Pattys Fortune

Carolyn Wells

Carolyn Wells (1862-1942) was an American author and poet. She wrote more than 170 books. During the first ten years of her career, she concentrated on poetry, humor, and childrens books. After 1910, she devoted herself to the mystery genre. This is one of the later books in the popular Patty Fairfield series of novels for young readers. In this volume, Patty and her chums hole up at a lavish hotel for a weeks-long reunion party. Then the story takes a dramatic turn when a beloved family member falls ill and seeks out Patty to discuss her future. The story of 20 years old Patty is relatable for most of the girls, especially in the third world countries despite the fact that the setting of the story is much Victorian Europe.

Queen of the Black Coast

Robert E. Howard

Hoofs drummed down the street that sloped to the wharfs. The folk that yelled and scattered had only a fleeting glimpse of a mailed figure on a black stallion, a wide scarlet cloak flowing out on the wind. Far up the street came the shout and clatter of pursuit, but the horseman did not look back. He swept out onto the wharfs and jerked the plunging stallion back on its haunches at the very lip of the pier.

The Blithedale Romance

Nathaniel Hawthorne

A group of people is a powerful mixture of competing ambitions, and its idealism finds little satisfaction in agriculture. Instead of changing the world, Blithedale community members individually follow selfish paths that ultimately lead to tragedy. Hawthornes tale simultaneously mourns and saturates a rural idyll, not unlike the history of America in the 19th century as a whole.

A Certain Dr. Thorndyke

R. Austin Freeman

John Osborne is a young gentleman who has left England for some, as of yet, unknown reason. He settles in Adaffia, an ends-of-the-earth type of town on the Gold Coast. Almost immediately he gets into a fight defending the only other white man in town, a drunken trader. And we see that Osborne is a tremendous fighter skilled at ju-jitsu, boxing, wrestling and strategy. These skills will come into play again and again, in a mutiny, a rebellion and other struggles with formidable opponents. His adventures at one point throw him into the company of a willful young lady who has an appetite for danger, and she and Osborne fall in love. Meanwhile back in England, a certain Dr. Thorndyke is investigating the crime that Osborne is supposed to have committed. This second half of the book is just as much fun as the first, involving bizarre searches for clues and meticulous examinations of minutiae, from mustache hairs to wormwood dust.

Tono-Bungay

Herbert George Wells

Considered one of Wells most successful attempts at a social novel in the vein of Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, Wellss tale is a panoramic view of an unravelling society. A semi-autobiographical satire of Edwardian advertising and patent-medicines. The story follows the life of a young man, George, and his Uncle Edward. Edward invents an elixir called TONO-BUNGAY and hires his nephew George to help build the company. The medicine becomes a huge commercial success, causing George to reflect on the sickness at the heart of a society that lets itself be so easily duped. He begins to search for a new order to replace the old one, a quest that leads him to dangerous aeronautical experiments. At the end of the novel, George sails down the River Thames to the open sea, toward the hopeful new world that awaits him.

The Wanderers Necklace

H. Rider Haggard

The book is full of unforeseen incidents. At the heart of the story is a guy who is much more honest and bolder than he seems. And of course there is love. Love leads this story, love strengthens it, and also corrupts it in a cunning way. This is a power struggle, a story about kindness, true friendship, sacrifice, conspiracy, and so on.

Grey Timothy

Edgar Wallace

The renowned family Callander receives a very unwelcome visit from their Australian relative, nephew Brian Pallard of family patriarch Peter Callander. Unwelcome because Pallard cultivates a rather dubious way of life and made his considerable fortune on the races. Upon arrival, Pallard proves charming and witty, so that daughter Gladys immediately gets a crush on him, but he also has rivals who do not shy away from bad deed like killing a horse with tse tse flies to manipulate a horse-race... Entertaining mix of social comedy, melodrama and lightweight detective novel by Edgar Wallace who was a prolific author of crime, adventure and humorous stories.

Smoky Cell

Edgar Wallace, Robert Curtis

The novel of Edgar Wallaces famous play told by Robert Curtis. Smoky Cell:... At ten oclock that night the guards outside the prison walls were doubled and among them they had enough machine-guns to play havoc with a battalion. The warden of the prison had announced that he was taking no chances. Ben Guinney, he had said, might have escaped from Canyon City prison without his due dose of high-power juice, but he wasnt going to jump this dump. Rumors of an attempt at rescue had reached him and his reputation as warden was at stake...