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Firs5t published in the year 1865, the present book ‘The Secret Service, the Field, the Dungeon, and the Escape’ by famos writer Albert D. Richardson is a collection of his memoirs of his time as a United States Secret Service agent and journalist during the Civil War. Also includes his time as a military prisoner.

First published in the year 1910, the present book ‘The Secret Sharer’ is a short story written by Polish-British author Joseph Conrad. The story takes place on a sailing ship in the Gulf of Siam (now the Gulf of Thailand), at the start of a voyage with cargo for Britain. The narrator is the ship’s young captain, whose name is never given. He is unfamiliar with both his ship and his crew, having joined the ship only a fortnight earlier, and unsure of his ability to exert his authority over the officers and crew who have been together for some time. He makes the point several times that he is the “stranger” on board.

NUMEROUS volumes have been written as commentaries upon the secret systems of philosophy existing in the ancient world, but the ageless truths of life, like many of the earth’s greatest thinkers, have usually been clothed in shabby garments. The present work is an attempt to supply a tome worthy of those seers and sages whose thoughts are the substance of its pages. To bring about this coalescence of Beauty and Truth has proved most costly, but I believe that the result will produce an effect upon the mind of the reader which will more than justify the expenditure.

The Shadow Out of Time is a novella by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft. Written between November 1934 and February 1935, it was first published in the June 1936 issue of Astounding Stories.

The Shadow over Innsmouth is a horror novella with the aid of H. P. Lovecraft, written in November–December 1931]. It types phase of the Cthulhu Mythos, the use of its motif of a malign undersea civilization. It references countless shared factors of the Mythos, consisting of place-names, legendary creatures and invocations.

The Sheltered Life’ stands as one of the most stirring epitaphs to the romantic South in American literature. In the town of Queenborough, Virginia, the Archbalds and the Birdsongs, the two remaining families on Washington Street, hold their ground and attempt to ignore the industrial invasion in the years before the first World War. Told from two perspectives – the wise outlook of elderly General Archbald, a civilized man in an uncivilized world, and the romantic vantage point of Jenny Blair, his impetuous grandchild – the story is a vivid parable of a society in decline.

About The AuthorEleanor Hallowell Abbott (Mrs. Fordyce Coburn) (September 22, 1872 June 4, 1958), born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was a nationally recognized American author. She was a frequent contributor to The Ladies’ Home Journal.

“In this Discussion Kepler gives reasons for accepting Galileo’s observations—although he was not able to verify them from want of a telescope—and entirely supports Galileo’s views and conclusions, adducing his own previous speculations, or pointing out, as in the case of Galileo’s idea of earth-light on the moon, the previous conception of[ix] the same explanation of the phenomenon. He rejects, however, Galileo’s explanation of the copper colour of the moon in eclipses. Kepler ends by expressing unbounded enthusiasm at the discovery of Jupiter’s satellites, and the argument it furnishes in support of the Copernican theory.” -Introduction

Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel-piece and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back his left shirt-cuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined arm-chair with a long sigh of satisfaction.

No,” said Pierre Jouvent, “I do not know Italy. I started to go there twice, but each time I was stopped at the frontier and could not manage to get any further.

This book was planned and promised to the publisher more than three years ago. Exacting duties have compelled the writer from time to time, to defer the completion of his undertaking. The delay has been profitable in that it has afforded opportunity for the study of recent works on kindred topics, which in some respects has modified and in some enlarged the original conception of the subject in hand. A long ocean voyage at last has provided the quiet in which to write out these thoughts.

The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., commonly referred to as The Sketch Book, is a collection of 34 essays and short stories written by the American author Washington Irving. It was published serially throughout 1819 and 1820.

H. G. Wells’s dystopian novel ‘The Sleeper Awakes’ was first published as a book in the year 1899. It narrates the story of a man who wakes up after a very long continuous sleep of hundred and three years. What happens next to him and how the world has changed for him is told interestingly in this novel.

First published in the year 1864, the present historical romance ‘The Small House at Allington’ by Anthony Trollope was his fifth novel in the series named “Chronicles of Barsetshire”. The plot concerns the Dale family, who live in the “Small House”, a dower house intended for the widowed mother of the owner of the estate. The landowner, in this instance, is the bachelor Squire of Allington, Christopher Dale. Dale’s mother having died, he has allocated the Small House, rent free, to his widowed sister-in-law and her daughters Isabella and Lilian.

“On the last of October Don Santiago de los Santos, popularly known as Capitan Tiago, gave a dinner. In spite of the fact that, contrary to his usual custom, he had made the announcement only that afternoon, it was already the sole topic of conversation in Binondo and adjacent districts, and even in the Walled City, for at that time Capitan Tiago was considered one of the most hospitable of men, and it was well known that his house, like his country, shut its doors against nothing except commerce and all new or bold ideas. Like an electric shock the announcement ran through the world of parasites, bores, and hangers-on, whom God in His infinite bounty creates and so kindly multiplies in Manila. Some looked at once for shoe-polish, others for buttons and cravats, but all were especially concerned about how to greet the master of the house in the most familiar tone, in order to create an atmosphere of ancient friendship or, if occasion should arise, to excuse a late arrival.” -an excerpt

Dr. Howard Archie had just come up from a game of pool with the Jewish clothier and two traveling men who happened to be staying overnight in Moonstone. His offices were in the Duke Block, over the drug store. Larry, the doctor’s man, had lit the overhead light in the waiting-room and the double student’s lamp on the desk in the study. The isinglass sides of the hard-coal burner were aglow, and the air in the study was so hot that as he came in the doctor opened the door into his little operating-room, where there was no stove. The waiting room was carpeted and stiffly furnished, something like a country parlor. The study had worn, unpainted floors, but there was a look of winter comfort about it. The doctor’s flat-top desk was large and well made; the papers were in orderly piles, under glass weights. Behind the stove a wide bookcase, with double glass doors, reached from the floor to the ceiling. It was filled with medical books of every thickness and color. On the top shelf stood a long row of thirty or forty volumes, bound all alike in dark mottled board covers, with imitation leather backs.

