All Reviews by Leah A. Zeldes
Buttered Side Down
by Edna Ferber
"Mameys from Cuba" alone would make this collection worth downloading, but all the stories are engrosing. I love the way Ferber has of making Chicago one of her characters.
The Jungle
by Upton Sinclair
Grisly and gripping, this muckraking account of the life of Chicago stockyard workers led to America's first comprehensive pure food laws -- much to its author's chagrin.
"I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach," he famously said. Meatpacking remains a dangerous and ill-paid job. (And the decade has seen troubling erosion of government food inspections and standards. This novel shows just how bad things can get.)
Chicago's stockyards are long gone, but I doubt this novel will be featured in "One Book, One Chicago" soon.
The Hampdenshire Wonder
by J. D. Beresford
A slow-moving and rather pointless novel about a strange child genius.
The beginning bogs down in a lot of detail about his father's brilliant but aborted career as a cricket player, so much so that at first it seems as if it's going to be a sports story. Then, when we finally get to the child, he leads a thoroughly dull life for all of his peculiarly intimidating intellect, and never does anything very important.
Across the Stream
by E.F. Benson
Very slow-paced story beginning in the very early childhood of Archie Morris, a British lord's son, who gradually becomes aware of occult contact from another world. At first, its influence is slight, but as he reaches adulthood, grows stronger.
It's an interesting plot, but the novel crawls along, reading as if the author, paid by the word, had padded it out to twice its natural length.
The Big Fix
by George Oliver Smith
Clever, Runyonesque short about a Chicago bookie who has to fix a horserace in a world of telepaths.
The Sunday Pigeon Murders
by Craig Rice
Two charming but not very bright characters try to horn in on a scam and get mixed up in murder. Bingo Riggs and Handsome Kuzak are finely drawn and hilarious.
If you're a fan of Damon Runyon, you'll enjoy this. If you're not, you should be.
In the High Valley
by Susan Coolidge
Sappy conclusion to the series. If you loved the preceding volumes, you might like it, but nothing much happens. Clover and Elsie are married and happily settled in Colorado, where their life is wonderful and their troubles few.
The Fabulous Clipjoint
by Fredric Brown
Excellent -- one of the best books I've read lately!
After Wally Hunter, a linotype operator, is found dead in a Chicago alley, his 18-year-old son, Ed, and his brother, Ambrose, a carny, try to find his killer. In the process, Ed learns things about his father he never knew and gets an education about life.
Fast-paced and well thought out, both as a mystery and a bildungsroman, the novel gives a colorful glimpse of the seamy side of 1940s Chicago.
Love Stories
by Mary Roberts Rinehart
Not all conventional romances, the deftly written "Love Stories" in this collection mostly revolve around hospital life -- in a time before insurance companies dictated lack of care. A couple also deal with unwed mothers, most sympathetically for their era, but another dating element.
If you can get past those details, these stories hold up very well.
Arson Plus
by Dashiell Hammett
A straightforward, easy-to-read detective tale with an unexpected ending.
Polly Oliver's Problem
by Kate Douglas Wiggin
The mainstay of her delicate, widowed mother, impoverished young Polly finds her troubles increase almost beyond bearing, but she perseveres with the aid of many kind friends. Eh.
Three Men and a Maid
by Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
Red-headed Miss Wilhelmina Bennett is looking for a perfect knight, but neither Eustace Hignett nor Bream Mortimer fill the bill. Sam Marlowe uses various subterfuges to convince the fussy young lady that he's the hero of her dreams.
Full of typical Wodehouse hijinks, it's a fun, fast read -- not up to the Jeeves series, but certainly worth a once-through.
The Midnight Queen
by May Agnes Fleming
One of Fleming's more lurid novels, which is saying a lot. Recounted in the airiest possible tone, this historical romance featuring a mysterious, masked fortuneteller; a beautiful, tragic bride; a brave if foolhardy young knight; three unlikely doppelgangers; deadly secret midnight revels; strange noblemen; a fearsome dwarf; grisly beheadings; and a peculiar king, all set amid the grim horrors of the Great Plague of London in 1665. Rather more unbelievable than most, it's perhaps best approached as fantasy.
Postmark Ganymede
by Robert Silverberg
Cute, early Silverberg story, dated but fun, about a space pilot making a mail delivery. I do wonder how the reviewer who finds the whole concept ridiculous gets parcels delivered.
The Runaway Skyscraper
by Murray Leinster
"We're in a runaway skyscraper, bound for some time back before the discovery of America!"
While more readable in a stylistic sense than many early SF stories, this 1919 time-travel tale makes suspension of disbelief rather a strain for modern readers.
Miss Minerva and William Green Hill
by F.B.Calhoun
Orphaned little Billy Hill comes to live with his spinster Aunt Minerva. His upbringing till that point had been rather freewheeling, and Miss Minerva's efforts to correct his speech and habit lead to comical results.
The antics of Billy and Jimmy Garner, the little boy next door, slightly suggest a junior Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, though far lighter weight. Offensive characterization and language in reference to blacks, typical of the period, runs throughout.
Lightly amusing, but nothing special.
Daisy's Aunt
by E.F. Benson
After a year abroad, Daisy's beloved Aunt Jeannie has returned home to find her niece on the brink of agreeing to marry. Jeannie knows an unsavory secret about the man, yet dares not reveal it to Daisy. She therefore resolves to stop the romance at all costs. It's a slow, feeble and unsatisfying plot, without much of the wit Benson is known for.
The Ruin of Fleet Street
by E. Harcourt Burrage
I'd hoped this was a history of journalism. Instead it's a not-very-entertaining collection of cautionary tales about assorted drunkards connected with London literary and newspaper life and their bad ends.
French Life
by Elizabeth Gaskell
A colorful, conversational diary of two trips to France, a year apart, which Mrs. Gaskell, clearly a Francophile, took toward the end of her life. Originally a series for Fraser's Magazine, these essays feature all of the delightful observation Gaskell is known for (rather like "Cranford" but without a plot).
She details everything from French dress to meals to customs to architecture, usually with enough comparison to their English equivalents that modern-day Americans can understand the difference.
Gaskell also delves into French history, recounting, for example, her talks with people who describe their childhoods during the Reign of Terror, and her researches into sometimes obscure past events of the places she visits.
Anyone with an interest in France or history should enjoy this travelogue.
Twenty-Five Cent Dinners for Families of Six
by Juliet Corson
An interesting selection of recipes for low-cost dinners, by the superintendent of the New York Cooking School, which reveals huge changes in food pricing, tastes and nutritional ideas since the 19th century. A modern cook attempting these will be slightly handicapped by the author's tendency to call for "5 cents' worth" of this and "10 cents' worth" of that, but the directions are otherwise clear enough for adaptation by experienced cooks, and many would still be economical, so the cookbook is of more than just historical interest.
While recipes for dishes like sheeps' head stew ("Thoroughly clean a sheeps' head, weighing about three pounds, (cost about ten cents)...") and brain and liver pudding may not be to many modern tastes, others are more appealing, such as German potatoes (baked potatoes stuffed with sausage), and many of the desserts.
There are also useful tips, including complete directions for cleaning a chicken and a rabbit.
Bones in London
by Edgar Wallace
Bones, Hamilton and Sanders -- all demobbed -- have left Africa for London, where Bones, heir to a sizeable fortune, increases it through haphazard and romantic adventures, despite efforts to swindle him by a broad range of City malefactors. Told in episodic fashion, like the earlier Mr. Commissioner Sanders stories, they are just as amusing, although the natives aren't guite so colorful.
It isn't strictly necessary to have read the previous Sanders books to enjoy this one, but you'll probably like it more if you have.
Where Angels Fear to Tread
by E.M. Forster
Forster's first novel, a tragic and difficult tale mired in the prejudices and sensibilities of its time and place. Its beautiful language and vivid description help to bridge the gap for modern American readers, but its unlikeable characters often make it rough going.
Lillia, a silly English widow, travels abroad. At first, her trip is a relief to her snobbish in-laws, who think her vulgar and a bad influence on her young daughter. To their horror, however, they soon receive word of her plans to remarry -- to the son of an Italian dentist.
