Horatio Leavenworth, an immensely wealthy bachelor, is a retired merchant who enjoys great social position and respect. His two orphan nieces, Mary and Eleanor live with him in a luxurious mansion in New York's upscale Fifth Avenue. One morning, he is found mysteriously dead in his study, shot neatly through the back of his head. His will, written some time earlier, is discovered, in which he has left his entire fortune to one of the nieces, while cutting out the other completely. The building, which had remained locked throughout the night, houses a number of servants besides the two young ladies...

A perplexing mystery novel published in 1897, That Affair Next Door focuses on a mysterious murder that has occurred in a quiet neighborhood, incidentally in the house next door to the home of the curious Miss Butterworth. Consequently, the middle-aged spinster becomes directly involved in the unraveling of the gruesome crime, instigated by her inquisitive and resolute nature. The story sets into motion with the introduction of its protagonist, Miss Amelia Butterworth, an admirable woman in her fifties, who has never experienced the doubtful bliss of marriage, but nevertheless is quite contempt with her respected status in the inner circle of New York society and her comfortable home...

Anna Katharine Green (November 11, 1846 – April 11, 1935) was an American poet and novelist. She was one of the first writers of detective fiction in America and distinguished herself by writing well plotted, legally accurate stories (no doubt assisted by her lawyer father). (Wikipedia)

Violet Strange, a clever petite detective, is called upon to solve the mystery of a page gone missing from an important document. The futures of several people, including an eccentric misanthrope, a chemical scientist, a bride and groom, depend on the quick resolution of this problem. In solving one mystery, she uncovers another which dates back many years.

Anna Katharine Green (November 11, 1846 – April 11, 1935) was an American poet and novelist. She was one of the first writers of detective fiction in America and distinguished herself by writing well plotted, legally accurate stories (no doubt assisted by her lawyer father).

“I was, perhaps, the plainest girl in the room that night. I was also the happiest—up to one o’clock. Then my whole world crumbled, or, at least, suffered an eclipse. Why and how, I am about to relate.” Thus begins this mystery told by Anna Katharine Green, one of the first writers of detective fiction in America and renowned for writing well plotted, legally accurate stories.

"Sometimes in the course of his experience, a detective, while engaged in ferreting out the mystery of one crime, runs inadvertently upon the clue to another. But rarely has this been done in a manner more unexpected or with attendant circumstances of greater interest than in the instance I am now about to relate.For some time the penetration of certain Washington officials had been baffled by the clever devices of a gang of counterfeiters who had inundated the western portion of Massachusetts with spurious Treasury notes...

A reward of five thousand dollars is offered, by Phil Ocumpaugh, to whoever will give such information as will lead to the recovery, alive or dead, of his six-year-old daughter, Gwendolen, missing since the afternoon of August the 16th, from her home in New York. (Quote from the book)

This short story by Anna Katharine Green revolves around a plot to steal some goods secured safely within an impenetrable vault within the confines of Mr. Stoughton's business concern. Nobody seems to have any clue as to how the vault can be accessed, and yet access is gained once a day by person or persons unknown, by a means not known to anyone, apparently Mr. Stoughton himself included! Every clerk in the office is suspect, as the devious plot to plunder the vault's contents unfolds. (Introduction by Roger Melin)

It was a night to drive any man indoors. Not only was the darkness impenetrable, but the raw mist enveloping hill and valley made the open road anything but desirable to a belated wayfarer like myself.Being young, untrammeled, and naturally indifferent to danger, I was not averse to adventure; and having my fortune to make, was always on the lookout for El Dorado, which, to ardent souls, lies ever beyond the next turning. Consequently, when I saw a light shimmering through the mist at my right, I resolved to make for it and the shelter it so opportunely offered...

