Beautiful, flirtatious, and recently widowed, Lady Susan Vernon seeks a new and advantageous marriage for herself, and at the same time attempts to push her daughter into marriage with a man she detests. Through a series of crafty maneuvers, she fills her calendar with invitations for extended visits with unsuspecting relatives and acquaintances in pursuit of her grand plan. As the plot unfolds, characters are revealed and the suspense builds, all through letters exchanged among Lady Susan, her family, f

In September of 1884, Robert Louis Stevenson, then in his mid-thirties, moved with his family to Bournemouth, a resort on the southern coast of England, where in the brief span of 23 months he revised A Child's Garden of Verses and wrote the novels Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. An intriguingcombination of fantast thriller and moral allegory, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde depicts the gripping struggle of twoopposingpersonalities - one essentially good, the otherevi

Jane Austen has won legions of devoted fans in the 200 years since her death with her masterful parody of courtship and lightly moralizing critique of social mores in the early 19th century. Northanger Abbey was the first of her major novels to be completed, and though it was sold to a publisher in 1803, it was not released until 1817, months after her death. The tale of Gothic novel-obsessed Catherine Morland gives readers, particularly Austen fans that have only experienced her later works, an early poin

A terrifyingpsychological trip into the life of one Joseph K., an ordinary man whowakes up one day to findhimselfaccused of a crime hedid not commit, a crime whose nature isneverrevealed to him. Once arrested, heisreleased, but must report to court on a regular basis--an eventthatprovesmaddening, as nothingiseverresolved. As hegrows more uncertain of his fate, hispersonal life--includingwork at a bank and his relations withhislandlady and a youngwomanwho live snext door-become sincrea singly unpredictable.

According to Mary, in December 1878, her father had telegraphed her upon his safe return from India and requested her to meet him at the Langham Hotel in London. When Mary arrived at the hotel, she was told her father had gone out the previous night and not returned. Despite all efforts, no trace was ever found of him. Mary contacted her father's only friend who was in the same regiment and had since retired to England, one Major John Sholto, but he denied knowing her father had returned. The second puzzle

Dr James Mortimer asks Sherlock Holmes for advice after his friend Sir Charles Baskerville was found dead in the park surrounding his manor, in the moors of Devon. The death was attributed to a heart attack, but according to Mortimer, Sir Charles's face retained an expression of horror, and not far from the corpse the footprints of a gigantic hound were clearly visible. According to an old legend, a curse runs in the Baskerville family since the time of the English Civil War, when Sir Hugo Baskerville

Impressionisticnovel by Virginia Woolf, published in 1922. Experimental in form, itcenters on the character of Jacob Flanders, a lonelyyoung man unable to synthesizehis love of classical culture with the chaotic reality of contemporary society, notably the turbulence of World War I. The novelis an examination of characterdevelopment and the meaning of a life by means of a series of brief impressions and conversations, stream of consciousness, internal monologue, and Jacob'sletters to hismother. In zealouspu

Novel by Jack London, published in 1903 and often considered to be his masterpiece. London's version of the classic quest story using a dog as the protagonist has sometimes been erroneously categorized as a children's novel. Buck, who is shipped to the Klondike to be trained as a sled dog, eventually reverts to his primitive, wolflike ancestry. He then undertakes an almost mythical journey, abandoning the safety of his familiar world to encounter danger, adventure, and fantasy. When he is transformed into t

Franz Kafka wrote this letter to his father, Hermann Kafka, in November 1919. Max Brod, Kafka's literary executor, relates that Kafka actually gave the letter to his mother to hand to his father, hoping it might renew a relationship that had lost itself in tension and frustration on both sides. But Kafka's probing of the deep flaw in their relationship spared neither his father nor himself. He could not help seeing the failure of communication between father and son as another moment in the larger existenti

The hush of the court, which had been broken when the foreman of the jury returned their verdict, was intensified as the Judge, with a quick glance over his pince-nez at the tall prisoner, marshalled his papers with the precision and method which old men display in tense moments such as these. He gathered them together, white paper and blue and buff and stacked them in a neat heap on a tiny ledge to the left of his desk. Then he took his pen and wrote a few words on a printed paper before him. Another breat

Odette Rider is fired by Thornton Lyne after rejecting his favors. Jack Tarling, a detective who has been working in China and just returned to London, visits his cousin Thorton Lyne at his store to discuss his cashier Milburgh's embezzlement. In his anger with Odette, Lyne decides to try to blame her for the embezzlement instead. Tarling immediately falls in love with Odette. Lyne is found dead in the park with one of Odette's nightgowns wrapped around his gunshot wound and it doesn't look good for Odette.

