Dickens’s last work, tragically interrupted by his sudden death from a stroke at the age of 58. It was a mystery novel, written to rise to the challenge of showing that he too could write in that new genre after the considerable success of his good friend Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White (1860), generally recognized as being the first mystery thriller in literature — although Dickens himself had innovated in the genre with his creation of the remarkably resourceful and penetrating (…)
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"The Mystery of Edwin Drood" (1869) - the last work of Charles Dickens
5 janvier 2021, par Charles Dickens -
"The World of Null-A" (1945) by A. E. van Vogt
2 janvier 2021, par A. E. van VogtFirst published in monthly installments in the August-October 1945 issues of Astounding Science Fiction, this fast-paced and very ambitious blockbuster novel set in 2580 A.D. was A. E. van Vogt’s fourth major novel in that glorious heyday-decade of science fiction, the golden forties.
Regularly reissued ever since in hardcover, paperback and foreign-language translations, it is certainly the author’s most-republished work, and one that, with Slan, established him definitively in the front (…) -
"An Enigmatic Nature" and other stories by Anton Chekhov
1er janvier 2021, par Anton ChekhovTABLE OF CONTENTS
1. AN ENIGMATIC NATURE (Загадочная натура) (1883) A very pretty young lady in a first-class railway car is baring her soul to a budding author who is all too anxious to proffer his psychological expertise on problems of the heart, but the explanation by the lovely lady of her current romantic drama puts a real damper on his effusions. (830 words)
2. FAT AND THIN (Толстый и тонкий) (1883) Two former classmates and close friends, one now very plump and the other (…) -
"The Expendables" and other late-period stories by A. E. van Vogt
9 décembre 2020, par A. E. van Vogt1. THE EXPENDABLES (1963) A spaceship on an exploration mission encounters crafty and powerful aliens who threaten to take over after they are brought on board – and a ferocious struggle breaks out in parallel among the ship’s leading officers for control of the ship. . (11,400 words)
2. THE REPLICATORS (1965) Steve Matlin is a particularly ornery farmer who comes across a very big alien monster on a back road near his farm, and as he was out on a hunting expedition he shot the thing. So (…) -
"The Pearls of Parlay" and other stories by Jack London
8 décembre 2020, par Jack LondonTABLE OF CONTENTS
1. PLUCK AND PERTINACITY (1899) In the words of the author : “The true story of a man who practically achieved the impossible in his hazardous ice-journey in the dead of the Arctic winter. Happily, success crowned the effort.” (1,450 words).
2. THE SCORN OF WOMEN (1901) Floyd Vanderlip has at last struck it very rich on Bonanza Creek in the Klondike and has sent funds for his young sweetheart down south to come up to Dawson for a wedding. But in the meantime the star (…) -
"The Burning Log" and other stories by Guy de Maupassant
6 décembre 2020, par Guy de MaupassantTABLE OF CONTENTS
1. THE BURNING LOG (1882) The narrator is having tea with a close friend when a log burning in the fireplace rolls onto the carpet. That reminds him of a similar but more dramatic incident when he’d been dining with very close and newly-married friends, a story that the lady insists he tells her and us. (1,850 words)
2. THE BED (1882) The narrator discovers a letter hidden in an old priest’s gown that he had just bought at a public auction. It’s a letter from a sick and (…) -
"The Black Monk" and other outstanding stories by Anton Chekhov
4 décembre 2020, par Anton ChekhovTABLE OF CONTENTS
1. CHORISTERS (Певчие) (1884) The sacristan of a village church has been intensely rehearsing a complex choral with the school’s choir in preparation for the forthcoming visit of a Petersburg dignitary, in spite of the vocal inadequacies of the singers and the hostility of the church deacon. But when the big day arrives, there is a crisis that reconciles the two churchmen. (1,900 words)
2. THE MARSHAL’S WIDOW (У предводительши) (1885) Every year on the estate of Madame (…) -
"Burning Daylight" (1910) - Jack London’s last Klondike novel
22 novembre 2020, par Jack LondonThis big and quite ambitious rags-to-riches-and-back story has a long first part describing the adventures of the central personage Elam Harnish – known by one and all as Burning Daylight because of his habit of routing his comrades out of their blankets with the complaint that daylight was burning – on his way to acquiring a formidable fortune in the Klondike gold rush in northern Canada in the late 1890’s, and then how he continues his economic adventures in the even tougher world of (…)
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German prefixes and suffixes - an overview
15 novembre 2020, par RayThe German language has a large number of prefixes and suffixes whose function is to enable the formation of an open-ended number of new words by adding new nuances, aspects and dimensions to other words.
These powerful tools can be added in front of or behind just about anything to create new, usually particularly precise and expressive terms that are so numerous that only a small sub-section of these terms are ever included in the dictionaries – there just isn’t room for all the possible (…) -
"A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens (1843)
14 novembre 2020, par Charles DickensA Christmas Carol was a huge hit in both England and the United States when it was published shortly before Christmas in 1843.
This famous novella was instrumental in reinvigorating popular enthusiasm for the Christmas season among the general public on both sides of the Atlantic, and it established the name Scrooge, and what it stands for, solidly in the English language.
Its utter charm is as effective today as when the book first appeared.
We have reproduced here the splendid (…)