Literary Criticism
The Lifted Veil
The Lifted Veil is a thought-provoking novella by George Eliot that delves into the realms of the supernatural and the unknown. Set against …
Lord Jim
While it's not often described as such, "Lord Jim" can be viewed as a kind of love story whose real theme is the close bond which …
Their Yesterdays
Their Yesterdays by Harold Bell Wright invites listeners into a reflective journey through the essence of human experience. This novel follo…
The Painted Veil
This Maugham classic is set in England and Hong Kong and in a cholera --ridden Chinese village in the 1920's. A committed, principled, epide…
The Gambler
The Gambler is a short novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky about a young tutor in the employment of a formerly wealthy Russian general. The novella r…
Cousin Pons
Cousin Pons is one of the final works in Balzac's long novel series titled The Human Comedy. It was published in 1847, along with Cousin Bet…
The Wolf-Leader
Part local legend of a dark and dangerous Wolf-Leader, part childhood memories of his home near Villers-Cotterets, in Aisne, Dumas here penn…
The Marrow of Tradition
In The Marrow of Tradition, Charles W. Chesnutt--using the 1898 Wilmington, North Carolina massacre as a backdrop--probes and exposes the ra…
The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories
The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories showcases Mark Twain's profound exploration of human nature and morality through a collection of t…
Death in Venice
Thomas Mann, author of Death in Venice (German: Der Tod in Venedig) was a winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. The main character in th…
The Island of Doctor Moreau
In 1896 HG Wells produced the Island of Doctor Moreau. After a fateful shipwreck, a chance rescue, and offer of safe harbor, Edward Prendick…
A Sportsman's Sketches
A Sportsman's Sketches (Russian: Записки охотника; also known as The Hunting Sketches and Sketches from a Hunter's Album) was an 1852 collec…
Oliver Twist
When orphaned Oliver Twist asks for more food, the workhouse board are horrified and immediately pack him off to work for an undertaker, who…
Deephaven
Sarah Orne Jewett is best known for her clean and clear descriptive powers that at once elevate common-place daily events to something remar…
Max
On a trans-continental train journey into Paris, Max, a young adventurer determined to make his way as an artist, meets Blake, a well-to-do …
Kipps
Arthur Kipps, an orphaned draper’s assistant of humble means, unexpectedly inherits a large sum of money and that is when all his troubles b…
Robert Falconer
Robert Falconer follows the journey of a young man whose life is shaped by the love of music and the struggles of faith. Set against the bac…
Notes from the Underground
Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s short masterpiece about a ranting, slightly mad civil servant. The stylistic inventiveness, and the insights into the a…
The Absentee
Published in 1812, “The Absentee” by Maria Edgeworth examines social injustice in 19th-century Britain. At that time, the management of man…
Martin Eden
Martin Eden (1909) is a novel by American author Jack London, about a struggling young writer. It was first serialized in the Pacific Monthl…