Literatura
H.C. McNeile
Readers will be the interlocutors of our heroes. They gather in the Dinner club and tell stories related to their professions. Members of the club are different people: actor, lawyer, doctor, soldier, writer and ordinary person. Every member of this club is obliged from time to time to treat their fellows with dinner. The stories of these people will surprise you in a pleasant way.
Arthur Conan Doyle
The Disintegration Machine is a story featuring Doyles famous character Professor Challenger. It was first published in The Strand Magazine in January 1929. The story centers on the discovery of a machine capable of disintegrating objects and reforming them as they were. This short story is a part of the Challenger series, a collection of stories about the wealthy eccentric adventurer Professor Challenger. Unlike Conan Doyles laid-back, analytic character, Sherlock Holmes, Professor Challenger is an aggressive, dominating figure. The professor is described as a lion of a man with a full beard and a rotund physique. One day, he is interrupted by the young journalist, Malone, to go investigate a machine designed by Latvian inventor, Theodore Nemor.
E. Phillips Oppenheim
Lord Evelyn and a group of seven like-minded esthetes make up The Ghosts a cabal of social arbiters, of whom the mere mention is regarded as a faux pas. They are imbued with almost mystical power in setting tastes and trends and behavior for the members of Society in London in 1908. Desperate for stimulation The Ghosts embark on a risky program of wealth redistribution... other peoples wealth. Meanwhile, a spurned aspirant to their club, the American debutante Sophy Van Heldt, seeks revenge against them. Originally published in 1908 as The Ghosts of Society this intriguing novel carries the theme of social boredom, ennui, and sensation craving which entranced late Victorian Europe in the pre-war period.
The Divine Comedy. The Vision of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise
Dante Alighieri
A unique poetic work, about which historians and critics, philosophers and even adherents of various mystical and esoteric teachings are desperately arguing about. Hell is a colossal funnel of concentric circles, the tapering end of which is adjacent to the center of the earth. Having passed the threshold of hell, in which the souls of indecisive, insignificant people dwell, they enter the first circle of hell the limb. In the earthly paradise, Dante meets Beatrice, seated on a chariot drawn by a vulture.
The Doctor, His Wife and the Clock
Anna Katharine Green
A mystery filled with guilt, love and anger led to death. The story is about Ebenezer Gryce, a young, energetic and determined police detective who is entrusted with the investigation of the high-profile murder of Mr. Hasbrouck, a wealthy and influential resident of the Colonnade in Lafayette Place. The only real clue is provided by the victims wife. She woke from a deep sleep and thought she was dreaming. She soon realized that her husband wasnt next to her in bed. While she was looking for him, she heard a voice say from across the dark room, God! What have I done! , which was quickly followed by footsteps and the front door closing. Enjoy this 7th Mr. Gryce book.
The Doctor of Pimlico. Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime
William Le Queux
A grey, sunless morning on the Firth of Tay. Across a wide, sandy waste stretching away to the misty sea at Budden, four men were walking. Two wore uniformone an alert, grey-haired general, sharp and brusque in manner, with many war ribbons across his tunic; the other a tall, thin-faced staff captain, who wore the tartan of the Gordon Highlanders. With them were two civilians, both in rough shooting-jackets and breeches, one about forty-five, the other a few years his junior.
Hulbert Footner
As well as penning some of the most popular detective fiction, Conan Doyle also wrote thrilling adventure stories. Rodney Stone is a combination of both. Nelson, Beau Brummell, Fox and King George III himself appear in a tale at the heart of which is, as one character says, a pretty conspiracy a criminal, an actress and a prize-fighter, all playing their parts. The book is narrated by Rodney, in 1851 thinking back over the events 1803, when Rodney was 17 and his best friend, Boy Jim, was 19. This is the year Rodneys uncle comes to introduce the boy to London society. Sir Charles is a dandy, and a friend of Beau Brummell and the Prince of Wales. But Rodneys father has hopes for his son going into the Royal Navy. Boy Jim also has a life decision to make. He has been raised by Champion Harrison as a blacksmith, but after befriending an alcoholic ex-actress, he yearns to see more of the world, at least London.
George Bernard Shaw
“The Doctor’s Dilemma” 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. The Doctor's Dilemma is a play by George Bernard Shaw. It is a problem play about the moral dilemmas created by limited medical resources, and the conflicts between the demands of private medicine as a business and a vocation.
