The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain: The Savage Noble
Nothing conjures up summer quite like a bully, sure-’nough treasure: A kite, a dead rat and a string to swing…
Poe’s The Black Cat: The Perverseness Which Passeth Understanding
Even as nature falls asleep under the fiery spell of autumn, there awakens in the lords of nature a keen spiritual…
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The womb and the tomb—one of the most striking mirror images that our lives have to offer. Babies are buried…
The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy: A Story for All Souls
A man lies on his deathbed—screaming; screaming for three days without cessation. Even behind closed doors, the sound horrifies all…
The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
It is a terrible paradox that the pursuit dedicated to improving the human condition bears the greatest potential to destroy humanity….
The Murders in the Rue Morgue and Other Tales by Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was missing. The year was 1849. There had been no trace of Mr. Poe for six days…
Do the Dead Come Back and Watch the Living? On Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca
by Emma Warner
Every reader loves a good ghost story. And that is why Daphne du Maurier’s Romantic-Gothic novel, Rebecca has thrilled readers since its publication…
Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes by Mother Goose
There is a gravestone in Boston’s Granary Burying Ground that legend purports marks the resting place of Mother Goose. Now, whether…
Wartime Morality in Ambrose Bierce’s “A Horseman in the Sky”
The extant portion of the six-mile long Civil War front at Cold Harbor, Virginia is small enough to explore in an…
The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Andersen: A Tale of Resurrection
Just as baptism and burial are seldom associated with one another, neither are a duckling and the Resurrection. The interconnectivity of…
The House of Usher & the House of Poe: Celebrating 175 Years of Horror
Edgar Allan Poe. Enigmatic. Eccentric. Erratic. Melancholic. Alcoholic. Neurotic. But above all else, Fantastic. Throughout his 40 tormented years of…
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
Be warned. As you read this, the demons are grinding the glorious creatures of folklore into distorted glorifications of the grotesque….
Will Rascals Defend Our Civilization… and What Books will they Read?
He faces execution each day. Seven days a week, his jury of peers votes unanimously for capital punishment. The judge’s…
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Complete Stories of Sherlock Holmes
George Bernard Shaw wrote that “Sherlock Holmes was a drug addict without a single amiable trait,” and he was absolutely…
The End of the Affair
It is officially over. I should admit that publicly, shameful and embarrassing though it may be. It pains me to…
