Publisher: ReadOn
"The Thing on the Doorstep" is a short story written by H.P. Lovecraft, part of the Cthulhu Mythos universe of horror fiction. It was written in August 1933, and first published in the January 1937 issue of Weird Tales. Daniel Upton, the story's narrator, begins by telling that he has killed his best friend, Edward Derby, and that he hopes his account will prove that he is not a murderer ...
What Polly Found in Her Stocking is a delightful Christmas poem that tells what a girl of the late 1800s might have gotten from Santa - if she were very good.Show book
David Copperfield is the eighth novel by Charles Dickens. The novel's full title is The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (Which He Never Meant to Publish on Any Account). It was first published as a serial in 1849/50, and as a book in 1850.The novel features the character David Copperfield, and is written in the first person, as a description of his life until middle age, with his own adventures and the numerous friends and enemies he meets along his way. It is his journey of change and growth from infancy to maturity, as people enter and leave his life and he passes through the stages of his development.Show book
"The Turn of the Screw" is a short novel or a novella written by American writer Henry James. Originally published in 1898, it is ostensibly a ghost story that has lent itself well to operatic and film adaptation. Due to its ambiguous content and narrative skill, "The Turn of the Screw" became a favorite text of New Criticism.The account has lent itself to dozens of different interpretations, often mutually exclusive, including those of a Freudian nature. Many critics have tried to determine what exactly is the nature of evil within the story.Show book
After the death of his parents, Jim Burden is sent to live with his grandparents on the Nebraska plains. By chance, on that same train is Ántonia, a bright-eyed girl who will become his neighbor and lifelong friend. Her family has emigrated from Bohemia to start a new life farming but soon lose their money and must work hard just to survive. Through it all, Ántonia retains her natural pride and free spirit.Jim's grandparents have a large and tidy farm. They are kind to him, but conventional. Later, Jim becomes a scholar and Ántonia becomes a "hired girl" in town. She blossoms in the new freedom that town life offers. Jim can only taste this life vicariously through her recounting of town gossip and of the "dance tent." Ántonia's strong will, spirit, and honesty allow her to thrive in the midst of hardship.In My Ántonia, Willa Cather paints a rich picture of life on the prairie at the beginning of the twentieth century and depicts some of the many cultures that came to compose the United States.Show book
Andrew Lang (1844 – 1912) was a Scottish poet, novelist, best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. "The Frog" is a variant on the Frog Princess. Three brothers are told by their mother to set specific tasks for their sweethearts to complete, to see whether they will make suitable brides. The youngest lad does not know any girls, but a mystery frog proves amazingly adept at all the trials set her by her future mother-in-law.Show book
The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor, one of 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is the 10th of the 12 stories collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The story was first published in Strand Magazine in April 1892. Lord Robert St. Simon's new American bride, Hatty Doran, has disappeared almost immediately after the wedding. The servants had prevented an old love interest of his from forcing her way into the wedding breakfast, and Hatty had been seen in whispered conversation with her maid. Inspector Lestrade arrives with the news that Hatty's wedding dress and ring have been found floating in the Serpentine. Holmes quickly solves the mystery, locating Hatty at a hotel with a mysterious, "common looking" man who had picked up her dropped bouquet after the ceremony. The man turns out to be Hatty's husband, Frank, whom she had thought dead in America and who managed to locate her only moments before she was to marry Lord St. Simon. Frank and Hatty had just decided to go to Lord St. Simon in order to explain the situation when Holmes found them. Public Domain (P)2016 Rick SheridanShow book
