Germinal

Emil Zola

Akcja powieści Germinal Zoli rozgrywa się w latach 60. XIX wieku i opowiada o losach francuskich górników. Początkujący górnik Stefan Lantier próbuje się odnaleźć w górniczej społeczności i podołać trudnym warunkom pracy. Wsparcia szuka w rozwijających się ideach socjalistycznych, pod wpływem których próbuje wzniecić w kopalni strajk. Sytuacja wymyka się spod kontroli.

Colonel Chabert

Honoré de Balzac

In 1807 Colonel Chabert, Napoleons beloved commander, is severely wounded in the Battle of Eylau. Taken for dead and buried in a mass grave, he manages to escape and wanders in poverty through Europe for 10 years, torn between life and death, oblivion and consciousness. Finally recovering his memories, he sets out for Paris to search for his wife who had been a prostitute before he married her and to reclaim his possessions. In the several years while he had been gone, his wife thinking he was dead had remarried and had two new children. She had also collected his existing fortune. In all, she was pretty happy the way things were. How could our colonel prove who he was? What arguments could he use against his former wife? The story has a surprising number of twists, and poses a number of questions about how our society really works and the analysis of human behavior, character and emotions, is, as usual in Balzac, sublime.

Up the Ladder of Gold

E. Phillips Oppenheim

The secretive financier and Press baron Warren Rand is working to bring about Global Peace and Disarmament, against the plotting of England, France, Germany, and Russia. The story expands to include the chief characters in Rands life: his security chief a British officer Tellesom who falls in love with Rands estranged daughter, the financier John Glynde and a large cast of evil Russian and German spies. His machinations of the gold market and international sabotage bring the major players to the table. The book shows the interesting attitudes of Europeans towards America, the failure of the Revolution in Russia, the plotting of Germany for a second war and how millionaire corners the gold market and tries bribing the most powerful nations to maintain peace for forty years.

Dave Dashaway And His Giant Airship. Or a Marvellous Trip Across the Atlantic

Roy Rockwood

Roy Rockwood was a house pseudonym used for boys adventure books, including Bomba the Jungle Boy. The Dave Dashaway series focused on aerial adventures. Dave Dashaway continues to explore new horizons and to stay one step ahead of his nemesis! In Dave Dashaway and His Giant Airship or A Marvelous Trip Across the Atlantic Dave Dashaway is back, this time trying to beat Jerry Dawson in an airship race across the Atlantic Ocean, avoiding armed gunmen, fire, sharks, and all of the dangers of the open skies. From ghosts to stowaways, you wont want to stop until Daves feet are safely on solid ground. How the giant airship was constructed and how the daring young aviator and his friends made the hazardous journey through the clouds from the new world to the old, is told in a way to hold the reader spellbound.

LÎle aux trente cercueils

Maurice Leblanc

Une atmosphere sombre des légendes celtes, le présage sanglant, le comte Vorski sans-cur, voil de quoi frissonner dangoisse et de terreur. Les gens superstitieux appellent ce lieu Lîle aux trente cercueils. La raison est simple: il y a une terrible prophétie, que dit trente victimes doivent mourir dont quatre femmes en croix. Quelle est la destinee de la jeune femme de bonne famille Véronique, qui est impliqué dans cette histoire? Quel est le fin de lamour impossible entre un fou psychopathe et cette belle ingénue? Est-ce que Arsene Lupin peut affronter la malédiction?

Ambitions Slave

Fred M. White

The life of Beatrice Darryll seemed perfect. It was calm without any trouble. The woman was young and energetic, many friends said she was charming. After her words: The woman suffers most. Life is full of problems.

Collected Short Stories

A. Merritt

The Collected Short Stories is a collection of Abraham Merritts shorter works, and contains eight stories and two fragments. Included are: The People of the Pit, Through the Dragon Glass, The Drone, The Last Poet and the Robots and others. These short stories span the entire career of the man who has been called Americas foremost adventure fantasist of the 1920s and 30s. The collection kicks off with one of its strongest tales, The Fox Woman, a tale of revenge in a remote part of 20th century China. This is a mix of complete short stories and beginnings of novels that Abraham Merritt left unfinished before he died, the title story in the latter camp.

