Four Faultless Felons

G.K. Chesterton

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 books 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.

Manalive

G.K. Chesterton

Perhaps the most light-hearted of all Chestertons 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 a little madness just to know we are alive.

Święty Tomasz z Akwinu  

G. K. Chesterton

Święty Tomasz z Akwinu G. K. Chesterton Tł. Magda Sobolewska Chesterton podyktował Świętego Tomasza z Akwinu błyskawicznie, jakby pod natchnieniem chwili, niemal nie korzystając ze źródeł, a osiągnął efekt zdumiewający. Etienne Gilson, jeden z największych tomistów XX w., okrzyknął jego dzieło " bez wątpienia najlepszą książką, jaką napisano o św.Tomaszu". Być może Chesterton potrafił tak doskonale zrozumieć swojego bohatera, bo był do niego bardzo podobny. Obaj uznawani byli w szkole za tępaków, imponowali wzrostem i tuszą, uprawiali "niezwykłe hobby, jakim jest myślenie" i wyrażali swoje myśli w setkach tomów, których wystarczyłoby "do zatopienia okrętu albo zapełnienia biblioteki". Mieli ten sam polemiczny temperament, przenikliwość i genialny dar syntezy. Ze spotkania tych dwóch nieprzeciętnych osobowości powstała niezwykła biografia, przypominająca impresjonistyczny portret namalowany przy użyciu wielu kontrastowych barw albo średniowieczny obraz, składający się z wielu osobnych scen z życia jednej postaci. Z tej różnorodnej mozaiki wyłania się spójny wizerunek wielkiego filozofa na tle epoki i szerszej perspektywy dziejów, sięgającej aż po nasze czasy. Chesterton nazywa bowiem św. Tomasza "lekarzem współczesnego świata (...) wezwanym do łoża śmierci", a jego słowa nie tylko nie straciły, ale wręcz zyskały na aktualności. Nasza kultura, gorączkowo poszukująca istoty człowieczeństwa, a zarazem chorobliwie kwestionująca jej podstawy, potrzebuje trzeźwej diagnozy Chestertona, który proponuje nam lekarstwo w postaci życiowej mądrości Akwinaty i wiary we Wcielenie.

The Ball and The Cross

G.K. Chesterton

A very good Christian book, which, nevertheless, speaks not so much about Christianity in itself, as about humanity, as the principle of life in general. If there were such a category as social Christian romance, then this book would be one of the most remarkable examples. The book is attractive and not only because of the description of a non-ideal world, but also because of the authors attitude to his characters. There are no heroes in principle, there are only images. Very bright and understandable.

The Club of Queer Trades

G.K. Chesterton

Chestertons book is a series of mysterious stories with the participation of the narrator and his friend, an eccentric ex-judge Basil Grant. Each story is about someone who belongs to the Club of Strange Merchants about who makes a living in a unique way. This is an exciting journey for every reader.

The Father Brown Stories

G.K. Chesterton

Brown is a short, inconspicuous provincial priest in a ridiculous wide-brimmed hat and an old umbrella. It is amazing how the author twisted the plot in an incredible way, fitting such a complex structure consisting of small details and nuances into such a small amount of stories. At the same time, Father Brown finds himself in the crime scene quite by accident. Either this is a social reception, then it comes back from the funeral, then by invitation. And always his figure in the crowd causes the least interest, and, more often, the bewilderment of others. And his analytical and deductive abilities forced others to drop his jaw to the floor from an incredible denouement of history.

The Flying Inn

G.K. Chesterton

Armed with a donkey cart filled with rum, cheese and a tavern signpost, pub owner Humphrey Hump and Captain Patrick Dalroy, a crimson-haired giant with a tendency to burst into song, take to the road in this rollicking, madcap adventure, encountering revolution, romance, and a cast of memorable characters. In this hilarious, satirical romp, G.K. Chesterton demonstrates his intense distrust of power and progressives, railing against Prohibition, vegetarianism, theosophy, and other dreary and oppressive forces of modernity.

The Incredulity of Father Brown

G.K. Chesterton

The Incredulity of Father Brown is the third collection of short mysteries by G.K. Chesterton about that character. In The Incredulity of Father Brown, all the stories involve murders and conflicts between Catholicism and atheism and spiritualism. We find the usual Chesterton moral landscape -- in which the author paints a picture of nature somehow mirroring the fact that something is very wrong. In The Incredulity of Father Brown, G.K. Chesterton treats us to another set of bizarre crimes that only his stumpy Roman Catholic prelate has the wisdom and mindset to solve. As usual, Chesterton loves playing with early twentieth-century class distinctions, common-sense assumptions, and the often anti-Catholic biases of his characters.

The Innocence of Father Brown

G.K. Chesterton

Father Brown is one of the Hounds greatest crime fighters and his creator, Chesterton, one of the masters of the short crime story. Father Brown is the second among the Great literary detectives, right after Sherlock Holmes. In some ways, Father Brown was a continuation of what Chesterton wrote in his classic Orthodoxy.The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) is the first of five collections of mystery stories by G. K. Chesterton starring an unimposing but surprisingly capable Roman Catholic priest. Father Browns ability to uncover the truth behind the mystery continually surpasses that of the experts around him, who are fooled into underestimation by the priests unimpressive outward appearance and, often, by their own prejudices about Christianity.

