Generally agreed as Maugham's literary masterpiece, "Of Human Bondage" is the semi-autobiographical tale of Philip Carey. First published in 1915, the novel follows the life of Philip, who suffers from the disability of a clubbed foot, from boyhood when he is orphaned and sent to live with his aunt and uncle. Similarly Maugham was sent to live with his aunt and uncle when his mother passed away and also suffered from the disability of a speech impediment....

The Outsider' is a short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft and one of the most popular stories ever published in the successful pulp magazine, 'Weird Tales'. For as long as he can remember, a mysterious man has lived alone in a castle away from other people and the light. He does not know his name or where he's from. Eager for human contact, he finally decides to escape his dark, decaying castle and its endless black forest. But what he finds...

Admirado por la belleza de Dorian Gray, el artista Basil Hallward pinta un retrato al óleo del bello y presuntuoso joven y enlazan una amistad. Situada en la alta sociedad en la época victoriana en Londres, Dorian también conoce a Lord Henry Wotton, amigo de Basil, quien lo introduce en conversaciones filosóficas sobre la belleza y el hedonismo, y lo convence de que sus más valiosas posesiones son su belleza y su juventud. Atormentado por la...

Wilbur Whateley has lived in the run-down town of Dunwich for his entire miserable life. Born to a deformed outcast mother and an unknown father, Wilbur, along with the rest of his strange and dark family, is shunned by the Dunwich residents. When Wilbur attempts to gain access to the Necronomicon in Miskatonic University's library, Dr. Henry Armitage suspects he desires the powerful book of the dark arts for reasons that are not purely academic....

Crome Yellow is the first novel by British author Aldous Huxley, published in 1921. In the book, Huxley satirises the fads and fashions of the time. It is the story of a house party at Crome, a parodic version of Garsington Manor, home of Lady Ottoline Morrell, a house where authors such as Huxley and T. S. Eliot used to gather and write. The book contains a brief pre-figuring of Huxley's later novel, Brave New World. Mr. Scogan, one of the characters,...

The Tomb tells of Jervas Dudley, a self-confessed day-dreamer. While still a child, he discovers the entrance to a mausoleum, belonging to the family Hyde, whose nearby family mansion had burnt down many years previously. The entrance to the mausoleum is padlocked and slightly ajar. Jervas attempts to break the padlock, but is unable. Dispirited, he takes to sleeping beside the tomb. Eventually, inspired by reading Plutarch's Lives, Dudley decides...

Charles Dickens' work The Battle of Life: A Love Story has an English village on the site of a historic battle as the setting. Some characters allude to the war as a metaphor for the struggle for life, hence the title. Charles John Huffam Dickens FRSA is an English writer and social commentator. He produced some of the world's most renowned fictional characters and is often regarded as the best author of the Victorian era. His writings achieved unparalleled...

Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) is best known as the innovator of the English detective novel, whose sensational novels, plays, and short stories were hugely popular in the Victorian Era. Today, readers enjoy Collins' intricate and suspenseful plots, and his penetrating social commentary on the plight of women and domestic issues of the time. Unfortunately Collins suffered from rheumatic gout, for which he took the opiate laudanum, and which eventually...

When it appeared in 1874 "Lady Anna" met with little success, and positively outraged readers, but Trollope staunchly defended the novel. It is a tightly constructed and passionate study of enforced marriage in the world of Radical politics and social inequality. "Lady Anna" records the lifelong attempt of Countess Lovel to justify her claim to her title, and her daughter Anna's legitimacy, after her husband announces that he already has a wife. Anna...

A Manhattan lawyer turns to master detective Fleming Stone to prove his beautiful neighbor innocent of murder in this classic locked-room mystery A respectable young attorney in New York City, Otis Landon has barely settled into his new living quarters when an incident occurs in a neighboring apartment that he cannot, in good conscience, ignore. Robert Pembroke, a vicious, miserly man, has been murdered behind locked doors. The only people who had...