The Shadow of the Vulture

Robert E. Howard

So thay brought the envoys, pallid from months of imprisonment, before the canopied throne of Suleyman the Magnificent, Sultan of Turkey, and the mightiest monarch in an age of mighty monarchs. Under the great purple dome of the royal chamber gleamed the throne before which the world trembled gold-paneled, pearl-inlaid. An emperors wealth in gems was sewn into the silken canopy from which depended a shimmering string of pearls ending a frieze of emeralds which hung like a halo of glory above Suleymans head.

The Shadow of the Wolf

R. Austin Freeman

This novel is an excellent example of the inverted detective story, a modern form that R. Austin Freeman is credited with inventing. You know from the beginning who the guilty party is, but watching Dr. Thorndyke figure it out is amazing. And watching the perpetrator think that he is getting away with his crime, while watching Dr. Thorndyke close in on him is well-done literary irony. The fun comes not from being baffled, but from watching Thorndykes mind at work and observing his scientific methods which include, in this case, geology, petrology, psychology, marine biology, handwriting analysis, and chemical analysis. The crime takes place in a yacht off the coast of Penzance in Cornwall, where a circle of friends are vacationing. The victim is a boorish, overbearing, dishonest brute with money. The murderer is a likable, gentlemanly, talented artist of modest means. Every one likes the murderer, including Dr. Thorndyke.

The Shadow Out of Time

H.P. Lovecraft

A novel told in first person by a human abducted mind,describing the world of the ancient alien strange civilization,a world of amazing colossal partial underground costructions that persisted buried for eons. The Shadow Out of Time is the story of Professor of Economics Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee who faints one day in the middle of a lecture and regains consciousness five years later only to find that heor some entity inhabiting his bodyhas been pursuing eccentric researches in the obscure libraries and remote places of the world. The Nathaniel of those five years acted strange, knew foreign and dead languages, travelled to weirdest places, researched the strangest things and talked to various cult leaders. Eventually his journey ends in the outback of Australia, amid cavernous ruins and terrifying revelations.

The Shadow over Innsmouth

H.P. Lovecraft

The Shadow Over Innsmouth follows a nameless narrator touring New England for information on his family, and studying the local architecture. The story describes a man who finds himself stranded in a half-deserted town with strange inhabitants. They look human mostly, but there is something odd about their eyes and their behavior. He meets the town drunk, Zadok Allen, who tells him the terrifying history of the town, about Devil Reef and mutant humanoids, sea gods, gold, and human sacrifice. When the narrator finds himself stranded in town overnight, he comes face to face with the towns horrifying secret... one not of this world... A story about the horror that could turn to wonder, the once perceived abyss is afterwards seen as the most fascinating destiny, and what was at first avoided at all costs is eventually embraced with open arms.

The Shadow-Line. A Confession

Joseph Conrad

This book is about a young captain who is hastily given his first command of a ghost ship. Its about a first mate who will lose his mind to madness as the malaria sickness spreads without medicine. This book is about a calm sea with not a sigh of a wind to move the ship. The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad describes that demarcation line in the journey of life that divides the happy, bright, fantastic and irresponsible youth with the darker ages of manhood. Conrad goes on to delineate this vision as being beyond the charm and innocence of illusions. It isnt an elaborate story, but one that explores that moment, that shadow-line between youth and adulthood. It is a story about maturity, wisdom, experience. And, even though Conrad himself tells us this story is not about the supernatural, a curse and the first captain who died before Conrad took command, tells us otherwise.

The Shaggy Legion

Hal G. Evarts

Arapaho Gilroy, who was briefly loved to call Rapaho Hill. He was known by many. He was known wherever there were Indians of any tribe or white people with many years of experience to the West. Arpakho, to some extent, was a real robber. He ran across adventures everywhere. For such a hero is interesting to watch.

