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Life in the Grey Nunnery was first published in Boston, in 1857 by Edward P. Hood, who was credited as the book's editor. It is likely that this account is by Sarah J. Richardson as told to Edward Hood, though it may in fact be completely fictional. It is clearly an anti-Catholic book, an example of the genre of fiction referred to as the convent horror story. As this summary shows, it is not known if this book is fictional or a true account.(Summary by project Gutenberg and Elaine Webb)...

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Fiction

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Tales of the Jazz Age (1922) is a collection of eleven short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Divided into three separate parts, according to subject matter, it includes one of his better-known short stories, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Several of the stories had also been published earlier, independently, in either The Metropolitan, Saturday Evening Post, Smart Set, Collier's, Chicago Tribune, or Vanity Fair....

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Fiction

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Gertrude began life as an abused child in the care of Nan Grant, a cold and cruel woman. The only human character who was kind to her was the lamplighter, Truman Flint. When Nan, in one of her tantrums, threw Gertrude away from her house, he took her into his care. A few unforgettable people taught Gertrude everything that a young lady has to know. Almost everybody loves and admires Gertrude. But the one she loved best is Willie Sullivan. Will this love stay strong even after 6 years of separation? And will Gertrude, so admired and loved as she is, be happy - once in her life - for herself and not for others? (Summary by Stav Nisser)...

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Fiction

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'The Well-Beloved' tells the story of Jocelyn Pierston and his love for three generations of women - the grandmother, her daughter and grand-daughter over a period of forty years. Pierston is seeking for perfection in his choice of lover and in doing so lets opportunities for happiness pass him by. However, at the end of his life, he finds some kind of contentment in compromise. (Summary by Simon Evers)...

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Fiction

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This is a story of an adventure involving a young man, his dog, and two friends. Together they wander through the Western prairies on a mission to make peace between the pale-faces and the Red men. They face many perils and become heroes many times over. This wonderful story takes the characters (and the reader) on an action-packed journey through the Western prairies during the times when relations between the white man and the Natives were not always peaceful. (Summary by Allyson Hester)...

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Fiction

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Sixth in the Chautauqua Girls series. It picks up the characters of Dr. Stuart Everett and Joy Saunders introduced in Ester Ried Yet Speaking and follows them and other Christians in their work for the Master. Half-hearted and fully committed workers: all have an impact on those around them, for good or for ill. (Summary by Tricia G)...

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Fiction

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The title of the novella is almost an adequate summary in itself. The boy-meets-girl-then-loses-her story is universal but not, I think, banal - despite a surprise ending which notoriously turns out to be very little of a surprise. First Love is given its originality and poignancy by Turgenev's mastery of the piercing turning-point (akin to Joyce's epiphanies) that transforms the character's whole being, making a tragic outcome inevitable. Even the nature symbolism is rescued from triteness by lovely poetic similes - e.g. but at that point my attention was arrested by the appearance of a speckled woodpecker who busily climbed up the slender stem of a birch-tree and peeped out uneasily from behind it, first to the right, then to the left, like a musician behind the bass-viol. (Summary by Martin Geeson)...

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Fiction

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One of the first books to be published by Leonard & Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Press, Prelude is among Katherine Mansfield's most accomplished stories, inspired by her childhood in New Zealand. (Introduction by iremonger)...

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Fiction

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Bartley Alexander is a construction engineer and world-renowned builder of bridges going through what's known today (but not in 1912) as a mid-life crisis. Although married to his wife Winifred, Bartley resumes his acquaintance with a former lover, Hilda Burgoyne, in London. The affair proves to gnaw at Bartley's sense of propriety and honor....

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Fiction

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Nella Larsen, a novelist of the Harlem Renaissance, wrote two brilliant novels that interrogated issues of gender and race. In Passing, her second novel published in 1929, she examines the troubled friendship between two mixed-race women who can pass as white. One, Irene Redfield, marries a black man and lives in Harlem, while the other, Clare Kendry, marries a bigoted white man. Clare re-enters Irene's life after an absence of many years, and stirs up painful questions about identity. (Introduction by Elizabeth Klett)...

