The definite collection of Fitzgerald’s short stories; edited and with a preface by the foremost Fitzgerald scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli. The forty-three masterpieces range from early stories that capture the fashion of the times to later ones written after the author’s fabled crack-up, which are sober reflections on his own youthful excesses. This essential collection is ample testament to that statement, and a monument to the genius of one of the great voices in the history ...
Ford Madox Ford was a prolific English novelist and poet in the early 20th century. Ford wrote the best-selling novel „The Good Soldier”, as well as the „Parade’s End” series. „Privy Seal” is the second novel in the well-known „Fifth Queen” trilogy that recreates Tudor England in a masterful story of court intrigue, romance, and betrayal. Here Ford focuses on the figure of Thomas Cromwell, a powerful advisor to the King who comes to see Katharine as a rival whose good nature ...
„Lucia’s Progress”, previously published in the U.S. as „The Worshipful Lucia” is the fifth of E. F. Benson’s famous series, opening about a year after the previous story ended. In this volume both Lucia and Mapp stand for election to the Town Council, and Lucia speculates in gold shares. While re-decorating Miss Mapp’s house, Lucia discovers and hide the remains of a Roman Villa. Excitements ensue!
Perhaps the most light-hearted of all Chesterton’s works, „Manalive” follows the fun loving Innocent Smith who, after bringing joy to a boarding house, is charged with a series of crimes. Later accused even of murder and denounced for philandering everywhere he goes, Smith prompts his newfound acquaintances to recognize an important idea in most unexpected ways. In this delightfully strange mystery, Chesterton demonstrates why life is worth living, and that sometimes we need ...
The fourth installment of the popular series-a hilarious study of 1930s manner and pecking order-begins when Lucia Lucas rents a summer place-the home of Elizabeth Mapp-in the English village of Tilling. So begins a battle of one-upmanship, peppered with queenly airs, ghastly tea parties, and unnerving bridge evenings as the two combatants attempt to out-do each other to win social supremacy. The pompous Lucia and malignant Mapp are characters you will love to hate, wonderful...
The fourth part in the series, „Master of the World” continues adventures of strange and mysterious gem named the Sphinx Emerald that leaves its trail through history. Alexander of Macedon had conquered most of the world, and his legions were rolling toward Carthage when a wily little priest strangely presented to him the Sphinx Emerald...
E. F. Benson’s subject is always the petty concerns of petty people, but his talent is to make those concerns nearly as important to us as they are to his characters. For us, what happens to Benson’s people is also much funnier than it is to them. This is another of Benson’s social comedies with women battling it out for social supremacy in the village. „Mrs. Ames”, first published in 1912, has been described as a forerunner to the author’s Mapp and Lucia novels
Despite his intellectual brilliance, successful career, and sizeable inheritance, Christopher Tietjens is a largely unhappy man. Tortured by his wife’s open infidelity, caught up in his own heated affair, Tietjens attempts to put his past behind him by volunteering to fight for his country. Tragic and emotionally piercing, „No More Parade’s” by Ford Madox Ford, is a story of romance, war and betrayal that proves a brilliant sequel to „Some Do Not”.
„The heart of a man is full of hypocrisy; the heart of Nature is utterly without guile”. Harold Preston discovers this when he goes prospecting for gold in the uncharted bush with a rival he considered a friend. This is a fairly decent tale of jealousy, betrayal and vengeance written by a prolific British journalist and author of mystery and horror fiction James Edward Preston Muddock also known as „Dick Donovan” (28 May 1843 – 23 January 1934).
„Paul Clifford” is a novel published in 1830 by Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803-1873) who was an English novelist, playwright, and politician. It tells the life of Paul Clifford, a man who leads a dual life as both a criminal and an upscale gentleman. Paul Clifford tells the story of a chivalrous highwayman in the time of the French Revolution. This is the novel that first used the opening line ’’It was a dark and stormy night...’’
The story is set around the Wentworth mention, a small boarding house in Bolton Spa and its owners and lodgers. They are quite unlikable, mainly upper-middle-class English people who came to the Spa to cure their body illnesses, but also to fill the time and escape boredom despite having no passions, interests and work. A delightful book for anybody familiar with Benson’s work, full of all the usual light, wit and satirical caricatures that Benson does so well.
The third novel in the series, „Lucia in London” continues the adventures of Benson’s famously irrepressible characters, and bring them into hilarious conflict. Using her best social-climbing instincts and refusing to be embarrassed, Lucia sets out to conquer London and mingle with the beau monde. Soon a secret group of ’Luciaphiles’ springs up; the social climbers who make up its rank never tire of watching her get into and out of all kinds of trouble.
