The book begins with Charon, ferryman of the Styx startled--and annoyed--by the arrival of a house boat on his mystical river. At first afraid that the boat will put him out of business, he later finds out that...
A djinn, sealed in a jar for three thousand years, has been found by Horace Ventimore, a young and not very flourishing architect. Upon his release the djinn expresses his gratitude by seeking to grant his benefactor's...
The story of the fortunes and misfortunes of the egotistical dandy Peregrine Pickle, and it provides a comic and caustic portrayal of 18th century European society.
Brother Jacob is Eliot's literary homage to Thackeray, a satirical modern fable that draws telling parallels between eating and reading. Revealing Eliot's deep engagement with the question of whether there are...
Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice is a 1919 fantasy book by James Branch Cabell - the eighth among some fifty-two books written by this author - which gained fame (or notoriety, in the view of some) shortly after...
At the beginning of the book, we are told that Ethelberta was raised in humble circumstances but, through her work as a governess, married well at the age of eighteen. Her husband died two weeks after the wedding...
The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont (1906) brings together tales of the multifarious exploits of Robert Barr's elegant and cunning sleuth, Valmont, a brilliantly ironic parody of Sherlock Holmes. Exhibiting the crucial...
Nowhere do Flaubert's explorations of the relation of signs to the objects they signify reach a more thorough study than in this work. Bouvard and Pécuchet systematically confuse signs and symbols with reality,...
On my return to this my native State, as soon as it was noised abroad that I had met with extraordinary adventures, and made a most wonderful voyage, crowds of people pressed eagerly to see me.
The burlesque adventures of Tartarin, a local hero of Tarascon, a small town in southern France, whose invented adventures and reputation as a swashbuckler finally force him to travel to a very prosaic Algiers...
Parnassus on Wheels is Morley's first novel, about a fictional traveling book-selling business. The original owner of the business, Roger Mifflin, sells it to 39-year-old Helen McGill, who is tired of taking...
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