Two old school friends meet in a café in Paris, but their chance meeting turns into a surprise for one of them. Aged, dirty, and with fingernails blackened with tobacco, Jean des B ...

It’s 1870 and the Siege of Paris is in full swing, where the French-Prussian war has brought daily life to a halt. Wearied, starving, and strung out on absinthe, two men meet by ch ...

"The Thief" tells the tragic story of a soldier enamoured with life and with a girl as disquieting and wayward as she is beautiful. Through masterful storytelling within a story, G ...

Walter Schnaff is unlike the other soldiers in the Prussian army. While his brothers-in-arms advance through Normandy with the intent of subjugating the French and achieving victor ...

When the Baronne de Grangerie attempts to imitate the gestures of a woman in the window on the opposite side of the street, she gets much more than she bargained for. Will she make ...

Matilda cannot wait for her husband to be away so she can invite Captain Sommerive into her house and heart. But as their love affair grows more passionate, Matilda begins to see t ...

Moscow is lost, occupied by Napoleon's French hordes. Is Russia lost? Is all lost? Students of history will already know the answer. But whether or not you do, Leo Tolstoy's 'War a ...

The third quarter of 'War and Peace' is where the rubber really hits the road (or the cannonballs hit the walls). The story centres on one of history's most famous periods, Napoleo ...

Have you taken a deep breath after the drama and conflict of volume one? It's time to dive into 'War and Peace II' - and it does not slow down. With Russia bruised by Napoleon's vi ...

'I'm not looking for 'War and Peace'" is a modern way of saying 'keep it short'. However, 'I am looking for 'War and Peace'' should be on our lips. Leo Tolstoy's masterpiece is a c ...

Published posthumously in 1884, An Old Man’s Love was Anthony Trollope’s last completed work. A classic tale of romance and rivalry, it follows the intertwining stories of young or ...

Joaquin Phoenix won an Oscar for playing the Joker, capturing the psychologically dark personality of a villain. Critics were stunned – just as how the villainous character of Lydi ...

Ok, nobody wants to lose pund500 – but is it big enough of a deal to deserve a short story? To put it into context: a Victorian pund500 was about pund60,000 in today’s money. So, y ...

If you’ve seen "The Sixth Sense" with Bruce Willis, you’ll be familiar with Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome: deliberately making a person feel unwell in order to care for them. In "Je ...

Dr Phil didn’t invent family drama. This Victorian novel might as well be given the Dr Phil caption of "I found out my parents weren’t married, and my cousin won’t give me my inher ...

"Little Novels" isn’t quite a "Little Women" spin-off, as the title might suggest. While you won’t be treated to Timothée Chalamet, you will be treated to fourteen short stories – ...

What is "poor" about Miss Finch? Well, with a novel with names like "Mr Sebright" (he’s an eye specialist – "see bright", geddit?), it’s all about sight. You see, Lucilla Finch has ...

Imagine as a woman losing all your property to your husband. Sadly, such was the law for much of the Victorian times. Wilkie Collins’s novel "The Woman in White" (starring Charles ...

'A Double Rescue' is a short story that reads in stark contrast to the adventure writing, which Ballantyne is most notorious for. It is an evangelistic tale of a blithe young boy n ...

‘The Last of the Legions’ by famous Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is a collection of twelve short stories. Stories in the collection include ‘Through the Veil’, ‘T ...

First published in 1898 ‘The Refugees’ is a historical tale by the famous ‘Sherlock Holmes’ author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Set largely in France at the end of the 17th century, the ...

A young traveller sets out to make his fortune and discovers the idyllic distant land of Erewhon. Its people welcome him with open arms, but this apparent utopia soon reveals its d ...

When you think of Charles Dickens’ ghost stories, you may first think of ‘A Christmas Carol’ and the ghosts that visit Scrooge. However, ‘The Trail for Murder’ is perhaps Dickens’ ...

'A Modern Mephistopheles' is an eerie tale of passion, deceit, control and greed. It is little wonder Alcott's authorship of the novel was unknown for many years, as she sheltered ...

Back when Louisa May Alcott was an aspiring author she took to the art of writing short stories – much like her character Jo March in ´Little Women’.A thrilling and chilling story, ...