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Arthur Mervyn is the story of a young man from the country who arrives in a city stricken with Yellow Fever. He soon comes down with the illness and is rescued by a kindly doctor. Arthur tells the doctor and his wife the story of his life, thereby gaining the doctor’s confidence and good will. However, others familiar with Arthur tell another tale, and the doctor’s as well as the reader’s confidence in Arthur is shaken. Brown, who himself contracted Yellow Fever during an outbreak in New York City, vividly describes the horrors of the disease and its effects on an early American city. (Summary by Margaret)...

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Fiction

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O Alienista, de Machado de Assis, é um pequeno romance sobre loucura, cientificismo e poder. O enredo se desenrola a partir dos esforços científicos de um importante médico português, o dr. Simão Bacamarte, cuja obsessão pela busca de um método universal para tratar e curar distúrbios mentais leva os habitantes da pequena cidade de Itaguaí ao terror, conspiração e a tentativas de revolução. Em pouco tempo, o hospício do dr. Bacamarte passa a tratar não só os doentes mentais, mas também os sãos, que, segundo o diagnóstico do médico, poderiam vir a desenvolver doenças mentais. O Alienista tem como tema a crítica ao cientificismo arbitrário e sua influência em elementos políticos e culturais. The Psychiatrist is a tragicomic literary piece on madness, scientism and power. It follows the scientific efforts of Dr. Simão Bacamarte, a prominent Portuguese physician whose obsession for discovering a universal method to treat and consequently cure mental disturbs drives the inhabitants of the small town of Itaguaí to fear, conspiracy and revolutionary attempts. In a short space of time, Bacamarte's madhouse passes to take inside of its walls...

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Kottō contains 20 Japanese stories, collected from different sources and translated by Lafcadio Hearn. The types of stories in this collection are widespread: There are old ghost stories Hearn is best known for (The Legend of Yurei-Daki), his own observations and musings (Pathological), as well as the translation of 'A Woman's Diary', a touching account of the life of the poorer classes in Tokyo, written at the end of the 19th century. (Summary by Availle)...

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Fairy tales

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“THE BOOK THAT DORIAN GRAY LOVED AND THAT INSPIRED OSCAR WILDE”. Such is the enticing epigraph of one early translation of Huysmans’ cult novel of 1884, which is also routinely called the Bible of Decadence. Accurate descriptions, both, of this bizarre masterpiece which has reverberated ever since through high and popular culture.“Against Nature” (or in this version “Against The Grain”) explores to the furthest limit the life of the world-rejecting aesthete living a reclusive existence devoted entirely to artificial paradises of his own devising. This is no solemn tract, however: the book’s anti-hero Duc Jean Floressas Des Esseintes spectacularly fails to achieve his life’s work, as all his attempts to create worlds of perverse experience through synaesthesia and interior decoration prove ludicrously unsatisfying and injurious to health. An innocent tortoise also falls casualty to his theories, in the wonderful fifth chapter.This is probably a novel best savoured one chapter at a time, and not only because John Howard’s clunky translation makes indigestible listening. Those who can skip whole chunks without guilt would do well to av...

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Fiction

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Perhaps most well-known for his fairytales and fantasy stories such as The Golden Key and Phantastes, or for his poetry, George MacDonald was a great spiritual master of the nineteenth century. He spent several years as a minister in his native Scotland; however he was forced to resign his position due to ill health. He had a profound influence on such later writers as G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis – the latter of whom considered MacDonald to be his spiritual father, and edited an anthology of his works. In The Hope of the Gospel, with his ever sagely style, MacDonald explores the essential heart of the gospel that is so often overlooked, both in his day and ours. Dissatisfied with cheap and hasty interpretations of Scripture, MacDonald invites us beneath the surface in a heartfelt meditation on all that Christ came to accomplish. (Summary by Jordan)...

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Play, Fiction

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After the bizarre textual antics of Tristram Shandy, this book would seem to require a literary health warning. Sure enough, it opens in mid-conversation upon a subject never explained; meanders after a fashion through a hundred pages, then fizzles out in mid-sentence - so, a plotless novel lacking a beginning, a middle or an end. Let us say: an exercise in the infinitely comic. There is not a secret so aiding to the progress of sociality, as to get master of this short hand, and to be quick in rendering the several turns of looks and limbs with all their inflections and delineations, into plain words. Sterne calls his fine sensitivity to body language (as we now term it) translation. Much of the pleasure to be had from this wonderfully engaging book comes from his unmatched ability to extract random details from the chaos of experience to create comic turns imbued with Feeling. His Parson Yorick is the Sentimental Traveller: certainly a Man of Feeling, but one in whom Nature has so wove her web of kindness, that some threads of love and desire are entangled with the piece... (Summary by Martin Geeson)...

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Travel, Fiction

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Albert Payson Terhune, perhaps best known for his book Lad, a Dog (later turned into a popular movie), was also a breeder of collies and a journalist. Some of his collie lines survive to this day. His Dog is a story about Link Ferris who finds an injured dog on his way home one evening. Knowing nothing about dogs, Link nurses the dog back to health and the two form a bond such as only can be formed between human and canine. Unable to locate the collie's owner, Link christens his dog 'Chum' who becomes invaluable in tending to the daily needs of his meager farm. Unknown to Ferris however, Chum's original owners have been looking for their lost collie, and the story finds Link torn between that which he knows is morally right and his love for what he believes has become his dog . (Summary by Roger Melin)...

