A Modern Utopia is a novel by H. G. Wells. Because of the complexity and sophistication of its narrative structure A Modern Utopia has been called "not so much a modern as a postmodern utopia." The novel is best known for its notion that a voluntary order of nobility known as the Samurai could effectively rule a "kinetic and not static" world state so as to solve "the problem of combining progress with political stability." To this planet "out beyond...

Old Ebenezer Scrooge is too mean to spend money on coals for the fire in his counting-house, where his clerk Bob Cratchit shivers in the winter cold. Declining an invitation to his nephew Fred's Christmas party, and refusing to give money to charity, he is ready for his usual miserly Christmas in his cold, dingy apartment. But that night, the ghost of his dead partner Jacob Marley appears and tells him to expect a visit from three spirits over the...

"Tolstoy produced many drafts of Anna Karenina. Crafting and recrafting each sentence with careful intent, he was anything but casual in his use of language. His project, translator Marian Schwartz observes, "was to bend language to his will, as an instrument of his aesthetic and moral convictions." In her magnificent new translation, Schwartz embraces Tolstoy's unusual style - she is the first English language translator ever to do so. Previous translations...

Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet (1888) is the first of four of the original Sherlock Holmes novels and introduced the world to the most famous detective duo in literature. From the initial discovery of a corpse in a deserted house in London, to the wild west of the pioneer days of Utah, this is transatlantic crime adventure steeped in mystery, romance and delectable revenge. A Study in Scarlet was initially published in the magazine Beeton's...

American Fairy Tales is the title of a collection of twelve fantasy stories by L. Frank Baum, published in 1901 by the George M. Hill Company, the firm that issued The Wonderful Wizard of Oz the previous year. The twelve stories were published in this order in the first edition. "The Box of Robbers." "The Glass Dog." "The Queen of Quok." "The Girl Who Owned a Bear." "The Enchanted Types." "The Laughing Hippopotamus." "The Magic Bon Bons." "The Capture...

A Voyage to Arcturus is a novel by Scottish writer David Lindsay. It combines fantasy, philosophy, and science fiction in an exploration of the nature of good and evil and their relationship with existence. Critic and philosopher Colin Wilson described it as the "greatest novel of the twentieth century", and it was a central influence on C. S. Lewis' Space Trilogy. J. R. R. Tolkien said he read the book "with avidity". Clive Barker has stated " A...

When I was apprenticed to theatrical carpentering my master was John Haliday, who was Master Machinist - we called men in his post 'Master Carpenter' in those days - of the old Victoria Theatre, Hulme. It wasn't called Hulme, but that name will do. It would only stir up painful memories if I were to give the real name. I daresay some of you - not the Ladies (this with a gallant bow all round) - will remember the case of a Harlequin as was killed in...

2 B R 0 2 B is a science fiction short story by Kurt Vonnegut, originally published in the digest magazine Worlds of If Science Fiction, January 1962, and collected in Vonnegut's Bagombo Snuff Box (1999). The title is pronounced "2 B R naught 2 B", referencing the famous phrase "to be, or not to be" from William Shakespeare's Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. In this story, the title refers to the telephone number one dials to schedule an assisted suicide...

After the Storm was written by the very popular nineteenth-century American author who articulated and disseminated the values, beliefs, and habits of middle-class life in pre-Civil War America. T.S. Arthur (June 6, 1809 — March 6, 1885) was a popular 19th-century American author. He is most famous for his temperance novel Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and What I Saw There (1854), which helped demonize alcohol in the eyes of the American public. He was...

A Martian Odyssey is a science fiction short story by Stanley G. Weinbaum. It was Weinbaum's second published story (in 1933 he had sold a romantic novel, The Lady Dances, to King Features Syndicate under the pseudonym Marge Stanley), and remains his best known. It was followed four months later by a sequel, "Valley of Dreams". These are the only stories by Weinbaum set on Mars. Early in the 21st-century, nearly twenty years after the invention of...