The famous Orient Express, thundering along on its three days' journey across Europe, came to a sudden stop in the night. Snowdrifts blocked the line at a desolate spot somewhere in the Balkans. Everything was deathly quiet. "Decidedly I suffer from the nerves," murmured Hercule Poirot, and fell asleep again. He awoke to find himself very much wanted. For in the night murder had been committed. Mr. Ratchett, an American millionaire, was found lying...

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on the 16th October 1854 in Dublin Ireland. The son of Dublin intellectuals Oscar proved himself an outstanding classicist at Dublin, then at Oxford. With his education complete Wilde moved to London and its fashionable cultural and social circles. With his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the most well-known personalities of his day. His only novel, The Picture...

Gabriel Oak is a shepherd struggling to get ahead when Bathsheba Everdene moves next door. Although he loves her, she sees him as a friend and rejects him for two other suitors. After she leaves town, she and Gabriel are reunited years later, once everything has changed. In this classic novel, Thomas Hardy depicts the English countryside as idyllic but also hard and unforgiving, much like the Victorian mindsets of the day.

South Boston, a peninsular extension of the Massachusetts mainland, was originally dubbed "Great Neck" by the Puritans who settled Dorchester in 1630. After the year 1804, when the town of South Boston was officially separated from Dorchester, tremendous urban development was begun according to a highly organized grid plan. Anthony Mitchell Sammarco's South Boston chronicles the development of this culturally and economically rich suburb from the

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"Widely recognized as one of literature's most gripping ghost stores, this classic tale of moral degradation conerns the sinister transformation of two innocent children into flagrant liars and hypocrites. The story begins when a governess arrives at an English country estate to look after Miles, aged ten, and Flora, eight. At first, everything appears normal but then events gradually begin to weave a spell of psychological terror. One night a ghost...

Hidden in the depths of eighteenth-century London, a secret apothecary shop caters to an unusual kind of clientèle. Women across the city whisper of a mysterious figure named Nella who sells well-disguised poisons to use against the oppressive men in their lives. But the apothecary's fate is jeopardized when her newest patron, a precocious twelve-year-old, makes a fatal mistake, sparking a string of consequences that echo through the centuries....

One of Agatha Christie's most famous novels, featuring her beloved detective Hercule Poirot--and her most surprising twist.The story that made Agatha Christie famous ends with one of her most dramatic twists. The villagers of King's Abbot are shocked when a wealthy local widow commits suicide and the very next day her fiancé, Roger Ackroyd, is stabbed to death. Dr. James Sheppard, the local physician, discovers the body of his friend and narrates...

Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess, originally published in 1905, unfolds the tale of young Sara Crewe, an English darling born in India. When her father dies in the war, a fortuneless Sara is restricted to the drab confines of the Seminary attic, and the cold-hearted headmistress turns her into a servant. Sara's imagination and charming pluck prevails, though, and she befriends many of the girls at the Seminary. Sara also peaks the interest...