Best of
Fiction

1929

Pather Panchali: Song of the Road


Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay - 1929
    It was followed in 1932 by a sequel Aparajito, which was later also adapted into a film of the same name by Satyajit Ray.

Works of Jules Verne : Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea; A Journey to the Center of the Earth; From the Earth to the Moon; Round the Moon; Around the World in Eighty Days


Jules Verne - 1929
    They have been the subject of films, radio dramatizations and have even been presented on ice Read the originals now and one of the world's greatest ever story tellers will give you hours of pleasure and enjoyment.Stories included are: "Around the World in 80 Days, The Clipper of the Clouds, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, From the Earth to the Moon" and "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea."

The Dunwich Horror and Others


H.P. Lovecraft - 1929
    Lovecraft and His Work · August Derleth · in 10 · In the Vault · ss The Tryout Nov ’25; Weird Tales Apr ’32 19 · Pickman’s Model · ss Weird Tales Oct ’27 33 · The Rats in the Walls · ss Weird Tales Mar ’24 53 · The Outsider · ss Weird Tales Apr ’26 60 · The Colour Out of Space · nv Amazing Sep ’27 89 · The Music of Erich Zann · ss The National Amateur Mar ’22; Weird Tales Nov ’34 98 · The Haunter of the Dark · nv Weird Tales Dec ’36 121 · The Picture in the House · ss The National Amateur Jul ’19; Weird Tales Mar ’37 130 · The Call of Cthulhu [Inspector Legrasse] · nv Weird Tales Feb ’28 160 · The Dunwich Horror · nv Weird Tales Apr ’29 203 · Cool Air · ss Tales of Magic and Mystery Mar ’28; Weird Tales Jul ’27 212 · The Whisperer in Darkness · na Weird Tales Aug ’31 278 · The Terrible Old Man · vi The Tryout Jul ’20; Weird Tales Aug ’26 281 · The Thing on the Door-step · nv Weird Tales Jan ’37 308 · The Shadow Over Innsmouth · na Visionary Press: Everett, PA, 1936; Weird Tales Jan ’42 370 · The Shadow Out of Time · na Astounding Jun ’36

Gods' Man: A Novel in Woodcuts


Lynd Ward - 1929
    Ward (1905–85), in employing the concept of the wordless pictorial narrative, acknowledged his predecessors the European artists Frans Masereel and Otto Nückel. Released the week of the 1929 stock market crash, Gods' Man was the first of six woodcut novels that Ward produced over the next eight years. It presents the artist's struggles in a world characterized by both innocence and corruptions and can be considered a forerunner of the contemporary graphic novel, popularized by artists such as Daniel Clowes. Although best known for his "novels in woodcuts," Ward was also a successful illustrator of children's books. In 1953 he won the Caldecott Medal for The Biggest Bear, which he both wrote and illustrated. His illustrations also appeared in numerous books that received the Newbery Medal. Ward's final work was the acclaimed wordless novel The Silver Pony (1973). Until now, Gods' Man has only been widely available in high-priced original editions. This top-quality, low-cost republication of Ward's masterpiece will be welcomed by collectors of his work as well as by readers new to his achievement.

Tales from Two Pockets


Karel Čapek - 1929
    His unique approaches to the mysteries of justice and truth are full of the ordinary and the extraordinary, humor and humanism.