Some descriptions of this book call it a comedy of manners, but I find it sad.
'Lena Rivers
by Mary J. Holmes
This romantic saga, set before the Civil War, follows the ill-omened, orphaned 'Lena. Her parents married secretly; her father abandoned her mother before her fatal birth. She's forced from her loving, though impoverished, childhood home with her grandparents in rural Massachusetts, and must reside in Kentucky as a begrudged poor relation with her weak, henpecked uncle; his haughty, wealthy wife; and their spoiled children.
By mid-novel, the plot becomes very predictable: Of course, 'Lena grows up to be beautiful and accomplished. And, of course, many pitfalls and misunderstandings -- some deliberately fostered by her proud, plotting aunt and other spiteful characters -- lie between 'Lena and true love.
As in many romantic novels of the period, a significant part of the story hinges on the society's opinion of proper behavior for women.
Some minor, but interesting, background covers the life of slaves in Kentucky. The rest left me pretty cold.
The Door Through Space
by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Science-fiction thriller about Race Cargill, a failed Terran agent, as he struggles to settle a longstanding feud and unlock the mystery of a deadly toymaker.
It's kind of a potboiler.
The treatment of women is somewhat disturbing, particularly in a novel as late as the 1960s by a female author.
The Melting of Molly
by Maria Thompson Daviess
An old lover is coming to town and dimwitted Molly, though "a luscious peach" at 160 pounds, thinks she must lose weight before he sees her. She has a number of other stupid ideas, too:
- "It's strange how the thought of taking a beating from a man can make a woman's heart jump."
- "Faithfulness is what a woman flowers, only it takes a man to pick his posy."
- "I felt just as I said I did, which is a slightly unnatural feeling for a woman."
- "I want to be a healthy happy woman and a wife to a man who can inspire himself and manage me."
Bah. Not only is Molly a disgrace to intelligent womankind -- even for her era -- the romance is utterly predictable.
The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective
by Catherine Louisa Pirkis
Miss Brooke, naturally, is far more clever than any male detectives, but her adventures have little spice.
The Adventures of a Boy Reporter
by Harry Steele Morrison
This is one of those stories about a lucky fool.
Leaving his comfortable home and loving mother, country-bred Archie Dunn, 17, runs away to New York City to make his fortune. After some discouraging but predictable misadventures en route, his third day in the city brings him to the offices of the New York Enterprise. His account of his travels earns him a job there immediately.
Then he stumbles on a gambling house on Coney Island and is assigned to cover the subsequent police raid. Next, he's sent as a war correspondent to the Philippines, where his various acts of foolhardiness are acclaimed as heroism. (The narrative, by the way, is very biased against the Filipino insurgents and "their insane efforts to establish an independent government.")
The story plods along but everything Archie does proves that "a boy with honest ambition will always get along." Would that it were so!
My Father's Dragon
by Ruth Stiles Gannett
Aimless fairy tale about a boy who goes off to rescue a dragon held captive on a wild island. It surprises me it was a Newbery winner.
Where the Blue Begins
by Christopher Morley
A very odd, quasi-religious story set in a society of anthropomorphosized canines. Gissing, a debonair young dog about town, adopts some orphaned puppies, and begins to yearn for a more meaningful existence than his pleasant life in suburban Canine Estates. There's metaphor in it somewhere, but I sure can't explain it.
Murder at Bridge
by Anne Austin
Broadway belle Nita Selim has come to a prosperous Midwestern town and inveigled herself into local high society. But neither she nor they are all what they seem, as becomes clear when she's found dead during a bridge party.
Investigator Bonnie Dundee tracks the killer with earnest derring-do, and the plot keeps him and the reader guessing pretty well. A few extraneous details could be done away with, but overall, it's a good read.
Dawn
by Eleanor Hodgman Porter
In the days before World War I, young Keith Burton, to his terror, finds his eyesight growing dim. The boy lives alone with his absent-minded and unsuccessful artist father and their strong-minded, poetry-writing housekeeper, Susan Betts, and can't bring himself to confide his fears. Unthinking comments from a pretty young girl make matters worse.
Meant to be an inspirational tale, "Dawn" offers some great characterizations -- Susan Betts is priceless -- but fails to enthrall.
The Princess Passes
by Alice Muriel Williamson
A travelogue overlaid with an unconvincing romance. Lovesick Lord Montagu Lane goes on a trip around the Continent to get over the woman who jilted him. En route he befriends a mysterious American boy. The rather predictable plot gets some relief from the travel descriptions, at first by car -- when cars were still new and required special motoring clothes -- and later by donkey, but the pace crawls.
Lucky Stiff
by Craig Rice
One of her best: Jake and Helene Justus and J.J. Malone tackle the murder of a Chicago mobster and the framing of his mistress in a captivating story full of colorful characters, including assorted crooks, a police captain with an odd idea of psychology, an Italian undertaker and beautiful ghost. It keeps you guessing all the way through.
Wired Love
by Ella Cheever Thayer
Well before Internet chat rooms -- or the Internet itself -- was ever thought of, long-distance romance between people who'd never met existed. (I had one myself, through the mails, at age 15. Alas, it became a dead letter.)
In this case, two telegraph operators exchange rapid-fire repartee in Morse code. As their courting conversation can be heard by all the other operators on the wire, a modern-day analogy might be romance via Twitter. Ultimately, the two operators meet, but there are many crosses and breaks before they connect.
Charming.
The Street of Seven Stars
by Mary Roberts Rinehart
An unhappy story, overall, and one of those novels that reveal fundamental changes in society since its time.
To save money, two American friends -- a struggling young doctor doing a residency in Vienna and a lovely, indigent violin student -- unconventionally set up housekeeping, together with an older woman for propriety and a sick young boy. But when their chaperone must leave, an evil-minded, scandal-making, "good" woman makes trouble. Meanwhile, another doctor, living more or less openly with an Austrian girl in a matter-of-fact arrangement, falls in love with an upright American woman.
The differing morals of today make it hard to get into the dread and panic of the characters or "the instinct of the young girl to preserve her good name at any cost." The novel also touches on the supposed impossibility of a woman both marrying and having a career.
The story questions some of these prevailing attitudes, but doesn't condemn them. It may have been daring for its time, yet I found myself getting very impatient with it. The ending, though conventional as romance novels go, brings little catharsis.
Rinehart is much better in her mysteries and lighter novels.
Judy
by Temple Bailey
Willful, orphaned Judy, age 14, has come to live with her grandfather in a rural town, away from her beloved seaside. She hates the country and many other things besides, as she announces frequently, but nevertheless befriends the almost saintly young Anne, brave but bossy Launcelot and other village children, gradually mellowing amid companions who are nearly all cloyingly good. It's a little reminiscent of "The Secret Garden," but less powerful.
Miss Billy's Decision
by Eleanor Hodgman Porter
In this second book of the series, Billy is engaged to Bertram Henshaw, the artist. But the course of true love is fraught: She fears that he really only loves her as a model, while he believes he has a rival. Sister Kate meddles, too. The results are predictable, and I didn't like it as well as the first book.
The Clue of the Twisted Candles
by Edgar Wallace
"Most people are murdered as a result of an introduction. The cases where people murder total strangers are singularly rare. That I think is due to the insularity of our national character."
That's one quotation from T.X. Meredith, the singular detective of this singular mystery. The story begins as if it were to be a procedural -- a writer friend of T.X.'s is induced to inadvertently kill another man in an evil plot -- but midway through turns into locked-room mystery.
The novel starts a bit slowly, but picks up the pace as it goes on. The villain is over the top and the women characters rather banal, but Meredith is fascinating -- even though, ultimately, someone else solves the crime.
The Unseen Bridegroom
by May Agnes Fleming
Though this romance is as convoluted as most of Fleming's works, the unlikeable characters make it tiresome. The 17-year-old heroine of mysterious origins, Mary Dane, is a cruel flirt with a dramatic bent. On the eve of her wedding to a much older, wealthy man, she's kidnapped and forced to wed one of her jilted suitors. The man wears a disguise, hence "The Unseen Bridegroom."
