Cornelius von Baerle lives only to cultivate the elusive black tulip and win a magnificent prize for its creation. But when his powerful godfather is assassinated, the unwitting Cornelius becomes caught up in a deadly political intrigue. Falsely accused of high treason by a bitter rival, Cornelius is condemned to life in prison. His only comfort is Rosa, the jailer's beautiful daughter, who helps him concoct a plan to grow the black tulip in secret. As Robin Buss explains in his informative introduction, Dumas infuses his story with elements from the history of the Dutch Republic (including two brutal murders) and Holland's seventeenth-century "tulipmania" phenomenon.

The Black Tulip

Literature & Fiction

DUMAS, ALEXANDRE

Classics

Aloha Library

The tale of Allan Quatermain's second wife, Stella, is a classic fantasy African adventure, complete with magic and ghosts, plus Haggard's trademark gripping narrative style. Allan's Wife and Other Tales is a collection of Allan Quatermain stories by H. Rider Haggard, first published in London by Spencer Blackett in December 1889. The title story was new, with its first publication intended for the collection, but two unauthorized editions appeared earlier in New York, based on pirated galley proofs. The other three stories first appeared in an anthology and periodicals in 1885, 1887, and 1886

Allan's Wife

HAGGARD, HENRY RIDER

Action & Adventure

Allan Quatermain is the protagonist of H. Rider Haggard's 1885 novel King Solomon's Mines and its sequels. Allan Quatermain was also the title of a book in this sequence. This is the story of Allan Quartermain's last adventure. He, Sir Henry Curtis, and Commander John Good go in search of a lost city of white people in Africa. There is also Umslopagaas, a Zulu ex-chief/warrior, who might be my favorite character. I hope he shows up in another Allan Quartermain novel. (Curtis &amp; Good are also in King Solomon's Mines, and so far, Umslopagaas has been mentioned, but I don't know if he'll actually show up.)

Allan Quatermain

In his classic espionage thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan introduced Richard Hannay, an appealing antihero with the intelligence and daring to thwart a conspiracy involving British secrets and German spies. Greenmantle, the second in Buchan's five-part series of spy novels, reintroduces the intrepid secret agent Hannay. Tasked by the Foreign Office with investigating a rumored uprising in the Muslim world, Hannay and his associates must prevent Germany and its Turkish partners from turning the tide of World War I by launching a jihad against the Allies. Buchan's fast-paced tale of pursuits and escapes takes readers across war-torn Europe and behind enemy lines from Vienna to Constantinople and the Russian front. Written in lean, contemporary prose, this gripping novel offers an action-packed and remarkably topical tale of Middle Eastern politics and intrigue.

Greenmantle

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Buchan, John.

Mystery

The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus is a 1902 children's book, written by L. Frank Baum Contents [hide] 1 Infancy, Youth, Motivation 2 Inventing Toys 3 Reasons for Certain Traditions 4 Reindeer, Gift Exchanges, and Christmas 5 Santa Claus 6 Christmas Trees and Stockings 7 Immortality 8 Deputies