The Best of O. Henry


O. Henry - 1929
    Henry's talents, including such classics asThe Gift of the Magi and The Furnished Room.

The Good Companions


J.B. Priestley - 1929
    It was his third novel and it is certainly well-written and very readable. It is, too, an enjoyable romp, all about a stranded theatrical group the Dinky Doos rescued by Miss Trant and coverted into the Good Companions, and involving their adventures with such characters as Jess Oakroyd, the middle-aged joiner from Bruddersford, who breaks free from his miserable domestic existence, Susie Dean and Inigo Jollifant. It is the sort of long, colourful novel which was one of Priestley's hallmarks, and it is clear that Priestley enjoyed himself writing it. He regarded the job as not so much a task, more a kind of holiday.One of the ironies of the success of The Good Companions is that when he discussed his idea for the book with his publishers they told him that such a book would not appeal to the current reading public. However, the germ of the story was embedded deep into his mind and heart, and writing the novel became something of an obsession. He had made up his mind to write a novel that he himself could enjoy even if nobody else did...and, in the event, a great many others also loved it! (The novel arrived at a time when the country was in depression, and someone commented that The Good Companions "soared out of the gloom like a fairy tale to lift thousands of minds into a world of literary enchantment."David Hughes in "J.B. Priestley:An Informal Study of His Work", wrote: "The Good Companions is a simple book, plainly constructed and straightforwardly told. Like so much of Priestley's work, its action begins on a note of rebellion, while its impulse is the search for romance without losing sight of reality; indeed, staring into the very heart of reality for the magic. Jess Oakroyd is pitched into loneliness by the drab quarrrelling of his family. Miss Trant, suddenly relieved in early middle age of a burden that might have lasted her lifetime, turns against the trivial monotony of her genteel days in a Cotswold village. Inigo Jollifant, surrounded in the prep school where he teaches by petty rulings, is refused permission to play the piano by the headmaster's wife, gets drunk and escapes into the night. Three separate rebellions against the frustrations of life put three characters on the road for what is probably the longest picaresque novel in English since Pickwick."Priestley started to write The Good Companions in January 1928, and he delivered the manuscript to Heinemann in March 1929.At least two films have been made of The Good Companions, and it has been turned into a play on several occasions.

The Works of Anton Checkov (100+ stories and plays with an active table of contents)


Anton Chekhov - 1929
    6, and In the Ravine.

Brown on Resolution


C.S. Forester - 1929
    Alone on the barren island of Resolution in the South Pacific, he fights against the might of a German battleship. This is the first of C.S.Forester's novels about the sea.

The Complete Father Brown


G.K. Chesterton - 1929
    Chesterton's endearing amateur sleuth has entertained countless generations of readers. For, as his admirers know, Father Brown's cherubic face and unworldly simplicity, his glasses and his huge umbrella, disguise a quite uncanny understanding of the criminal mind at work.This Penguin omnibus edition contains* The Innocence of Father Brown* The Wisdom of Father Brown* The Incredulity of Father Brown* The Secret of Father Brown* The Scandal of Father Brown

Rogue River Feud


Zane Grey - 1929
    the wild make this novel one of his best. There is a deep emotional feeling for nature in the raw, for the great salmon runs, and for the clashes of men fighting for gold.Along the notorious Rogue River, gold seekers, crazed by the discovery of nuggets that made them rich overnight, are at war with one another. The river itself swarms with salmon, bringing along with them another kind of wealth and violent fighting between fishermen and the fish-packing monopoly. Into this scene comes Keven Bell, returning to face life after being handicapped by a disfiguring wound he received in World War I. Keven teams up with a broken-down fisherman and boatbuilder. When they try to buck the salmon-packing monopoly, they encounter violence and trickery; their boat is sunk and they are left to swim for their lives.Keven is tended to by Beryl, the daughter of a gold miner. His convalescence is slow, but the autumn days, fishing and camping, make a woodland dream of romance. But no sooner has an operation straightened out Keven’s injuries than he is framed on a charge of murder in the salmon-packing war. Keven must carry on as best he can, along with what help Beryl and her old father can give, to clear his name and ensure his and Beryl’s safety on the turbulent Rogue.This text refers to an alternate edition.

Wolf Solent


John Cowper Powys - 1929
    Lawrence. Since then it has won the admiration of writers from Henry Miller to Iris Murdoch. Wolf Solent remains wholly unrivaled in its deft and risky balance of mysticism and social comedy, ecstatic contemplation of nature and unblinking observation of human folly and desire.Forsaking London for Ramsgard, a village in Dorsetshire, Wolf Solent discovers a world of pagan splendor and medieval insularity, riddled by ancient scandals and resentments. And there this poetic young man meets two women—the sensuous beauty Gerda and the ethereal gamine Christie—who will become the sharers of his body and soul. Audacious, extravagant, and gloriously strange, Wolf Solent is a twentieth-century masterpiece.

