Description Notes from Underground is a fictional collection of memoirs written by a civil servant living alone in St. Petersburg. The man is never named and is generally referred to as the Underground Man. The “underground” in the book refers to the narrator’s isolation, which he described in chapter 11 as “listening through a crack under the floor.” It is considered to be one of the first existentialist novels. With this book, Dostoevsky challenged the ideologies of his time, like nihilism
Description H. G. Wells is probably best known for his imaginative longer works, such as his novels The War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man ; but he was also a prolific short story writer. This Standard Ebooks edition of his short fiction includes fifty-four of Wells’ stories, written between 1894 and 1909 and compiled from the collections The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents (1895), The Plattner Story and Others (1897), Tales of Time and Space (1899), Twelve Stories and a Dream (1903)
Description Captain Belval, learning of a threat to his beloved nurse Little Mother Coralie, rescues her from her would-be assailants and is promptly dragged into a plot involving her husband and millions of francs worth of gold. As layer upon layer of conspiracy emerges with no obvious thread to follow, there’s only one man who can be counted on to uncover the truth. The Golden Triangle (also known as The Return of Arsène Lupin) was published in 1917 in both the original French and this
Description The Murder on the Links is Agatha Christie’s second Poirot novel, featuring the brilliant Belgian detective and his sidekick, Captain Hastings. In this characteristic whodunit, Poirot is summoned to a seaside town in northern France by a desperate letter from a rich businessman, who fears that he is being stalked. Poirot arrives to find the businessman already dead, his body lying facedown in an open grave on a golf course, a knife in his back—the victim of a mysterious murder. Over
Description Six Characters in Search of an Author (Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore) is an Italian three-act play written by Luigi Pirandello in 1921, considered as one of the earliest examples of absurdist theatre. It’s a play within a play that deals with perceptions of reality and illusion, and plays with the ideas of identity and relative truths. The plot features an acting company who have gathered to rehearse another play by Pirandello, when they’re interrupted by 6 “characters” who
Description John Keats’ poems are a major part of the second wave of English Romantic poetry. They portray settings loaded with symbolism and sensuality, and draw heavily on Greek and Roman myth along with romanticised tales of chivalry. Keats died in 1821 at the young age of 25, having written the majority of his work in less than four years. While not appreciated during his lifetime, he has gone on to become one of the most loved of the Romantic poets, and has provided inspiration to authors
Description The Pit-Prop Syndicate is a story from the beginning of the golden age of crime fiction. Seymour Merriman, a British wine merchant on business in France, happens upon a syndicate manufacturing pit-props—beams used to prop up mine tunnels—but his eye is caught by one odd detail: their lorry’s numberplate mysteriously changes. With the help of his friend Hilliard from the Excise department they dig deeper and uncover a dangerous conspiracy. Freeman Wills Crofts was a civil engineer,
Description The Island of Doctor Moreau is the narration of Edward Prendick, a shipwrecked man who finds himself on a mysterious island full of humanoid animal creatures. He comes to find that these creatures are the work of Dr. Moreau, a man who experiments in vivisection, and his assistant Montgomery. The story of Dr. Moreau’s island began as an article in the January, 1895 issue of Saturday Review. It was later adapted into a novel. Its themes reflect concerns growing in the society of the
Description Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim, published in 1901, tells the story of Kimberly O’Hara (“Kim”), the orphaned son of an Anglo-Irish soldier, who grows up as a street-urchin on the streets of Lahore in India during the time of the British Raj. Knowing little of his parentage, he is as much a native as his companions, speaking Hindi and Urdu rather than English, cunning and street-wise. At about the age of twelve, Kim encounters an old Tibetan lama on a pilgrimage in search of a holy
Description Perhaps the most influential and widely read political work of the 19th century, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ The Manifesto of the Communist Party succinctly lays out the political theory and history of class struggle. Following a short introduction, the Manifesto develops over four short chapters, discussing the historical background of class struggle, the relationship of Communists with other socialist and working class movements, a critical review of other contemporary