The Four Faces. A Mystery

William Le Queux

Michael Berrington is a bachelor leading a quiet life in London. Overhearing a conversation at his club one day, he becomes interested in a discussion regarding a man named Gastrell. Gastrell is somewhat of a mystery to the club members in spite of his renting a house from one of them. Berringtons interest in Gastrell intensifies as his fiancé, Dulcie Challoner, befriends a wealthy widow, Mrs. Connie Stapleton who evidently has some type of relationship with Gastrell. As the plot progresses, Berrington finds himself involved with sensational robberies, brutal murders, coded messages, and even mind control! As in many Le Queux books, there are twists and turns as new characters and locations are introduced.

The Phantom Rickshaw and Other Ghost Stories

Rudyard Kipling

The world of Kiplings stories is complex and rich, representing essentially an encyclopedia of the plot experience of the best English and American storytellers of the XIX century. They are characterized by psychology, innovation, which consists in introducing new layers of life into the fabric of narration, and a kind of naturalism. The lazy tourists demanding communication with people have already somewhat dulled this feeling of complacency and wide hospitality.

LÎle mystérieuse

Jules Verne

Le mystérieux capitaine Nemo et, bien sr, lhistoire de la survie sur un bout de terre dans locéan: des héros pleins de ressources lancés par un ouragan sur une île inhabitée, transformant en sucre et en acier, fabriquent des briques, de la laine, de lacide sulfurique et nitrique, de la nitroglycérine et de la dynamite, construisent un télégraphe et une machine filer. Lun des romans les plus fascinants de Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island une histoire daventures fascinante des habitants de lîle. Jules Verne sest efforcé de montrer ce dont un petit groupe de personnes est capable, se retrouvant dans les conditions de Robinson, se distinguant par leur activité, leur détermination et lutilisation des connaissances scientifiques pour leur survie.

Die Gräfin von Ascot. Roman

Edgar Wallace

Neugier breitet sich in der kleinen Ortschaft Ascot aus, als sich eine wohlhabende Gräfin dort niederlässt. Eine Gräfin taucht in Ascot auf, und bezieht dort eine Villa. Ein Einbrecher sucht die Villen in Ascot heim. Immer wieder erbeutet er Schmuck. Die Gräfin engagiert als Beschützer den Privatdetektiv John Morlay und stellt ihn vor eine äußerst schwierige Aufgabe.

The Hunchback of Westminster

William Le Queux

Up to that time, I remember, my big brass plate, with the legend Mr Hugh Glynn, Secret Investigator, had only succeeded in drawing a very average and ordinary amount of business. True, I had had several profitable cases in which wives wanted to know what happened to their husbands when they didnt come home at the usual hours, and employers were anxious to discover certain leakages through which had disappeared a percentage of their cash; but for the most part my work had been shockingly humdrum, and already I had begun to regret the whim that had prompted me, after reading certain latter-day romances, to throw up my career as a barrister in Grays Inn to emulate the romancers heroes in real life.

Collected Short Fiction

H.P. Lovecraft

This is a collection of classic Lovecraft stories. What readers like about him is how he can terribly make everything seem, a feeling of fear and foreboding that his thick prose can create. These early works of H.P. Lovecraft were originally published in the first half of the 20th century. The Dunwich Horror and The Call of Cthulhu, which subsequently brought him a place as one of the most influential authors of the horrors of the 20th century.

Obrona Sokratesa

Platon

Obrona Sokratesa to dzieło Platona, greckiego filozofa, twórcy systemu filozoficznego zwanego obecnie idealizmem platońskim, który był uczniem Sokratesa. Platon przedstawia w nim treść trzech mów, jakie Sokrates wygłosił na procesie w 399 r. p.n.e., na którym został skazany na karę śmierci. Obrona Sokratesa jest źródłem historycznym, dziełem literackim, lecz nade wszystko dziełem filozoficznym w najgłębszym sensie tego słowa.

Madame de Treymes

Edith Wharton

Even a short novel like Madame de Treymes shows you what a masterful writer Edith Wharton was. It is a captivating portrait of turn-of-the-century American and French culture. Inspired by Whartons own entré into Parisian society in 1906 and reminiscent of the works of Henry James, it tells the story of two young innocents abroad: Fanny Frisbee of New York, unhappily married to the dissolute Marquis de Malrive, and John Durham, her childhood friend who arrives in Paris intent on convincing Fanny to divorce her husband and marry him instead. In hopes of finding a solution, Durham meets with Fannys sister-in-law, the enigmatic Madame de Treymes, who suggests that she might be willing to appeal to her brother on his behalf if, that is, he will help settle her illicit lovers gambling debts. Such a proposition surely wont have a catch...