All Quiet on the Western Front


Erich Maria Remarque - 1929
    With the fire and patriotism of youth they sign up. What follows is the moving story of a young ‘unknown soldier’ experiencing the horror and disillusionment of life in the trenches.

A Piece of Steak


Jack London - 1929
    He has earned and spent a lot of money, both on himself and others, but is now so poor that he cannot even loan the money for a piece of steak. He has to fight a young opponent, Sandel, and in his preparation he can only eat bread and gravy. Though King is the more experienced and tactically much better boxer, he loses the fight to the younger man who has better stamina and recuperation. But King just knows that, if he could have eaten a steak before the fight, he could have won...

Out of the Storm


Marcia MacDonald - 1929
    Adrift on an angry ocean, lovely young Gail must struggle to save her life…and the life of a man she doesn't know.

Daughter of Earth


Agnes Smedley - 1929
    Revered writer and activist Agnes Smedley worked to advance the cause of human justice on three continents as a writer and political activist. Here, she relives in fictionalized form her first thirty-three years—growing up on the wrong side of the tracks; discovering double standards of class, race, and sex among East Coast intellectuals; facing false espionage charges; and maintaining her independence through two tormented marriages.

The Prodigal Girl


Grace Livingston Hill - 1929
    So when Betty's father insists on moving the family to a farm in Vermont, she turns to dashing Dudley Weston—and his promises of excitement and marriage—as the answer to her problems. Then, through a terrifying chain of events, Betty finds herself abandoned in a snowstorm! Now her only hope for survival is a stranger . . . but can she trust him? Grace Livingston Hill is the beloved author of more than 100 books. Read and enjoyed by millions, her wholesome stories contain adventure, romance, and the heartwarming triumphs of people faced with the problems of life and love.

Big Blonde and Other Stories


Dorothy Parker - 1929
    Somerset Maugham on Parker: 'Dorothy Parker has a wonderfully delicate ear for human speech .... Her style is easy without being slipshod and cultivated without affectation. It is a perfect instrument for the display of her many-sided humour, her irony, her sarcasm, her tenderness, her pathos.'

The Poet and the Lunatics


G.K. Chesterton - 1929
    His madness is the madness of insight and he uses this gift to solve or prevent crimes committed by madmen. Chesterton ably illustrates his own premise that lunacy and sanity may just be a point of view!

The Middle Parts of Fortune


Frederic Manning - 1929
    It is a peculiarly human activity.Originally published in 1929 anonymously under the pen name Private 19022, The Middle Parts of Fortune follows ordinary soldiers as they fight to survive in the trenches of a raging war. It was revised and published again in wider circulation in 1930. The book details the brutalities of the soldier's experiences and their internal struggles, as well as the raw complexities of human interaction when comradeship and conflict collide. Most of the book's events are filtered through the main character Bourne, who is enigmatic and detached and considered to be a self-portrait of the author.Frederic Manning was an Australian poet and novelist who died in 1935. He had fought in the Battle of the Somme in 1916 during the first World War, and his war experiences allowed him to infuse his characters and their perspectives with authenticity and fragility. While the subject matter may be bleak and grim, Manning's writing is fluid and striking in its description. Beloved by T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Ernest Hemingway, who called it a noble novel, The Middle Parts of Fortune is regarded as a classic war novel.

I Burn Paris


Bruno Jasieński - 1929
    It tells the story of a disgruntled factory worker who, finding himself on the streets, takes the opportunity to poison Paris's water supply with a deadly virus. With the deaths piling up, we encounter Chinese communists, rabbis, disillusioned scientists, American millionaires and a host of others as the city sections off into ethnic enclaves and everyone plots their route of escape. At the heart of the cosmopolitan city is a deep-rooted xenophobia and hatred — the one thread that binds all these groups together. As Paris lies in ruin, Jasienski issues a rallying cry to the downtrodden of the world while mixing "The Internationale" with a broadcast of popular music.With its montage strategies reminiscent of early avant-garde cinema and fist-to-the-gut metaphors, I Burn Paris has lost none of its vitality and vigor. Ruthlessly dissecting various utopian fantasies, Jasienski is out to disorient, and he has a seemingly limitless ability to transform the Parisian landscape into the product of disease-addled minds. An exquisite example of literary Futurism and Catastrophism, the novel presents a filthy, degenerated world where factories and machines have replaced the human, but rather than cliché and simplistic propaganda, these features are given an immediacy that depicts the modern metropolis as only superficially cosmopolitan, as hostile and animalistic to its core.