The Shakespeare Murders

A.G. Macdonell

An amusing thriller by A.G. Macdonell, one of six mysteries he wrote under the pseudonym Neil Gordon. Macdonell is best known for the gently satirical novel England, Their England, which appeared the same year as The Shakespeare Murders and enjoyed a great success, which probably led to his abandoning the mystery genre. In The Shakespeare Murders, the treasure was to be found in an English country house, and it was worth one million pounds, but what was the treasure, was it jewels or something else? Various parties were searching; American gangsters among them, and all had to unravel the clues to be found in the works of Shakespeare. Murder followed murder as the ruthless search continued... Macdonell uses his usual skill, well-dosed with ingenious twists, and a fast moving story-line, to keep the reader riveted to the book.

The Shakespearean Tide. Studies in the Dynamics of Human Time

Jacek Mydla

Książka przybliża czytelnikowi problematykę czasu jako tkanki utworu dramatycznego na przykładzie wybranych sztuk Williama Szekspira, tych, w których czas pełni szczególnie istotną funkcję. Przedmiotem rozważań były sztuki o bardzo różnym charakterze, od komedii romantycznej poprzez dramat historyczny i tragedię po późne „romanse”. Każdy z rozdziałów był próbą syntetyzującego wniknięcia w tekst sztuki, który traktowano jako fundament świata literacko wykreowanego, z nastawieniem na ukazanie doniosłego znaczenia czasu, nie tylko jako elementu budującego konkretną czasoprzestrzeń („kalendarz” świata przedstawionego), lecz także jako swoiście ulotnego bytu, nieuchwytnego a jednak warunkującego dynamikę ludzkiej egzystencji (postawy, decyzje, plany, intrygi, itd.). Szczególną uwagę poświęcono tzw. przekleństwu narodzin, tj. osobliwej postawie życiowej zwróconej przeciwko czasowi organicznemu i retoryce ją wyrażającej. Przekleństwo narodzin, jak to sugeruje autor książki, jest charakterystyczne dla tragicznej wizji ludzkiej egzystencji. Okazuje się, iż w swej późnej twórczości Szekspir usiłuje przezwyciężyć ciążące na wielkich tragediach przekonanie o bezsensowności („próżności”) prokreacji i wypracowuje dynamiczną retorykę dramaturgiczną umożliwiającą wyrażenie afirmacji biologicznej strony życia, w tym szczególnie związków między członkami rodziny jako przejawów owej „biologii”, które w tragediach wydają się skażone. Książka pozwala czytelnikowi na zetknięcie się z pulsującym życiem, ale również dramaturgią specyficznie ludzkiego istnienia, tekstem literackim. Namacalny staje się kunszt, z jakim dramaturg wydobywa na jaw to, co istotne w niestałym świecie ludzkich postaw i dążeń, które zawsze i w sposób zasadniczy odniesione zostają do czasu. Skupienie analiz wokół zagadnienia czasu staje się zatem okazją do ponownego przemyślenia – bez groźby osunięcia się w drętwy filozoficzny dyskurs – zasadniczych dla człowieka, „egzystencjalnych”, problemów i dylematów.

The Shanty Sled

Hulbert Footner

This story is something vital, but very tragic. The main character decides to travel from New York to northwestern Canada to see her mother, who sent her to New York twenty years ago. She falls in love with a local catcher, and then an evil fur trader tries to intervene.

The Shape of Things to Come

Herbert George Wells

The Shape of Things to Come is one of the great classics of science fiction. Originally written in 1929, this masterly work of science fiction has already confirmed H G Wells status as a remarkable soothsayer, and provides glimpses of what is perhaps yet to come. The book is written as a sort of historical account. It tells of how a world state could be considered an answer to Earths problems. After a large plague wipes out much of humanity, a dictatorship takes over, taking away all religion and uniting the world. If someone opposes the dictatorship, they are given a choice to commit suicide in an environment of their choice. However, the dictatorship is later overthrown and the world state dissolves. Spanning the years from 1929 to 2105, it describes future generations and predicts the advent of wars, advancing technology and sweeping cultural changes.

The Shepherd of Guadaloupe

Zane Grey

The Shepherd of Guadaloupe is not a traditional Western: the story begins in 1919 and there are no gunslingers, rustlers, Indians, or stagecoaches. Cliff Forest returns from the war to find that his parents home has been taken over by the brutal Lundeen, whose own lovely daughter is terrified of him. To break the feud, save his parents, and win the woman who loves him, Cliff will have to defeat death itself. Virginia knows of the injustice done to his family by her father and decides to fight with Cliff to restore the property and to win his heart. This is a poignant love story of a man who only dares to dream of such a woman as Virginia because he knows he is about to die; and the passion of a woman who encourages him and tries her best in every way possible to see he does not die.

