Showing results by author "Frank Bill" in All Categories

In 1914, Princess Mary, then 17 years of age, gave her name to this collection of short stories and essays from the most prominent authors of the time for the purpose of raising funds for the "Work For Women Fund". A few of the outstanding authors represented in this sparkling collection are J.M. Barrie with is essay on A Holiday in Bed; A. Conan Doyle; J.H. Fabre the naturalist with his well know description of The Ant-Lion; H. Ryder Haggard; Rudyard Kipling; Alfred Noyes ("A Spell for a Fairy"); Baroness Orczy (yes, that one); and Kate Douglas Wiggin. - Summary by Phil Chenevert

Although A.E.W. Mason is best known for The Four Feathers, an adventure novel of 1902 set in Egypt and the Sudan (and filmed several times), he was a prolific and popular writer of the period. Running Water, published in 1907, is, like its predecessor, a tale of romantic adventure. Though much of the story takes place in England, the real setting here is in the high Alps, in the range of Mont Blanc near Chamonix and Courmayeur. Here it is that Captain Hilary Chayne arrives, having spent the prior four years of his army service on the shores of the Red Sea, dreaming all the time of his return ...

This well-written novel is a fictional account of a true historical rescue mission. In 1719, at the age of 17, when she was on her way across Europe to marry James Stuart, the Catholic pretender to the British throne, Princess Maria Clementina Sobieska was kidnapped and held prisoner by Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, with the approval of his ally, the Protestant king of England. The king feared that the marriage would produce heirs who might raise a rebellion against the Crown, though Stuart’s own rebellion had failed four years earlier. But Irish soldier of fortune and Stuart's ablest spy, ...

This collection of articles by and about Mark Twain and his family was compiled by Barbara Schmidt, publisher of twainquotes.com. Included in Part Two of this chronological listing (1880-1889) are some of Twain’s short stories, speeches and letters, as they appeared in the New York Times in that decade. The original microfiche articles are available at the New York Times “Time Machine” website: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser/ and here.

This collection of articles by and about Mark Twain and his family was compiled by Barbara Schmidt, publisher of twainquotes.com. Included in the chronological listing are some of Twain’s short stories, speeches and letters, as they appeared in the New York Times from the first (May 1, 1867) up through 1924 (the most recent Public Domain year available). "Part One" of the collection includes articles that appeared from 1867 through 1879. The original microfiche articles are available at the New York Times "Time Machine" website: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser/ - Summary by John ...

Fanny relates the experiences of a 19th century missionary as she and her young husband proselytize throughout Europe in search of converts to the new Mormon faith. Her religious zeal is sorely tested upon receipt of news from America revealing that their religion has adopted the practice of polygamy as the means to exaltation. The couple is summoned to Utah only to find themselves firmly ensconced in Brigham Young's inner circle and called upon to practice plural marriage or risk a fall from family, friends, and faith. - Summary by Spiffycat

Raoul des Sablières, a French parole prisoner in England during the Napoleonic Wars, becomes enmeshed in a complicated tangle where his honour conflicts with his parole, and is sent to prison. Juliana Forrest, for whose sake he broke his parole, does her utmost to save him, and in his adventures and misfortunes, Raoul eventually also finds help from an unlikely source. This is a fun adventure story and romance, written in a style similar to Georgette Heyer.

The Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, is a work of enormous proportions. Setting out with the simple goal of offering "American households a mass of good reading", the editors drew from literature of all times and all kinds what they considered the best pieces of human writing, and compiled an ambitious collection of 45 volumes (with a 46th being an index-guide). Besides the selection and translation of a huge number of poems, letters, short stories and sections of books, the collection offers, before each chapter, a short essay about the author or subject in question...

"Are you wishing sometimes that you had a good book which you don't know, that you might just read and enjoy? The goal of this collection is to introduce you to as many books as possible. Some are well known, some are not." Summary by Stav Nisser.

Harriet Beecher Stowe (June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896), of Cincinnati, was the most famous female American author of her age, and is said to have touched off the American Civil War with her novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), awakening the whole world to the harsh conditions of slavery. She wrote 30 other successful books depicting life in early America, plus collections of well written articles and travellogues, poems, hymns, and speeches on social issues. Harriet's father and all 7 of her brothers were ministers, her 5 sisters teachers and/or social activists, a whole family concerned with ...