The Husbands of Edith
by George Barr McCutcheon
Needing to keep his real whereabouts secret, a man asks a friend to pose as himself on a trip to the Continent, in company with the first man's wife. The morals of the time being what they are, the faux spouses have an uncomfortable time keeping up appearances without doing anything unthinkable -- like sharing a hotel room.
Matters become worse when the impersonating husband falls in love with his purported sister-in-law. Their efforts to keep the secret without doing anything that will prove compromising to their reputations when the ruse is ultimately revealed are mildly amusing, but, like "Brewster's Millions," the story comes off as very dated.
Brewster's Millions
by George Barr McCutcheon
Monty Brewster is a lucky fellow. He's inherited a million dollars from his grandfather. Then comes word that an uncle has left him $7 million ... but only if he becomes penniless first ... with conditions. The vicarious thrill of watching him try to divest himself of his first fortune -- to the profound disapproval of everyone not in on the secret reason -- makes up the bulk of the novel.
It's a light read and rather dated. Brewster's inheritances, though not as vast as they were back in the day, seem large amounts still, but modern times offer many more interesting ways to spend money.
Dining in Chicago
by John Drury
John Drury enlightens us on the Chicago dining scene as it existed in 1931. Entertainingly written, this guidebook forms a picture of a city where one has always been able to dine well. In an interesting approach to restaurant criticism, Drury often tells us more about an establishment's customers than its food.
Somebody's Little Girl
by Martha Young
Bessie Bell, a tiny orphan girl, struggles to understand her vague memories of life before the orphanage. Rather twee.
The Green Carnation
by Robert Smythe Hichens
This name-dropping novel requires a fairly strong knowledge of 19th-century popular culture for real appreciation, but aficionados of the period should enjoy it.
After a long absence from England, the widowed Lady Locke visits her cousin, Mrs. Windsor, and meets the extremely epigramatical Esme Amarinth, and his young friend and imitator, Lord Reginald Hastings. The two men wear dyed green carnations and affect wickedness and disdain for society. Lord Reggie both fascinates and repels Lady Locke.
Though the story comes to a somewhat flat conclusion, its satirical tone, reminiscent of Evelyn Waugh, and well-drawn characterizations make it fun reading.
The Green Mummy
by Fergus Hume
"And Heaven knows that from beginning to end there had been no lack of melodrama of the most lurid description."
An eccentric and irascible archaeologist buys a rare Incan mummy and sends his assistant to fetch it, but when the packing case arrives, the mummy has been replaced by the murdered body of the assistant. Though the language sometimes seems stilted, the plot corkscrews wonderfully before the killer is uncovered, and the characters are amusing.
On Christmas Day in the Morning
by Grace S. Richmond
A tear jerker of a family Christmas story -- yes, you can go home again.
Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs
by Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
From the author: "I warn you perfectly frankly that I am distinctly pro-dog and distinctly pro-Christmas, and would like to bring to this little story whatever whiff of fir-balsam I can cajole from the make-believe forest in my typewriter, and every glitter of tinsel, smudge of toy candle, crackle of wrapping paper, that my particular brand of brain and ink can conjure up on a single keyboard! And very large-sized dogs shall romp through every page!"
Charming.
Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad
by Edith van Dyne
In this second book of the series, the three cousins and their Uncle John go to Italy, arriving at Naples just as Mt. Vesuvius erupts. Then, they visit Sicily, where brigands kidnap Uncle John, an incident the author's foreword claims is based on true events.
It's far more exciting than the first book, with interesting details about early-20th-century Italy.
Pauline's Passion and Punishment
by Louisa May Alcott
A very unsatisfying and melodramatic story about a woman's efforts at vengeance against a lover who deserted her to marry for money. It's only "horror" in a psychological sense.
The Song of the Cardinal
by Gene Stratton Porter
The life of a bird raising a family near an Indiana river.
Don't expect an avian version of "Black Beauty" or "The Lady and the Tramp." It's not your typical animal story, but more of a nature text given a thin coating of fiction.
Stratton-Porter inserts only the slightest anthropomorphism. People don't appear till the second chapter, and exist merely as supporting characters.
I found it somewhat dull, therefore, but someone with more interest in birds might enjoy it better.
The Countess of Lowndes Square
by E.F. Benson
Blackmailers, cats, the supernatural, the neurotic and high society all figure as subjects in this highly amusing collection of stories by the author of the "Queen Lucia" series.
At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern
by Myrtle Reed
A budding author and his new bride inherit an odd old house and take up residence, only to discover that the previous owner's many peculiar relatives, in the habit of spending summers there, are undeterred by the change of ownership. Tiresome long passages of the would-be author's work in progress pad out the book, but if you skip past them, the main story is amusing.
Miss Billy
by Eleanor Hodgman Porter
Orphaned, 18-year-old Billy Neilson writes to her father's boyhood friend, William Henshaw, for whom she was named, asking whether she can make her home with him. Thinking her a boy, he and his two brothers agree to take her in to their bachelor quarters. To their consternation and delight, she turns their lives topsy turvy -- until a well-meaning busybody makes it clear just how much she's "upset" their previously placid existence. Ultimately, the story turns into a tame farce of mixed-up love affairs, but Miss Billy and her cohorts are charming.
Kate Danton
by May Agnes Fleming
Here's one for fans of Georgette Heyer.
Capt. Danton returns home to Canada from England, bringing with him his imperious eldest daughter, Kate, and a mysterious invalid, Mr. Richards. The homecoming disturbs the peaceful existance of his cousin Grace, who's been housekeeper and companion to the captain's two younger daughters, tempestuous Rose and fragile Eeny.
Mr. Richards' real identity is only one of the secrets floating around Danton Hall in this well-written, intricately plotted romance. It becomes fairly predictable -- indeed, all the mysteries are revealed by the middle of the novel -- but watching the characters play out the consequences remains engrossing.
In 1878, the New York Times called Fleming "the princess of novelists." I'd call her the queen of historical romance -- except it wasn't so historical when she wrote it. Toss out those Harlequins and read this instead.
What Diantha Did
by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
A young woman flies in the face of convention -- and her fiance -- by starting a business that helps other women. The novel is something of an idealistic propaganda piece for feminism, but not an overly preachy one. It's a pity society didn't quite develop along the orderly lines Gilman envisioned.
The Indifference of Juliet
by Grace S. Richmond
Juliet is by no means indifferent. She is disgustingly perfect. Having left wealth behind to marry a poor, but rising man, she becomes the perfect, economical homemaker.
The story takes pains to point out the difference a cheerful, skillful housewife can make to her husband, and how she can be fulfilled through making him a delightful home on pennies -- in contrast to her discontented friend who hasn't the knack or the inclination. What a piece of anti-feminist propaganda!
Just Patty
by Jean Webster
A prequel to "When Patty Went to College," and much the same -- but this time covering the irrepressible Patty's hijinks at a girls' prep school. Patty's antics seem more amusing in this book, whether because the author has more experience or because one doesn't expect as much maturity from schoolgirls as from college women. Pure fluff.
The Love Affairs of an Old Maid
by Lilian Bell
A spinster muses on the marriages of her friends and acquaintances; listens and agrees with such confidences as, "I don't see how a woman with any self-respect can marry until she meets her master"; and confides her feelings about it all to her cat. Wordy and dull.
Six Girls
by Fannie Belle Irving
Wholesome, somewhat religious and romantic bildungsroman about six poor, sweet sisters growing to womanhood -- very much influenced by "Little Women," although these girls don't quite have the liveliness and spirit of Louisa May Alcott's heroines. The novel very conventionally concludes with weddings for most of the sisters, as if marriage were the be-all and end-all of any girl's life, but overall, the characterizations are good and the writing engaging.
Three Margarets
by Laura E. Richards
Three cousins, each named Margaret, meet for the first time on a visit to an isolated Long Island family estate. Alone except for a retired, nonagenarian aunt and servants, they learn from one another. A sweet, if unexciting, girls' story.
The Garden of the Plynck
by Karle Wilson Baker
Young Sara opens the doors of her mind to visit a nonsensical fantasyland that ought to be charming but is mostly tedious. The author strives for an "Alice in Wonderland" effect but only manages a cloying cuteness.
''Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame''
by Frances Hodgson Burnett
One of the hardest things about reading 19th-century literature is getting into the moral mindset of the period. This story about a lovely young woman; her ugly, older husband; and her handsome, talented, male cousin could not be transferred into modern times. That makes the unhappy characters seem less sympathetic than they likely were to readers of its day.
Romance Island
by Zona Gale
A newspaperman follows a beautiful woman on a search for her father to a marvelous hidden island, where the denizens travel through the fourth dimension, employ perpetual motion and do many other wonderful things. You might call it a distaff version of Edgar Rice Burroughs -- rather over-written and flowery, but with some novel elements in an otherwise conventional lost-world romance.
My School-Days
by Edith Nesbit
A memoir of her own peripatetic childhood by one of the foremost children's writers of her time. As she describes her life moving around Europe in the 1860s, the youngest of five, Nesbit reveals the not always comfortable imagination that stood her in such good stead in her storytelling. She doesn't get very far into her life -- she has only reached age 10 by the last chapter -- yet despite the very different times in which she lived, she captures the poignant universals of early terrors and boredom in a way that most of us can remember.
In a Steamer Chair
by Robert Barr
Short stories set in a vanished world -- the transatlantic steamship. Today, a cruise is a vacation in and of itself, and ocean-crossing passengers are mostly well-to-do, but in the days when cruise lines were merely a means of transportation overseas, a broad mix of people came together aboard ship.
This collection forms an eclectic mix, too. Quality varies, but most of the stories are worth reading.
This release could have used better proofreading.
Things Mother Used to Make
by Lydia Maria Gurney
"These recipes and Household Hints are written very plainly, for those who have had no experience, no practice and possibly have little judgment."
Despite some oddities like "coffee" brewed from bread crusts, most of the recipes in this collection seem very straightforward and approachable, at least to experienced cooks. The modern cook may want to compare the baked goods recipes to some in contemporary cookbooks for oven temperatures and cooking times.
The Man Who Knew
by Edgar Wallace
A millionaire who's made his money by nefarious means, his nephew, his male secretary and his lovely ward are all involved in mysterious doings that bring them into contact with the curious Saul Arthur Mann, "The Man Who Knows."
The character of Mann has potential, but the rest of this mystery is annoying. The reader is misdirected in an unfair way, and the conclusion doesn't tie up all the loose ends.
Bones
by Edgar Wallace
This collection of episodes in the Commissioner Sanders series continues Wallace's subtly humorous look at colonial Africa. Bones is the nickname of Francis Augustus Tibbetts, lieutenant of the Houssas, seconded to British Africa under Lt. Patrick George Hamilton and Mr. Commissioner Sanders. He is both raw and utterly self-confident, a devastating combination, particularly since Sanders is away for most of these episodes. The stories don't seem to be arranged chronologically, which makes me think they were originally published separately and collected in no particular order.
Ladies-In-Waiting
by Kate Douglas Wiggin
Mostly amusing short stories about the romances of women ranging a from a bright young singer to an aging country spinster.
The Girl at the Halfway House
by Emerson Hough
After the Civil War, in the expanding, egalitarian West, a young lawyer, a former Union soldier, courts a haughty Southern beauty who can't let go of the past. Meanwhile, he and others build a civilization. It's rather wordy and purple in its prose but the details of Western pioneer life are good.
The Little Colonel
by Annie Fellows Johnston
In this first book of a popular series, made into a movie with Shirley Temple in 1935, an impish little girl and her fierce Southern grandfather meet for the first tlme. Sweet but predictable.
The Girl and The Bill
by Bannister Merwin
Robert Orme, a visitor to Chicago from the East, is drawn into a mystery surrounding a beautiful but reticent young woman and a curiously marked five-dollar bill. He becomes fascinated by both, rather unbelievably so: "Orme knew in his soul that there could be nothing unworthy in any action in which the girl took part." That's the least of the plot's unlikely events.
Except for a little boosterism at the beginning, the setting reads like one derived from maps -- "He had crossed the Rush Street bridge and found his way up to the Lake Shore Drive..." -- and conveys little of the character of Chicago. It could have been set in almost any city. (One of the streets mentioned has either disappeared completely in the hundred years since this was written or, more likely, the author made it up.)
The novel also contains a full measure of its era's prejudices and stereotypes about foreigners. And, annoyingly, we never find out the mysterious "Girl's" name.
It's not absolutely wretched, but it's certainly a waste of time.
The Wide, Wide World
by Susan Warner
Soppy little Ellen Montgomery is sent off to live with her cold, stern aunt on a farm, while her beloved mother goes abroad for her health. Ellen's only solace comes in Christian friends who teach her to love Jesus and turn the other cheek with patience and forbearance, although she's told to consider it sinful to love her mother more than her Lord.
A very preachy novel, and amid all the exhortations about goodness, honoring Christ, avoiding pride and passion, etc., it gets in some gratuitous Catholic bashing. Although a very long book, it ends abruptly, without satisfactorily settling Ellen's affairs.
The release is also littered with HTML tags.
Leah Mordecai
by Belle Kendrick Abbott
Set in Charlotte, N.C., around the Civil War, this novel follows beautiful Leah Mordecai, daughter of a rich Jewish banker, who, persecuted by an unkind stepmother, runs off and marries a gentile -- to the violent curses of her father -- lives a generally unhappy life, and dies young.
The novel crawls along, full of stilted language, dropped plot lines and stereotyped and ignorant descriptions of Jews and "Jewesses." Among the many annoyances, the author never gives any place its right name but goes on and on about the "Queen City," the "Palmetto State," etc.
Cranford
by Elizabeth Gaskell
Mrs. Gaskell's most charming work, a lovely read about the mostly female denizens of an English country town.
Doom of the Griffiths
by Elizabeth Gaskell
Mrs. Gaskell in a conversational mode, like "Cranford," though gloomier. The tale follows the descendants of Rhys ap Gryfydd, cursed unto the ninth generation by the mighty Welsh hero Owen Glendower. It reads more like the retelling of a legend or fairy tale -- complete with wicked stepmother -- than a short story.
Beyond the City
by Arthur Conan Doyle
A blithe, airy, domestic romance -- completely unlike the adventures of Sherlock Holmes -- about the residents of three new, adjoining, suburban villas: A retired admiral and his wife and stockbroker son; a widowed doctor and his two pretty daughters; and a militant feminist and her stolid nephew. The lives of young and old neighbors intertwine in sometimes surprising ways.
Polly of the Hospital Staff
by Emma C. Dowd
Little Polly May is such a light of the children's ward that after her convalescence the hospital hires her as a mascot. Fans of "Pollyanna" and "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" should enjoy it.
The Baronet's Bride
by May Agnes Fleming
What a romp! It's absolutely without redeeming social value, and the sort of thing that makes you understand why pious prudes used to denounce the reading of all novels. But imagine the thrilled young girls poring over this in secret. Arrogant and impetuous baronets, haughty ladies, gypsies declaring vengeance unto the third generation, a horrifying horoscope, a dying father with a degrading secret, a deathbed betrothal, family feuds, mysterious murder ... a frothy confection of brain-rotting mind candy. Irresistible.
The Day of the Boomer Dukes
by Frederik Pohl
A time traveler looking for adventure meets up with some teenage gangs in East Harlem. Odd, and probably more comprehensible to New Yorkers of 1950s, but funny.
Mrs. Christy's Bridge Party
by Sara Ware Bassett
This dig at New York society must have been very funny in its day, but its day has passed.
The Story of Sugar
by Sara Ware Bassett
Boarding-school roommates Bob and Van discover that, coincidentally, both of their fathers are in the sugar business. On respective visits home, they learn all about how trees are tapped and sap boiled for maple syrup and sugar, how sugar cane and beets are turned into white crystals and how candy is made.
The story ends rather abruptly, but otherwise the author does a good job of sugar-coating the lessons with a sweet topping of fiction. And, although the manufacturing processes may be somewhat more mechanized today, not much about the basics has changed.
