Fiction Books

In The Open Door a sense of suspense intensifies as the horrifying environment unfolds and events heighten the imagination of the reader. An excerpt reads, "It was close to us, the vacant door-way in it going out straight into the blackness outside. The light showed the bit of wall, the ivy...

Janet Summerhayes did not start in life with the feelings usually attributed to the young governess when beginning what is certainly a very thankless trade, with about as little prospect of continued prosperity as any in the world. Many representations of that sad and resigned young heroine have...

Two ladies were seated in a great dim room, partially illuminated by fits and starts with gleams of firelight. The large windows showed a pale dark sky, in which twilight was giving place to night, and across which the brown branches of the trees, rough with the buds of March, tossed wildly in a...

A dated melodrama built around one of Rider Haggards' feisty heroines and exploring themes of illegitimacy and injustice. The pace of the book is quite slow and much of the dialogue is clumsy. The books lack the pace and vibrance of the best of his adventure writing but the characters are...

In the beautiful and wild country near Sorrento, in the Kingdom of Naples, at the time it was governed by monarchs of the house of Anjou, there lived a territorial noble, whose wealth and power overbalanced that of the neighboring nobles. His castle, itself a stronghold, was built on a rocky...

The Bagpipers is a novel by George Sand, first published in 1853. It forms part of her series of pastoral novels which evoke the peasant world of the author's home region of Berry. The series also includes The Devil's Pool, Little Fadette, and François the Waif, which are also available from...

Margaret Oliphant's Neighbours on the Green was first published in 1889. A woman tells delightful accounts of her neighbours and friends from the village of Dinglefield Green. A book of excellent character studies of people in the Victorian era, much of which is still relatable today. Margaret...

CARAVAN TO PATALIPUTRA is the sequel to my novel NAUCA - DAUGHTER OF THE STEPPES and continues the adventures and travels of Nauca, a young Sarmatian woman who was born in the year 80 B.C. in the plains and forests of the Caucasus, north of the Black Sea. After joining a caravan in the Greek...

Miss Wyndham, and her cousin, Lady Selina Grey, the only unmarried daughter left on the earl's hands, were together. Lady Selina was not in her premiSre jeunesse, and, in manner, face, and disposition, was something like her father: she was not, therefore, very charming; but his faults were...

Emile Zola's His Masterpiece is the author's most autobiographical novel, based in part on his boyhood friendship with the painter Paul Cezanne. The painter of His Masterpiece, Claude Lantier, has much in common with Cezanne, as well as Manet -- the controversial painter of this period whose...