An American classic, an historical novel centred on the infamous Fort Henry massacre in 1757 during the Seven Years War when the English forces in that besieged fort surrendered to their French opponent Montcalm on the condition of safe conduct for their men and civilians – a condition that was immediately ignored by the Iroquois and Huron allies of Montcalm who massacred many hundreds of women and children as they left the fort.
At the beginning of the story the two lovely (…)
Most recent articles
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"The Last of the Mohicans" by James Fennimore Cooper (1826)
15 April 2024, by James Fennimore Cooper -
"The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" by Arthur Conan Doyle (1894)
8 April 2024, by Arthur Conan DoyleThe second collection of Sherlock stories published by Arthur Conan Doyle in book form, including two of the most memorable of them all: The Greek Interpreter, introducing Sherlock’s elder brother Mycroft who has an even greater gift of precise reasoning and deduction than his own, although he’s too phlegmatic to ever go out and do the field investigations necessary to obtain proof for a law court the way Sherlock does, being a member of the extraordinarily antisocial Diogenes club whose (…)
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"The Return of Sherlock Holmes" by Arthur Conan Doyle (1905)
1 April 2024, by Arthur Conan DoyleA collection of 13 Sherlock stories published by Arthur Conan Doyle between September 1903 and December 1904.
Beginning most effectively at the start of The Adventure of the Empty House with Sherlock’s own account of how he had managed to escape death at the hands of the infamous Professor Moriarty – an event that had provoked enormous disappointment in the reading public and a widespread demand for Sherlock’s return – and concluding with one of his most memorable accounts of all, The (…) -
"Walden" by Henry Thoreau – an ecological manifesto (1854)
26 March 2024, by Henry ThoreauThe author recounts how he had quite absented himself from the (mindless, to him) hustle and bustle of life in the thriving New England village of Concord to build a small log cabin deep in the woods nearby the pond (or rather small lake) of the title.
He describes in loving and indeed fascinating detail all the vegetable, animal, mineral, insect, and bird life that he saw around him and his quite extraordinary abode, in which he spent two full years including two particularly icy and (…) -
"A Study in Scarlet" by Arthur Conan Doyle (1887)
25 March 2024, by Arthur Conan DoyleThe very first Sherlock Holmes composition and the author’s first novel [1], where Sherlock and Doctor Watson meet for the first time in “London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained”, get along famously from the start after Holmes asks Doctor Watson “What have you to confess now? It’s just as well for two fellows to know the worst of one another before they begin to live together.”, move into shared lodgings in the (…)
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"The Engagement in St. Domingo" by Heinrich von Kleist (1811)
18 March 2024, by Heinrich von KleistIn the midst of the campaign of racial extermination of the thousands of white-skinned people left on Haiti (then called St. Domingo) after the successful uprising of slaves there in 1804, a young officer desperately seeks shelter and food for his small company of civilians in a wayside house, where he is lured into a very false sense of security by the family of the local killer-in-chief. We follow the ups and downs of the attempts of the officer to survive in the face of (…)
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"The Sign of the Four" by Arthur Conan Doyle (1890)
4 March 2024, by Arthur Conan DoyleAt the beginning of this second Sherlock Holmes novel [1] the eponymous detective is resorting to opium to allay his boredom when a young woman arrives to ask him – and Doctor Watson – to accompany her to a rendezvous that promises to reveal the mysterious fate of her father ten years previously. Off they go to begin to unravel, thanks to the quite extraordinary reasoning powers of the by-now-everyone’s-favorite detective, not only the fate of the poor lady’s husband but also of the fabulous (…)
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"His Last Bow" by Arthur Conan Doyle (1917)
1 March 2024, by Arthur Conan DoyleIntended, as the title indicates, to be the final collection in the series of Sherlock Holmes stories, this quite wonderful book finishes most appropriately by two of the best ones ever: the “The Adventure of the Dying Detective” and “His Last Bow: the War Service of Sherlock Holmes”, the only Sherlock story published during World War I.
Bravo and thank you, Sir Arthur!
We have included in an annex below a few of the many memorable citations from this Sherlock Holmes/Arthur Conan Doyle (…) -
"The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes" by Arthur Conan Doyle (1927)
20 February 2024, by Arthur Conan DoyleThe final collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, and the last published work of the very distinguished doctor, short-story writer, novelist, poet, historian, dramatist and essayist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, introduced by a fascinating farewell overview of his Sherlock Holmes works by the author, including his wistful comment “Had Holmes never existed I could not have done more, though he may perhaps have stood a little in the way of the recognition of my more serious literary work.”. An e-book (…)
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"The Mysterious Cup" by Ludwig Tieck - a classic of German romanticism (1812)
19 February 2024, by Ludwig TieckLudwig Tieck was one of the leading figures in the German romantic movement at the beginning of the 19th century, a movement that brought themes of the mysterious, the magical, the fantastic and the unexplainable into German-language letters at the time.
It was in a way a precursor of the fantasy and science-fiction themes in the literature of our own times!
Here we have a tender love story featuring notably a magnificent young woman, her ardent but too-poor lover and an alchemist who (…)