Publisher: 8
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.
Carolyn Wells
In this edge-of-your-seat thriller, renowned mystery writer Carolyn Wells strays from the enclaves of the well-to-do that usually serve as the settings for her novels and introduces elements of gritty street life. When the body of Rowland Trowbridge, a successful businessman, is found in a remote corner of Van Cortlandt Park, it initially appeared to be a robbery gone wrong. The dead mans last words were Cain killed me, which leads investigators to the victims nephew Kane Landon. But was Cain a Biblical reference? Or did it mean something else entirely? With circumstantial evidence against him, Landon turns to expert detective Fleming Stone and his assistant Fibsy McGuire, young man who hails from an Irish immigrant family, to unravel the meaning of... The Mark of Cain.
Edith Wharton
American writer Edith Wharton is known for her novels of manners set in old New York; yet much of her adult life was spent in France. She lived in Paris throughout World War I and was heavily involved in refugee work. She was a hugely successful writer and the first woman ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Age of Innocence. In this 1918 novella, we are introduced to the story of 15-year-old Troy Belknap who is from a wealthy family in New York but yearns to serve in the area of France along the Marne River where critical World War I battles took place, known as The Marne. Wharton takes the reader on a dizzying journey down the line between Troys rose-colored, heroic ambitions, the grim realities of the war, and the often hollow and ugly attitudes of Americans at home.
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.
The Marriage of Esther. A Torres Straits Sketch
Guy Boothby
The Marriage of Esther, surrounded by a messy community of settlers on a remote island off the coast of Australia, combines the best qualities of a classic action-adventure film with an ingeniously crafted riddle and right in the middle of all this is a heartbreaking novel.
The Marriage of Meldrum Strange
Talbot Mundy
This is an immoral story. Ommony Cottwolves is inaccurate in the report. The report is incorrect. They say that the press is saying this, and with it it can be learned that Maddrum String is a billionaire with brains, but without a heart; that his heart, if he has it, is made of iron sheets; that his stomach is of bronze, and the feet of clay; that his friendship is imaginary, but his enmity is a bitter and terrible truth; that he lacks repentance, but he has crazy ambitions; and that his superficial external resemblance to General Ulysses Grant was manifestly devised by Satan to bring the memory of this gallant soldier to bad weather.
L. Frank Baum
The sequel to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, set shortly after the events in the first book. A fantastical tale of endless imagination, The Marvelous Land of Oz follows the adventures of a young boy named Tip, who, for as long as he can remember has been under the guardianship of a witch named Mombi in the Land of Oz. When Tips prank, in creating a pumpkin-headed man to frighten Mombi backfires, and he is threatened with the terrible fate of being made into a statue as punishment, the young boy runs away and heads for the Emerald City, taking the now living Jack Pumpkinhead with him. Here he meets with our old friends the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman, as well as some new friends like the Wooden Sawhorse, the Highly Magnified Woggle-Bug, and the amazing Gump. They thwart the wicked plans of the evil witch Mombi and overcome the rebellion of General Jinjur and her army of young women. This story is as exciting and endearing today as it was when first published more than 80 years ago.
Fred M. White
Rarely do writers make the main character intelligent villains. However, Fred M. White decided to do just that. His main character, Felix Graida, is a brilliant criminal. This is a book about incredible adventures and exciting stories by Felix Grade.