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Fiction

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The flying blast struck London just where it scales the northern heights, terrace above terrace, as precipitous as Edinburgh. It was round about this place that some poet, probably drunk, looked up astonished at all those streets gone skywards, and (thinking vaguely of glaciers and roped mountaineers) gave it the name of Swiss Cottage, which it has never been able to shake off. At some stage of those heights a terrace of tall gray houses, mostly empty and almost as desolate as the Grampians, curved round at the western end, so that the last building, a boarding establishment called Beacon House, offered abruptly to the sunset its high, narrow and towering termination, like the prow of some deserted ship. (Summary by Gilbert Keith Chesterton)...

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Fiction

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Anthony Trollope sets the scene for his wonderful Chronicles of Barsetshire with this short novel about Septimus Harding's challenged ecclesiastical seat as the warden of Hiram's Hospital. To make things more interesting, the man doing the challenging - John Bold - also happens to be courting Mr. Harding's daughter, Eleanor. (Summary by JessicaLouise)...

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Fiction

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Rain charts the moral disintegration of a missionary attempting to convert a Pacific island prostitute named Sadie Thompson. (Introduction by an excerpt from Wikipedia)...

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Fiction

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Based on the author's own life, this book tells the story of little sister. The youngest of eleven, she is unwanted in the beginning. The brother who loved her most, and whom she loved most in the world, is Laddie. She is almost lonely, and it's hard for her to study, so her comfort is nature. In an unforgettable way, which is funny and sad, little sister tells us her story. (Summary by Stav Nisser)...

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Fiction

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The story deals with the literary world that Gissing himself had experienced. Its title refers to the London street, Grub Street, which in the 18th century became synomynous with hack literature; as an institution, Grub Street itself no longer existed in Gissing's time. Its two central characters are a sharply contrasted pair of writers: Edwin Reardon, a novelist of some talent but limited commercial prospects, and a shy, cerebral man; and Jasper Milvain, a young journalist, hard-working and capable of generosity, but cynical and unscrupulous about writing and its purpose in the modern (i.e. late Victorian) world. Summary from Wikipedia....

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Fiction

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Patty, Conny, and Priscilla are the best of friends, and roommates at boarding school. While the teachers might say they are mischievous, even troublemakers, Patty and her friends act only in accordance with their convictions. From forming a labor union to furnishing a house for the neighbors, Patty's ideas are unconventional, yet loads of fun. Just Patty is the prequel to When Patty Went to College, the first novel by the author of Daddy-Long-Legs and Dear Enemy.(Summary by Lorelle Anderson)...

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Fiction

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A Victorian novel devoted to beloved character first introduced to readers in MacDonald's David Elginbrod. (Summary by Kenneth R. Morefield)

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Fiction

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Diana Starling is the beautiful and quiet daughter of a cold and mentally abusive mother. She falls in love with Evan Nolton, but her mother wishes her to marry someone else. Yet, despite her mother's strong objections, she chooses her own husband. However, she can be truly happy only if she forgets her first love. Will she find the strength do do that? (Introduction by Stav Nisser)...

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Fiction

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Miss Mayor tells this story with singular skill, more by contrast than by drama, bringing her chief character into relief against her world, as it passes in swift procession. Her tale is in a form becoming common among our best writers; it is compressed into a space about a third as long as the ordinary novel, yet form and manner are so closely suited that all is told and nothing seems slightly done, or worked with too rapid a hand. (Summary from the Preface by John Masefield)...

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Fiction

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Aunt Jane is a good and loving woman, important to everyone except herself, always willing to give good advice. Her hero, Horace, is far different: in the beginning of the story, he is a good but a little unthoughtful youth. But at the end, his unthoughtfulness is replaced by his love to god. Beside aunt Jane and her hero, there is quite a large cast of other unforgettable characters who show us a lot of important things. (Summary by Stav Nisser.)...

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Fiction