Other books that might interest you

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  The Umbrella-Mender

  Beatrice Harraden

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  Beatrice Harraden (1864-1936) was a British writer and suffragette. "The Umbrella-Mender" is a disturbing tale about an eccentric man who runs a repair shop for umbrellas. One evening he is surprised by a knock at the door. Outside is a man who tells the umbrella-mender that his son is on his death-bed and wishes to see his father. The umbrella-mender sets off at once with the stranger. In the course of their conversation on the journey, the stranger explains that he himself has murdered the umbrella-mender's son. The tension between the two men and the need for revenge, atonement and closure forms the rest of the story and the story has multiple twists and surprises.

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  Robinson Crusoe - Unabridged

  Daniel Defoe

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  Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe. It was published under the full title The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is presented as an autobiography of the title character—a castaway who spends decades on a remote tropical island, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers.

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  The Bostonians

  Henry James

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  The Bostonians is set ten years after the end of the American Civil War.  The North had been victorious because of its industrial strength, but could not live up to the ideals for which it fought. James satirizes the North’s moral decline in Olive Chancellor’s fervent idealism and Basil Ransom’s reactionary stance, both of which are equally inappropriate. When first published the novel was a resounding failure.  The Americans could not accept such criticism and many were offended by the latent lesbianism in Olive’s relationship with Verena.

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  Wild Flowers of the Asphalt

  William Dean Howells

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  A short story that intricately discusses the wild flowers found amoung the asphalt and concrete of New York City.

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  Floor Games (Unabridged)

  H. G. Wells

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  Floor Games is a book published in 1911 by H. G. Wells. This light-hearted volume argues in a humorously dictatorial tone that "The jolliest indoor games for boys and girls demand a floor." Illustrated with photographs and drawings, it briefly describes a number of games that can be played on "well lit and airy" floors with "four main groups" of toys: soldiers about two inches high (Wells regrets the "curse of militarism" that makes civilians hard to find), largish wooden bricks, boards and planks, and electric railway rolling stock and rails. Various remarks show that the book is based on Wells's experience of playing such games with his two sons, George Philip "Gip" Wells (1901-1985) and Frank Richard Wells (1903-1982), identified here only by their initials at their family home, 17 Church Row, in the north west London district of Hampstead. Although Floor Games is often characterized as a "companion book" to Wells's Little Wars (1913), the earlier book was conceived of as a self-standing volume so that the author might later write a book devoted purely to war games. Floor Games describes mostly specific games for young children, whereas Little Wars describes war games for older children and adults.

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  The Byzantine Omelette

  Saki Saki, Hector Hugh Munro

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  Hector Hugh Munro (1870-1916) is better known by the pen name Saki. He remains hugely popular as a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirized Edwardian society and culture. Sophie Chattel-Monkheim was a Socialist by conviction and a Chattel-Monkheim by marriage. When the Duke of Serbia does her the honour of joining her house party, despite her left-wing leanings, Sophie is determined to make a good impression. So she hires an emergency chef who is an expert in making Byzantine omelettes. Within a very short time the entire household is thrown into disarray...

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