The country club house The Whispering Pines was closed for the winter, but only one day after he locked the place personally, the narrator sees smoke come out of the chimney. He decides to investigate and enters the house. Hidden in the dark, he sees the sister of his fiance, the girl he secretly loves, run out of the house with tears in her eyes. Upstairs then, he discovers the dead body of his betrothed... (Introduction by Carolin)

The small town of Shelby is shaken by a brutal murder. A man by the name of Etheridge was found beaten to death. A local inn-keeper, is convicted and executed for the crime. Many years later, "a woman in purple" shows up at the house of Ostrander, the respected judge who had sentenced the inn-keeper to be executed. This mysterious woman turns out to be the wife of the convicted man, but she does not believe he was guilty. She visits the Judge, to challenge him on his verdict. He listens to her plea, but reaffirms his belief in her husbands guilt...

It is the noon hour at a museum in New York City. The date: May 23, 1913. The weekday, attendance is light; the attendees are scattered between two floors. Suddenly a cry rings out from the second floor. Scrambling to Section II, the museum director discovers a teenage girl dead with an arrow through her heart. An older woman hovers over her whispering incoherent phrases in the girl's ear and offering incomprehensible answers to the director's questions. She is the only witness to the crime, or accident, as the case may be...

On the evening before his marriage, Sinclair loses a precious curiosity from his collection: an amethyst box, containing a tiny flask of deadly poison. He suspects that this poison is in the possession of either his betrothed or her cousin, the girl his best friend Worthington loves. Turning to Worthington for help, they try to recover the box before the poison can be administered...

A political society secretly operates in Baltimore. When he tries to help his beautiful neighbor Miss Calhoun recover a stolen ring which might cause great unknown danger, Mr. Abbott is drawn into the midst of the conspiracy. (Introduction by Carolin)

A valuable ruby is lost during a disturbance in the snow before a ball at The Evergreens. A detective is called for right away to recover it, but who, of the few guests, might have the jewel, and how to solve the mystery without causing a scandal?

In this well-plotted, character-driven mystery, Detective Gryce receives a cryptic message calling him to the scene of a “strange” crime. He soon finds that the adjective is correct, for in a quiet brownstone house in a respectable New York City neighborhood, he finds the body of a man brutally stabbed to death, yet lovingly laid out on the floor of his study. The only apparent witnesses are a deaf and dumb butler driven mad by the event, and a caged bird that sings out a vital but puzzling clue...

Told from the perspective of a Mrs. Truax, the owner of an inn during the time of the American and French Revolutions, "The Forsaken Inn" is a locked-room mystery that keeps readers guessing about what has happened. A young couple stays at the inn for the night, and goes on their way in the morning ... and several years later, the bride's body is found in a secret room of the inn. Yet, many people saw that bride leave with her husband. How can this be? Green tells her tale through Mrs. Truax' diary, and through letters and discussions with other characters who were friends of the young couple. An entertaining and highly recommended read.

A universally beloved woman has been murdered. But who would have the heart to kill Agatha Webb? Would her husband do it for money matters? Or would it be the cook, who died at about the same time? Or would it be the rich and well-connected Mr. Fredrick, who ran away into the woods? This work is also for feminist fiction lovers. As the story starts right after the murder, we see how Miss Page, a servant at a rich house who is the sweetheart of the same Mr. Fredrick, wants to join the investigation- and is constantly prevented from doing so by conservative men.

Miss Saunders is out for an adventure. One, which is full of secrets, hints, and half-lies. One, which will require all of her wits. She is to be the companion to the Mayor's wife. The Lady is unhappy, and the reason for her grave unhappiness is more serious than you think.

[The Moore House] was standing when Washington was a village. It antedates the Capitol and the White House. Built by a man of wealth, it bears to this day the impress of the large ideas and quiet elegance of colonial times; but the shadow which speedily fell across it made it a marked place even in those early days. While it has always escaped the hackneyed epithet of "haunted," families that have moved in have as quickly moved out, giving as their excuse that no happiness was to be found there and that sleep was impossible under its roof...

"I was married to-day in Grace Church. At the altar my bride--you probably know her name, Miss Georgian Hazen--wore a natural look, and was in all respects, so far as any one could see, a happy woman, satisfied with her choice and pleased with the éclat and elegancies of the occasion. Half-way down the aisle this all changed. I remember the instant perfectly. Her hand was on my arm and I felt it suddenly stiffen. I was not alarmed, but I gave her a quick look and saw that something had happened...