The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus

Children's Books

BAUM, LYMAN FRANK

Holidays & Celebrations

Camilla, subtitled A Picture of Youth, is a novel by Frances Burney, first published in 1796. Camilla deals with the matrimonial concerns of a group of young people: Camilla Tyrold and her sisters, the sweet tempered Lavinia and the deformed, but extremely kind, Eugenia, and their cousin, the beautiful Indiana Lynmere - and in particular, with the love affair between Camilla herself and her eligible suitor, Edgar Mandlebert. They have many hardships, however, caused by misunderstandings and mistakes, in the path of true love. An enormously popular eighteenth-century novel, Camilla is touched at many points by the advancing spirit of romanticism. As in Evelina, Burney weaves into her novel shafts of light and dark, comic episodes and gothic shudders, and creates many social, emotional, and mental dilemmas that illuminate the gap between generations. Contents [hide] 1 Plot Summary 2 Main characters 3 Literary references 4 Footnotes 5 External links Plot Summary[edit] Camilla focuses on the story of the Tyrold family. Augustus ("Mr Tyrold") and Sir Hugh Tyrold are brothers who, after a period of estrangement lasting an unspecified number of years, are reunited after Sir Hugh sends Mr Tyrold a letter expressing his desire to move near his parsonage, requesting him to purchase an estate called Cleves and prepare it for the arrival of Sir Hugh, his niece Indiana Lynmere, and her governess Miss Margland (his other ward, Clermont Lynmere, is to be sent to "the Continent" to be educated). His primary motivation for the move is that after years of being an active bachelor and confirmed bachelor, he suddenly finds himself injured and too physically weak to partake of the active physical and social life he once enjoyed. Forced to find entertainment and solace in more sedentary ways, he finds himself woefully unprepared and further engages Mr Tyrold to engage a tutor. Mr Tyrold complies and hires Dr Orkborne, a man better suited to private academic pursuits than pedagogy. This plan proves to be untenable and Sir Hugh is left scrambling to find a permanent "scholar" to place under Orkborne's tutelage, not wanting to offend the academic by dismissing him so soon after dragging him all the way out to Cleves. In the meantime, Sir Hugh becomes enchanted by his brother's middle daughter..........

Camilla

Burney, Fanny

Catherine: A Story was the first full-length work of fiction produced by William Makepeace Thackeray. It first appeared in serialized installments in Fraser's Magazine between May 1839 and February 1840. Thackeray's original intention in writing it was to criticize the Newgate school of crime fiction, exemplified by Bulwer-Lytton and Harrison Ainsworth, whose works Thackeray felt glorified criminals. Thackeray even criticized Dickens for this failing for his portrayal of the good-hearted streetwalker Nancy and the charming pickpocket, the Artful Dodger, in Oliver Twist. The appearance of the first installments of Ainsworth's novel Jack Sheppard at the beginning of 1839 seems to have been what spurred Thackeray into action. Jack Sheppard portrayed a real life prison breaker and thief from the eighteenth century in flattering terms. In contrast, Thackeray sought out a real life criminal whom he could portray in as unflattering terms as possible. He settled on Catherine Hayes, another eighteenth-century criminal, who was burned at the stake for murdering her husband in 1726. However, as he told his mother, Thackeray developed a "sneaking kindness" for his heroine, and the novel that was supposed to present criminals as totally vile, without any redeeming characteristics, instead made Catherine and her roguish companions seem rather appealing. Thackeray felt the result was a failure,[citation needed] and perhaps as a result did not republish it in his lifetime. It has thus suffered from neglect, despite its good qualities, such as its rollicking sense of fun, its satirical touches, and a heroine who in some ways anticipates the much more famous Becky Sharp of Vanity Fair.

Catherine: A Story

THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE

The Marble Faun: Or, The Romance of Monte Beni, also known by the British title Transformation, was the last of the four major romances by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and was published in 1860. The Marble Faun, written on the eve of the American Civil War, is set in a fantastical Italy. The romance mixes elements of a fable, pastoral, gothic novel, and travel guide.

The Marble Faun

Hawthorne,Nathaniel

Romance

The Lost Stradivarius (1895), by J. Meade Falkner, is a short novel of ghosts and the evil that can be invested in an object, in this case an extremely fine Stradivarius violin. After finding the violin of the title in a hidden compartment in his college rooms, the protagonist, a wealthy young heir, becomes increasingly secretive as well as obsessed by a particular piece of music, which seems to have the power to call up the ghost of its previous owner. Roaming from England to Italy, the story involves family love, lordly depravity, and the tragedy of obsession, all conveyed in a "high" serious tone not uncommon in late Victorian literature. Preceding M.R. James's ghost stories by several years, it has been called the novel James might have written, had he written novels.

The Lost Stradivarius

Falkner, John Meade

Genre Fiction

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, published in 1886, is a collection of humorous essays by Jerome K. Jerome. It was the author’s second published book and it helped establish him as a leading English humorist. While widely considered one of Jerome’s better works, and in spite of using the same style as Three Men in a Boat, it was never as popular as the latter. A second "Idle Thoughts" book, The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow, was published in 1898. The essays had previously appeared in Home Chimes, the same magazine that later serialised Jerome's Three Men in a Boat.

Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Jerome, Jerome Klapka

Humor & Satire

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