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The Mystery of the Sea, a mystery novel by Bram Stoker, was originally published in 1902. Stoker is best known for his 1897 novel Dracula, but The Mystery of the Sea contains many of the same compelling elements. It tells the story of an Englishman living in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, who meets and falls in love with an American heiress. She is involved with the intrigues of the Spanish-American War, and a complex plot involving second sight, kidnapping, and secret codes unfolds over the course of the novel.

Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, often published as 1984, is a dystopian social science fiction novel by English novelist George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, Nineteen Eighty-Four centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of persons and behaviours within society. Orwell, himself a democratic socialist, modelled the authoritarian government in the novel after Stalinist Russia.

The Secret of the Island is a novel by Jules Verne, published in 1874. The original edition, published by Hetzel, contains a number of illustrations by Jules Férat. The novel is a crossover sequel to Verne's famous Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and In Search of the Castaways, though its themes are vastly different from those books. During the American Civil War, five Northern prisoners of war escape during the siege of Richmond, Virginia by hijacking a hot air balloon.

De Profundis is a 50,000-word letter written by Oscar Wilde during his imprisonment in Reading Gaol, to Lord Alfred Douglas, his lover. Wilde wrote the letter between January and March 1897; he was not allowed to send it, but took it with him upon release. In it he repudiates Lord Alfred for what Wilde finally sees as his arrogance and vanity; he had not forgotten Douglas's remark, when he was ill, "When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting."

A suave baron takes a fancy to twelve-year-old Edgar's mother, while the three are holidaying in an Austrian mountain resort. His initial advances rejected, the baron befriends Edgar in order to get closer to the woman he desires. The initially unsuspecting child soon senses something is amiss, but has no idea of the burning secret that is driving the affair, and that will soon change his life for ever.

Book Reviews gives readers an efficient way to quickly go through and digest famous and well-loved titles. Offering easy-to-read and comprehensive synopses of every chapter of bestselling books, each Brainy Book Review highlights the key ideas behind critically acclaimed titles, helping readers swiftly get the most out of a book.

Father Brown (Chesterton's sharp-witted detective priest) and Flambeau (the reformed master-thief and Brown's constant companion) are on a little vacation in Norfolk, invited to visit the mysterious Prince Saradine. It doesn't go well. Sure, Flambeau gets some good fishing in, but there's also a duel with rapiers, a couple murders, a hanging, a case of mistaken identity, an awkward family reunion, and a gang of surly Sicilians.

The Reverend Wilfred Bohun could no longer stand the scandalous behavior of his alcoholic brother Norman, who blasphemed God and humiliated the Reverend Bohun in the eyes of his parishioners. Chesterton states that Wilfred and Norman Bohun belong to an old noble family whose descendants are now mostly "drunkards and dandy degenerates." Rumor has it that there has been "a whisper of insanity" in the Bohun family.

Baron Trump's Marvelous Underground Journey by Ingersoll Lockwood was published in 1893. The novel recounts the adventures of the German boy Wilhelm Heinrich Sebastian von Troomp, who goes by the name "Baron Trump", and his dog Bulger, as they discover fantastic underground civilizations, offend the natives, escape from their involvements, and repeat this pattern until arriving back home at Castle Trump. The novel was part of a trend in American children's literature that responded to the demand for fantastic adventure stories created by Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865).

"The Adventure of the Second Stain", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 13 stories in the cycle collected as The Return of Sherlock Holmes and the only unrecorded case mentioned passively by Watson to be written. Doyle ranked "The Adventure of the Second Stain" eighth in his list of his twelve favourite Holmes stories.

The Adventure of Black Peter is a Sherlock Holmes story by Arthur Conan Doyle. This tale is in the collection The Return of Sherlock Holmes, but was published originally in 1904 in the Strand Magazine and Collier's. Forest Row in the Weald is the scene of a harpoon murder, and a young police inspector, Stanley Hopkins, asks Holmes, whom he admires, for help. Holmes has already determined that it would take a great deal of strength and skill to run a man through with a harpoon and embed it in the wall behind him.

With Her in Ourland: Sequel to Herland is a feminist novel and sociological commentary written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The novel is a follow-up and sequel to Herland (1915), and picks up immediately following the events of Herland, with Terry, Van, and Ellador traveling from Herland to "Ourland" (the contemporary 1915-16 world). The majority of the novel follows Van and Ellador's travels throughout the world, and particularly the United States, with Van curating their explorations through the then-modern world, while Ellador offers her commentary and "prescriptions".

The Lady’s Maid is a story by Katherine Mansfield: Eleven o’clock. A knock at the door... I hope I haven’t disturbed you, madam. You weren’t asleep - were you? But I’ve just given my lady her tea, and there was such a nice cup over, I thought, perhaps.

An engineer, Victor Hatherley, attends Dr Watson's surgery after his thumb is chopped off, and recounts his tale to Watson and Holmes. Hatherley had been hired for 50 guineas to repair a machine he was told compressed Fuller's earth into bricks. Hatherley was told to keep the job confidential, and was transported to the job in a carriage with frosted glass, to keep the location secret. He was shown the press, but on closer inspection discovered a "crust of metallic deposit" on the press, and he suspected it was not being used for compressing earth.

The protagonist Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, king of the Danes, whose great hall, Heorot, is plagued by the monster Grendel. Beowulf kills Grendel with his bare hands, then kills Grendel's mother with a giant's sword that he found in her lair. Later in his life, Beowulf becomes king of the Geats, and finds his realm terrorized by a dragon, some of whose treasure had been stolen from his hoard in a burial mound.

Everything went right for Jayne just as it appeared to be going wrong. Or, at least, that's what she assumed. To begin with she lost her home and her job.

Habits are inevitable. The human brain craves habits so that it does not have to work so hard and is not involved in constant decision making. The brain does not want to have to think about every step you need to back your car out of the driveway and companies do not want to reinvent the hiring process every time they hire someone new. That is why habits form, to make things easier. What distinguishes successful people from unsuccessful people is whether we choose to control habits or we let them control us.

Mr. Polly is an ordinary middle-aged man who is tired of his wife's nagging and his dreary job as the owner of a regional gentleman's outfitters. Faced with the threat of bankruptcy, he concludes that the only way to escape his frustrating existence is by burning his shop to the ground, and killing himself. Unexpected events, however, conspire at the last moment to lead the bewildered Mr. Polly to a bright new future - after he saves a life, fakes his death, and escapes to a life of heroism, hope and ultimate happiness.

Mankind in the Making (1903) is H.G. Wells's sequel to Anticipations (1901). Mankind in the Making analyzes the "process" of "man's making," i.e. "the great complex of circumstances which mould the vague possibilities of the average child into the reality of the citizen of the modern state." Taking an aggressive tone in criticizing many aspects of contemporary institutions, Wells proposed a doctrine he called "New Republicanism," which "tests all things by their effect upon the evolution of man.

Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas is the second book by American writer Herman Melville, first published in London in 1847, and a sequel to his first South Sea narrative Typee, also based on the author's experiences in the South Pacific. After leaving the island of Nuku Hiva, the main character ships aboard a whaling vessel that makes its way to Tahiti, after which there is a mutiny and a third of the crew are imprisoned on Tahiti.