Michael Ward

Criminals beware - there is no eluding the extraordinary mind of Father Brown Dr. Orion Hood is one of the eminent thinkers of his day, a psychologist whose expert opinion on human nature is sometimes sought by the police. Usually, he is called on to solve only the most spectacular crimes - a nobleman murdered, a diplomat poisoned - but today a more ordinary problem presents itself. An amiable little priest named Father Brown asks Dr. Hood to help...

"Caspak.a mysterious and menacing island is lost in time. Here you'll find tribes or primitive ape-like cave-dwellers, huge pterodactyls that soar on their bat-like wings, and mighty dinosaurs that prowl the dark shadows of primeval forests. What fate lies in wait for the only humans from the modern world to ever set foot upon this accursed land?"--Page 4 of cover.

Soon after the American Civil War, Confederate soldier John Carter joins the gold rush in Arizona. After striking a vein of gold, Carter runs into trouble with the natives of the area. In attempts to evade their pursuit, Carter hides in a cave, unaware of its magical properties. Mysteriously, Carter is transported to Mars, which the planet inhabitants call "Barsoom". When Carter discovers that the gravity difference between Mars and Earth has granted...

When John Carter discovers that his beloved wife, Dejah, has been imprisoned in the Temple of the Sun, he is desperate to rescue her. However, the prison, which slowly rotates, is only opened once a Barsoomian year. As Dejah's prison sentence drags on for over a hundred days, the window of opportunity is narrowing for Carter to save her. Amid social and political unrest from the last war, the Thern had appointed a new leader, but many still believed...

One of George Bernard Shaw's best-known plays, Pygmalion is based on ancient Greek mythology. Pygmalion fell in love with one of his sculptures, which then came to life. The general idea of that myth was a popular subject for Victorian era British playwrights. Shaw's updated and revised version of this ancient Greek legend was first presented in England in 1914. Poking fun of the antiquated British class system, it introduces Henry Higgins, a professor...

The Prisoner of Zenda - Anthony Hope - The Prisoner of Zenda (1894), by Anthony Hope, is an adventure novel in which the King of Ruritania is drugged on the eve of his coronation and thus is unable to attend the ceremony. Political forces within the realm are such that, in order for the king to retain the crown, his coronation must proceed. Fortuitously, an English gentleman on holiday in Ruritania who resembles the monarch is persuaded to act as...

Falsely accused of theft, Silas Marner is cut off from his community but finds refuge in the village of Raveloe, where he is eyed with distant suspicion. Like a spider from a fairy-tale, Silas fills fifteen monotonous years with weaving and accumulating gold. The son of the wealthy local Squire, Godfrey Cass also seeks an escape from his past. One snowy winter, two events change the course of their lives: Silas's gold is stolen and, a child crawls...

"In Dunwich, a remote village in Massachusetts, lost in the depths of an inhospitable countryside with dark valleys invaded by brambles, the old stories of witches are still alive and strange subterranean noises resound at times under the hills surmounted by mysterious circles of stones. On an isolated farm in the region, Lavinia Whateley, a simple-minded albino, gives birth to a child, Wilbur, whose father is unknown. Old Whateley, Lavinia's father,...

"Published one year after its author's death in 1818, "Persuasion is Jane Austen's last completed novel. On its most basic level, the book is a love story. On another level, it is a deft exploration of human foibles and social flux. Twenty-seven-year-old Anne Elliot is Austen's most adult heroine. Eight years before the story proper begins, she is happily betrothed to a navel officer, Frederick Wentworth, but she precipitously breaks off the engagement...

After being kidnapped by his villainous uncle, sixteen-year-old David Balfour escapes and becomes involved in the struggle of the Scottish highlanders against English rule.