Bad Medicine
by Robert Sheckley
A man turns to a psychotherapy machine for help ... but it's the wrong machine. Forgettable.
The Parenticide Club
by Ambrose Bierce
Grisly short stories, told in the first person, about bizarre murderers. Despite their touches of dark humor, I don't think I'd care to know anyone who really enjoys these.
A Queens Delight
by Anonymous
Fascinating 17th-century collection of stillroom recipes for fruit preserves, perfumes and home remedies. Some of the ingredients may be hard to come by and some of the directions are a bit hazy, but many of these recipes are perfectly possible. I recommend Sir Walter Raleigh's strawberry cordial.
Bread Overhead
by Fritz Reuter Leiber
Loaves take to the air in this short story about puffy white bread gone to extremes. Very silly.
The Green Door
by Mary Wilkins Freeman
An unlikeable and disobedient little girl learns a harsh lesson after opening a forbidden door in this rather dull time-travel story.
Greener Than You Think
by Ward Moore
One for the Luddites and Greens: This quintessential example of anti-science science fiction comes complete with mad scientist -- in this case a woman, and therefore, of course, a frump -- who lets an incompletely tested, experimental compound escape into the world with, naturally, devastating results.
While the author perhaps thought he was making an anti-nuclear statement in the wake of Hiroshima, today's reader will likely focus on the current hot-button issue, genetic modification of plants. Along with science and war, the novel also takes sardonic potshots at women, democracy, bureaucracy, journalism, the arts, religion, capitalism and modern civilization generally.
It's rather long and gets tedious in parts, but lots of it is pretty funny, if you aren't bothered by the underlying message: Man shouldn't mess with nature.
The Case of Jennie Brice
by Mary Roberts Rinehart
A woman disappears during a flood. Did she leave her husband in a rage, as he claims? Was she drowned? Or did he kill her and drop her body in the swollen river? An absorbing mystery, with a lot of interesting detail, although the solution becomes obvious before the author reveals it.
Unfortunately, it seems as if a segment near the end is missing from this release.
Sight Unseen
by Mary Roberts Rinehart
A group of neighbors holds a seance and, discover another neighbor, Arthur Wells, died just at that moment, supposedly by suicide. Was Wells in fact murdered? Rinehart usually is much better than this dull, slow-moving supernatural mystery.
Where There's a Will
by Mary Roberts Rinehart
Rinehart at her funniest: a kind of bedroom farce set in a sanitarium -- which is what they called a health spa in 1912. Minnie the spring girl, the narrator, is a terrific character in Rinehart's best style, like Bab and Tish.
A Cathedral Courtship
by Kate Douglas Wiggin
A very tame romance set against a background of English tourism.
The Story of Patsy
by Kate Douglas Wiggin
Very sad, largely plotless little story about poor children who attend a free Kindergarten in San Francisco.
The Old Curiosity Shop
by Charles Dickens
An old man, addicted to gambling, loses his all, plunging himself and his granddaughter, sweet young Nell, into a life of itinerant poverty and peril. As they travel aimlessly, they're sought by friends and enemies.
Though full of colorful Dickens characters -- notably the malevolent dwarf Quilp and his rapacious, plotting lawyers -- and fascinating description, the novel comes to an unsatisfying conclusion, making it one of the author's lesser works.
This is not as well proofread as most Gutenberg releases.
They and I
by Jerome K. Jerome
A writer buys a country house and, while it is being remodeled, stays in a nearby cottage with his two almost-adult children and their 9-year-old sister. The kids are a handful, and his new acquaintance with bellowing cows, recalcitrant donkeys and other aspects of country life disturbing. Mostly, he ruminates on the upbringing of children and goes off on tangents. It's no "Three Men in a Boat," but there are some amusing bits.
Adventures of Chicken Little Jane
by Lily Munsell Ritchie
Nine-year-old "Chicken Little" Jane Morton (so nicknamed for no very notable reason), her older brother and their friends have routine, rather dull, childhood adventures in what's apparently downstate Illinois during the post-Civil War era. There's not much of interest for contemporary readers.
Rose of Old Harpeth
by Maria Thompson Daviess
Predictable but nonetheless charming romance about a poor farm family -- Rose Mary, her elderly aunts and uncle, and her young cousin -- who take in a sickly stranger, while their fortunes worsen.
Calumet ''K''
by Samuel Merwin
Surprisingly fascinating and suspenseful novel about a dynamic construction boss building a grain elevator on the Calumet River, south of Chicago. He races against a stringent deadline while confronting interference from a jealous, ignorant foreman; venal union leaders; recalcitrant railroads; and the sabotaging efforts of bullish speculators bent on cornering the wheat market. It makes a fine counterpart to Frank Norris' "The Pit."
The English Orphans
by Mary Jane Holmes
Rags-to-riches, ugly-duckling-to-swan story of an orphan girl who triumphs over her childhood poverty and homeliness through sweetness of character and crude dentistry.
The story starts out with a promisingly Dickensian feel, but the plot ultimately becomes conventional and predictable, and the heroine somewhat cloying, while everything ties up with unlikely coincidence. Still, the novel is peopled with some wonderful supporting characters, like Sally Furbush, who's lost her reason, but not her grammar.
Miss Lulu Bett
by Zona Gale
A sad story about unhappy people: A household drudge, 33-year-old Lulu Bett lives on the grudging charity of her vapid sister and self-important brother-in-law and never goes anywhere or does anything. Then a visitor gives her a brief, scandalous glimpse of another life. Fine writing, with well-drawn characters, but depressing.
The Chickens of Fowl Farm
by Lena E. Barksdale
Anthropomorphic chicken stories apparently written by a 10-year-old.
The Bow of Orange Ribbon
by Amelia Edith Barr
A historical romance that begins in the sober New York of 1765, when British aristocracy lorded over prim Dutch colonials. Young Katherine van Heemskirk has a forbidden, secret romance with a rakish English captain, leading to a vicious duel and public disgrace, while her brother futilely loves a pious Jewish girl.
Then the setting shifts to England and the novel becomes almost a Georgette Heyer society piece (Heyer must have been inspired by novels like this) before moving back to the colonies, on the brink of the American Revolution.
The author weaves in lots of interesting historical detail, although the plot doesn't always hang together.
How to Cook Husbands
by Elizabeth Strong Worthington
A spinster muses self-righteously on how married women should treat their husbands while conducting a tepid romance. Eh.
Pee-Wee Harris
by Percy K. Fitzhugh
Amusing tale about a gallant Boy Scout and a valiant orphan girl who go into business together. Girls should like it nearly as well as boys.
Lodusky
by Frances Hodgson Burnett
An artist follows the woman he loves to North Carolina, but becomes fascinated by a beautiful but vain mountain girl. More of a sketch than a story.
Esmeralda
by Frances Hodgson Burnett
You can take a girl out North Carolina, but you can't take Carolina out of the girl. Predictable.
The Adventures of Jimmie Dale
by Frank L. Packard
Fast-paced stories of the capers committed by the Gray Seal, a 20th-century Robin Hood, a "Philanthropic Crook," at the bidding of a mysterious and omniscient woman.
These tales were probably originally a serial, and they're better read in pieces -- too much of Jimmie Dale's derring-do at one sitting becomes cloying, an excess of mind candy. Nevertheless, the episodes build to an exciting conclusion.
Father Stafford
by Anthony Hope
Eugene and Kate are engaged, but not getting along -- not least because he's in love with Claudia. Haddington is in love with Kate, and while she's attracted, she wants to keep her hooks in her wealthy fiance.
Meanwhile, the ascetic young Anglican priest, Father Stafford, falls for Claudia, despite his vow of celibacy. Claudia's feelings are unclear, at first.
All the ingredients of a Wodehousian farce, but told with gravity.
Michael
by E.F. Benson
In the year leading up to World War I, Michael Comber, the homely, awkward son of the earl of Ashbridge, defies his conventional and stuffy father to take up the serious study of music. He befriends Sylvia and Hermann Falbe, two half-German siblings, a famed singer and her brother and accompanist, from whom he takes piano lessons, and begins to live an independent life. But ultimately the war threatens everything. A very potent and absorbing novel.
