A group of young adults away on a nutting expedition is delayed in a hospitable home by a sudden rainstorm. After the storm, Marjorie insists that she must get home that night, albeit late, out of respect and care for her mother. Others want to extend the fun and stay away overnight. Ralph, the driver of their wagon and unspoken beau of Marjorie, is swayed by the teasing ridicule of Estelle to refuse to take them home that night. Unknown to the party, unexpected opportunities occur at Ralph's and Estelle's homes that same night, and their delay and subsequent actions profoundly affect the course of all three of their lives. Sequel: Overruled

The Black Cat was a monthly literary magazine, publishing original short stories, often about uncanny or fantastical topics. Many writers were largely unknown, but some famous authors also wrote original material for this magazine. This is the eighth issue of volume 2 with the following five short stories: "The Passing of the Polly Ann", by Collins Shackelford: the survivor of a drifting ship testifies to a startling revelation "The Obsequies of Ole Miss Jug", by Jean Ross Irvine: these children know how to bury a faithful dog in style "A Modern Goliath", by J...

Between these pages you will find only the good, old-fashioned, every-day cat. No Angora or thoroughbred has been entered here, unless it be "Hansie," who is little more than mentioned. These are true incidents and true lives, with the exception of the one chapter, "The Mission of the Cat." The reader will pardon the intrusion of Victor, the dog. I have added him as the cook adds her trace of spice, but feeling also that he is entirely in place, being an ardent cat-lover himself.

This very special abridged version was written and performed by Dickens himself during his American Tour of 1862. Without the more terrifying and dark elements of the full length novel, its hour and a half length, and its lighter, comedic style makes this a family listening experience suited for all ages. ( Michael Armenta)

When the veteran captain of the St. Mary's baseball team is forced to resign at the beginning of the season, the choice for his replacement falls quickly upon the star pitcher. But can the new captain manage to rally the team, cope with detractors, and win the coach's confidence--all while still keeping his pitching arm in shape? And when fresh disasters threaten to wreck the big game, is there anything he can do to save it?

Conan the Barbarian is employed by one of the civilized countries to help in it's push to claim lands from the primitive Picts. The Picts are not excited about the idea however. Old gods and mythical creatures are called up by the Pict witches to contest the invading army and Conan finds himself battling for his life amid the blood thirsty hordes that include saber-toothed tigers, 40 foot long venomous snakes and a demon from another dimension who is intent on crushing him. The huge dog Slasher makes an appearance here and distinguishes himself so well in a doomed battle to delay their forces that Conan openly praises his courage and pledges that 7 Pict heads will roll in his honor.

Haedaecker’s Theory claims that real-time communications across space is impossible. Paul Grayson believes that Z-wave technology will make real time communication possible. Paul sets out to prove his theory but there are those who don’t want him to succeed. Follow Paul’s adventures while he tries to prove his theory correct in the face of stiff opposition from those who do not want him to succeed.

A tale of human choices and lost opportunities, and how one's choices affect so many other lives, for good or ill. A borrowed watch. A selfish younger brother. An engagement and flirtation. A trip to the city to replace the watch turns David Ransom's life in a whole new direction. - Summary by TriciaG

The eight short stories that comprise South Sea Tales are powerful tales that vividly evoke the early 1900’s colonial South Pacific islands. Tales of hurricanes, missionaries, brotherhood and seafaring are intertwined with enslavement, savagery, and lawless trading to expose the often-barbarous history of the South Pacific islands. You will also gain unsparing insight into the life, culture and relations between natives and Westerners during this period. If you like nautical and sea adventures, if you are interested in the history of the South Pacific islands, and especially if you want to read gripping tales set in the exotic lands, then this book will be perfect for you...

A miscellany of poetry and short works of fact and fiction on the topic of sports from North America, Great Britain and Australasia. The collection includes pieces on baseball, cricket, lacrosse, cycling, athletics, fishing, polo, fencing, marbles and three kinds of football, by authors including Arnold Bennett, Zane Grey, Banjo Paterson, and P. G. Wodehouse.