Anna Katharine Green is best known as one of the first women detective writers, and The Sword of Damocles, first published in 1881, does indeed include several mysteries. There is a very brief appearance by her famous detective, Mr Gryce, but at the heart of the book, which is subtitled A Story of New York Life, are a number of very different love stories.

After several people apparently vanish into thin air while walking along the same country road, New York detective Mr Gryce calls on the skills of Miss Amelia Butterworth to help him solve this most puzzling crime. The author of Lost Man’s Lane, Anna Katharine Green, has been described as the first female American writer of detective stories.

A young girl frantically summons a gentleman walking by on the street to come in and help her grandfather. Arthur Outhwaite answers her cry for help only to find himself as the last person to see her grandfather alive and left with the admonishment from the dying man to deliver a letter to someone, and to that person only. Unfortunately, he dies before he can inform Outhwaite who that particular person is. Being in a house of strangers, Outhwaite is thrust into the mystery of not only finding this unknown person, but is also faced with the mysterious circumstances under which the child's grandfather died.

Widow Clemmens is struck down in her parlor while the town's legal professionals chat outside the courthouse down the street. An investigation is made and two equally plausible suspects are quickly unearthed. But is either guilty? And what role does the mysterious Miss Imogene Dare play in this drama? A classic Green mystery notable particularly for the extended courtroom scenes in the second half of the book.

Delight Hunter spends her days looking out of her window at her handsome but very mysterious and reclusive next door neighbor. She walks straight into a mystery when one day a fire starts in one of the upper rooms of his house and she dashes over to warn him, only to have him lock her in with instructions to let no one else in. Why is he so insistent that no one come in? What secrets are hidden within the walls of this house?

Detective Ebenezer Gryce tells the story of the case with which he begun his career in 1840. Several wealthy men were drowned and washed ashore in New York City, and the first clue leads to a dubious money lender...

A man has been shot dead in his house. Ebenezer Gryce is on the case, but he has no leads, no witnesses, no evidence -- until he decides to talk to the neighbors of the victim, a blind doctor and his beautiful wife..

Three fellow travelers on a train enter into a discussion concerning what they would call an ‘indiscreet letter.’ The discussion albeit short, produces some rather interesting revelations during the journey and at journey’s end.

“If you don’t like Christmas stories, don’t read this one!And if you don’t like dogs I don’t know just what to advise you to do!For I warn you perfectly frankly that I am distinctly pro-dog and distinctly pro-Christmas, and would like to bring to this little story whatever whiff of fir-balsam I can cajole from the make-believe forest in my typewriter, and every glitter of tinsel, smudge of toy candle, crackle of wrapping paper, that my particular brand of brain and ink can conjure up on...

Eve Edgarton is not who she seems she is. A short encounter with Mr. Barton show that first impressions are not always right or indicative of one’s seemingly obvious preference or one’s proclivity.

Carl Stanton is an invalid suffering from an unusual bout of rheumatism. His fiancée is gone for the winter and though he begs her to write to help ease his boredom and pain she is stingy with her letters. She sends him what she calls a "ridiculous circular" which she states is very apropos of his sentimental passion for letters. In a sudden fit of mischief, malice and rheumatism, Carl decides to respond to the circular which results in bringing about the necessary distraction in a flurry of letters that do ease Carl’s boredom and pain but also bring him something else that he never quite expected.

This, volume 21 of the Chronicles of Canada series, describes the settlement of the Red River Colony by Lord Selkirk, and the struggles it had against the North-West Company. The fledgling settlement eventually became the city of Manitoba.

Virginia Woolf is one of the most influential and controversial feminine figures in the literary life of the London society. Night and Day is one of her first novels published in 1919 which displays the moral and spiritual issues that people confront. The author herself was an emotionally unstable person, her episodes of mental illness and suicidal depression being recurrent and always brought into the public attention. The novel revolves around the life of the main character, Katherine Hilbery, a superb girl, free spirited and living in her twenties...

