Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
All characters reduced
A Laodicean - cover

A Laodicean

Thomas Hardy

Publisher: Passerino

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Summary

A Laodicean; or, The Castle of the De Stancys. A Story of To-Day is a novel by Thomas Hardy, first published in 1880–81 in Harper's New Monthly Magazine. The plot exhibits devices uncommon in Hardy's other fiction, such as falsified telegrams and faked photographs.

Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Wordsworth. He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain, such as those from his native South West England.
Available since: 07/16/2023.

Other books that might interest you

  • Richard Bruce - Burglar - Former soldier and journalist that became a revered author and screenwriter - cover

    Richard Bruce - Burglar - Former...

    Edgar Wallace

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was born on the 1st April 1875 in Greenwich, London.  Leaving school at 12 because of truancy, by the age of fifteen he had experience; selling newspapers, as a worker in a rubber factory, as a shoe shop assistant, as a milk delivery boy and as a ship’s cook.  
     
    By 1894 he was engaged but broke it off to join the Infantry being posted to South Africa. He also changed his name to Edgar Wallace which he took from Lew Wallace, the author of Ben-Hur.  
     
    In Cape Town in 1898 he met Rudyard Kipling and was inspired to begin writing. His first collection of ballads, The Mission that Failed! was enough of a success that in 1899 he paid his way out of the armed forces in order to turn to writing full time.  
     
    By 1904 he had completed his first thriller, The Four Just Men. Since nobody would publish it he resorted to setting up his own publishing company which he called Tallis Press. 
      
    In 1911 his Congolese stories were published in a collection called Sanders of the River, which became a bestseller. He also started his own racing papers, Bibury’s and R. E. Walton’s Weekly, eventually buying his own racehorses and losing thousands gambling.  A life of exceptionally high income was also mirrored with exceptionally large spending and debts.  
     
    Wallace now began to take his career as a fiction writer more seriously, signing with Hodder and Stoughton in 1921. He was marketed as the ‘King of Thrillers’ and they gave him the trademark image of a trilby, a cigarette holder and a yellow Rolls Royce. He was truly prolific, capable not only of producing a 70,000 word novel in three days but of doing three novels in a row in such a manner. It was estimated that by 1928 one in four books being read was written by Wallace, for alongside his famous thrillers he wrote variously in other genres, including science fiction, non-fiction accounts of WWI which amounted to ten volumes and screen plays. Eventually he would reach the remarkable total of 170 novels, 18 stage plays and 957 short stories. 
     
    Wallace became chairman of the Press Club which to this day holds an annual Edgar Wallace Award, rewarding ‘excellence in writing’.  
     
    Diagnosed with diabetes his health deteriorated and he soon entered a coma and died of his condition and double pneumonia on the 7th of February 1932 in North Maple Drive, Beverly Hills. He was buried near his home in England at Chalklands, Bourne End, in Buckinghamshire.
    Show book
  • Taboo - cover

    Taboo

    Elizabeth Gage

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Plunge into the glamour, fame, dark secrets, and sordid lives of three high rollers living in Hollywood's gilded age. Kate Hamilton uses her hard-boiled pride and sensual beauty to hide her shameful past. Eve Sinclair is a child superstar who has carefully choreographed her climb to the top, coolly using anything or anyone to secure her rise. Finally, there's Joseph Knight, a writer and self-established Hollywood prodigy, whose predatory passion wreaks havoc in both women's lives. Expertly weaving intrigue and deception, Taboo is a thoroughly engrossing tale about bright Hollywood comets who blaze and fall to earth.
    Show book
  • The Moon That Fell From Heaven - cover

    The Moon That Fell From Heaven

    N.L. Holmes

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Coffee Pot Book Club's Book of the Year Awards: Silver Medal 
     
     
     
    Ehli-nikkalu, eldest daughter of the Hittite emperor, is married to a mere vassal of her father's. But despite her status, her foreignness and inability to produce an heir drive a wedge between her and the court that surrounds her. When her secretary is mysteriously murdered while carrying the emperor a message that would indict the loyalty of his vassal, Ehli-nikkalu adopts the dead man's orphaned children out of a guilty sense of responsibility. 
     
     
     
    A young cousin she has never met becomes a pretender to the throne and mobilizes roving armies of the poor and dispossessed, which causes the priority of her loyalties to become even more suspect. However, Ehli-nikkalu discovers a terrible secret that could destabilize the present regime if the pretender ever learns of it. 
     
     
     
    With the help of a kindly scribe, her brave young ward, and an embittered former soldier trapped in debt and self-doubt, Ehli-nikkalu sets out to save the kingdom and prove herself to her father. And along the way, she learns something about love.
    Show book
  • Lord Jim - cover

    Lord Jim

    Joseph Conrad

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    "Lord Jim" is a novel by Joseph Conrad, originally published as a serial in Blackwood's Magazine from 1899 to 1900 and later as a book in 1900. The novel is a complex exploration of honor, guilt, and redemption through the story of Jim, a young British seaman. Jim dreams of being a hero but is faced with a critical test when he abandons a ship in distress. His idealism is shattered by his actions, and the novel follows his quest for atonement. Conrad's narrative delves into the psychological depth of Jim's character, using a non-linear storytelling technique that was innovative for its time.
    Show book
  • The Inscription on the Grave A Story from ‘A Swedish Homestead’ - Swedish story set in 1830 by a Nobel prize winning author - cover

    The Inscription on the Grave A...

    Selma Lagerlöf

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    The bookshelves of European literature are incredible collections that have gathered together centuries of very talented authors.  From this continent their fame spread and whilst among their number many are now forgotten or neglected their talents endure.  Among them is the very talented Nobel prize winning Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf.
    Show book
  • Loot of the Shanung - cover

    Loot of the Shanung

    L. Ron Hubbard

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    A one hundred grand reward for the return of billionaire George Rockham is more than enough to turn Shanghai newspaperman Jimmy Vance's head. Throw in the gorgeous dame who's offering the reward — Rockham's daughter Virginia — and he might lose his head altogether. Fast-talking Vance jumps at the chance to get what could be the biggest story of his life... if he lives to tell it. A missing billionaire. A beautiful woman. A hot story. Hear all about it — as the audio version of Loot of the Shanung puts a newspaperman up against a brutal deadline.
    Show book