Shakespeare’s Sonnets is the title of a collection of 154 sonnets by William Shakespeare, which covers themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality. …

A classic romantic novel that marked the turn of the conventional romantic literature and proved to be a landmark for the Romantic Age of English literature. It was first published in the year 1774. ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’ by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe narrates a sad and tragic, yet romantic story of young Wether, who fall in love with a married girl and eventually, kills himself to prevent any complications in her marriage.

American social scientist W. E. B. Du Bois’ classic work ‘The Souls of Black Folk’ is a seminal work in the history of sociology, and a cornerstone of African-American literary history. First published in 1903, it contains several essays on race. Some of these essays were previously published by the Atlantic Monthly magazine. To develop this work, Du Bois drew from his own experiences as an African American in the American society. Outside of its notable relevance in African-American history, ‘The Souls of Black Folk’ also holds an important place in social science as one of the early works in the field of sociology.

The Sound and the Fury is a novel by the American author William Faulkner. It employs several narrative styles, including stream of consciousness. Published in 1929, The Sound and the Fury was Faulkner’s fourth novel, and was not immediately successful.

This work is not presented to the reader as a treatise on astronomy, although the different phenomena pertaining to that splendid science are reviewed with some detail, and the established facts bearing upon the subjects discussed are briefly cited in the very words of the great writers upon whose authority they rest. A considerable experience in chemistry, electricity, and the other allied physical sciences long since convinced the author of this work that some simple and uniform principle must control the production of the physical phenomena of astronomy,—some general law capable of being extended in its application to the widest, as well as applied to the narrowest, limits of that science. Knowing the absolute certainty of a magnetic and electrical connection between the sun and the earth, as evidenced by the reflected energy of sun-spots, auroras, etc., and that no known cause except electricity could account for some, at least, of the cometic phenomena, it seemed that any comprehensive law must at all events include this mode of energy as an effective cause, and that if the law be uniform in its application, it must equally exclude all others which may be either antagonistic or not necessary.

On the eighteenth day of August, 1886, as the sun was setting, I was floating in the Caribbean Sea. You may mark the place on the map as being approximately N. latitude 15°, and W. longitude 62° from Greenwich; or in other words, between one hundred and two hundred miles west of the French island of Martinique. A chest, well corded but partly filled with water, was all that kept my head above the surface. Without food or drink I had been floating thus since shortly after sunrise of the previous morning. At that time the sloop in which I was voyaging, capsized and sunk in a squall, drowning the negro captain and owner, and his son, who constituted the crew. In this little vessel I was bound for a small uninhabited island known as “Key Seven,” which was in plain sight when the disaster occurred. For two days and a night, without sleep or refreshment, I had been struggling to push the floating chest toward this land.

The present fictional novel titled ‘The Spell’ was written by famous novelist William Dana Orcutt. It was first published in the year 1909. This is one of the author’s most celebrated works which was written in the typical old French fashion.

Mrs. Gereth had said she would go with the rest to church, but suddenly it seemed to her that she should not be able to wait even till church-time for relief: breakfast, at Waterbath, was a punctual meal, and she had still nearly an hour on her hands. Knowing the church to be near, she prepared in her room for the little rural walk, and on her way down again, passing through corridors and observing imbecilities of decoration, the æsthetic misery of the big commodious house, she felt a return of the tide of last night’s irritation, a renewal of everything she could secretly suffer from ugliness and stupidity. Why did she consent to such contacts, why did she so rashly expose herself? She had had, heaven knew, her reasons, but the whole experience was to be sharper than she had feared. —from this Book

To the gods themselves is due the discovery, to Apollo and Artemis, patrons of the chase and protectors of the hound. As a guerdon they bestowed it upon Cheiron, by reason of his uprightness, and he took it and was glad, and turned the gift to good account.

Yevsey endeavored to escape observation even in his uncle’s home; but here it was difficult. He had to dine and sup in the company of the whole family, and when he sat at the table, Yakov, the uncle’s youngest son, a lusty, red-faced youngster, tried every trick to tease him or make him laugh. He made faces, stuck out his tongue, kicked Yevsey’s legs under the table, and pinched him. He never succeeded, however, in making the Old Man laugh, though he did succeed in producing quite the opposite result, for often Yevsey would start with pain, his yellow face would turn grey, his eyes open wide, and his spoon tremble in his hand.

First published in 1895, ‘The Stark Munro Letters’ by Arthur Conan Doyle is written in the form of twelve long letters. These letters are written by the protagonist J. Stark Munro to his friend, and gives an account of his attempts to create a medical practice in partnership with the brilliant but unorthodox James Cullingworth.

In so far as these pages reflect the thoughts of a busy stockbroker, distracted by many duties and lacking in literary skill, they have but little merit and the writer entertains no illusions regarding them.

“Thus much, however, it is necessary for the reader to know, that, when I planned the work, I had materials by me, collected at different times of sojourn in Venice during the last seventeen years, which it seemed to me might be arranged with little difficulty, and which I believe to be of value as illustrating the history of Southern Gothic. Requiring, however, some clearer assurance respecting certain points of chronology, I went to Venice finally in the autumn of 1849, not doubting but that the dates of the principal edifices of the ancient city were either ascertained, or ascertainable without extraordinary research.” -Preface

First published in the year 1896, English-born Australian novelist Ethel Sybil Turner’s novel ‘The Story of a Baby’ is the story of a lone baby found to a couple.