Death in Venice (German: Der Tod in Venedig) is a novella written by the German author Thomas Mann published in 1912. The work presents a great writer who visits Venice and is liberated, uplifted, and then increasingly obsessed by the sight of a stunningly beautiful youth. Tadzio, the boy in the story, is the nickname for the Polish name Tadeusz and is based on a boy Mann had seen during his visit to Venice in 1911. As the story opens, he is strolling...

Paul Kelver, a fictional character, recounts an eventful life loosely based on author Jerome K. Jerome's personal and professional exploits prior to becoming a writer. It's an intriguing look at an unconventional path that led to a promising literary career. In Paul Kelver: A Novel, the narrator explains the critical events that pushed him into his current profession. He details both platonic and romantic relationships that have come and gone. He...

Acclaimed by literary critic Carl Van Doren as "the most important of all immigrant novels," The Rise of David Levinsky takes place amid America's biggest and most diverse Yiddish-speaking community during the early 20th century. David Levinsky, a young Hasidic Jew struggling to master the Talmud, seeks his fortune amid the teeming streets of New York's Lower East Side. All the energy formerly focused on his religious studies now turns in the direction...

Dive into the life of a normal man with a normal family in this humorous novel told in diary entries from one Charles Pooter: husband, father, and someone, who experiences relatable social embarrassments and humiliations. As he chronicles a year in his life, he discusses his twenty-year-old son's foray into the dating scene, the couple's attempts at blending in with higher society, and his general interactions with friends and co-workers. Originally...

"Ruth Hall - A Domestic Tale of the Present Time" is an 1854 novel by American writer Fanny Fern. The story revolves around Ruth Hall-a fictionalized version of the author-and follows her happy marriage, destitute widowhood, and eventual success as a newspaper columnist. Sara Payson Willis (1811–1872), also known as Fanny Fern, was an American novelist, humorist, newspaper columnist, and children's writer during the 1850s and 1870s. Fern's novels...

A dog describes being mistreated by a cruel master but then later being taken in by a kind family.

For the Term of His Natural Life (1874) is a novel by Marcus Clarke. Inspired by a journey taken by the author to the penal colony of Port Arthur, Tasmania, the novel was originally serialized in The Australian Journal between 1870 and 1872. For its depictions of the brutality and inhumanity of Australia's penal colonies, the novel has been recognized as a powerful realist novel and one of the first works of Tasmanian Gothic literature. In the year...

This book is the author's attempt to make sense of World War I. It begins with a lighthearted account of an American visiting England for the first time, but the outbreak of war changes everything. Day by day and month by month, Wells chronicles the unfolding events and public reaction as witnessed by the inhabitants of one house in rural Essex. Each of the characters tries in a different way to keep their bearings in a world suddenly changed beyond...

The sequel to Dreiser's The Financier, which continues the saga of the ups and downs in the life of Frank Cowperwood.

The Fifth Queen Crowned (1908) is a novel by Ford Madox Ford. The third and final installment of Ford's The Fifth Queen Trilogy is set during the reign of Henry VIII, a tumultuous time of political and religious oppression in a land at the mercy of a murderous King. Ford's trilogy recreates Tudor England in a masterful story of court intrigue, romance, and betrayal. Focusing on the tragic figure of Katharine Howard, the fifth wife of the King, Ford...