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Deep Lake, in Wisconsin, had a curious and sinister charm. By day it was a charming resort for summer visitors, but by night its character took on sinister depth like the swirl of its own waters. The murder of Sampson Tracy was purely the strangest of all murders. He died of a nail driven into his skull, and round his body were found flowers, fruit, a feather duster, and other seemingly meaningless articles. Find the motive and you find the criminal. But several people have motives which may have led them to the deed. Which one did it? Why did the murderer decorate his victim with those gruesome inanities? And how was the crime committed in a sealed room?

A Sportsman's Sketches (also known as A Sportman's Notebook, The Hunting Sketches and Sketches from a Hunter's Album) is an 1852 cycle of short stories by Ivan Turgenev. It was the first major writing that gained him recognition.This work is part of the Russian realist tradition in that the narrator is usually an uncommitted observer of the people he meets. This series of short stories revealed Turgenev's unique talent as a short story writer. Evidently it greatly influenced all Russian short story writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Anton Chekhov, Ivan Bunin, Alexander Kuprin and many others.Other world writers also admired Turgenev's style. Sherwood Anderson was particularly influenced by Turgenev's literature. He considered A Sportsman's Sketches to be a paradigm for his own short stories.More recently, Turgenev has been criticized for his somewhat idealized characterization of muzhiks. Turgenev's muzhiks have been compared to other noble savages in 19th-century fiction (such as American Indians in works by J. F. Cooper). (wikipedia.org)

A.W. Marchmont was a popular British author who wrote several best-selling novels around the turn of the century. Unfortunately, biographical details are scarce. A New York Times obit merely states that upon leaving Oxford he engaged in journalism, which field he left in 1894 to devote his time to fiction. Marchmont's 1897 novel By Right of Sword remained on the Grosset & Dunlap best-seller list for over a decade after its initial publication, and in 1904 was made into a successful Broadway production, which ran several seasons. It was often remarked that Marchmont's novels sold better in the U.S. than in his own country. Marchmont specialized in the genre of "Imperial Intrigue." His tales are filled with romance, action, duels, and narrow escapes. He also wrote several excellent mystery novels which have yet to be rediscovered. A peculiarity of the Edwardian era, and especially for a 'man's man' writer, many of his novels are written from a woman's point of view.

A.W. Marchmont was a popular British author who wrote several best-selling novels around the turn of the century. Unfortunately, biographical details are scarce. A New York Times obit merely states that upon leaving Oxford he engaged in journalism, which field he left in 1894 to devote his time to fiction. Marchmont's 1897 novel By Right of Sword remained on the Grosset & Dunlap best-seller list for over a decade after its initial publication, and in 1904 was made into a successful Broadway production, which ran several seasons. It was often remarked that Marchmont's novels sold better in the U.S. than in his own country. Marchmont specialized in the genre of "Imperial Intrigue." His tales are filled with romance, action, duels, and narrow escapes. He also wrote several excellent mystery novels which have yet to be rediscovered. A peculiarity of the Edwardian era, and especially for a 'man's man' writer, many of his novels are written from a woman's point of view.

Ruth is Elizabeth Gaskell's tale of an orphaned girl who falls into the hands of an unscrupulous man and finds herself in the usual predicament that such girls face. What might, in our time, be a difficulty but barely raise an eyebrow, was, in Victorian times, a serious path to ruin for both the girl and her resultant child. Illegitimacy was not just a mistake, it was a sin, and the attitude of society was particularly cruel toward the woman involved, regardless of age, in this case 16, or circumstance, alone in the world and innocently naive. (Sara)

...It is one of the curiosities of literature, a fact that old Isaac Disraeli might have delighted to linger over, that there have been no collectors of sea-tales; that no man has ever, as in the present instance, dwelt upon the topic with the purpose of gathering some of the best work into a single volume. And yet men have written of the sea since 2500 B.C. when an unknown author set down on papyrus his account of a struggle with a sea-serpent. This account, now in the British Museum, is the first sea-story on record. Our modern sea-stories begin properly with the chronicles of the early navigators-in many of which there is an unconscious art that none of our modern masters of fiction has greatly surpassed. ...

The Collected Ghost Stories of M. R. James is the title of M. R. James' omnibus collection of ghost stories, published in 1931, bringing together all but four of his ghost stories (which had yet to be published).Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936) was a medievalist scholar; Provost of King's College, Cambridge. He wrote many of his ghost stories to be read aloud in the long tradition of spooky Christmas Eve tales. His stories often use rural settings, with a quiet, scholarly protagonist getting caught up in the activities of supernatural forces. The details of horror are almost never explicit, the stories relying on a gentle, bucolic background to emphasize the awfulness of the otherworldly intrusions. (wikipedia.org)

After escaping Richmond Virginia at the end of the Civil War by balloon five men and a dog are carried away to a to a mysterious island where they are helped by an unseen benefactor and strive to uncover the island's secrets.

The radar-complex had picked up the strange object in space just as it neared the earth's surface. It was described as "an object of considerable size." The impact of its landing at Boulder Lake Park, Colorado was felt on every seismograph in the world. Then the first reports began to trickle in: there were "creatures" on board? creatures who soon left their ship and began exploring the area ...Where was the ship from, and what was the quest of the strange visitors?these visitors who were armed with a terrifying paralysis ray that blinded its victims, filling their nostrils with a reptilian odor of the jungle?Only one man in the Boulder Lake Park area could hope to solve the mystery of the "Aliens" who had come to call on earth ...

Jean Webster, original name Alice Jane Chandler Webster, (born July 24, 1876, Fredonia, N.Y., U.S.-died June 11, 1916, New York, N.Y.), American writer who is best remembered for her fiction best-seller Daddy-Long-Legs, which was also successful in stage and motion picture adaptations.Webster adopted the name Jean while attending the Lady Jane Grey School in Binghamton, New York. In 1901 she graduated from Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, where she was a classmate and close friend of the poet Adelaide Crapsey. Webster, who was a grandniece of Mark Twain, showed an early interest in writing. While in college she contributed a weekly column to the Poughkeepsie Sunday Courier and at the same time started writing the stories that were collected in her first book, When Patty Went to College (1903).Webster soon followed with The Wheat Princess (1905) and Jerry, Junior (1907), both inspired by her extended visit to Italy; The Four Pools Mystery (1908), published anonymously; Much Ado About Peter (1909); Just Patty (1911), more stories about her first character, who was perhaps modeled on Crapsey; and Daddy-Long-Legs (1912), her most popular work. Daddy-Long-Legs, first serialized in the Ladies' Home Journal, became a best-seller when published in book form. It was a successful stage play (1914) in Webster's own adaptation, and a popular Mary Pickford silent film (1919). Daddy-Long-Legs was not only a successful piece of fiction but also a stimulus to reform the institutional treatment of orphans. In 1914 Webster published Dear Enemy, a sequel to Daddy-Long-Legs and also a best-seller. (britannica.com)

...Your speculations concerning the influence of the late revolution, on the social habits of the French, are more ingenious than true. While the mass of this nation has obtained less than they had a right to expect by the severe political convulsions they have endured, during the last forty years, they have, notwithstanding, gained something in their rights; and, what is of far more importance, they have gained in a better appreciation of those rights, as well as in the knowledge of the means to turn them to a profitable and practical account. The end will show essential improvements in their condition, or rather the present time shows it already. The change in polite society has been less favourable, although even this is slowly gaining in morals, and in a healthier tone of thought. No error can be greater, than that of believing France has endured so much, without a beneficial return. ...