Plays by George Bernard Shaw


George Bernard Shaw - 1929
    Most of Shaw's early plays were either banned by the censor or refused production. With Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant he sought a reading audience. He also began the practice of writing the challenging, mocking, eloquent prefaces to his plays, which were sometimes longer than the play itself. This volume contains the Unpleasant: Widowers' Houses; The Philanderer; and Mrs. Warren's Profession.

Emil and the Detectives


Erich Kästner - 1929
    . .A classic and influential story, Emil and the Detectives remains an enthralling read.

Jeeves & the Song of Songs


P.G. Wodehouse - 1929
    Originally published in the Strand, in September 1929.

Conan Doyle Stories


Arthur Conan Doyle - 1929
    Includes:The Ring and the CampPirates and Blue WaterTerror and MysteryTwilight and the UnseenAdventure and Medical LifeTales of Long Ago

Dodsworth


Sinclair Lewis - 1929
    When the woman becomes involved with another man, her husband must choose between forgiving his wife or abandoning the relationship, & Europe, forever.

The Small Dark Man


Maurice Walsh - 1929
    Here he encounters Frances Mary, and comes into violent conflict with the arrogant Vivian Stark.

The Crab Cannery Ship and Other Novels of Struggle


Takiji Kobayashi - 1929
    The volume presents a new translation of Takiji’s fiercely anticapitalist Kani kōsen—a classic that became a runaway bestseller in Japan in 2008, nearly eight decades after its 1929 publication. It also offers the first-ever translations of Yasuko and Life of a Party Member, two outstanding works that unforgettably explore both the costs and fulfillments of revolutionary activism for men and women. The book features a comprehensive introduction by Komori Yōichi, a prominent Takiji scholar and professor of Japanese literature at Tokyo University.

The Bridge in the Jungle


B. Traven - 1929
    Just as a party that has attracted many Indians from neighboring settlements is about to begin, death marches silently in. A small boy has disappeared. As the intimation of tragedy spreads among the people gathered in the jungle clearing, they unite, first to find the lost boy and then to console the grieving mother. The Bridge in the Jungle, regarded by many as B. Traven's finest novel, is a tale of how a simple, desperately poor people come together in the face of death. Traven never allows an iota of sentimentality to enter his story, but the reader finishes the book with renewed faith in the courage and dignity of human beings. "B. Traven is coming to be recognized as one of the narrative masters of the twentieth century."--New York Times Book Review. "Great storytellers often arise like Judaic just men to exemplify and rehearse the truth for their generation. The elusive B. Traven was such a man."--Book World.

Sand


Will James - 1929
    Set in the high plains, the characters are cowboys and horses. And the heart of the story is the hero's long duel with the black stallion and how the little grain of sand within him starts to grow.

The Stray Lamb


Thorne Smith - 1929
    Lamb, an ordinary man who leads an ordinary life, until a chance encounter leads to him experiencing the world through the eyes of various animals. Thorne Smith again shows his mastery of the comic fantasy tale as Lamb lurches from one mishap to another, reeling from his wife's abandonment and the actions of his headstrong daughter and reveling in the new opportunities that his excursions into animal form provide.

The Midnight Bell


Patrick Hamilton - 1929
    Ella, the barmaid at the pub, is secretly in love with Bob.

My First Two Thousand Years: The Autobiography of the Wandering Jew


George Sylvester Viereck - 1929
    The Wandering Jew is a cosmic symbol-he is man, he is woman, he is sex, he is history, he is life itself.