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Isabelle Sliford is a young girl who dreams of the books she reads and lives to read them. She sees life through the eyes of Brion, Shelley, Shakespeare and Dickens. George Gilbert, a handsome young doctor, sees that she and she are so different from the girls he knows, falling in love with her. He is pragmatic, and she is a dreamer of all that is beautiful, which causes the gulf between them.
Arthur Conan Doyle
The people of the small town of Tamfield are not used to exciting things happening. When millionaire Raffles Haw moves to town, rumors spread like wildfire about him. When his home is overtaken by workmen and strange boxes are seen coming and going, it only adds to the intrigue. Robert and Laura are his nearest neighbors and are soon delighted to meet this eccentric new addition to the small English town. The advent of Mr. Haw, however, changes the town, and particularly the lives of the McIntyre family, in ways no one could ever have guessed. A mysterious rich man, a desperate father, an ambitious daughter and the semi-detached and naive hero form the cast of this somewhat surprising Doyle piece. The Doings of Raffles Haw is a fantasy novel that explores the nebulous origins of the fortune of a mysterious millionaire, delving into the shadowy scientific process that Raffles Haws has used to amass his extravagant wealth.
Fred M. White
A terrible story that can cause goose bumps after reading. The story of The Doom of London describes the disasters that befell Victorian London. One of the largest cities is shocked by life threatening circumstances. Here there are underground explosions, poisoning, aplague of diphtheria. London is on the verge of death.
Edgar Wallace
A short but interesting detective story. Dick Martin plans for an early retirement from the police force seeking a quite life. His final job is to bring in Lew Pheeney, wanted in connection with a bank robbery. When Lew confesses to trying to open a dead mans tomb, however, Martin has a mystery he must unravel. He races to find the connection between an attractive young librarian, a mad scientist and the vanished heir to a vast fortune, as everyone becomes entangled in a web of fraud, deceit, torture and murder. What dangers did he face in understanding the mystery behind the door with seven locks? Combines a mystery thriller plot with considerable dashes of gothic horror, and just the faintest hint of science fiction.
Arthur Morrison
English writer Morrison chronicles the exploits of Horace Dorrington, a raconteur and scoundrel who hails from a very different social strata than the typical Victorian detective. Mr. Dorrington himself is a marvelous creation, charming and with no moral scruples whatsoever, clever, and entirely devoted to achieving as great a profit for himself as possible if this involves doing some honest detection, that is fine if it involved extorting the criminal instead of turning him over to the police, no problem, if it involves having the client murdered well, some things cant be helped. There are six short stories in this collection which begins with The Narrative of Mr. James Rigby. Definitely fun and recommended for readers who want to explore the darker side of Victorian detective stories.
Edgar Wallace
One of the most prolific writers of the twentieth century, Edgar Wallace was an immensely popular author, who created exciting thrillers spiced with tales of treacherous crooks and hard-boiled detectives. The Double is a story about a man who encounters his unknown double and the trouble that arises. When Dick Staines joined the police force the big case of the day had been the Staines murder. The only clue was an unknown thumb-print, the case was never solved. Ten years later and Detective Inspector Staines investigating a curious burglary in fashionable Belgravia finds a thumb-print on a glass. The strangest of murders with surgical overtones confronts Dick Staines our Cambridge educated detective.
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
In the book The Double Dostoevsky appears before the reader as a writer with an inimitable sense of humor. The author shows an extraordinary skill in describing comic episodes from life and makes the reader cheerfully laugh at the shortcomings of his characters and the comic nature of the situations. Before the reader St. Petersburg streets of the XIX century come to life, he will get acquainted with the mores of the inhabitants of St. Petersburg.
The Double Life of Mr. Alfred Burton
E. Phillips Oppenheim
Alfred Burton, a smooth-talking salesman, is having a perfectly ordinary day on the job when he stumbles across a strange plant with green leaves and a cluster of queer little brown beans hanging down from them in an old house. The virtue of the beans is that he who eats one shall see nothing, think nothing, say nothing but the truth. Alfred Burton has a well-meaning, rather ordinary wife who becomes unendurable to him, and he falls in love with a charming girl who would have no appeal for the man he formerly was. What Alfred really doesnt realize is that the fruit of the plant, when eaten, will change not merely the entire course of his life, but in fact his very self.