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Description Gil Blas isn’t the first picaresque novel, but it’s one of the genre’s most famous examples; it’s a novel that at one point in history was on the bookshelf of every good reader, and it has been featured in allusions across literature for centuries after its publication between 1715 and 1735. Gil Blas is the name of a Spanish boy born to a poor stablehand and a chambermaid. He’s educated by his uncle before leaving to attend a university, but on the way his journey is interrupted by

Description Xavier de Maistre lived mostly as a military man, fighting in France and Russia around the turn of the 19th century. In 1790 a duel he participated in led him to be put under arrest in Turin; during his confinement in a tiny chamber, he wrote his most famous work, “A Journey Round My Room.” “Journey” is a short story written as a parody of the grand travelogues popular at the time. He frames his six weeks’ confinement as a long journey across the unknown land of his room, visiting

Description The Power of Darkness is a five-act drama that follows the downfall of the peasants Anísya and Nikíta as they succumb to a series of sordid temptations, from adultery and drunkenness to outright murder. Written in 1886 but suppressed by censors until 1902, the play is a realist portrayal of some of the darkest elements of Russian peasant life. Similar to some other late Tolstoy works, like Resurrection , the play’s psychological exploration of human depravity is accompanied by a

Description In the year 2129, a doglike alien race asks the scientists Arcot, Wade and, Morey to assist them with defending their solar system from an enemy force. Their journey takes them to other solar systems across the galaxy as they build battle spacecraft out of pure matter using only their minds. Invaders from the Infinite is the third and final installment in the Arcot, Morey, and Wade trilogy. It was originally published in April 1932 in Amazing Stories.

Description Lorelei, a young woman living in the early 1920s, decides to keep a diary after receiving a blank journal from a “gentleman friend.” Lorelei has an apartment in New York paid for by a Chicago businessman named Gus Eisman. When he’s in town, Mr. Eisman spends his time “educating” Lorelei by going out to dinner, taking in shows, and then escorting her to her apartment to “talk about the topics of the day until quite late.” When he isn’t in town, Lorelei does much the same with the

Description The McLaughlins are prominent members of a settlement of Scottish immigrants who emigrated to the still-wild prairies of Iowa. As the story begins, their eldest son, Wully, returns to the family farm after serving in the Union Army during the Civil War. But much has changed in his absence: the girl who once returned his love, Chirstie, now appears cold, fearful, and traumatized, and won’t meet his eye. Wully seeks to discover what happened to her during his absence, and what he can

Description The Skylark of Space is said to be the seminal space opera. Dr. Seaton accidentally discovers a source of energy which could be used to travel to other star systems, but when he tries to show others, it fails to work. Most of his colleagues ridicule him, and he quits his career to focus on trying to refine the process. Meanwhile Dr. DuQuesne realizes the truth, and is willing to do anything to have that power. Both scientists refine the process well enough to build a spaceship and

Description In this, his first novel, P. G. Wodehouse offers a glimpse into the insular world of an English public school scandalized by a recent burglary of its prized sports trophies (“pots”) from its cricket pavilion. At first an overzealous master unjustly accuses one of the schoolboys, who happens to be in need of cash to pay a gambling debt owed to his brother. But, thanks to a Scotland Yard inspector brought in especially for the case, the boy is cleared and his promising career among

Description Indiscretions of Archie is a comic novel adapted from a set of short stories serialized in the Strand magazine between March 1920 and February 1921 in the United Kingdom and between May 1920 and February 1921 in Cosmopolitan in the United States. The novel was first published in the United Kingdom on February 14, 1921 by Herbert Jenkins and in the United States on July 15, 1921 by George H. Doran. The eponymous Archie is Archibald Moffam, a gaffe-prone but affable Englishman who has

Description Hercule Poirot has retired to the English village of King’s Abbot, determined to use his little grey cells in the growing of vegetable marrows. But when Roger Ackroyd, a local businessman and former acquaintance of Poirot’s, is murdered, the man’s niece begs Poirot to investigate in order to clear her fiancé. With Hastings having married and moved to Argentina, Poirot enlists the local doctor to be his assistant and scribe, and the two of them sift through clues to try to discern