Elizabeth Gaskell was a regular contributor to Charles Dickens's weekly magazine, Household Words, from 1850 through to 1853 In addition to three serialized novels, Cranford, North and South, and My Lady Ludlow, Dickens published 18 shorter works by Gaskell, which made her the major literary contributor to the magazine apart from Dickens himself. This collection brings together all of the short stories and non-fiction pieces that Gaskell published in the magazine between 1850 and 1853. Lizzie Leigh and The Heart of John Middleton are examples of Gaskell's writing on the working classes of the industrial north of England, while the Well of Pen Morfa is set in rural North Wales...

If you drive through the Lady's Mile, the most fashionable district in London, you will see people whose most distinguished ambition was to be known in that circle. A novelist, a painter, and some aristocrats, willing to prove themselves to the world. But what happens behind closed doors? Is the Lady's Mile as respectable as it seems? - Summary by Stav Nisser.

Falkner is the last novel by Mary Shelley, best known as the author of Frankenstein and The Last Man. It tells the impossible love story between Elizabeth Raby and Gerald Neville. She is an orphan, raised by a tyrannical father figure. The man who raised her drove Gerald Neville's mother to her death years before. Can these men reconcile for the woman both love and start anew? Or would Elizabeth have to give up her happiness? Mary Shelley considered this her best novel. You may read it and see what you think. - Summary by Stav Nisser and Wikipedia.

The Black Cat was a monthly literary magazine, publishing original short stories, often about uncanny or fantastical topics. Many writers were largely unknown, but some famous authors also wrote original material for this magazine. This is the tenth issue of volume 2 with the following five short stories: > For Dear Old Yale, by James Langston: a game of cards will decide the fate of these six men > The Casket of Pandora, by Margaret Dodge: a young woman is tempted to choose between her family and her career > A Romance of the Palisades, by E...

Aristopia (published 1895) is truly an alternative history. It is an imagination of how the continent of North America might have developed if one man with the vision, altruism and determination to build a state for the benefit of all its people had been in the happy position of having wealth enough to make his dream a reality. It is an interesting book which deserves its place in literary history largely for being the first novel-length example of its genre. It is written, not as a novel, but as unvarnished history...

Bertram Greene, brilliant student, aesthete, intellectual and shy, decides to make his military father proud of him at last and joins the colonial Indian Army Reserve as a second Lieutenant at the start of Great War. Feeling a complete fish out of water, he is dispatched to India without any training whatsoever, and is expected to take charge of a company of native soldiers. He is then posted to East Africa to join the British fighting force there, and finds out what real soldiering means. This amusing, and at times harrowing tale gives a comprehensive description of the life and conditions of a soldier in the tropics, obviously written by someone who has experienced them...

Here are two gemlike novellas in one volume, written in May Sinclair’s clearest and cleverest prose and exploring the many ways in which a woman can be held captive, held back from the “intoxication of freedom.” In “The Cosmopolitan,” Frida Tancred is a wealthy heiress trapped by family obligation in a dismal provincial estate, hopelessly longing to see all the glories of the world and with no way of escape but the conventional one of marriage. In “Superseded,” spinsterish Miss Juliana Quincey has been teaching arithmetic in a London girls’ school for twenty-five years when she suddenly falls in love with a much younger man and begins to question the assumptions of her life...

But he was afraid. He had failed twice already. He could not afford to fail a third time. If he failed ruin faced him, and disgrace. His father had warned him that the money he had saved for his education had come to an end. Ruin for his father and his little sister! He had no idea how deeply Rupert was in debt. Rupert himself had only just realised it. And in desperation he had gambled to save himself. (Excerpt from 1st chapter by Arthur Applin)

A collection of twenty stories featuring ghoulies, ghosties, long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night. Expect shivers up your spine, the stench of human flesh, and the occasional touch of wonder.

The scene is Rome, 935 A.D. Thirty-year-old Tristan, dressed as a pilgrim, overhears a conversation between Basil, the Grand Chamberlain, and Il Gobbo, his assistant. After the two have left, Tristan continues to observe the revelry on the Eve of St. John. Suddenly a chariot containing a beautiful woman stops before him. They exchange words. He kisses her hand. Then she moves on, leaving him to ponder her beauty as he returns to the inn where he is staying. That night he has an enchanting and haunting dream of him together with another woman...

The Tale of Genji (Genji Monogatari) is a classic work of Japanese literature attributed to the Japanese noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu in the early eleventh century, around the peak of the Heian Period. It is sometimes called the world's first novel, the first modern novel, the first romance novel, or the first novel to still be considered a classic... The Genji was written for the women of the aristocracy (the yokibito) and has many elements found in a modern novel: a central character and a very...

