Historyczna
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 Marble Faun. Or, The Romance of Monte Beni
Nathaniel Hawthorne
At the center of the novel is a group of four characters. These are two young American artists, Hilda and Kenyon, who were brought to Rome by a thirst to comprehend the secrets of art, and their friends the artist Miriam and the young Donatello, who are introduced into this circle not by a passion for art, but by love for Miriam. Everyone is struck by the similarity of the count with the famous statue of Praxiteles, depicting a faun. Most importantly, this similarity is not limited to external similarity: traits dominate in the depiction of his image, beyond which the innocence of a creature unaware of the existence of evil is revealed.
Honoré de Balzac
Just a plain old story told by a superb story teller. A Marriage Contract (French: Le Contrat de marriage) is an 1835 novel by French author Honoré de Balzac and included in the Scenes de la vie privée section of his novel sequence La Comédie humaine. Set in Bordeaux, the marriage between an elegant but weak young Parisian gentleman, Paul de Manerville, and the beautiful but spoiled daughter of a Spanish heiress, Natalie Evangélista, is undermined from the beginning by a fight over the contract of marriage and the financial arrangements, which causes the mother-in-law to seek revenge against Paul. The story is told in a typical Balzac prose style, a forthright narrative sprinkled with witty adages and life lessons, a swift change in emotions running in his characters such that its difficult to decipher the true nature of each character but only to gratify ones curiosity by admitting that inherent fallacy of human character its multi-faced nature.
Robert Barr
Robert Barr has been almost completely overlooked by critics and anthologists of Canadian literature, in part because, although he was educated in Canada, he spent most of his life in the United States and England. However, since most of his serious novels are either set in Canada or have some Canadian connection, Barr deserves attention. The Measure of the Rule is a 1907 coming-of-age novel about a country teacher who migrates to the city to study engineering, but is forced by dint of circumstance to go to a teachers training college, where he meets his wife-to-be. In this novel, Barr is exorcising unhappy memories and is ironic, even bitter, about the schools system and schools quality of education, the rigid discipline observed by its staff and their indifference to their students, and the sexual segregation practiced. A number of men under whom Barr actually studied are vividly caricatured.
May Agnes Fleming
This story is told during the great plague of London. A fantastic and historical tale begins with the story of Sir Norman Kingsley about the mystical La Masque, he ends up visiting her, and soon certain visions come to life in her presence. But how does a woman, supposedly dead, come to life and how can such a dead man suddenly disappear?
George Eliot
If you had to choose between the love of a lifetime and your relationship with your family, who would you pick? In The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot, the author draws on her own experiences when writing the tale of the complicated relationship between a young woman Maggie and her brother Tom Tulliver during a time when women had limited choices. Maggies often tormented battle to do her duty and belong on the one hand, and to be herself, wild and natural on the other, propels her from one crisis to another. As the Tulliver fortunes decline and fall, the rift between Maggie and her family becomes almost irreconcilable. But Maggies biggest mistake of all is to fall in love with Stephen Guest who is engaged to another woman. This novel is a masterpiece of ambiguity in which moral choice is subjected to the hypocrisy of the Victorian age.
Robert Barr
First published in 1896 and considered one of Robert Barrs best works, this historical novel set in London at the beginning of the 20th century and centering on an industrial strike and a love triangle. The men in Monkton and Hopes factory strike. Sartwell, their manager, refuses to compromise with them, but discusses the situation with Marsten, one of their number, who clings to his own order, at the same time that he avows his love for Sartwells daughter Edna. Sartwell forbids him to speak to her. The strike is crushed, Marsten is dismissed, and becomes secretary to the Labor Union. He sees Edna several times, she becomes interested in him, and her father sends her away to school... A great read, The Mutable Many is thoroughly recommended for inclusion on the bookshelf of any home and for lovers of historical novels.
H. Rider Haggard
In this story, readers are introduced to Leonard Outram, a penniless British adventurer in his pocket who is seeking wealth in distant lands, having lost his family lands and estates. He is involved in the rescue of a young Portuguese woman from the largest slave camp in Africa. As a result, the main character discovered a lost race. He will not be easy, because he will face their God.