed garden-path rising from the shadow of alders by the log bridge up to the sunlit flowers. Tall white and purple columbines, and the butt-end of the old Hampshire cottage that crouched near the earth amid flowers, blossoming in the bit of shaggy wildness round about....

Contents England, My England ........................................................................................................................ 4 Tickets, Please .................................................................................................................................. 35 The Blind Man ................................................................................................................................. 47 Monkey Nuts .................................................................................................................................... 66 Wintry Peacock ................................................................................................................................ 79 You Touched Me............................................................................................................................... 93 Samson and Delilah........................................................................................................................110 The Primrose Path ........................................................................................................

Excerpt: No Thoroughfare by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins.