Publisher: KtoCzyta.pl
The Argonauts of North Liberty
Bret Harte
What starts out as a tale of peaceful domesticity takes a sudden turn when the protagonists are lured from Connecticut to California by the promise of striking it rich. This fascinating novella from American author Bret Harte is an engaging, easy read that will please fans of historical fiction or tales of the Old West. First published in 1888, it keeps the reader engrossed with its fast-paced narrative and surprising twists and turns in the plot. Francis Bret Harte was a prolific American author and poet, best remembered for his accounts of pioneering life in California. The spirit of Dickens breathes through the poems and stories of Bret Harte just as the spirit of Bret Harte breathes through the poems and stories of Kipling.
The Arrow of Gold. A Story Between Two Notes
Joseph Conrad
Events unfolding in Marseille. George secretly gets the forbidden goods, and this makes money. He falls in love with Rita da Lastiola, a young woman with a certain wealth and mystery that supports the work of Karlist and inherited the fortune from a rich man who took her for a mistress. She is of peasant origin, and her motives and feelings are the subject of endless debate.
Henry James
The Aspern Papers is one of the masterpieces of the writers small prose, the plots of which are based on the collision of European and American cultural consciousness, the point of view of an individual and social stereotypes, the book perception of the world and individual experience. The tragicomic search by the hapless biographer of the lost letters of the great poet is the conflict of this story.
Rex Beach
Lorelei Knights parents want to get rich on her beauty. They send her to New York to be on a girl show. Bob Wharton, the dissolute son of a millionaire, falls in love with a girl. When Lorelei finds out her father is ill and needs money, she marries Bob even though she doesnt love him. Bobs father cuts his allowance and Bob is forced to go to work.
Henry James
In this story, a mother allows her only child, a seven-year-old boy, to die of diphtheria only so that he will never be subjected to the corrupting influence of the books written by his father, which she deeply condemns. Anyone who imagines motherly love and at least once saw the torment of a child restlessly darting in his crib, fighting for every breath, would never have invented such a monstrous story. The French call it litterature. By this word they denote works created on the basis of a cheap literary effect, devoid of any likelihood.
Herbert George Wells
Mr. Parham is a university academic of the traditional, classical sort, very much a snob and unhappy with many of the social trends of the time. Sir Bussy Woodcock is a self-made millionaire of sharp intelligence and great energy but lowly beginnings and no cultural education. This unlikely pair meet by chance and form an intermittent relationship. In an attempt to foster this acquaintance that goes on for six years, Mr. Parham finds himself involved in séances that summon a Master Spirit from the beyond. This entity occupies Mr. Parhams body, and commences to inspire a political movement (the League of Duty Paramount) that overthrows the British government in a coup détat. This is an intriguing tale which Wells uses to explore opposing social and political views of the period, with the fantasy element a vehicle for so doing. On the way, he creates a couple of memorable characters.
Edgar Wallace
Over a period of time, men disappear, and later their heads are found. Meanwhile a young actress in a small part in a film on location, is disturbed by the actions of the owner of the place where they are filming. A detective comes to investigate, and finds many puzzling things going on. Several of the characters are suspicious, in one way or another, and as the plot unfolds, it grips you. Edgar Wallaces The Avenger is a perfectly fine example of what a page-turning thriller looked like, early in the last century. What Edgar Wallace has over modern writers is the willingness to insert a girl-snatching, sapient orangutan in his plot. Surely the seeds for his King-Kong screenplay can be found here.
E. Phillips Oppenheim
Yet another collection of linked short stories from Oppenheim. By chance a young man and woman meet and set up an agency to aid Scotland Yard, but is romance in the air? This story deals with a young man and a young woman who make an informal partnership in criminal investigation. This whodunit murder mysteries collection brings to you some of Oppenheims finest murder mysteries to keep you at your toes: The Evil Shepherd Murder at Monte Carlo, or Wolves Amongst the Honey, The Glenlitten Murder and others. Phillips Oppenheim was an internationally renowned author of mystery and espionage thrillers. His novels and short stories have all the elements of blood-racing adventure and intrigue and are precursors of modern-day spy fictions.