No Thoroughfare
by Charles Dickens
This excellent collaboration between two great 19th-century writers shows all of Dickens' talent for description and characterization and all of Collins' skill at creating suspense.
Walter Wilding, left at a foundlings' hospital as an infant by his distressed mother and recovered by her as an adolescent, is
profoundly disturbed to discover that he is the wrong Walter Wilding, and his beloved mother wasn't his mother at all. Accordingly, he wills her legacy to the correct Walter Wilding, if he can be found.
His partner and executor, George Vendale, inherits the quest, but holds it lightly, until he falls in love, becomes entangled with a serious crime and goes on a desperate journey.
As a romance, this novel is fairly tame; as a crime story, it foreshadows the procedural, yet its ending still comes as a surprise.
Faithfully Yours
by Lou Tabakow
You can run, but you can't hide.
Typical for its era, this is one of a very few stories by the late Lou Tabakow, whose claim to fame is a 1955 Hugo Award for Best Unpublished Story -- for a tale that made the cover of Other Worlds but was never printed. Tabakow was best known in science-fiction circles as a bon vivant and the longtime leading light of the Cincinnati Fantasy Group. Founded in the 1930s, the club still hosts Midwestcon, one of the oldest SF conventions extant, each June.
Citadel
by Algirdas Jonas Budrys
An odd story of government manipulations in a future populated by a peculiarly libertarian society.
The Night of the Long Knives
by Fritz Reuter Leiber, Jr.
A grim, grisly post-apocalypse story with an unpleasant view of humanity. A somewhat hopeful conclusion doesn't lighten things much.
The Pirates of Ersatz
by Murray Leinster
Bron Hoddan is the scion of notorious space pirates, but instead of following the family trade, he intends to achieve splendid things as an electronic engineer. But fate conspires against him. A preposterous space adventure.
When Patty Went to College
by Jean Webster
A very lightweight girls' book about an irrepressible girl who doesn't seem to be getting much education at a women's college. It seems to be aimed at an audience younger than its heroine.
Timothy's Quest
by Kate Douglas Wiggin
Ten-year-old Timothy smuggles baby Gay into the country, determined to find her an adoptive mother. Arriving in a tiny hamlet, the two orphans, and Rags the dog, wreak havoc in the inhabitants' settled lives. Heartwarming and sweet, with just enough zest to keep it from being cloying.
The Cliff-Dwellers
by Henry Blake Fuller
George Ogden, of Boston, comes to the West -- which meant Chicago in 1893 -- and goes to work in the impressive Clifton building, a towering skyscraper, 18 stories high. There he mingles with its denizens -- greedy real estate moguls ... brutish bankers ... aristocratic architects ... snobbish, social-climbing North Siders ... placid suburbanites -- a microcosm of the brash, burgeoning city, and emerges a sadder, wiser man.
This soap-opera of a novel paints an unhappy and woefully incomplete picture of late-19th-century Chicago. There are only a few lessons here for a modern audience, and most of them are better told elsewhere.
Moreover, this release is very badly transcribed, so riddled with errors that it's difficult to read.
The Sheridan Road Mystery
by Paul and Mabel Thorne
A shot rings out at 2 a.m. near the corner of Lawrence Avenue and Sheridan Road in Chicago. Investigating, police find a vacant apartment with a blood-stained carpet in a building full of mysterious tenants.
At first, it's a job for Sgt. Dave Morgan, the Chicago PD's ace detective (who lives with his white-haired mother and wakes her up in the mornings to cook his breakfast). Then a Secret Service man unexpectedly takes over.
The Thornes' stilted and amateurish writing has a plodding simplicity: "'Mother,' he called. 'The Chief has just 'phoned me that they have the biggest case for me that I ever handled. I must go down at once.'"
They describe Chicago as if they worked from a map, without ever having been there, with such scintillating detail as, "Morgan ... returned down the alley to Lawrence Avenue where he turned west and walked over to Broadway," and "We trailed down Sheridan Road, through Lincoln Park, and on to Michigan Avenue...."
They don't neglect to moralize: "A really clever man is also clever enough to know that it doesn't pay to be a criminal."
It doesn't pay to read this book.
The Confession
by Mary Roberts Rinehart
Miss Agnes Blakiston rents a house for the summer and becomes oppressed by sense of terror. Investigating the source of her fear, she gradually learns a deadly secret.
The story is well told but the flat, matter-of-fact ending is a letdown after all the gothically moody horror leading up to it.
People You Know
by George Ade
A tedious series of faux fables, meant to be humorous, about various archetypal characters.
It’s like this, cat
by Emily Neville
Growing up in New York in the early 1960s, 14-year-old Dave Mitchell ponders the nature of family relationships while wandering around the city with his cat.
A delightful coming-of-age story, it's not at all dated, apart from occasionally jarring period references to things like air conditioning (not universal in the '60s), transistor radios and Harry Belafonte. More introspective than action-oriented, it ends somewhat abruptly -- the biggest flaw.
Mr. Achilles
by Jennette Lee
Left on her own by accident, 12-year-old Chicago heiress Betty Harris wanders into Achilles Alexandrakis' Clark Street fruit shop. She's the first American to ask him about the Parthenon and his native Athens. He's charmed; she's fascinated; and the two become fast friends.
That premise could have led to a lovely story, but instead degenerates into a disjointed and unlikely crime tale.
The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair
by Charles McCellan Stevens
Uncle Jeremiah, Aunt Sarah and their two grandchildren, Fanny and Johnny, come from their downstate dairy farm to Chicago for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. The yokels take in all the wondrous sights of the great White City; become confounded by ticket agents; fall prey to shortchangers, pickpockets and con men; and have many adventures.
Fanny is nearly tricked into entering a house of ill-repute, "one of the worstestes places in Chicago." Johnny, trying to peer over a fence, falls into the Amazon village. Uncle Jeremiah takes a Turkish bath. Along the way, they're in turns shocked and bored by foreign art, dance and theater; learn the history of Columbus; and see many surprising things.
The snide narration and hicks-gape-at-the-big-city routine get old pretty quickly, and the plot is lightweight and trite, but the contemporary descriptions of turn-of-the-century Chicago and the fair are fascinating. It's by no means "The Devil in the White City," but if you're interested in Chicago history, it's worth reading.
The Blotting Book
by E. F. Benson
Two crooked solicitors, engaged in embezzling an estate in their trust, resort to slandering its beneficiary as a means of keeping him from reviewing their accounts. The partners have a falling out; the slander is discovered, with great ire, by its victim; and one of the lawyers turns up dead.
Told with all the urbanity of Benson's "Queen Lucia" series, but not the humor, this mystery moves a bit too slowly, with too much happening offstage, to be truly satisfying.
Planetoid 127
by Edgar Wallace
Young Tim Lensman visits his old science teacher, Prof. Colson, who's grown wealthy by speculating on the stock market in a way that suggests hidden sources of information. Tim overhears a puzzling radio message, and Colson shows him some peculiar equipment in a room labeled "Planetoid 127." Before he can explain further, a rival investor determined to find out Colson's secrets interferes, with devastating results.
This short novel has historical significance as one of the first "twin Earth" stories, but like a lot of pre-Golden Age science fiction, it presents only the germ of an interesting idea, wrapped in an unbelievable, turgid story line.
Vagabondia
by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Dolly, eldest sister of a happy family of artistic indigents, has been engaged to equally penniless Grif for seven years. It seems hopeless that they can ever afford to marry, but she builds castles in the air while he frets. Then a well-to-do rival arrives on the scene, trying them both.
The characters seem more real than "Little Lord Fauntleroy" or Dickon of "The Secret Garden," but it's still a sentimental tearjerker.
Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman
by E.W. Hornung
The seminal criminal-as-hero story, somewhat dated in light of all that's been written since, but still a good read.
The Haunted Bookshop
by Christopher Morley
As the previous reviewer notes, no ghosts appear in the bookshop of this title, which is haunted merely by "the ghosts of all great literature, in hosts."