A collection of poems written for naughty children and intending to show them better paths.

Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas is Herman Melville's sequel to Typee, and, as such, was also autobiographical. After leaving Nuku Hiva, the main character ships aboard a whaling vessel which makes its way to Tahiti, after which there is a mutiny and the majority of the crew are imprisoned on Tahiti. The book follows the actions of the narrator as he explores Tahiti and remarks on their customs and way of life. Many sources incorrectly assert that Omoo is based on Melville's stay in the Marquesas. The novel is, in fact, exclusively based on his experiences in the Society ...

"Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" is a short story by Herman Melville. The story first appeared, anonymously, in Putnam's Magazine in two parts. The first part appeared in November 1853, with the conclusion published in December 1853. It was reprinted in Melville's The Piazza Tales in 1856 with minor textual alterations. The work is said to have been inspired, in part, by Melville's reading of Emerson, and some have pointed to specific parallels to Emerson's essay, "The Transcendentalist." The story has been adapted twice: once in 1970, starring Paul Scofield, and again in 2001,...

After The Three Muskateers and Twenty Years After the adventurous story of Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D'Artagnan continues! The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later (French: Le Vicomte de Bragelonne ou Dix ans plus tard) is the last of the Musketeer novels. It is usually divided into four volumes and this third volume contains chapters 141-208. (Summary by Diana Majlinger)

These letters were arranged in two volumes by Albert Bigelow Paine, Samuel L. Clemens's literary executor, as a supplement to Mark Twain, A Biography, which Paine wrote. They are, for the most part, every letter written by Clemens known to exist at the time of their publication in 1917. They begin with a fragment of a letter from teenaged Sam Clemens to his sister, Pamela, and conclude with a letter to his attorney two weeks before his death. These letters give us some degree of insight into the evolution of Twain's style of speech and prose over the period of his lifetime; they are a small ...

The contents of these volumes of 'Celebrated Crimes', as well as the motives which led to their inception, are unique. They are a series of stories based upon historical records, from the pen of Alexandre Dumas, pere, when he was not "the elder," nor yet the author of D'Artagnan or Monte Cristo, but was a rising young dramatist and a lion in the literary set and world of fashion. The third volume is devoted to the story of Mary Queen of Scots, another woman who suffered a violent death, and around whose name an endless controversy has waged. Dumas goes carefully into the dubious episodes of ...

The Adventures of Paddy Beaver is another in the long list of children’s books by the conservationist, Thornton W. Burgess. In this book, the industrious and clever Paddy Beaver, a newcomer to the Green Forest, has encounters with Sammy Jay, Jerry Muskrat, Ol’ Man Coyote and other inhabitants of the Green Forest. Along the way, we learn how Paddy builds his dam and his house, and how he stores his food. We also learn little lessons about life, such as the importance of planning before doing, caring for Nature, trusting others, the benefits of working together and how wonderful it is to ...

Eve's Diary is a comic short story by Mark Twain. It was first published in the 1905 Christmas issue of the magazine Harper's Bazaar, and in book format in June 1906 by Harper and Brothers publishing house. It is written in the style of a diary kept by the first woman in the Judeao-Christian creation myth, Eve, and is claimed to be "translated from the original MS." The "plot" of this novel is the first-person account of Eve from her creation up to her burial by, her mate, Adam, including meeting and getting to know Adam, and exploring the world around her, Eden. The story then jumps 40 years ...

Een historisch vrijwel correcte beschrijving van het leven van Elisabeth Musch (kleindochter van Jacob Cats) en haar man Henri de Fleury de Culan (heer van Buat) in de tijd van Jan de Witt tot 1666 in de Nederlanden. (Marcel Coenders)

In between "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892) and Herland (1915), feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) wrote and published this delightful fictional autobiography, Benigna Machiavelli (1914), in her monthly magazine, The Forerunner. The narrator, young Benigna MacAvelly, decides as a child that she intends to emulate her ancestor Niccolò Machiavelli but dedicate her machinations to doing good rather than evil. She starts her ingenious plotting very early in life (for example, as an 11-year-old, she enlists her classmates in an elaborate money-raising scheme to buy a new watch for an ...