The Sheriff Rides

Max Brand

Ernest Pontifex, son of a clergyman, leads a life of disarray. Ernest struggles with orthodoxy, lives in the slums, is thrown into prison, and eventually marries Ellen. Saved by the discovery that Ellen is already married, Ernest received an inheritance, and is able to devote his life to literature, finally winning self-respect and success. One of many recommended Westerns by this prolific author. Frederick Schiller Faust (May 29, 1892 - May 12, 1944) was an American author known primarily for his thoughtful and literary Westerns under the pen name Max Brand. Experience the West as only Max Brand could write it!

The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet

George Bernard Shaw

“The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet” is a play by George Bernard Shaw, an Irish playwright who became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.   Shaw claimed that "this little play is really a religious tract in dramatic form", the plot being less important than the debate about morality and divinity that occurs between the characters. He was using the folksy language and quirky insights of his principal character to explore his version of the Nietzschean concept that modern morality must move "beyond good and evil". Shaw took the view that God is a process of continual self-overcoming: "if I could conceive a god as deliberately creating something less than himself, I should class him as a cad. If he were simply satisfied with himself, I should class him as a lazy coxcomb. My god must continually strive to surpass himself." When he heard that Leo Tolstoy had shown an interest in the ideas expressed in the play, he wrote a letter to him explaining his views further.  

The Shields of the Empire: Eastern Roman Military Elites during the Reigns of the Emperors Theodosius II, Marcian and Leo I. Byzantina Lodziensia XLVII

Łukasz Pigoński

When the emperor Valentinian III murdered the general Flavius Aetius, it has been observed that he had 'cut his right hand with his left', and the story of the fall of the 'last Roman' has been put in the greater context of the subsequent dissolution of the Roman Empire in the West. However, a similar deed committed by the emperor Leo in the East in 471, when he ordered the killing of the general Aspar, certainly did not gain such a legendary status. The underappreciated story of the survival of the Eastern Roman Empire in the turmoil of the fifth century is however no less dramatic, and the role that powerful military leaders played in those events was certainly paramount. This publication aims to reconstruct the involvement of the Eastern Roman military elite in various matters of the state on the wider background of political history marked by the reigns of the emperors Theodosius II (408-450), Marcian (450-457), and Leo I (457-474). On its pages, the author presents the history of the numerous wars in which the Empire found itself entangled in during that uneasy time, as well as the periods of conflict and cooperation between the generals and the emperors. The focus is not only on the military elite as a group, but also on outstanding individuals, such as generals Plintha, Flavius Zeno, Aspar or Zeno-Tarasikodissa, the aforementioned emperors and their civilian advisors. The result is a comprehensive study and a novel interpretation of the nearly seven decades of turmoil that, contrary to what happened in the West, curiously did not result in the collapse of the Eastern Roman state; perhaps, as the author argues, in no small part due to those military leaders, who were serving and protecting it.

The Ship of Ishtar

A. Merritt

The goddess of love and beauty was adrift on an enchanted ocean in a magic world. The myriad forces of satanic evil plagued the vessel of the red-haired, passionate goddess. Only one man, John Kenton, the American adventurer, WWI vet and archaeologist, could save Ishtars priestess from the black magic which divides her world from ours. Written in 1924, The Ship of Ishtar is a universally hailed classic of the fantasy novel by A. Merritt and is, on surface at least, an obvious early product of Pulps Golden Age. Merritt was influential upon the science fiction and fantasy world primarily through the imaginative power he displayed in the creation of desirable alternative worlds and realities.

The Short Stop

Zane Grey

This is a small baseball story about a good young man who does his best to make a living. He has a widow and brother with disabilities. An interesting understanding of the history of early baseball. A bit of romance, a bit of an intrigue, basically a baseball and a pure search for a place in life. It was first published in 1909.