Cabbages and Kings

O. Henry

Cabbages and Kings is a 1904 novel made up of interlinked short stories, written by O. Henry and set in a fictitious country. A series of stories which each explore some individual aspect of life in a paralytically sleepy Central American town called the Republic of Anchuria while each advancing some aspect of the larger plot and relating back one to another in a complex structure which slowly explicates its own background even as it painstakingly erects a town which is one of the most detailed literary creations of the period. This work is O. Henrys first published volume and is considered to be his only novel. The plot is composed of several short stories, which were inspired by the authors six-month stay in Honduras in the late 1890s. In this book, O. Henry coined the term banana republic.

Au Bonheur des Dames

Émile Zola

Cest lhistoire de lentrepreneur Octave Mouret, qui a créé un grand magasin florissant dans le centre de Paris. Il existe une technologie de pointe qui vous permet dattirer des acheteurs. Denise est une vendeuse discrete qui essaie désespérément de sortir de la pauvreté et de nourrir ses deux freres. Il y a un prince, Cendrillon et de nombreux autres personnages magnifiquement écrits.

A Mummers Throne

Fred M. White

Fritz, a wandering man. He came to the west with the generally accepted goal of finding a wife. This adventure in search of a wife, it promises to be interesting. It would not be the story of Fred M. White, if he had not added mysticism here.

Atma

Maria Rodziewiczówna

Adam Jaworski to wybitny przemysłowiec. Kieruje dużą cukrownią. Jest zmęczony życiem. Nie odnajdując w nim celu, postanawia popełnić samobójstwo. Nie udaje mu się to i wraca do zdrowia. Nim jednak obudzi się z gorączkowego snu, przeżywa widzenie. Jego dusza wędruje po zaświatach. Tam po raz pierwszy spotyka się z Atmą kobietą, którą wkrótce potem spotka w realnym życiu. Atma to najbardziej mistyczna ze wszystkich powieści Rodziewiczówny. Autorka pisała ją zafascynowana filozofią Wschodu i teorią reinkarnacji, którą zaskakująco zgrabnie połączyła z wiarą chrześcijańską.

An Autumn Sowing

E.F. Benson

The main character, Mr. Keeling, is a simple self-worker who started his business with the fish trade. That is how he became popular and famous. Having a lot of money behind him, the main character decided to fight the class community. This book puts an intriguing twist on an old story about a middle-aged man who falls in love with his secretary.

Paula Monti ou lHôtel Lambert

Eugene Sue

Chapitres tres courts. Pourquoi courber ton front plus bas que de coutume? Quel mal avons-nous fait, pour ne plus nous cherir? Vois, la lampe palit, latre scintille et fume; Si tu ne parles pas, le feu qui se consume, Et la lampe, et nous deux, nous allons tous mourir

Znak czterech

Arthur Conan Doyle

Do Sherlocka Holmesa zgłasza się z prośbą o pomoc panna Mary Morstan (przyszła żona doktora Watsona). Od dziesięciu lat, w rocznicę tajemniczego zniknięcia jej ojca, ktoś przysyła jej drogocenną perłę. Tym razem jednak otrzymała także list, a w nim propozycję spotkania. Holmes i Watson mają odkryć, kto i dlaczego przysyła pannie Morstan tak drogie prezenty i co ma z tym wspólnego tajemniczy napis Znak czterech...

Fraszki

Jan Kochanowski

Jan Kochanowski pisał fraszki przez całe życie. W ciągu całej z górą dwudziestoletniej działalności poety powstało ich ponad trzysta. Fraszka to drobny utwór poetycki wierszem, często o charakterze żartobliwym, oparty na dowcipnym pomyśle. Pierwowzór fraszek w literaturze polskiej dał Mikołaj Rej w Figlikach. Kochanowski ustalił swoimi Fraszkami obowiązujący wzór stylistyczny tego typu utworów. Fraszki Kochanowskiego charakteryzuje duża różnorodność. Są wśród nich utwory żartobliwe, humorystyczne, satyryczne, frywolne, ale także bardzo poważne. Autor przedstawia w nich portreciki swoich znajomych, zdarzenia ze swego życia, scenki obyczajowe. Liczne utwory zawierają rozważania filozoficzne oraz ironiczne refleksje, także na temat własnej twórczości.

Where Highways Cross

J.S. Fletcher

Outside the city of Sycaster, they found small villages. In the villages themselves, the observant traveler often finds traces of old houses, which, no doubt, were picturesque and calculated in those times when agriculture was preferred to coal mining. In these villages, there is something secretive that will have to razgodat.