Lazarus

Author	Algernon Blackwood
ISBN	1587156520

Two friends are midway on a canoe trip down the Danube River. Throughout the story Blackwood personifies the surrounding environment—river, sun, wind—and imbues them with a powerful and ultimately threatening character. Most ominous are the masses of dense, desultory, menacing willows,...

Author	Fyodor Dostoyevsky
ISBN	1409913589

I like to observe children. It is fascinating to watch the individuality in them struggling for self-assertion.



Need I say that parties or kindred social gathering aren’t invariably fun, nor for the attendants, nor for the host? Neither are weddings. As bringing a book seems quite...

Author	Aleksandr Ivanovich Kuprin
ISBN	0451500458

Her mourth was almost pressed against his, and her words were like quick, hurried kisses: "You must absolutely go through with the duel tomorrow."

This is an account of the final days of Czarist Russia. An absorbing saga about the brutalities of military life upon its own soldiers. Stranded...

Author

Dorothy Scarborough

this collection was first published in 1921, so keep that in mind when considering the word "modern" in its title.

two classics I enjoyed revisiting, one excellent find, a handful of okay, a handful of uninteresting, one execrable, and one superlative find.

☀

"The Willows"...

Author	Leo Tolstoy
ISBN	0886820715

“God Sees the Truth, but Waits” is a deceptively simple short story from Leo Tolstoy, written in 1872, about a wealthy, carefree young man falsely accused of murder. I was fascinated by the parallelism between the events at the beginning of the story and those at the end, including:

•...

Author	Anton Chekhov
ISBN	0895986841

"Going to prison is like dying with your eyes open."
—Bernard Kerik

A wealthy banker holds a party at his commodious home, where a group of intellectuals argue as to which is the more humane punishment: a swift execution, or life imprisonment in a Russian jail. One kills swiftly, the...