Literatura

The Lost Viol

M.P. Shiel

Romantic mystery novel first published in New York by Clode in 1905. Matthew Phipps Shiel (18651947) was a prolific British writer of West Indian descent. Shiel was more than just a writer of sensational tales of magic and mystery. There is an undercurrent of philosophic seriousness running beneath the finely textured prose of all his fiction. Like his contemporaries George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) and H. G. Wells (1866-1946), Shiel wrote out of the intellectual fervor of his times when the impact of Darwins theories and the revolutionary strides being made in the material sciences were shaking to the roots the philosophical and religious underpinnings of the closing nineteenth century.

The Lost World

Arthur Conan Doyle

The Lost World - a novel by Arthur Conan Doyle, a British writer and medical doctor. He created the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. The Sherlock Holmes stories are considered milestones in the field of crime fiction.   It is a novel concerning an expedition to a plateau in the Amazon basin of South America where prehistoric animals still survive. The character of Professor Challenger was introduced in this book. The novel also describes a war between indigenous people and a vicious tribe of ape-like creatures.  

The Lost World

Arthur Conan Doyle

The restless, questing intellect of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle spurred him far beyond the ingenious puzzles he constructed for Sherlock Holmes. Arthur Conan Doyles The Lost World focuses on a story about an expedition in the South American Rainforest, leading its four protagonists on a plateau which seems to surround a world believed to be long-gone. Professor Challenger is the one defending his findings, Professor Summerlee is the skeptic, and there are two unbiased observers: the guide, Lord John Roxton, and a reporter Ned Malone, who also servers as the Narrator of the story. Confronted with dinosaurs like pterodactyls, iguanodons or stegosaurus, our main characters have to solve many difficult or even dramatic situations, and its one enjoyable thing to read it. Originally published in 1912, this imaginative fantasy unfolds with humor and good-natured satirical eye for pedantry.

The Loudwater Mystery

Edgar Jepson

This novel was first published in 1920 and is along the lines of a classic whodunnit. Lord Loudwater is brash, short tempered and always bullying people. He was loved by none, feared by many and hated by all. When he is inexplicably found fatality stabbed with a letter opener, the list of suspects seems endless. Unfortunately for Detective Flexen, who is to investigate the case, Lord Loudwater was not a very agreeable sort of fellow and almost every person in his vicinity had a motive for the crime. Was it his young wife or her lover, his former fiancé or even one of the servants? If you like the old style crime novels where you are presented with a puzzle and have to try and work out who the killer is, then you should like this.

The Lovels of Arden

Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Antonia Thornton is raised to be a religious skeptic by her father, but has doubts after meeting with Oxford Methodists, such as Stobard. Lord Killrush is impressed by her beauty and intelligence and suggests making her his mistress. Dying from consumption, as people did in the old days, Killrush agrees to marry her. Provided that she marries no one.

The Lowest Rung

Mary Cholmondeley

This book focuses on the social exclusion and marginalization of respectable women in the context of their response to risk. Of the four stories included in the collection, three deal with crime, deviance, or both.

The Luck of the Spindrift

Max Brand

A Novel of Adventure. A quest for a fabulous treasure. The ordeal of Sam Culver. He gets mugged and shanghaied aboard the ship Spindrift. A race for exquisite pearls belonging to a man who is about to die. Prolific in many genres Max Brand wrote historical novels, detective mysteries, pulp fiction stories and many more. "The Luck of the Spindrift" is not the usual Max Brand Western - its a South Seas treasure hunt adventure. The plot is well constructed with well drawn subsidiary characters and provides a number of interesting twists.

The Lure of the Dim Trails

B.M. Bower

Take a trip along the dusty byways of the Old West in this book from renowned author B.M. Bowers. Phil Thurston was born on the range where the trails are dim and silent under the big sky. It was the place his father loved, the place he had to be. After the death of his father when he was five, his mother brought him back to the city, where he grew up and became a writer. To revive his stale writing, he returns to the West, and may just find what he is really missing. Thurston learns many a lesson while following The Lure of the Dim Trails but the hardest, and probably the most welcome, is that of love.

The Lust of Hate

Guy Boothby

Each person at some point in his life begins an adventure, after which he is destined to look back with a sensation very close to surprise. Someone said that adventure is for adventure. The vocation of a sailor in these times of giant steamboats is so much different from what it was in the old days of sailing ships and long voyages, that with the most ordinary luck, a person could easily climb along the ridges from the apprentice to the skipper less danger than that with which one might come across at the merchants London office.

