Very simply: the most famous – and no doubt the greatest – novel in the history of crime fiction, a dramatic murder mystery in the eerie, desolate and dangerous Dartmoor Downs in Devon where Sherlock Holmes and his faithful companion and formidable narrator Doctor Watson investigate at great risks to themselves the menace of a mysterious wild beast that threatens to put an end to one of the most ancient dynasties of the region [1].
(59,000 words)
An e-book is available for downloading (…)
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"The Inconsiderate Waiter" by J. M. Barrie (1893)
19 February, by J. M. BarrieA diner in the restaurant of a gentleman’s club in London is scandalized by the uncommonly inattentive and distracted behavior of his waiter, and although gentlemen mustn’t be seen talking to or in any way taking an interest in members of the lower classes such as waiters, the gentleman in question in the course of reprimanding the waiter does find out rather a lot about his dramatic domestic situation, and even manages willy-nilly to do something about it.
A potent satire of the rigid (…) -
"The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" by Arthur Conan Doyle (1892)
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A splendid set of 12 excellent tales recounted by Sherlock’s faithful friend Dr. Watson with brio and colour, always concentrating on the superb reasoning and deductive skills of the first and most famous scientific detective in literary history, the one and only Sherlock Holmes. An e-book is available for (…) -
"The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde (1891)
5 February, by Oscar WildeA sophisticated, very immoral and very witty account of the rise and fall of the most beautiful (to use the flowery terminology of this classic of decadent aestheticism) young man of his time, Dorian Gray, who sells his soul at the age of twenty to remain as pristinely handsome and youthful as he was then for the rest of his life – at the expense of his morals, of his social reputation, of his psychological and physical well-being and, especially, of the condition of the eponymous portrait (…)
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"A Study in Scarlet" by Arthur Conan Doyle (1887)
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A remarkably credible and vivid account centered on the personalities of his fellow prisoners and of the prison guards while calmly and clearly recounting the terrible punishments handed out to the common prisoners (the intellectuals and nobles like the author were exempted from corporal punishment) as well as the everyday conditions in the (…) -
"Barry Lyndon" by William Thackeray (1844)
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