Description The Castle of Otranto is considered to be the first “Gothic” novel—that is, containing a combination of tropes, like hidden passages, haunted paintings, mysterious sounds, skeletal ghosts, ancestral curses, and unexplained deaths, that essentially invented the genre later made famous by authors like Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, or Henry James. Walpole made a point of creating a novel that blends supernatural elements with more realistic depictions of characters and events. The plot
Description The Secret Adversary, Agatha Christie’s second novel, introduces Tommy and Tuppence, the two much-loved mystery-solving adventurers. The novel centers around a mysterious young girl, suffering from amnesia, who was present on the sinking of the Lusitania. As Tommy and Tuppence try to unravel the mystery, they find themselves embroiled with mysterious millionaires and the dangerous politics of nation-states. Contemporary reviews of The Secret Adversary were positive, and the success
Description The Shaving of Shagpat isn’t just George Meredith’s first published novel, it’s also his only foray into fantasy literature. Shagpat sold poorly in its day despite good reviews, and after its disappointing sales Meredith pursed a career as a writer of romantic fiction instead. Despite its poor financial reception, Shagpat enjoys a good modern reputation and remains a classic of fantasy literature, with George Eliot going so far as to call it a “work of genius.” The book is set in
Description The Princess and the Goblin is a children’s fantasy novel in the vein of the best classic fairy tales. The simple narrative follows Princess Irene as she discovers a ghostly relative living in a castle tower only she can access. During a walk outside one day, she encounters the threat of the lair of goblins living near the castle—and meets a new friend, a young miner named Curdie. She and Curdie must stop the goblin threat before they can carry out their evil plot.
Description Khaled is a hard-working and faithful genie who, in his zeal, goes a little too far and kills a faithless man. This puts him under scrutiny from the powers above, who curse him to live as a human. Since genies have no souls, he will vanish from existence when he dies; but, if he can find true love, he’ll be granted a soul and thus be allowed into heaven. Written in the style of the “oriental romances” popular in those days, Khaled was F. Marion Crawford’s favorite novel out of all
Description William Hazlitt was a well-regarded critic and essayist in his day, and Table-Talk, a collection of some of his more popular short essays, is perhaps his best-remembered work. The essays themselves range in subject from philosophy, to art, to literature, culture, society, and politics, with titles like “On the Pleasures of Painting” and “On Corporate Bodies.” Hazlitt’s intimate style and deep familiarity with many different aspects of art culture (not only was he a literary success,
Description The King in Yellow is a fascinating, almost two-faced work. The first half consists of five legendary weird tales, loosely tied together by a fictional play—the eponymous King in Yellow—that drives those who read it mad. Celebrated by authors like H. P. Lovecraft and Lin Carter, these stories are classic tales of madness, despair, and strange happenings. With the fifth tale the reader finds a sort of palate-cleansing collection of short prose-poems leading into the last four
Description The place is London, and the time is the late 1800s. Mr. Verloc appears to be an unassuming owner of a bric-a-brac store, but he’s actually a spy for an unnamed country. When he’s summoned by his superiors and ordered to plant a bomb to foment unrest in English politics and society, he finds himself stuck in a more-than-uncomfortable situation. Conrad’s novel is set against the background of the Greenwich Observatory bombing, in which an anarchist unsuccessfully tried to detonate a
Description The Lost Continent, initially published as a serial in 1899, remains one of the enduring classics of the “lost race” genre. In it we follow Deucalion, a warrior-priest on the lost continent of Atlantis, as he tries to battle the influence of an egotistical upstart empress. Featuring magic, intrigue, mythical monsters, and fearsome combat on both land and sea, the story is nothing if not a swashbuckling adventure. The Lost Continent was very influential on pulp fiction of the
Description The Napoleon of Notting Hill, like so many Chesterton novels, deftly straddles the fence between humor and philosophy. The place is London, in the far-future year of 1984. Inexplicably, not too much has changed since the turn of the century—except that the king is chosen at random. Things quickly take a turn for the worse when the people randomly select an imbecile who only cares about a good joke. With the new prankster king in place, the novel continues on with surprisingly