To the Lighthouse is a 1927 novel by Virginia Woolf. A landmark of high modernism, the novel centres on the Ramsays and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920. Following and extending the tradition of modernist novelists like Marcel Proust and James Joyce, the plot of To the Lighthouse is secondary to its philosophical introspection. The novel includes little dialogue and almost no action; most of it is written as thoughts and observations. The novel recalls childhood emotions an

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), published in 1889, is a humorous account by English writer Jerome K. Jerome of a boating holiday on the Thames between Kingston and Oxford. The book was initially intended to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of local history along the route, but the humorous elements took over to the point where the serious and somewhat sentimental passages seem a distraction to the comic novel. One of the most praised things about Three Men in a Boat is how undated

It is November 1915, the midst of World War I, and Richard Hannay and his friend Sandy are convalescing from wounds received at the Battle of Loos. Hannay is summoned to the Foreign Office by Sir Walter Bullivan. It appears German and Turkish allies are plotting to throw the Middle East, India and North Africa into turmoil. Hannay undertakes a perilous journey through enemy territory to Constantinople. Once there, he must thwart the Germans' plans to use religion to help them win the war.

At Baskerville Hall on the grim moors of Devonshire, a legendary curse has apparently claimed one more victim. Sir Charles Baskerville has been found dead. There are no signs of violence, but his face is hideously distorted with terror. Years earlier, a hound-like beast with blazing eyes and dripping jaws was reported to have torn out the throat of Hugo Baskerville. Has the spectral destroyer struck again? More important, is Sir Henry Baskerville, younger heir to the estate, now in danger? Enter Sherlock

Wessex Tales was the first collection of Hardy's short stories, and they reflect the experience of a novelist at the height of his powers. These seven tales, in which characters and scenes are imbued with a haunting realism, show considerable diversity of content, form and style, and range from fantasy to realism and from tragedy to comedy. Hardy tests the skill of any narrator. Not only must the reader dramatize differences of age, sex, region, and class among the characters who inhabit the fictional cou

One of the most enduringly popular adventure tales, Treasure Island began in 1881 as a serialized adventure entitled The Sea-Cook in the periodical Young Folks. Completed during a stay at Davos, Switzerland, where Stevenson had gone for his health, it was published in 1883 in the form we know today. Set in the eighteenth century, Treasure Island spins a heady tale of piracy, a mysterious treasure map, and a host of sinister characters charged with diabolical intentions. Seen through the eyes of Jim Hawk

The Secret Agent is considered to be one of Joseph Conrad's finest works and was ranked the 46th best novel of the 20th century by the Modern Library. Set in London at the end of the nineteenth century, it follows the life of Mr. Verloc, a secret agent who is also the proprietor of a small shop that sells, photographs of more or less undressed dancing girls and a few books, with titles hinting at impropriety. Verloc's friends, a group of anarchists, assign him the task of destroying the Greenwich Observator

Jack London cut a mythic figure across the American landscape of the early twentieth century. But throughout his colorful life -from his teenage years as an oyster pirate to his various incarnations as a well-traveled seaman, Yukon gold prospector, waterfront brawler, unemployed vagrant, impassioned socialist, and celebrated writer- he retained a predilection for drinking on a prodigious scale. London's classic alcoholic memoirs -the closest thing to an autobiography he ever wrote- are a startlingly honest

This thriller by Edgar Wallace is a perfect example of the Edwardian era's suspense novels which were the most popular form of fiction after the pulp romances of that time. It depends upon twists and turns and unexpected surprises and keeps the reader wondering what's next. The Clue of the Twisted Candle also includes an unflappable hero and a thoroughly despicable villain (an Albanian aristocrat with an unlimited thirst for power and honor). Reading it today is a lot of fun and gives one a sense of that by