Otbebookpublishing: 2325 books

John Brownlow is a highly respected attorney; and he is the executor for Mrs Thomson's will, which left £50,000 to her daughter Phoebe. But he is also the beneficiary of that will, if Phoebe is not found within 25 years. As the years pass and Phoebe cannot be found, he begins to think of the money...

The beautiful old pre-Elizabethan house and estate of Whiteladies is strictly entailed. The two ladies in their late fifties who live there, Susan and Augustine Austin, are the daughters of the prior possessor. Augustine, who lives and dresses as a penitent nun, believes Whiteladies is cursed. The...

Tales of a Traveller by Washington Irving is a mostly interesting read. The book is a collection of small stories with the author serving only as a means to hear these tales from other characters in the book. The locales and stories vary greatly, ranging from good fun, to morals of living, to more serious tones of dangers and trials. (Goodreads)

Excerpt: "The six chapters of this little book discuss and explain six separate and most important phases of the present war. Every effort has been made to deal with the headings selected as comprehensively and as simply as possible, and it is hoped that, in this convenient form, the handbook...

Excellent article about the evils of what he calls "the official Press," how it suppresses some news, distorts others, or invents a few, as a part of the political agenda of its owners or advertising sponsors, never in favour of the public. He also considers how the free Press, however puny...

The Bad Child's Book of Beasts is an 1896 children's book written by Hilaire Belloc. Illustrated by Basil Temple Blackwood, the superficially naive verses give tongue-in-cheek advice to children. In the book, the animals tend to be sage-like, and the humans dull and self-satisfied. Within the first...

Excerpt: "The Scorpion is as black as soot, He dearly loves to bite; He is a most unpleasant brute To find in bed, at night."

Excerpt: "“You, Tom Jones, let that pot-lid alone.” It was a big brown-faced woman who said that crossly, and a big rough-looking bugler, in the uniform of the 200th Fusiliers, with belts, buttons and facings looking very clean and bright, but the scarlet cloth ragged and stained from the...

"Albert" is a short story by Leo Tolstoy. It was originally published in 1858. The lead character, Albert, is a homeless, yet brilliant, violinist. The kind Delesov wanted to save the young violinist, but after taking him home, discovers that Albert's drinking and temper threaten to destroy his entire family.

A London Life is a novella by Henry James, first published in Scribner's Magazine in 1888. The plot revolves around a crumbling marriage and its impact on many other people, especially Laura Wing, the sister of the soon-to-be-divorced wife. Laura is a classic Jamesian "central consciousness,"...

Excerpt: "The last of the West Bow balls before Lady Charlotte ran away with her dancing-master was on a dirty evening in November. Edinburgh was all day wrapped in haar, and now came rain that made the gutters run like mountain burns and overflow into the closes, to fall in shallow cataracts...

This swashbuckling yarn is the continuation of the story in "Balsamo, the Magician," "The Queen's necklace," and "Ten Years Later." It is the story of the royal family in the last days of the monarchy of France and the struggles of the people on every side, and more than their historical struggle, their personal struggles as well. (Excerpt from Goodreads)

A novel, which tells the story of a reclusive fisherman from the Channel Islands who must free a ship that has run aground in order to win the hand of the woman he loves, a shipowner's daughter. (Goodreads)

The story begins on the day of the Feast of Fools in Paris, France. Quasimodo, a deformed hunchback who is the bell-ringer of Notre-Dame, is introduced by his crowning as the Pope of Fools. Esmeralda, a beautiful Gypsy street dancer with a kind and generous heart, captures the hearts of many men,...