The Voyage Out is the first novel by Virginia Woolf, published in 1915 by Duckworth; and published in the U.S. in 1920 by Doran. One of Woolf's wittiest social satires.Rachel Vinrace embarks for South America on her father's ship and is launched on a course of self-discovery in a kind of modern mythical voyage. The mismatched jumble of passengers provide Woolf with an opportunity to satirize Edwardian life. The novel introduces Clarissa Dalloway, the central character of Woolf's later novel, Mrs...

The novel centers, in a very ambiguous way, around the life story of the protagonist Jacob Flanders, and is presented entirely by the impressions other characters have of Jacob [except for those times when we do indeed get Jacob's perspective]. Thus, although it could be said that the book is primarily a character study and has little in the way of plot or background, the narrative is constructed as a void in place of the central character, if indeed the novel can be said to have a 'protagonist' in conventional terms. Motifs of emptiness and absence haunt the novel and establish its elegiac feel.

Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929), with its famous dictum, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction...

CANADA, THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTHBy Agnes C. LautPREFACETo re-create the shadowy figures of the heroic past, to clothe the dead once more in flesh and blood, to set the puppets of the play in life's great dramas again upon the stage of action,--frankly, this may not be formal history, but it is what makes the past most real to the present day. Pictures of men and women, of moving throngs and heroic episodes, stick faster in the mind than lists of governors and arguments on treaties. Such pictures may not be history, but they breathe life into the skeletons of the past...

Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann (1776 – 1822), better known by his pen name E.T.A. Hoffmann (Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann), was a German Romantic author of fantasy and horror, a jurist, composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist. Hoffmann's stories were very influential during the 19th century, and he is one of the major authors of the Romantic movement.He is the subject and hero of Jacques Offenbach's famous but fictional opera The Tales of Hoffmann, and the author of the novelette The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, on which the famous ballet The Nutcracker is based...

Anyone who's ever visited the Yosemite National Park will find this book a treasure trove of descriptions, information and evocations of the fabled beauty of this amazing piece of heaven on earth! The Yosemite by John Muir was published in 1912. Born in Scotland, England, this world-famous conservationist was a multi-talented genius. He was a geologist, naturalist, engineer, writer, botanist and a passionate and prolific writer on the preservation of the natural environment. His family migrated to America when he was just a few years old, the third of eight boisterous children...

First published in 1894, this wonderful travelogue by a famed naturalist and conservationist still remains a book that delights and informs its readers. The Mountains of California by John Muir recounts the author's exploration of the Yosemite Valley, Mount Whitney, the famed sequoia forests and King's Canyon among other places of immense natural beauty. Written in his characteristic zestful style, with a deep understanding and respect for nature, the book is a treasure trove of geography, geology, botany, biology and sheer love of the magical planet we live in...

The journal of nature-lover John Muir who spent the summer of 1869 walking California’s Sierra Nevada range. From French Bar to Mono Lake and the Yosemite Valley, Muir was awestruck by everything he saw. The antics of the smallest “insect people” amazed him as much as stunted thousand-year old Juniper trees growing with inconceivable tenacity from tiny cracks in the stone. Muir spent the rest of his life working to preserve the high Sierra, believing that “the clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.” John Muir (1838-1914) was born in Dunbar, Scotland and grew up in Wisconsin, USA. This recording commemorates the 140th anniversary of that first summer.

“The only fire for the whole house was the kitchen stove, with a fire box about eighteen inches long and eight inches wide and deep,- scant space for three or four small sticks, around which in hard zero weather all the family of ten shivered, and beneath which in the morning we found our socks and coarse, soggy boots frozen solid.” Thus, with perceptive eye for detail, the American naturalist, John Muir, describes life on a pioneer Wisconsin farm in the 1850’s. Muir was only eleven years old when his father uprooted the family from a relatively comfortable life in Dunbar, Scotland, to settle in the backwoods of North America...