Description Notes from Underground is a fictional collection of memoirs written by a civil servant living alone in St. Petersburg. The man is never named and is generally referred to as the Underground Man. The “underground” in the book refers to the narrator’s isolation, which he described in chapter 11 as “listening through a crack under the floor.” It is considered to be one of the first existentialist novels. With this book, Dostoevsky challenged the ideologies of his time, like nihilism
Description H. G. Wells is probably best known for his imaginative longer works, such as his novels The War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man ; but he was also a prolific short story writer. This Standard Ebooks edition of his short fiction includes fifty-four of Wells’ stories, written between 1894 and 1909 and compiled from the collections The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents (1895), The Plattner Story and Others (1897), Tales of Time and Space (1899), Twelve Stories and a Dream (1903)
Description Captain Belval, learning of a threat to his beloved nurse Little Mother Coralie, rescues her from her would-be assailants and is promptly dragged into a plot involving her husband and millions of francs worth of gold. As layer upon layer of conspiracy emerges with no obvious thread to follow, there’s only one man who can be counted on to uncover the truth. The Golden Triangle (also known as The Return of Arsène Lupin) was published in 1917 in both the original French and this
Description The Murder on the Links is Agatha Christie’s second Poirot novel, featuring the brilliant Belgian detective and his sidekick, Captain Hastings. In this characteristic whodunit, Poirot is summoned to a seaside town in northern France by a desperate letter from a rich businessman, who fears that he is being stalked. Poirot arrives to find the businessman already dead, his body lying facedown in an open grave on a golf course, a knife in his back—the victim of a mysterious murder. Over
Description Six Characters in Search of an Author (Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore) is an Italian three-act play written by Luigi Pirandello in 1921, considered as one of the earliest examples of absurdist theatre. It’s a play within a play that deals with perceptions of reality and illusion, and plays with the ideas of identity and relative truths. The plot features an acting company who have gathered to rehearse another play by Pirandello, when they’re interrupted by 6 “characters” who
Description John Keats’ poems are a major part of the second wave of English Romantic poetry. They portray settings loaded with symbolism and sensuality, and draw heavily on Greek and Roman myth along with romanticised tales of chivalry. Keats died in 1821 at the young age of 25, having written the majority of his work in less than four years. While not appreciated during his lifetime, he has gone on to become one of the most loved of the Romantic poets, and has provided inspiration to authors
Description The Pit-Prop Syndicate is a story from the beginning of the golden age of crime fiction. Seymour Merriman, a British wine merchant on business in France, happens upon a syndicate manufacturing pit-props—beams used to prop up mine tunnels—but his eye is caught by one odd detail: their lorry’s numberplate mysteriously changes. With the help of his friend Hilliard from the Excise department they dig deeper and uncover a dangerous conspiracy. Freeman Wills Crofts was a civil engineer,
Description The Island of Doctor Moreau is the narration of Edward Prendick, a shipwrecked man who finds himself on a mysterious island full of humanoid animal creatures. He comes to find that these creatures are the work of Dr. Moreau, a man who experiments in vivisection, and his assistant Montgomery. The story of Dr. Moreau’s island began as an article in the January, 1895 issue of Saturday Review. It was later adapted into a novel. Its themes reflect concerns growing in the society of the
Description Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim, published in 1901, tells the story of Kimberly O’Hara (“Kim”), the orphaned son of an Anglo-Irish soldier, who grows up as a street-urchin on the streets of Lahore in India during the time of the British Raj. Knowing little of his parentage, he is as much a native as his companions, speaking Hindi and Urdu rather than English, cunning and street-wise. At about the age of twelve, Kim encounters an old Tibetan lama on a pilgrimage in search of a holy
Description Perhaps the most influential and widely read political work of the 19th century, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ The Manifesto of the Communist Party succinctly lays out the political theory and history of class struggle. Following a short introduction, the Manifesto develops over four short chapters, discussing the historical background of class struggle, the relationship of Communists with other socialist and working class movements, a critical review of other contemporary