In the days just after World War I, Roger Mifflin, the garrulous, proselytizing, bookseller hero of "Parnassus on Wheels," takes on a debutante as apprentice in his Brooklyn shop and befriends an up-and-coming, young advertising man who's soon besotted with her. Meanwhile, mysterious and untoward events center on a volume of Thomas Carlyle's "Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell" and a German druggist down the street.
Mifflin tends to be preachy, but book lovers should enjoy his musings. The novel also contains plenty of recommendations for future reading. Anyone who's familiar with all of the books mentioned herein may consider himself well-read. If not, I'd guess most of them can be found here on Manybooks. Start now.
The Red House
by Edith Nesbit
A young couple -- a writer and an artist -- inherit a moldering mansion and try to set up housekeeping on the do-it-yourself principle. They're aided, and discouraged, by a friend who believes strongly that they'd be better off concentrating on their paying careers and hiring out the housework.
The characters and setting have great charm, but despite a few minor setbacks, their life meanders on idyllically and nothing much ever happens.
Nesbit shines as a children's writer (incidentally, the Bastable kids from "The Story of the Treasure Seekers" make a cameo appearance in this novel), but her grown-up books don't seem to have the same magic.
The Fire Within
by Patricia Wentworth
This early work by the author of the "Miss Silver" mysteries shows promise, but doesn't deliver.
It starts off well, with a wealthy, eccentric, declining, old man; his beetle-collecting nephew, avid for his demise; his dedicated doctor, painfully in love with the nephew's pretty wife, Mary; and Mary's sister, patiently in love with the doctor. Then the old man dies suddenly -- of arsenic poisoning!
It looks like we are in for a nice, juicy mystery. But then it all evaporates into a sappy, mystical romance with hardly any spice at all.
Fortunately, Wentworth improved significantly with her later novels -- the "Miss Silver" books are delightful -- but you'll have to seek those through commercial sources.
Two Little Women on a Holiday
by Carolyn Wells
Dolly and Dotty, two 15-year-old, small-town girls, accompany a friend to visit her uncle and a cousin in New York.
Sheltered Dolly is younq for her age, a prim goody two shoes; the cousin, apparently meant to provide counterpoint as a "flibbertigibbet," has little to recommend her; and none of the others shine, either. The four girls have some mild adventures in the big city, but little of note happens and their characters remain essentially unchanged throughout.
I can't imagine any modern teenager would think this book anything but sappy and insipid, and even in its day, it must have been aimed at girls much younger than its heroines.
The Council of Justice
by Edgar Wallace
This second book of Wallace's "Four Just Men" series recounts the vigilante Four's efforts against the Red Hundred, a curiously well-governed group of anarchists led by the beautiful but bizarrely fickle Woman of Gratz.
It's pretty heavy going, with all kinds of confusing tangents that don't advance the plot and only sort of come together in the end.
The proofreading of this release could be better, too.
Parnassus on Wheels
by Christopher Morley
Charming story about an earnest, if slightly preachy, itinerant bookseller who brings literature to rural areas and a farm woman who abandons her housekeeping to take up his trade, learning along the way about the joys of bookmanship.
Every book lover ought to read this, and its sequel, "The Haunted Bookshop."
A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago
by Ben Hecht
A series of sketches written for the Chicago Daily News beginning in 1921. In the words of Henry Justin Smith's preface:
"Comedies, dialogues, homilies, one-act tragedies, storiettes, sepia panels, word-etchings, satires, tone-poems, fuges, bourrees, -- something different every day.... Stories seemingly born out of nothing, and written -- to judge by the typing -- in ten minutes, but in reality, as a rule, based upon actual incident, developed by a period of soaking in the peculiar chemicals of Ben's nature, and written with much sophistication in the choice of words. There were dramatic studies often intensely subjective, lit with the moods of Ben himself, not of the things dramatized. There were self-revelations characteristically frank and provokingly debonaire. There was comment upon everything under the sun; assaults upon all the idols of antiquity, of mediaevalism, of neo-boobism. There were raw chunks of philosophy, delivered with gusto and sometimes with inaccuracy. There were subtle jabs at well-established Babbitry."
A few are still worth reading. Most of them are not. Some of them weren't even worth the newsprint they were first printed on.
You might imagine that they'd provide a portrait of Chicago of the era, but they don't -- or only a very diffuse one. The fiction of authors like Edna Ferber or Frank Norris gives a much clearer picture than this supposed journalism.
Hecht is at his best when he concentrates on individuals or the ironies of the newspaper business -- as in these vignettes:
"Don Quixote and His Last Windmill"
"The Watch Fixer"
"Vagabondia"
"The Man from Yesterday"
K
by Mary Roberts Rinehart
A bildungsroman evocative of the works of Edna Ferber, "K" is the tale of a middle-class city neighborhood and its residents, an urban version of Grovers Corners.
We meet Sidney, a young woman who wants to be a nurse, and her family, neighbors and lodgers, among them her Aunt Harriet, who yearns to be more than a simple dressmaker; Joe, the boy who loves her; Dr. Ed, the selfless G.P. across the street, and his younger brother, Max, a handsome, philandering surgeon; her friend Christine, about to marry a wild Society youth; Tillie, the 40ish boardinqhouse waitress who's sorely tempted by a life of sin; and the mysterious K., the shabby tenant who is more than he seems.
Intricate and engrossing, the novel holds one's attention to the very end.
The Gold Bat
by Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
One of Wodehouse's early novels set in English public schools, probably aimed at boys of prep-school age. Like "The Head of Kay's" and "A Prefect's Uncle," it's told in a series of episodes.
Similarly, it's not as funny as the Jeeves stories, but for those who've exhausted Wodehouse's later, better-known works, it makes an interesting look back.
The very British references to footer and other aspects of U.K. boarding-school life may make it slightly impenetrable to American readers unfamiliar with these English institutions.
The Head of Kay's
by Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
One of Wodehouse's early novels set in English public schools, probably aimed at boys of prep-school age. This one concerns two prefects struggling to keep order in a refractory house, in spite of its interfering housemaster.
It's not as funny as the Jeeves stories, but for those who've exhausted Wodehouse's later, better-known works, it makes an interesting look back.
The very British references to cricket, footer and other aspects of U.K. boarding-school life may make it slightly impenetrable to American readers unfamiliar with these English institutions. On the other hand, if you can read "Harry Potter," you can certainly manage this. I suspect British boys' books like this one were very much J.K. Rowling's inspiration.
A Prefect's Uncle
by Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
One of Wodehouse's early novels set in English public schools, and probably aimed at boys of prep-school age. The tale concerns the difficulties of a prefect when a young reprobate enrolls in in his school -- and turns out to be his uncle. The story is told as a series of episodes.
These early boys' books have their charms, but comparing them to the author's later works for adults would not be fair.
You probably shouldn't attempt this if you don't have at least a "Harry Potter" familiarity with English boarding-school life.
Jack O'Judgment
by Edgar Wallace
Criminal mastermind Col. Dan Boundary fights two enemies, Stafford King, a dedicated detective, and Jack O'Judgment, a mysterious figure bent on vigilante justice.
The novel opens with the murder of "Snow" Gregory, a doper linked with Boundary. (I was surprised to learn that "snow" was slang for cocaine as far back as 1920, and addicts were just as common then as now.)
Naturally, there is also a love interest, actress Maisie White, daughter of one of Boundary's associates, who's sought after by both King and Pinto Silva, a slimy Boundary henchman.
It's something of a potboiler, and a little predictable, but the story moves along and the crime lord's machinations become wonderfully complex and nasty.
Wet Magic
by Edith Nesbit
Four young siblings on a seaside holiday rescue a captive mermaid and get caught up in a war in her underwater domain. Told in E. Nesbit's delightfully conversational style, this is a fantasy to appeal to children of all ages.
Nesbit's magical adventures were the early 20th century's answer to the Harry Potter series, and I highly recommend her books to anyone who enjoys J.K. Rowling, Daniel Pinkwater or Edward Eager. Even Lemony Snicket fans may find Nesbit to their liking, though she's not nearly so depressing.
The Pit
by Frank Norris
This absorbing novel follows Laura Dearborn, a well-to-do young woman recently come to Chicago, as she commences wedded life against a background of wheat speculating at the Board of Trade.