In 1879 John Muir went to Alaska for the first time. Its stupendous living glaciers aroused his unbounded interest, for they enabled him to verify his theories of glacial action. Again and again he returned to this continental laboratory of landscapes. The greatest of the tide-water glaciers appropriately commemorates his name. Upon this book of Alaska travels, all but finished before his unforeseen departure, John Muir expended the last months of his life.

A collection of Muir's previously unpublished essays, released shortly after his death. "This volume will meet, in every way, the high expectations of Muir's readers. The recital of his experiences during a stormy night on the summit of Mount Shasta will take rank among the most thrilling of his records of adventure. His observations on the dead towns of Nevada, and on the Indians gathering their harvest of pine nuts, recall a phase of Western life that has left few traces in American literature...

A great dog story, a well told tale — the naturalist and adventurer John Muir recounts how he and his companion, a dog named Stickeen, each, alone, confronted and conquered their fears of an icy Alaskan glacier in 1880.

Emily Bronte’s first and only novel, Wuthering Heights, portrays the obsessive and vengeful love story between Heathcliff and Catherine. Images of cruelty and passion with an incorporation of gothic supernatural elements set the dark and misty atmosphere present throughout the novel. Moving between two neighboring houses, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, the wild love story turned destructive obsession is narrated by Mr. Lockwood through his diary entries. Bronte sets the novel into motion with the arrival of Mr...

The first book in Galsworthy’s trilogy, The Forsyte Saga, The Man of Property revolves around the lives of the Forsytes, a self-conceited and cold family, who place a high value on propagating money and rising from their yeoman roots. The novel chronicles the events that lead to their inevitable demise, which is instigated by the stuffy man of property, Soames Forsyte, as he pursues the ideals of the preceding generation, whilst maintaining his own obsession with ownership. At the same time, Galsworthy candidly criticizes the values of the upper-middle classes, by means of satire, irony, a mixed array of realistic characters, an evocative setting, and an intricate plot...

‘The Forsyte Saga’ is the story of a wealthy London family stretching from the eighteen-eighties until the nineteen-twenties. In Chancery is the second book in the saga. Five years have passed since Irene left Soames and the death of Bosinney. Old Jolyon meets Irene and is enchanted by her. At his death he leaves her a legacy sufficient for her to live an independent life in Paris. Soames, who is desperate for a son, attempts to effect a rapprochement but is rejected by her. Meanwhile Young Jolyon, now a widower who is Irene’s trustee, falls in love with her...

‘The Forsyte Saga’ is the story of a wealthy London family stretching from the eighteen-eighties until the nineteen-twenties. To Let is the third and final book in the saga (although Galsworthy later published two further trilogies which extend the story). We are now in 1920, about twenty years since Irene married Young Jolyon and gave birth to John and since Soames married Annette, who gave him a daughter, Fleur. The two sides of the family have not met since those times and John and Fleur do not even know of each other’s existence...

This 1918 book consists of five short stories or novelettes by Galsworthy. They are The First and Last (1914), A Stoic, The Apple Tree (1916), The Juryman, Indian Summer of a Forsyte (1918) This last became part of the trilogy The Forsyte Saga. (Introduction by David Wales)

Gyp, the daughter of ex-Major Charles Claire Winton, at the age of 23 marries Fiorsen, a Swedish violin virtuoso. Her mother, the wife of another man, has been Winton's mistress; she had died when Gyp was born. A highly sensitive child, Gyp has grown up in isolated surroundings with a kind, but very British, father. As she gets older her father tries to introduce her into society. An attack of gout takes him to Wiesbaden for a cure and, as he never goes anywhere without her, she accompanies him...

A small play in three acts. A kind of comic tragedy. The plot tells the story of the interaction between two very different families in rural England just after the end of the First World War. Squire Hillcrist lives in the manor house where his family has lived for generations. He has a daughter, Jill, who is in her late teens; and a wife, Amy, as well as servants and retainers. He is "old money", although his finances are at a bit of low ebb. The other family is the "nouveau riche" Hornblowers,...