Found and Fettered – A Series of Thrilling Detective Stories is a collection of short stories dates from 1894 written by British journalist and author of mystery and horror fiction J. E. Preston Muddock. For a time his detective stories were as popular as those of Arthur Conan Doyle. Between 1889 and 1922 he published nearly 300 detective and mystery stories. This varied collection includes material that gives readers a 19th century view of the world.
A novel series by G.K. Chesterton of four intertwined novellas whose central characters appear to be involved in murder, fraud, theft and treason. Are these friends involved in crimes? Are these individuals faultless as the book’s title suggests? A good book for people who love suspenseful novels that features mind-blowing twists, awesome plots, and events that will keep you engaged page by page.
Meet the widow anxious to bury her husband before the autopsy, the artist who’s brushes have never been used, the bedridden drunk who contracts lead poisoning from a pub miles away. These strange stories are designed to baffle the mind and entertain the crime buff and newcomer alike. Set in the early days of the nineteenth century, the six tales here take place in various parts of rural England -- wherever the young physician-detective’s assignments take him.
Written by British journalist and author of mystery and horror fiction J. E. Preston Muddock. In these thrilling stories, Muddock writes under the guise of his fictional alter ego – the private detective Dick Donovan. From the murky underworld of Victorian London to the grand houses of the upper classes, Donovan investigates crime in all its forms, recovering priceless jewels, exposing villainous conspiracies and solving dastardly murders!
An old secret and a lovely woman and three men: Barr Radison, an American adventurer, searching for the mysterious source of black and silver fox pelts, Macferris Montenay, a ruthless giant of a man, trying to carve out his own kingdom in the wilderness, and Jean Nichemus, a halfbreed and Montenay’s henchman, harboring his own sinister plans. „Ghost Hills” is one of the adventure stories of a prolific H. Bedford-Jones who is rightly called the „King of Pulps”.
Again the strange Sphinx Emerald came to the scene to play its part in the unrolling historic drama. This series about the Sphinx Emerald constitutes, as has been said, a veritable Outline of History – or perhaps „Highlights of History” would be more accurate. For this reason the greatest event in all history could not be left out.
Don Lorenzo and Arnold Neville lead separate expeditions to the South American interior whereupon they encounter the exiled king of the underground world. But can Neville help him reclaim his throne when the arch-priestess, Alloyah, raises an army of the dead? The sequel to „The Devil-Tree of El Dorado” and „A Queen of Atlantis”, „King of the Dead” is a novel among the most famous „lost race” novels written by the British author Frank Aubrey.
Written in the cycle of tales by H. Bedford-Jones, „Lady in Chain Mail” continues amazing series about the Sphinx Emerald. From the hand of a dead Mameluke after the battle of the Pyramids, a civilian scientist with Napoleon’s army took the Sphinx Emerald... and though the Mameluke’s militant daughter offered to buy back the gem at a price high indeed, swift tragedy followed.
First published in 1928, „Last Post” is part four of Ford Madox Ford’s hugely successful „Parade’s End” tetralogy. It is about Christopher Tietjens and his life, with World War I as the backdrop. This book is set during a few hours of a day in June, where Tietjens is making a living as a dealer of old furniture. The series has taken the reader from before the war, to during it, and this final novel explores the legacy of it.
Readers are treated to authentic historical dramas, all centering on the mysterious jewel that seems to contain a miniature image of the sphinx. This image hypnotizes its owners and inspires them to make history-changing decisions. That malign and magic jewel the Sphinx Emerald comes again on the scene to play its part in a stirring drama of the Crusades.
Behind this rather prim title lies the hilarious fictional diary of a disaster-prone lady of the 1930s, and her attempts to keep her somewhat ramshackle household from falling into chaos. Written with humour, this charming novel is full of the peculiarities of daily life. As witty and delightful today as when it was first published in 1930, „Diary of a Provincial Lady” is a brilliantly observed comic novel and an acknowledged classic.
„Dr. Delmore’s Secret” is an absorbing tale of mystery by Fenton Ash, author of at least three Lost-World novels. Little is known about Aubrey/Atkins. He was involved in a scandal at the turn of the century and sentenced to nine months imprisonment for obtaining money by deception. After leaving prison he dropped the name Frank Aubrey and – in his early 60s, following a three-year hiatus – began writing as Fenton Ash.