"The Pit" is the second saga in Norris' unfinished "Trilogy of The Epic of the Wheat." The cycle begins with "The Octopus," an otherwise unrelated novel that covers disputes between wheat growers and a railway trust in California. (Norris died before he started the third book, which was to cover wheat as bread relieving famine in Europe.)
Laura Dearborn is a rather tiresome, stupid woman, but Norris describes her world enthrallingly, and his business scenes -- loosely based on the young Chicago tycoon Joseph Leiter's 1890s corner on the wheat market -- make the clashes between Bulls and Bears surprisingly thrilling.
While some legal and technical changes in trading have occured since the turn of the 20th century and the CBOT's historic trading floor has been demolished, the basics remain the same today as in Norris' day, a hundred years ago:
"Think of it, the food of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people just at the mercy of a few men down there on the Board of Trade. They make the price. They say just how much the peasant shall pay for his loaf of bread. If he can't pay the price he simply starves. And as for the farmer, why it's ludicrous. If I build a house and offer it for sale, I put my own price on it, and if the price offered don't suit me I don't sell. But if I go out here in Iowa and raise a crop of wheat, I've got to sell it, whether I want to or not, at the figure named by some fellows in Chicago. And to make themselves rich, they may make me sell it at a price that bankrupts me."
In the Quarter
by Robert W. Chambers
Rather pointless story of a young American art student studying in Paris, who has an affair with a French singer and comes to a bad end through no particular fault of his own.
It's quite gratuitously antisemitic, too, even for the times.
Badge of Infamy
by Lester del Rey
A very predictable story full of stock characters: The selfless doctor. The venal, vindictive ex-wife. The nobel pioneer. Not one of del Rey's better efforts.
Aunt Jane's Nieces
by Edith van Dyne
Rich, crabby Aunt Jane summons her three impoverished nieces to her deathbed in order to choose one as her heiress, in spite of the young man whose claim to the estate exceeds her own. Meanwhile, Jane's long lost brother, John, turns up, also apparently penniless.
Edith van Dyne was a penname for L. Frank Baum, but this story for girls shows none of the magic of the Wizard of Oz. This story is a fairly typical rags-to-riches tale, in which the most unselfish triumph, but with a few twists. There's not much of interest to adult readers, however.
It was apparently very popular with young readers of its day, since it spawned nine sequels.
The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People
by L. Frank Baum
A series of fantasy adventures aimed at fairly young readers, very silly, but fun. Each segment is short, so they might make good bedtime reading.
Five Little Peppers Midway
by Margaret Sidney
Continues the story of the Five Little Peppers in their newly prosperous life. If you enjoyed the first book, this and the sequels will continue to charm. If you thought Polly Pepper, her siblings and their Mamsie were too thoroughly good to be true, don't read farther into the series because they just keep on.
Despite the dates attached to the books, the stories seem to go in this order:
The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, 1881
The Adventures of Joel Pepper, 1900
The Five Little Peppers at School, 1903
The Five Little Peppers and their Friends, 1904
The Five Little Peppers Midway, 1890
The Five Little Peppers Abroad, 1902
The Five Little Peppers Grown Up, 1892
The People of the River
by Edgar Wallace
This is the second in a series of stories about Sanders, a British commissioner in Africa. Wallace served in Africa and he gets the background right. However, his attitudes are definitely those of his times, and while he accords the African people a much more individual and human status than many pulp writers of the era, his vision is a decidedly paternalistic one.
If you can overlook that, the stories are thoroughly enjoyable and amusing. Fans of Alexander McCall Smith should enjoy them.
Books in the series, not all available here, include:
Sanders of the River, 1911
The People of the River, 1912
Bosambo of the River, 1914
Bones, 1915
The Keepers of the King's Peace, 1917
Lieutenant Bones, 1918
Bones in London, 1921
Sandi, the King Maker, 1922
Bones of the River, 1923
Molly Make-Believe
by Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
Charmingly romantic story of an invalid, left to solitary recuperation, who subscribes to a letter service to keep his spirits up. The characters here are much more fully drawn than Abbott's typical archetypes.
When a Man Marries
by Mary Roberts Rinehart
A lively, humorous, romantic mystery, told with fine wit: Kit invites a batch of society types to help cheer up Jim, who's despondent over his divorce. Then she's talked into posing as his wife during the sudden visit of his wealthy aunt, who must be kept from knowing about the break-up. Unfortunately, the entire crew -- and several other unexpected characters -- find themselves cooped up together when the butler takes ill and the house is quarantined for smallpox. Meanwhile, the guests' jewels begin disappearing.
Erik Dorn
by Ben Hecht
Slow-moving, rather tedious tale of a selfish and unlikeable Chicago newspaperman with an unaccountable appeal to women. He abandons his adoring wife and elderly father for a young, single woman, ruins her life, and goes on to Europe, where he destroys a few more people. Heavy-handed and rather pointless.
The Man Who Bought London
by Edgar Wallace
Chased out of the U.S. by anti-trust legislation, American millionaire King Kerry and his compatriots are buying up London real estate and commerce, much to the dismay of their competitors. Kerry, meanwhile, is plagued by an implacable enemy and a dark, romantic secret out of his past.
Something of a potboiler, but the story moves along, and comes to a somewhat surprising end.
The Duke in the Suburbs
by Edgar Wallace
A Wodehousian comic novel about the Duc de Montevillier, who -- despite his aristocratic French lineage, is a root' tootin' cowboy out of Texas. He takes up residence in the London suburbs, pays court to the damsel next door from atop a sacred stepladder and is beset by bad guys, both of the of the Wild West and the City financier variety, with loads of witty language and drollery.
Unfortunately, this text is riddled with typographical errors and the story ends so abruptly that I can't help wonder whether some portion is missing.
Mary at the Farm
by Edith M. Thomas
Housekeeping lore and lectures get a slightly saccharin coating of fiction in this story of sweet, young Mary and her Pennsylvania relations. About to wed, Mary gives up her job teaching kindergarten and visits Bucks County in order to learn cooking, handicrafts and other housewifely skills from her Great-Aunt Sarah.
Along with these lessons, she gets tips on thrift, reads a great deal of sentimental poetry (included in the text) and travels around the area taking in the scenic views and historic sights, as well as arguing in favor of women's suffrage and setting up a chapter of the Camp Fire Girls.
It's not exactly thrilling reading -- the storybook section can get a bit prosy (Aunt Sarah is inclined to lecture) -- but there's a wealth of information about early-20th century homemaking techniques, including rug making, preserving and cookery, and the recipe section is full of interesting, old-fashioned American and Pennsylvania-Dutch/German recipes.
Eating in Two or Three Languages
by Irvin S. Cobb
An American war correspondent's memoir of the privations and triumphs of dining amid rationing in Britain and France during World War I. Told lightly and with humor, this short piece is of interest to food historians and other seeking information about life during those difficult times, but it doesn't reach the heights of gourmet porn foodies will be looking for.
Gigolo
by Edna Ferber
Edna Ferber is one of the great, undersung writers of the 20th century. Her finely wrought stories concentrate on the lives of working people, especially women, amid urban landscapes, notably Chicago, drawn with lyrical detail. Every one of the stories in this collection is worthwhile.
The Incomplete Amorist
by E. Nesbit
This romance follows sappy young Betty, a would-be artist, through her first love -- with an engaging but not overly scrupulous painter. It lacks the charm of Nesbit's stories for young people and comes to a predictable, socially acceptable conclusion, but the writing is clear, the story moves along and the descriptions of turn-of-the-century Paris add interest.
The Mouse in the Mountain
by Norbert Davis
This is the first and best of an absolutely delightful series of humor-tinged mysteries featuring the quixotic Doan and his Great Dane partner. The only trouble is that there aren't enough of them.
Tommy and Co.
by Jerome K. Jerome
This engaging collection of tales from the author of "Three Men in a Boat" presents the amusing and sometimes bittersweet adventures of a crew of Fleet Street journalists and their cronies, beginning with the arrival of young Tommy, a gutter-born scamp of uncertain gender. Fans of P.G. Wodehouse should find it especially appealing.