Publisher: Good Press
The following work is an essay intended to be a rebuttal to the author's critics. The person who penned it was Anthony Collins, an English philosopher and essayist, notable for being one of the early proponents of Deism in Great Britain.
Soldier Boy is the top steed at Fort Paxton. He is Buffalo Bill's favorite horse and has led a life of glory and honor. One day General Alison's orphaned niece arrives and proceeds to charm every man, woman, and beast for miles around including Soldier Boy. Buffalo Bill takes her under his wing and ultimately "lends" her Soldier Boy so that they may seek adventure together. And so they do.Show book
The story traces the history of the titular street in a New England city, presumably Boston, from its first beginnings as "but a path" in colonial times to a quasi-supernatural occurrence in the years immediately following World War I. As the city grows up around the street, it is planted with many trees and built along with "simple, beautiful houses of brick and wood", each with a rose garden. As the Industrial Revolution runs its course, the area degenerates into a run-down and polluted slum, with all of the street's old houses falling into disrepair.After World War I and the October Revolution, the area becomes home to a community of Russian immigrants. Among the new residents is the leadership of a "vast band of terrorists," who are plotting the destruction of the United States on Independence Day. When the day arrives, the terrorists gather to do the deed, but before they can get started, all the houses in the street collapse concurrently on top of each other, killing them all. Observers at the scene testify that immediately after the collapse, they experienced visions of the trees and rose gardens that had once been in the street.Show book
Chichikov, a mysterious stranger, arrives in a provincial town and visits a succession of landowners to make each a strange offer. He proposes to buy the names of dead serfs still registered on the census, saving their owners from paying tax on them, and to use these "souls" as collateral to reinvent himself as a gentleman. In this ebullient masterpiece, Nikolai Gogol created a grotesque gallery of human types, from the bear-like Sobakevich to the insubstantial fool Manilov, and, above all, the devilish con man Chichikov. Dead Souls, Russia's first major novel, is one of the most unusual works of nineteenth-century fiction and a devastating satire on social hypocrisy.This version of Dead Souls is the translation by C. J. Hogarth.Show book
"The Tree" is a macabre short story by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft. It was written in 1920, and published in October 1921 in The Tryout. Set in ancient Greece, the story concerns two sculptors who accept a commission with ironic consequences. Lovecraft wrote "The Tree" early in his career. He was dismissive of the story in a 1936 letter. Such stories, he said, "if typed on good stock make excellent shelf-paper, but little else." The assessment of Lovecraft authority S. T. Joshi was that although the story "may be a trifle obvious... it is an effective display of Lovecraft's skill in handling a historical setting."On a slope of Mount Maenalus in Arcadia is an olive grove that grows around a marble tomb and the ruin of an old villa. There, one gigantic tree resembles a frighteningly distorted man, and the roots of the tree have shifted the blocks of the tomb.Show book
"History of the Necronomicon" is a short text written by H. P. Lovecraft in 1927, and published in 1938. It describes the origins of the fictional book of the same name: the occult grimoire Necronomicon, a now-famous element of some of his stories. The short text purports to be non-fiction, adding to the appearance of 'pseudo-authenticity' which Lovecraft valued in building his Cthulhu Mythos oeuvre. Accordingly, it supposes the history of the Necronomicon as the inspiration for Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow, which concerns a book that overthrows the minds of those who read it.Show book
Vincent O'Sullivan (1868-1940), born in New York to an Irish American family, moved as a child to London. As a young man, he soon became well recognised as the master of decadent and macabre fiction. "The Business of Madame Jahn" is a macabre ghost story of a suicide, a terrible murder and an awful revenge.Show book
