Genre Other. Page - 185

Description Considered by many to be the first detective novel, The Lerouge Case (aka The Widow Lerouge) introduces Monsieur Lecoq (later Inspector Lecoq), a former “habitual criminal” who becomes a police officer. Émile Gaboriau based Lecoq at least in part on an actual criminal-turned-police-officer, Eugène Vidocq, who went on to be the first director of the Sûreté. In this first book, Lecoq plays a relatively small part, the bulk of the mystery solving being done by Lecoq’s mentor Tabaret,

Description A murder is discovered. The authorities quickly arrest an obvious suspect. A detective spends hours at the scene in disguise before making himself known, and proceeds to minutely examine the evidence with the assistance of a doctor, among others, before proclaiming the answer lies in a completely different direction. One would be forgiven for thinking the detective must be a certain famous Englishman and his doctor companion. But this detective is French rather than English, a

Description Ernest Bramah’s Kai Lung stories are set in a fantastical ancient China and written with an oblique, ornate prose style that serves to mimic that of Chinese folk tales. The titular character is an itinerant storyteller and the books themselves are mostly collections of stories presented as if he were narrating. Kai Lung’s Golden Hours, published in 1922, is the second of the Kai Lung books, and the first to have an overarching framing narrative and thus be published as a novel. In

Description Songs of a Sourdough is a collection of poems written in 1907 by Robert W. Service while he was working as a bank teller in Whitehorse, Yukon. The best-known poems are those describing life during the Klondike Gold Rush of the late 1890s, especially his ballads “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” and the “Cremation of Sam McGee.” While some of Service’s work had previously appeared in newspapers and periodicals, Songs of a Sourdough was his first book. Publishers initially questioned the

Description Whose Body?, published in 1923, is the first in a long and very popular series of mystery novels written by Dorothy L. Sayers and featuring her aristocratic detective Lord Peter Wimsey. In this novel we are introduced to Wimsey, his imperturbable and multi-skilled butler Bunter, and his close friend Charles Parker of Scotland Yard as they come together to investigate an extremely mysterious incident: the naked body of a man, wearing a golden pince-nez, has been discovered in the

Description Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town is Stephen Leacock’s humourous and affectionate account of small-town life in the fictional town of Mariposa. Written in 1912, it is drawn from his experiences living in Orillia, Ontario. The book is a series of funny and satirical anecdotes that illustrate the inner workings of life in Mariposa—from business to politics to steamboat disasters. The town is populated by many archetypal characters including the shrewd businessman Mr. Smith, the

Description Ethan Frome is a young man whose nascent ambitions were thwarted by illness and privation. Now his daily toils wring only the most meager living from his fading farm, and his marriage is as frigid as the winter that has beset his home in Starkfield, MA. Yet despite the swirling snows, a flame of passion sparked by the recent arrival of his wife’s cousin, Mattie Silver, burns desperately within him. How far will he go to pursue a forbidden love and the prospect of true happiness?

Description The Way We Live Now is Anthony Trollope’s longest novel, published in two volumes in 1875 after first appearing in serial form. After an extended visit to Australia and New Zealand in 1872, Trollope was outraged on his return to England by a number of financial scandals, and was determined to expose the dishonesty, corruption, and greed they embodied. The Way We Live Now centers around a foreign businessman, Augustus Melmotte, who has come to prominence in London despite rumors

Description Roswitha, also known as Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, was a tenth century German canoness, dramatist, and poet. A remarkable woman, she has been called the first Western playwright since antiquity as well as the first known woman playwright. She was inspired by the Roman comic playwright Terence, who wrote six farces filled with disguises, misunderstandings, and pagan debauchery. Upset by Terence’s immoral subject matter but also inspired by his well-crafted plays, Roswitha sought to

Description Kate Chopin’s most famous work nowadays is the novel The Awakening , but at the turn of the last century she was more famous for her short fiction, published in American magazines like the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Youth’s Companion, and Vogue. A prolific writer, over the course of fourteen years she penned nearly a hundred stories, although many didn’t see publication until a new collection was released in 1963. The stories focus on life in 1890s Louisiana, a setting that she was