Other books that might interest you

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  The Great Gatsby

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

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  When The Great Gatsby was published, commercially it was a failure but critically it was a success. It is still the most admired and well read of all Scott Fitzgerald’s novels and it is considered a handbook of the 'Jazz Age'.  Scott Fitzgerald put much of himself and his life into the book. He created the character of Jay Gatsby to illustrate his own experiences of the illusory and morally bankrupt aspects of 1920s' America, and the character of Nick Carraway to show his disapproval of its destructive effects.

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  Mysterious Key and What It...

  Louisa May Alcott

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  In this delightful short story, we discover the secrets of the Trevlyn family. 'The Mysterious Key and What it Opened' is a mystery entwined with romance

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  The Return Of Sherlock Holmes

  Arthur Conan Doyle

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  This 1904 collection of Sherlock Holmes adventures was a revival of the character after his supposed death in ‘The Final Problem’. In the first story, ‘The Adventure of the Empty House’, Sherlock reappears in London and meets his friend to tell him how he had pushed Moriarty off the ledge in Switzerland, and then escaped fatal attacks at the hands of Moriarty’s still loyal henchmen.

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  Northanger Abbey

  Jane Austen

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  Jane Austen's first novel—published posthumously in 1818—tells the story of Catherine Morland and her dangerously sweet nature, innocence, and sometime self-delusion. Though Austen's fallible heroine is repeatedly drawn into scrapes while vacationing at Bath and during her subsequent visit to Northanger Abbey, Catherine eventually triumphs, blossoming into a discerning woman who learns truths about love, life, and the heady power of literature. The satirical novel pokes fun at the gothic novel while earnestly emphasizing caution to the female sex.

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  Nightmare Abbey - Unabridged

  Thomas Love Peacock

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  Nightmare Abbey is a Gothic satire about the romantic movement in contemporary English literature, its morbid subjects, misanthropy and transcendental philosophical systems. Most of the characters are based on historical figures whom Peacock wishes to ridicule. The main character is Christopher Glowry, Esquire, a morose widower who lives with his only son in his shabby family mansion. Mr. Glowry has servants with long faces or dismal names such as Raven, Graves or Deathshead. The few visitors he welcomes are mostly of a similar cast of mind: a transcendental philosopher; a Manichaean Millenarian; his son's languid and world-weary college friend; and a misanthropic poet. The only exception is the sanguine Mr. Hilary, who, as Mr. Glowry's brother-in-law, is obliged to visit the abbey from family interests. And there is Reverend Mr. Larynx, the vicar of nearby Claydyke, who readily adapts himself to whatever company he is in.

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  The Good Soldier

  Ford Madox

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  Handsome, wealthy, and a veteran of service in India, Captain Edward Ashburnham appears to be the ideal "good soldier" and the embodiment of English upper-class virtues. But for his creator, Ford Madox Ford, he also represents the corruption at society's core. Beneath Ashburnham's charming, polished exterior lurks a soul well-versed in the arts of deception, hypocrisy, and betrayal. Throughout the nine years of his friendship with an equally privileged American, John Dowell, Ashburnham has been having an affair with Dowell's wife, Florence. Unlike Dowell, Ashburnham's own wife, Leonora, is well aware of it. When The Good Soldier was first published in 1915, its pitiless portrait of an amoral society dedicated to its own pleasure and convinced of its own superiority outraged many readers. Stylistically daring, The Good Soldier is narrated, unreliably, by Dowell, through whom Ford provides a level of bitter irony. Dowell's disjointed, stumbling storytelling not only subverts linear temporality to satisfying effect, it also reflects his struggle to accept a world without honor, order, or permanence. Called the best French novel in the English language, The Good Soldier is both tragic and darkly comic, and it established Ford as an important contributor to the development of literary modernism.

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