Yet he always seems to be troubled by disagreeable tradesmen, impertinent young office clerks and wayward friends, not to mention his devil-may-care son Lupin with his unsuitable choice of bride. Try as he might, he cannot avoid life's embarrassing mishaps. In the bumbling, absurd, yet ultimately endearing figure of Pooter, the Grossmiths created an immortal comic character and a superb satire on the snobberies of middle-class suburbia - one which also sends up late Victorian crazes for spiritualism and bicycling, as well as the fashion for publishing diaries by anybody and everybody.

    The book is a series of tales supposed to be told to poor travelling portrait-painter, William Kerby, who is forced to abandon his profession for six months in order to save his sight. Collins provides a narrative framework, which tells us how the painter came to think of publishing the stories, (Kerby’s wife Leah realizes that if she acts as amanuensis William can support them by turning author), how they were collected (from the people who ‘sat’ for him to have their portraits painted) and descriptions of the circumstances under which the tales were told. The tales are stories of adventure, well varied, and often striking in the incidents, or with thrilling situations; and are as pleasant reading as a novel reader could desire. The six stories contained in the book are:The Traveller's Story of A Terribly Strange Bed The Lawyer's Story of A Stolen Letter The French Governess's Story of Sister Rose The Angler's Story of The Lady of Glenwith Grange The Nun's Story of Gabriel's Marriage The Professor's Story of The Yellow MaskThis idea for the book may have been prompted by a period of eye-trouble suffered by Collins's father, William Collins, an English landscape and genre painter. In the preface to After Dark, Collins also acknowledges the painter W. S. Herrick as his source for the facts on which 'A Terribly Strange Bed' and 'The Yellow Mask' are basedWilliam 'Wilkie' Collins (1824-1889) was an English novelist, poet, and playwright writing in the mid 19th century. His writing was very popular consisting of 27 novels, 50 short stories, 15 plays and over 100 poems. His best-known works were The Woman in White, The Moonstone and Armadale.

    This book contains the complete novels and novellas of Leo Tolstoy in the chronological order of their original publication.- Childhood- Boyhood - Youth - Family Happiness- The Cossacks- War and Peace - Anna Karenina- The Death of Ivan Ilyich- The Kreutzer Sonata - Resurrection- The Forged Coupon- Hadji Murad

    I moaned with pleasure. Now for the other boot ...”  Colin Grey’s life was happy and simple, until the day everything changed—the day his wife read that book. Suddenly, he was thrust headfirst into a dark, illicit world of pleasure and pain. This is what happens when a tide of tempestuous, erotic desire invades man’s last place of privacy: his backyard shed.  WARNING: Fifty Sheds of Grey contains fifty graphic shed-based images. Please do not look if you are easily offended. Follow the phenomenon @50ShedsofGrey

    Lucas, Lucia to her intimates, resides in the village of Riseholme, a pretty Elizabethan village in Worcestershire, where she vigorously guards her status as "Queen" despite occasional attempts from her subjects to overthrow her. Lucia’s dear friend Georgie Pillson both worships Lucia and occasionally works to subvert her power.

    Shaw drew not only on Byron's verse satire, but also on Shakespeare, the Victorian comedy fashionable in his early life, and from authors from Conan Doyle to Kipling. In this powerful drama of ideas, Shaw explores the role of the artist, the function of women in society, and his theory of Creative Evolution. As Stanley Weintraub says in his new introduction, this is "the first great twentieth-century English play" and remains a classic exposé of the eternal struggle between the sexes.

    Told in the same fanciful, irreverent style as the Hitchhiker trilogy, with scraps of scripts, letters and comments from Adams, Don't Panic is the perfect companion to one of the most successful series in publishing history.

    This story describes Squire Bramble's tour of the Britain of George III.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    Includes:- The Strength of the Strong- South of the Slot- The Unparalleled Invasion- The Enemy of All the World- The Dream of Debs- The Sea-Farmer- Samuel

    Beneath the once decorous surface of their lives, unsavories like blackmail and adultery are now to be glimpsed. As spooky as it is witty, poignant and wickedly hilarious, Memento Mori may ostensibly concern death, but it is a book which leaves one relishing life all the more.

    The Black Cat; The Fall of the House of Usher, The Raven; The Tell Tale Heart, The Masque of the Red Death, the Premature Burial and six others that are a shuddering delight to read and listen to. Turn off the lights, settle down and hear these stories read to you as only LibriVox readers can perform them. (Summary by Phil Chenevert)THE TELL-TALE HEART.THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMARTHE BLACK CAT.THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHERTHE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH.THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO.THE PREMATURE BURIALBERENICELIGEIAHOP-FROGTHE RAVENTHE PIT AND THE PENDULUM

    The animals seem intelligent enough, and Red recruits Slim to help him train the odd creatures to do circus tricks. But the boys are about to discover their playthings aren’t exactly animals—and they’ve allowed themselves to be caught for a reason . . . Youth is a riveting tale from the author of countless classics, including I, Robot and the Foundation Trilogy, which won the Hugo Award for Best All-Time Series.

    Set in the seventeenth century, it tells the story of a country and a family riven by war, and features one of fiction's most original heroines.Honor Harris is only eighteen when she first meets Richard Grenvile, proud, reckless - and utterly captivating. But following a riding accident, Honor must reconcile herself to a life alone. As Richard rises through the ranks of the army, marries and makes enemies, Honor remains true to himAs the English Civil war is waged across the country, Richard rises through the ranks of the army, marries and makes enemies, and Honor remains true to him, and finally discovers the secret of Menabilly.Decades later, an undaunted Sir Richard, now a general serving King Charles I, finds her. Finally they can share their passion in the ruins of her family's great estate on the storm-tossed Cornish coast-one last time before being torn apart, never to embrace again.

    The first three tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, the famed necromancers from the Malazan Book of the Fallen, collected in one volume.Contents:Blood Follows (2002)The Healthy Dead (2004)The Lees of Laughter's End (2007)