Description The Castle of Otranto is considered to be the first “Gothic” novel—that is, containing a combination of tropes, like hidden passages, haunted paintings, mysterious sounds, skeletal ghosts, ancestral curses, and unexplained deaths, that essentially invented the genre later made famous by authors like Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, or Henry James. Walpole made a point of creating a novel that blends supernatural elements with more realistic depictions of characters and events. The plot
Description The Secret Adversary, Agatha Christie’s second novel, introduces Tommy and Tuppence, the two much-loved mystery-solving adventurers. The novel centers around a mysterious young girl, suffering from amnesia, who was present on the sinking of the Lusitania. As Tommy and Tuppence try to unravel the mystery, they find themselves embroiled with mysterious millionaires and the dangerous politics of nation-states. Contemporary reviews of The Secret Adversary were positive, and the success
Description The Shaving of Shagpat isn’t just George Meredith’s first published novel, it’s also his only foray into fantasy literature. Shagpat sold poorly in its day despite good reviews, and after its disappointing sales Meredith pursed a career as a writer of romantic fiction instead. Despite its poor financial reception, Shagpat enjoys a good modern reputation and remains a classic of fantasy literature, with George Eliot going so far as to call it a “work of genius.” The book is set in
Description The Princess and the Goblin is a children’s fantasy novel in the vein of the best classic fairy tales. The simple narrative follows Princess Irene as she discovers a ghostly relative living in a castle tower only she can access. During a walk outside one day, she encounters the threat of the lair of goblins living near the castle—and meets a new friend, a young miner named Curdie. She and Curdie must stop the goblin threat before they can carry out their evil plot.
Description Khaled is a hard-working and faithful genie who, in his zeal, goes a little too far and kills a faithless man. This puts him under scrutiny from the powers above, who curse him to live as a human. Since genies have no souls, he will vanish from existence when he dies; but, if he can find true love, he’ll be granted a soul and thus be allowed into heaven. Written in the style of the “oriental romances” popular in those days, Khaled was F. Marion Crawford’s favorite novel out of all
Description William Hazlitt was a well-regarded critic and essayist in his day, and Table-Talk, a collection of some of his more popular short essays, is perhaps his best-remembered work. The essays themselves range in subject from philosophy, to art, to literature, culture, society, and politics, with titles like “On the Pleasures of Painting” and “On Corporate Bodies.” Hazlitt’s intimate style and deep familiarity with many different aspects of art culture (not only was he a literary success,
Description The King in Yellow is a fascinating, almost two-faced work. The first half consists of five legendary weird tales, loosely tied together by a fictional play—the eponymous King in Yellow—that drives those who read it mad. Celebrated by authors like H. P. Lovecraft and Lin Carter, these stories are classic tales of madness, despair, and strange happenings. With the fifth tale the reader finds a sort of palate-cleansing collection of short prose-poems leading into the last four
Description The place is London, and the time is the late 1800s. Mr. Verloc appears to be an unassuming owner of a bric-a-brac store, but he’s actually a spy for an unnamed country. When he’s summoned by his superiors and ordered to plant a bomb to foment unrest in English politics and society, he finds himself stuck in a more-than-uncomfortable situation. Conrad’s novel is set against the background of the Greenwich Observatory bombing, in which an anarchist unsuccessfully tried to detonate a
Description The Lost Continent, initially published as a serial in 1899, remains one of the enduring classics of the “lost race” genre. In it we follow Deucalion, a warrior-priest on the lost continent of Atlantis, as he tries to battle the influence of an egotistical upstart empress. Featuring magic, intrigue, mythical monsters, and fearsome combat on both land and sea, the story is nothing if not a swashbuckling adventure. The Lost Continent was very influential on pulp fiction of the
Description The Napoleon of Notting Hill, like so many Chesterton novels, deftly straddles the fence between humor and philosophy. The place is London, in the far-future year of 1984. Inexplicably, not too much has changed since the turn of the century—except that the king is chosen at random. Things quickly take a turn for the worse when the people randomly select an imbecile who only cares about a good joke. With the new prankster king in place, the novel continues on with surprisingly