The Man Who Knew Too Much

G.K. Chesterton

This is a detective story collection of Gilbert Keith Chesterton. Most of the stories in the collection are about the hermit of society, Horn Fischer, who has the talent to solve crimes. Journalist Harold March was walking around the outskirts of Turnbull and met the bizarre Horn Fisher, whom he immediately made friends with. No sooner did they get to know each other when they became witnesses of the disaster: the car flew off the road and fell into the abyss. Fisher and March approached the crash site and identified Sir Humphrey Turnbull, the local rich man. It turned out that he was shot, so that he fell into the abyss. New acquaintances take up the investigation.

The Man Who Was Thursday. A Nightmare

G.K. Chesterton

The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare was written by G.K. Chesterton and published in 1908. Ostensibly about a secret policeman investigating anarchists, it becomes a surreal and philosophical novel. It is a metaphysical thriller, and a detective story filled with poetry and politics. Gabriel Syme is a poet and a police detective. Lucian Gregory is a poet and a bomb-throwing anarchist. Syme infiltrates a secret meeting of anarchists and becomes Thursday, one of the seven members of the Central Anarchist Council. He soon learns, however, that he is not the only one in disguise, and the nightmare begins...The Man Who Was Thursday has a Mission plot, although the final confrontation with the Antagonist is rather a bizarre one.

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

G.K. Chesterton

Meet Auberon Quin. He is a man to whom the world is a punchline; a dangerous man, for he cares for nothing but a joke. And meet Adam Wayne to whom the joke is quite serious. When Quin is appointed King of England, he decides to turn London into a medieval carnival for his own amusement. When Adam Wayne is appointed Provost of Notting Hill, he proposes to be patriotic about it and takes the new order of things seriously, organizing a Notting Hill army to fight invaders from other neighborhoods. Amidst the chaos of confusion, the stirring speeches, the epic battles, and the all-pervading Chesterton wit, The Napoleon of Notting Hill is a cry for renewed life in a deadened world a call that compels mankind to fight for the small things, if only for the sake of fighting for something.

The Return of Don Quixote

G.K. Chesterton

Chestertons last novel is a reflection of his first novel. Michael Herne, the librarian at Seawood Abbey, is asked to play the part of a medieval king. He not only takes his role seriously by thoroughly researching the Middle Ages, when the play is concluded, he refuses to take off the costume... Set in the early 20th Century, this is the intriguing story of the rise of a new Don Quixote who introduces a medieval government into the world of big business.

The Scandal of Father Brown

G.K. Chesterton

Chesterton again allows us to accompany Father Brown, preternaturally-unbiased master of human nature, as he stumbles across another series of murders and mysteries. These stories in this series are not as compact as those in other books, notably The Innocence of Father Brown, but they have the same magnetic power to draw the reader in. As ever, Chesterton is interested not only in delivering first rate detective stories, but of describing human nature. His characters are flawed and biased, all blind in their own way, which is what makes it so difficult to see the truth that lies before them. Father Brown, ever kind and imperturbable, nearly always sees right through to the heart of the matter. Posing as a humble parish priest, which he is, he somehow sees beyond the class boundaries which it is Chestertons special gift to point out and puncture.

The Secret of Father Brown

G.K. Chesterton

Have you wondered how the great detectives solved their cases? In The Secret of Father Brown, while visiting Flambeaus house Father Brown meets a curious American who has to know as some of his countrymen think Father Brown is using mystical powers. The fourth of the Father Brown detective story collections has something the first three did not: a framing sequence at the beginning and end, in which Father Brown explains to a curious person his method for solving crimes he becomes the criminal. In this collection he becomes several jewel thieves and murderers, all of whom carry out their crimes in bizarre circumstances. Father Brown, or rather Chesterton, takes opportunity on occasion to indulge in a bit of Catholic apologetic or homiletic, but it never takes over the story: it makes Father Brown that much more a priest and not just a mystery-solving machine.

The Wisdom of Father Brown

G.K. Chesterton

In Chestertons second Father Brown book, The Wisdom of Father Brown, we get a series of bizarre, sometimes dangerous mysteries that Father Brown must puzzle out. Some of the crimes are simple once Brown explains them, but others are devious, chilling things that are wrapped in Chestertons poetic prose. In the stories that follow, the priest investigates many other mysteries: a sinister voodoo cult, a nobleman with a deformed ear, a gang of Italian thieves, a lie-detector with one major problem (the operator), a girl who is blackmailed for a crime nobody knows she committed, a burning tower, a murder that may be suicide, and a man who is under a horrible death curse. Father Brown solves things by observation and thought, in some ways like Poirot, but in an unassuming and modest manner. The stories are each very different, but are very good reading.