As much as any other work of literature, Henri Murger’s 1851 collection of witty sketches Scènes de la vie de bohème shaped the later romanticized image of the bohemian artist: independent, insouciant, exuberantly lustful, devoted to Art for Art’s sake no matter how cold and hungry the artist might be. Four young Parisian artists, Schaunard the composer, Marcel the painter, Rodolphe the poet, and Colline the philosopher, form an informal Bohemian alliance dedicated to Art and the joy of Life...

One of the so-called "Chronicles of Carlingford", of which there were two short stories and five novels written from 1861 to 1876 by Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant. The Chronicles originally appeared in the famous Blackwood's Magazine. Mrs. Oliphant wrote prolifically in her career, and many of her main characters were independent, resourceful women. In fact, Miss Marjoribanks has been occasionally cited as the successor to Jane Austen's Emma, albeit Miss Marjoribanks is more focused, less pliable and a decidedly more strategic thinker than dear Emma.

Fearing that her son, Robert, will grow too intellectual to relate to his parents, Mrs. Fenton starts a "Chautauqua Literary & Scientific Circle" in the town of Centreville. The C.L.S.C. draws in members from all strata of society - from the maid of a well-to-do family and 3 lazy, wild youths to society girls and the eminent Professor Monteith. We follow various members of the Circle as the studies at home and the social interactions and programs at the actual Chautauqua in New York shape and challenge their previous ideas and beliefs...

Ned Franks, a one-armed Christian sailor, returns to his sister's home after several years away at sea. She and her son are not Christians, and are cold toward him, viewing him as a hindrance and expense. By his upright, kind behavior and willingness to work, he soon begins supporting himself and becomes well-liked in the community, especially by the children. Various other characters face and overcome challenges, including a servant girl who breaks a habit of dishonesty and a Jew who is faced with the reality that Jesus Christ is the Messiah...

"Herbert West—Reanimator" is a story by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft that was first serialized in February through July 1922 in the amateur publication Home Brew. The story was the basis of the 1985 horror film Re-Animator and its sequels, in addition to numerous other adaptations in various media. You want zombies? Listen to this because Lovecraft was one of the very first and he got zombies right: scary, evil, implacable and out to get you.

First published in 1914, the King of Alsander is the only novel by James Elroy Flecker, best known as a poet, but also a noted scholar, linguist and diplomat. Flecker's love of learning, language and travel, and his keen satirical insight into politics are all in evidence in this phantasmagoric tale. As the author himself describes it: Here is a tale all romance - a tale such as only a Poet can write for you, O appreciative and generous Public - a tale of madmen, kings, scholars, grocers, consuls,...

The year is 2353. Tom Corbett is a cadet with the Space Academy, training to become a member of the elite Solar Guard. Sent on a top-secret mission across the stars, Tom and his fellow crew members discover the nature of true loyalty, as they battle against danger in deep space.

The Journal of Julius Rodman, Being an Account of the First Passage across the Rocky Mountains of North America Ever Achieved by Civilized Man is an unfinished serial novel by American author Edgar Allan Poe published in 1840. Six installments of the novel were published in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine's January through June issues in 1840. At the time, Poe was a contributing editor of the journal. He was fired from the job in June 1840 by William Burton and refused to continue the novel.

This 2nd volume of the Marie Antoinette Romances continues the intrigues of "Balsamo, The Magician" and adds to them the schemes of philosophers and the stirrings of revolution. Balsamo carries on his occult tactics to weaponize the state secrets that he gained in the previous volume. A serious romance and illness takes root in the court of King Louis XV, convincing one of the leading philosophic minds of the era, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that “the breath of heaven will blast an age and a monarchy.” - Summary by jvanstan

This is a collection of short stories of mystery and romance, set at sea, in the times of the great sea voyages.

A manhunt for a bank robber takes a determined and fixated New York City detective on a gripping, globe-spanning adventure, with many plot twists along the way. Arthur Stringer was a novelist, screenwriter and poet. He published 45 works of fiction and 15 other books in addition to writing numerous film scripts and articles. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Stringer_(writer) This book is unrelated to the 1930s and 1940s pulp magazine and radio series of the same name. (Lee Smalley)