Alexander Botts - Earthworm Tractors


William Hazlett Upson - 1929
    When sent to sell a tractor to an English lord, he reveals himself as a man of culture and innate refinement who realizes that a cutaway and all the etceteras are necessities when dealing with the titled nobility. Although in general he tries to cultivate a polite and ingratiating manner, Botts on a collecting job is a hard-boiled bozo, in a very softhearted way. Whether it means diving into a well for a drowned cat, promoting a beauty contest, or riding into a swamp, Alexander Botts always makes his sale, and even if you're not interested in a tractor, you're sure to be interested in and delighted by Botts. Share this book with someone in uniform.

Moorland Mousie


Golden Gorse - 1929
    Illustrated by Lionel Edwards.

The Works and Days of Svistonov


Konstantin Vaginov - 1929
    He wrote in the wake of the Bolsheviks' emergence after the Revolution. Vaginov, from a privileged family and highly educated, skillfully concealed his contempt for the new order in his prose and poetry through references to antiquity, obscure metaphor, multiple layers of meaning, overlayed sarcasm, myriad subtexts, and a carnival atmosphere in many of his passages. This is Vaginov's second of four novels and perhaps the most accessible in theme and subject matter to an American audience unfamiliar with this author of stellar brilliance. The "works and days" of the main character, Svistonov, are filled with his tasks in assembling a work of literature. His primary chore is "collecting" characters, and there is no shortage of Leningrad philistines, decadents, and eccentrics to serve Svistonov's (and Vaginov's) purpose of skewering his country's new political/social reality. When the bureaucrats who controlled artistic output finally realized Vaginov's "heresy" they set out to arrest him. But he had the last laugh. Vaginov had already died that year of tuberculosis.

Ex-wife


Ursula Parrott - 1929
    The book begins: My husband left me four years ago. Why-I don't precisely understand, and never did. Nor, I suspect, does he. Nowadays, when the catastrophe that it seemed to be and its causes are matters equally inconsequential, I am increasingly disposed to the belief that he brought himself to the point of deserting me because I made such outrageous scenes at first mention of the possibility.

At the Earth's Core/Pellucidar/Tanar of Pellucidar


Edgar Rice Burroughs - 1929
    

Black Storm: A Horse of the Kansas Hills


Thomas C. Hinkle - 1929
    This is suppose to be the true story of his life handling horses and rough coated hounds, only the names have been changed to protect the innocent. Great story. Good portrait of a time and place.

La rosa blanca


B. Traven - 1929
    A clash of two cultures, total exploitation for maximum profit vs. reverence for the land and what flows from it. As in this novel: We all are poor people, delight in the machine, in the airplane, the radio precisely because we have lost our attachment to the soil. This loss leaves us apathetic and distracted. That's why we need gasoline - to anesthetize us, to make us insensible of our loss, of our pain, gasoline that deludes us with speed so that we can flee all the quicker from ourselves and the needs of the heart. A Collector's Edition

Little Jeanne of France


Madeline Brandeis - 1929
    Yet how different was the world of one from the other. Little Margot was born in a beautiful Paris apartment on the Avenue Champs Elysees while Little Jeanne first looked upon a sad, war-stricken, bleak little village far from Paris.The is the story of how Margot and Jeanne grew up, how they met, and how the secret of little Jeanne's birth was revealed. For only one person knew who little Jeanne's parents were and this person was Aunty Sue, for whom Jeanne worked as a children's dress model.

Before the Dawn


Tōson Shimazaki - 1929
    Its author was a man of sophistication and erudition even though he was not given to virtuoso displays of either quality. He created this novel out of his personal and artistic needs, and out of his sense of the need of Japan and the world community to know the story he tells in it. Japan has been richly served by the original. But Toson had a worldwide as well as a Japanese audience in mind when he wrote Before the Dawn. This translation has been done in the hope of contributing to that undertaking.Before the Dawn looks back on the adventure, turmoil, and tragedy of the mid-nineteenth century with a clear and unsentimental vision, but it speaks of those times in tones of tact, humility, and deference. It is a celebration of the humanity of its characters and the richness, complexity, and diversity of the lives they lived during the final years of the Tokugawa shogunate and the first two decades of the Meiji era. For all the weight of its historical concerns, it maintains its lyrical tone even when the subject is external threat, internal political turmoil, the grinding hardship of maintaining the old post system, or the bitter disappointments that the new age brought so many of those who had worked hardest and sacrificed most to bring it into being. It has been followed not only by scholarly studies but also by an immense outpouring of historical fiction, family and local histories, and other publications drawing on the rich store of old diaries and official records preserved throughout the country. These later works often illuminate the period from points of view that were not accessible to any of Toson's characters, but Before the Dawn remains the standard against which all others are measured. --from the Introduction