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Fiction, Animals

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The mystery of a secret room, scene of many murders, is unraveled by Carlos Paredes, the Panamanian Sherlock Holmes. (Summary by manybooks.net)

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Fiction, Mystery

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Written by Louisa May Alcott under her pseudonym, A. M. Barnard, this Christmas story deals with the themes of love and defending one's honor. Although he is disinherited and poor, Maurice Traherne tries to win the hand of his love, Octavia.(Summary by Jennifer Stearns)...

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Fiction, Romance

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One of Dickens' Christmas stories, this was first published as part of the Christmas number of Household Words for 1854. The first chapter relates Dickens' visit to the ancient Richard Watts's Charity at Rochester. The second chapter is the touching story of Richard Doubledick, which Dickens supposedly told the travellers, and Dickens' journey home on Christmas morning provides the short concluding chapter. (Summary by Ruth Golding)...

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Fiction, Holiday

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Twice-Told Tales is a short story collection in two volumes by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The first was published in the spring of 1837, and the second in 1842. The stories had all been previously published in magazines and annuals, hence the name....

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Fiction, Short stories

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The Poor Little Rich Girl is a children’s fantasy about a little girl named Gwendolyn who is lonely and longs for a friend. But she is isolated by rich parents who ignore her and left to the care of servants who are indifferent. Her nanny’s carelessness with some medicine plunges Gwendolyn into a bewildering world in which metaphors literally come to life. (Summary by Susan Umpleby)...

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Children

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Science fiction

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In a small town far out West, 11 year old Pollyanna loses her mother then her dad to disease. This book describes how the orphan is sent to be raised by her aunt who loves far away in the East of the country. Unfortunately her aunt does not want her but accepts her very reluctantly only out of 'duty' and sticks her into a tiny hot attic room so she will be 'out of the way'. What Aunt Polly does not know is that Pollyanna is bringing the game of being 'glad' that her father taught her and that her irrepressible happy attitude will transform not only that dull and miserable house, but an entire village before she is through. (Summary by Phil Chenevert)...

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Children

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The story of Richard Mahony, a doctor trained in Edinburgh who comes to Ballarat in the gold rush of the 1850s. At first he runs a shop but later he marries and returns to medical practice. His story is interwoven with that of his wife's brothers and sister. Even after his medical practice becomes successful he is still unhappy living in the colony and decides to return home to Britain. Richard is a restless irritable man whose character is said to be based on the author's own father. This book is the first of the trilogy 'The Fortunes of Richard Mahony', but stands well on its own. The other two books of the trilogy are still protected by copyright in the USA, but may be found on Project Gutenberg Australia. (Summary by tabithat)...

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Historical Fiction

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Dal Timgar had always wanted to be a doctor. As a Garvian and the first non-human to study medicine on Hospital Earth, he must face enormous adversity from classmates, professors, and some of the highest ranking physicians on all of Earth. Will his efforts be enough to earn him the Silver Star of a Star Surgeon? (Summary by Scott D. Farquhar)...

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Science fiction

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Captain Blood is an adventure novel by Rafael Sabatini, originally published in 1922. It concerns the sharp-witted Dr. Peter Blood, an Irish physician, who is convicted of treason in the aftermath of the Monmouth rebellion in 1685, and enslaved on the Caribbean island of Barbados. He escapes and becomes a pirate. [wikipedia] Captain Blood was the basis for the Academy Award-nominated swashbuckling film that rocketed Errol Flynn and Olivia de Haviland to stardom in Hollywood. The fast-paced historical fiction of Rafael Sabatini is often compared with that of Robert Louis Stevenson and Alexandre Dumas. [DSayers]...

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Adventure

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When the blue plague appeared on the planet of Dara, fear struck nearby worlds. The fear led to a hate that threatened the lives of millions and endangered the Galactic peace. But the Med Service ship Aesculapius 20 with Calhoun and Murgatroyd the Tormal aboard are on the job and have stumbled into the horrible mess caused by unreasoning hatred, quarantine, mass starvation and worse. Calhoun must use all his medical knowledge and significant skills to even understand the situation here in neglected Sector 12. Can he and Murgatroyd untangle this Gordian's knot and live to tell the tale? Maybe and maybe not. Listen and find out. (Summary by Phil Chenevert )...

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Science fiction

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Calhoun is an Interstellar Medical Serviceman, and he's needed on Dara. Trouble is: Dara is forbidden. Taboo. And breaking quarantine will make Calhoun a presumed plague-carrier and subject to being shot on sight by anyone from Weald. But hey! If he did the smart thing, we wouldn't have a story! But why are men from Dara shooting at him? (Summary by Mark F. Smith)...

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Science fiction

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The book examines the role of education in the lives of the characters and how such education and study has affected the characters. Rosamond Vincy's finishing school education is a foil to Dorothea Brooke's religiously-motivated quest for knowledge. Rosamond initially admires Lydgate for his exotic education, and his intellect. A similar dynamic is present in Dorothea and Casaubon's relationship, with Dorothea revering her new husband's intellect and eloquence. In both cases, however, the young wives' expectations of their husbands intellects are not reflected in reality. Despite extreme erudition, Mr. Casaubon is afraid to publish because he believes that he must write a work that is utterly above criticism. In contrast, Lydgate at times arrogantly flaunts his knowledge, making enemies with his fellow physicians. He regards the residents of Middlemarch with a certain amount of contempt stemming from his belief that the townspeople are backwards and uninteresting. However, his education has not included tact and politicking, skills necessary in a small town but are seen by Lydgate as below him, the brilliant doctor. (Summary - http...

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Literature