Fiction

"The sea was very calm. There was no ship in sight, and the seagulls were motionless upon its even greyness. The sky was dark with lowering clouds, but there was no wind. The line of the horizon was clear and delicate. The shingly beach, no less deserted, was thick with tangled seaweed, and the innumerable shells crumbed under the feet that trod them. The breakwaters, which sought to prevent the...

The Sorrows of Young Werther (German: Die Leiden des jungen Werthers) is an epistolary and loosely autobiographical novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, first published in 1774; a revised edition of the novel was published in 1787. Werther was an important novel of the Sturm und Drang period in German literature, and influenced the...

Aaron's Rod is a novel by D. H. Lawrence, started in 1917 and published in 1922.  The protagonist of this picaresque novel, Aaron Sisson, is a union official in the coal mines of the English Midlands, trapped in a stale marriage. He is also an amateur, but talented, flautist. At the start of the story he walks out on his wife and two children and decides on impulse...

The Story of the Gadsbys is a story by Rudyard Kipling. It was originally published as no. 2 of the Indian Railway Library in 1888. The Story of the Gadsbys is written in dramatic form, consisting of eight short scenes (listed below). This short pamphlet, of 100 pages, was later collected in book form as the second part of Soldiers Three. "Poor Dear Mamma" "The World Without" "The Tents of...

The Gambler (Russian: Игрок, Igrok) is a short novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky about a young tutor in the employment of a formerly wealthy Russian general. The novella reflects Dostoyevsky's own addiction to roulette, which was in more ways than one the inspiration for the book: Dostoyevsky completed the novella under a strict deadline to pay off gambling...

The House of the Dead (Russian: Записки из Мёртвого дома, Zapiski iz Myortvogo doma) is a semi-autobiographical novelpublished in 1861 in the journal Vremyaby Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky, which portrays the life of convicts in a Siberianprison camp. The novel has also been published under the titles Memoirs from the House of The...

"The Canterville Ghost" is a popular short story by Oscar Wilde, widely adapted for the screen and stage. It was the first of Wilde's stories to be published, appearing in the magazine The Court and Society Review in February 1887. It was later included in a collection of short stories entitled Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories in 1891.  The...

Cashel Byron's Profession is George Bernard Shaw's fourth novel. The novel was written in 1882 and after rejection by several publishers it was published in serialized form in a socialist magazine. The novel was later published as a book in England and the United States. Shaw wrote five novels early in his career and then abandoned them to pursue politics, drama criticism...

Unsocial Socialist was published in 1887, having been written in 1883. The tale begins with a humorous description of student antics at a girl's school then changes focus to a seemingly uncouth laborer who, it soon develops, is really a wealthy gentleman in hiding from his overly affectionate wife. He needs the freedom gained by matrimonial truancy to promote the socialistic cause, to which...

This novel was written in the year 1880, only a few years after I had exported myself from Dublin to London in a condition of extreme rawness and inexperience concerning the specifically English side of the life with which the book pretends to deal. Everybody wrote novels then. It was my second attempt; and it shared the fate of my first. That is to say, nobody would publish it, though I tried...

When being forced to political marriage, she – a lovely, dreamy princess who inherently not to be acquainted with competition over the wall – suddenly disobey The King’s order riskily, deploying troops entrenched in the castle because of wishing to protect her honor. As the heart telling, he – a passionate adventurer count, not being interested of authority – who...

The Kingdom of God Is Within You (Russian: Царство Божие внутри вас [Tsarstvo Bozhiye vnutri vas]) is a non-fiction book written by Leo Tolstoy. A philosophical treatise, the book was first published in Germany in 1894 after being banned in his home country of Russia. It is the culmination of thirty years of Tolstoy's Christian anarchist thinking, and lays out a new...

Just imagine a northern Vietnamese teen-age soldier and an American soldier imprisoned in a jungle cave by an ethnic tribe and forced to eat frogs and rats roasted by an open ire and you are immediately drawn into what can only be described as a very special if not unique story. This gripping and humane tale has been awarded a prize by the Vietnamese Association of Writers...