The Million Pound Deposit


E. Phillips Oppenheim - 1929
    He is generally regarded as the earliest writer of spy fiction as we know it today, and invented the 'Rogue Male' school of adventure thrillers. This one is a thriller set in England and centred around a commercial chemical formula ...

With the Eagles


Paul L. Anderson - 1929
    novel of the Roman Legion

Death of a Hero


Richard Aldington - 1929
    The hero is George Winterbourne. Leaving the Edwardian gloom of his embattled parents behind him, George escapes to Soho, which buzzes, on the eve of war, with talk of politics, pacifism and free love. He paints, he marries, he takes a mistress: the perfect hero of his time, whose destiny -- like all those of that lost generation -- is the bloody nightmare of the trenches.

Dark Star


Lorna Moon - 1929
    They engage with the margins of this world, presenting itinerants, outcasts, and misfits with a distinct lack of sentimentality. Moon's work is also striking in its awareness of the position of women in the community: her stories deal with minutiae, with networks of power which operate in apparently insignificant areas.

Round Up: The Stories of Ring W. Lardner


Ring Lardner - 1929
    Lardner, American humorist and short-story writer, is known for his mordant wit, exemplified in satirical stories and sketches of American life in the early 20th century told in the language of athletes, stockbrokers, secretaries, chorus girls, etc. Contents: The Maysville Minstrel; I Can't Breathe; Haircut; Alibi Ike; Liberty Hall; Zone of Quiet; Mr. Frisbie; Hurry Kane; Champion; Contract; Dinner; Women; A Day with Conrad Green; Old Folks' Christmas; Harmony; The Love Nest; Ex Parte; The Golden Honeymoon; Now and Then; Horseshoes; There are Smiles; Anniversary; Reunion; Travelogue; Who Dealt? My Roomy; Rhythm; Some Like Them Cold; Nora; Man Not Overboard; A Caddy's Diary; Mr. and Mrs. Fix-It; A Frame-Up; Sun Cured; and The Facts. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

Roper's Row


Warwick Deeping - 1929
    This is a story of the struggles of a semi-handicapped young man to become a successful MD and of the two women who are the bedrock in his life.

Farthing Hall


Hugh Walpole - 1929
    The exchange of letters reveals the story.

The Fool Of The Family


Margaret Kennedy - 1929
    He too is a musician and to save money to put on a concert, he works in the evening as a cinema pianist on the Lido in Venice. Within the space of one summer week, two fateful meeting disrupt his calm and ordered life: that with beautiful Fenella and, much less welcome, with his handsome, amoral half-brother Sebastian.

Hans Frost


Hugh Walpole - 1929
    Her train was drawing her into Paddington Station, and how she wished that she were dead...Orphaned teenager Nathalie Frost is on her way to London to stay with her mother's sister, Aunt Ruth, and Ruth's famous husband, the celebrated popular novelist Hans Frost. She arrives on the evening of Hans Frost's 70th birthday celebration, and Aunt Ruth bundles Nathalie off to her bedroom to get her out of the way. Hans himself is something of a side character in the household, for despite their critical acclaim, his books don't bring in that much income, and his wife's wealth provides the luxury he has enjoyed since their marriage.Hans and Nathalie meet that night and are immediately taken with each other, much to Ruth's jealous dismay. The entry of Nathalie into his world is the catalyst which Hans has needed to wake him from his slump; his next move shocks the literary and social world. Nathalie meanwhile is learning about love from a Russian emigre; her life as well is changed beyond recognition by her close relationship with her uncle and the influence they have on each others' lives.