The Wife and Other Stories

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

In this story, the couple can not find a common language. After all, the wife does not agree with the point of view of her husband. She is capricious and does not want to solve their problems. But then we find hints of a deeper history of their relationship, which can prove that it is more reasonable than we suspect. This is a simple story, but with a very deep meaning.

The People of the River

Edgar Wallace

The setting is Nigeria a century ago, and British District Commissioner R.G. Sanders oversees the tribes. He discovers that Bosambo has been acting as chief without approval, but is so impressed with his skills Sanders allows him to remain in place, but Sanders heads to England to marry and unrest follows. The classic Commissioner Sanders stories about Africa by Edgar Wallace. This is the second collection in the series, following Sanders of the River. Wallace served in Africa and he gets the background right. Both books were written in the same year, when world powers were vying for colonial honor. Great humor, lots left to the readers imagination, but delightful stories about individuals and their interactions with Commissioner Sanders, British authority figure.

The Evil That Men Do

M.P. Shiel

The Evil That Men Do is a classic story of horror and unbelievable cruelty by British writer Matthew Phipps Shiel. This novel of mystery about Hartwell from birth, does he inherit his fathers traits? Do great men have great sons and how much does ones own lifes experiences cause variance to this question? To the ordinary reader there will seem very little in point of morality to choose between Robert Hartwell and the villainous millionaire whom a strange facial resemblance enables him to impersonate. Mr. Shiel does not, and probably does not aspire to, draw pictures of everyday life as it is. But there is always something ingenious in his situations, and in this book, at any rate, he has contrived to avoid the developments which disfigured at least one of his earlier novels.

The Eye of Istar. A Romance of the Land of No Return

William Le Queux

Thrice hath the Fast of Ramadan come and gone since the Granter of Requests last allowed my eyes to behold the well-remembered landscape, scarcely visible in the pale light of dawn. Hills, covered with tall feathery palms, rose abruptly from the barren, sun-scorched plain, and, at their foot, stood the dazzlingly-white city of Omdurman, the impregnable and mysterious headquarters of Mahdiism, while beyond, like a silver ribbon winding through the marshes, the Nile glided, half veiled by its thin white cloud of morning vapours.

The Wonderful Visit

Herbert George Wells

Like The Time Machine, this book may be considered as a further romance of the fourth dimension. The Wonderful Visit was paid by an angel, who by some accident, had got out of the angel into the human world, where his is accidentally shot by a vicar. The angel had trouble adjusting to life in a small English town. The Wonderful Visit is an 1895 novel by H. G. Wells. With an angel a creature of fantasy unlike a religious angel as protagonist and taking place in contemporary England, the book could be classified as contemporary fantasy, although the genre was not recognised in Wellss time. The Wonderful Visit also has strong satirical themes, gently mocking customs and institutions of Victorian England as well as idealistic rebellion itself.

The Scarlet Citadel

Robert E. Howard

The roar of battle had died away; the shout of victory mingled with the cries of the dying. Like gay-hued leaves after an autumn storm, the fallen littered the plain; the sinking sun shimmered on burnished helmets, gilt-worked mail, silver breastplates, broken swords and the heavy regal folds of silken standards, overthrown in pools of curdling crimson. In silent heaps lay war- horses and their steel-clad riders, flowing manes and blowing plumes stained alike in the red tide.

The Pickwick Papers

Charles Dickens

This novel demonstrates Dickens experimenting with building his own voice. The Pickwick Papers is a series of linear adventures, unlike the convoluted plots of Dickenss later novels. In other words, we follow our heroes from one stop to the next and meet interesting characters, rather than unraveling a mystery. The novel is a late example of the picaresque, a style of story in which we follow a rough, but still likable, hero through his adventures.The Pickwick Club sends Mr. Pickwick and a group of friends to travel across England and to report back on the interesting things they find. In the course of their travels, they repeatedly encounter the friendly but disreputable Mr. Jingle, who becomes a continual source of trouble for all who know him. Pickwick himself is the victim of a number of misunderstandings that bring him both embarrassment and problems with the law.

The Radium Seekers

Fenton Ash

Early science fiction, a cult classic, an enjoyable adventure. The story opens when our hero and his friends go to South America to look for radium, which has anti-gravity properties, and battle with a race of cruel Inca-type people who use the radium to fly, and disguise themselves as giant birds and terrorize the locals. The Radium Seekers is a fairly good novel written by Frank Aubrey. Francis Henry Frank Atkins (18471927) was a British writer of pulp fiction, in particular science fiction aimed at younger readers, writing at least three Lost-World novels along with much else. He wrote under the pseudonyms Frank Aubrey and Fenton Ash.