The Lute Player

Harold Bindloss

Kings sometimes get bored too, and they want diversity. After all, they have everything they want. Similarly, our main character, the king, wanted to leave the comfort zone and went on a journey, leaving his wife. However, it can be said that the pudding quickly came to an end and he goes to prison. The king sends a message to his wife, where he asks him to disguise himself as a boy and save him.

The Łoś

Andrzej Boruszewski

Nie, nie śniła mu się, w każdym razie nic mu o tym nie wiadomo. Dlaczego więc o niej pomyślał, gdy się obudził? Przecież nie z powodu wyrzutów sumienia, bo tych nie powinien mieć. Nie powinien, czyli ma? Do diabła z tym. Jest środek lata, dokładnie dwudziesty lipca, przez ostatnie dziesięć lat nikt nie zginął, nikogo nie zamordowała żadna stara baba i żaden pieprzony łoś – to są wystarczające powody, żeby się uśmiechnąć do pękniętej żyłki Tomczewskiej. Na sali sądowej doprowadził ją do takiego stanu, że dostała wylewu i jeśli teraz w ogóle gdzieś miesza, to w ośrodku leczniczo-rehabilitacyjnym. Jedyne, co może zrobić, to podciąć komuś nogę albo napluć do kawy. Nie udowodnił kobiecie winy, ale przynajmniej pozbył się jej z miasta. Łosia chyba też, skoro od tego czasu w Typinie panuje spokój. W Typinie tak, ale nie w jego głowie. To przez ten sen. Grzmoty, błyskawice, jakieś krzyki, wrzaski, szczęk żelaza… Nie miał pojęcia co to było. I po to po aferze z Tomczewską zgodził się iść na emeryturę, żeby teraz psuły mu humor takie głupie sny?   Ci, którzy znają dwie pierwsze części, wiedzą o co chodzi. Tym, którzy nie znają, nie powinno to przeszkadzać. (Chociaż lepiej czytać po kolei.) Tym razem narzędziem zbrodni jest prąd elektryczny. Pomimo tego, że łosie rzadko go używają, łoś z ulewskich lasów - obok Peruna, słowiańskiego boga błyskawicy i pioruna - znowu staje się jednym z podejrzanych. Dobrej zabawy życzy autor.

The Mad King

Edgar Rice Burroughs

“The Mad King“ is a novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, an American fiction writer, who created such great characters as Tarzan and John Carter of Mars.   Set in the fictional European kingdom of Lutha, the protagonist is a young American named Barney Custer, of Beatrice, Nebraska, who is the son of an American farmer and a runaway Luthan princess, Victoria Rubinroth. Unaware of his royal blood, much less that he is a dead ringer for his relative Leopold, the current king of Lutha, Barney visits Lutha on the eve of the First World War to see for himself his mother's native land.  

The Magic Casket

R. Austin Freeman

The Magic Casket Thorndike solves the mystery of the box in order to locate a jewel stolen from a client and get rid of the dastardly Japanese who are after them in every way.

The Magnificent Hoax

E. Phillips Oppenheim

Captain Jan Henderson master of the cargo ship Henrietta Anne trading between London and Holland is working with mysterious conspirators (Sir Gregory Fawsitt and Lady Judith Martellon) to smuggle goods from Holland to London. His deck boy, David, falls in love with Judy, a pretty dancer. When Anthony Loman, an haggard traveler, staggers up the stairs of the tenement house at Bunters Buildings, Judy listens while he is flung to his death. As Police Sergeant Sanders investigation draws closer to the truth, will the killers be brought to justice? The Magnificent Hoax is a novel of drug-smuggling with yacht cruises to the Orient, Scotland Yard, aristocratic beauties and Londons waterfront.

The Mahatma and the Hare. A Dream Story

H. Rider Haggard

Henry Rider Haggard describes the plight of the protagonist. He loses his wife and daughter in a car accident, as he thinks through his fault. The main character goes into great depression and begins to drink. When the man was thinking about suicide, a stranger named Joren appeared and told him not to worry. He tells him about reincarnated souls and life after death. Joren teaches him to transcend his body.

The Maid-at-Arms

Robert W. Chambers

This is an outstanding book written in the old style. The story is set between the middle and the end of the Revolutionary War and has a good mix of adventure, romance and complex characters with a bit of history thrown in for good measure.