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From advice on planning the perfect wedding to eating an artichoke correctly, Emily Post offers instruction on how to live a well-mannered life circa 1922. With a sometimes gentle, sometimes sharp wit, she maintains that true ladies and gentlemen are characterized not by wealth but by their behavior toward others. (Summary by Laurie Anne Walden)...

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Advice, Instruction

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The Harbor was written in 1915 by Ernest Poole. The novel is considered by many to be one of Poole’s best efforts even though his book, The Family won a Pulitzer Prize. The Harbor is a fictional account of life on a Brooklyn waterfront through the eyes of Billy as he is growing up. The novel starts with Billy the child, living on the harbor with his father, mother, and sister, Sue. During this time he also meets Eleanor who, at that time, he considers to be strange. She later becomes an important character in the novel. His father owns a shipping business, is hard-working, and can think of little else. As a young man, Billy begins to detest the harbor and longs for escape to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a writer and avoiding his father’s business. With his mother’s blessing, he takes flight to Paris to hone his trade. While in Paris, he meets Joe Kramer (J.K.) and a sometimes stormy relationship begins. J.K. forces him to confront human situations that Billy would prefer to close his eyes to. Billy eventually returns to the harbor after some years and recognizes changes are taking place in the harbor, and in his life. The h...

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Fiction

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Ruth and Alice DeVere and their father Hosmer struggle to make ends meet in New York City - times are hard, even for a talented actor like Mr. DeVere. Just as he successfully auditions for a new play, an old voice affliction renders him terribly hoarse and he loses the role. Despite voice rest and medical treatment, Mr. DeVere's voice fails to improve, and it is impossible to find theatre work. A friend and neighbour in their apartment building suggests that Mr. DeVere tries acting in the moving pictures (which being silent, would not need him to speak at all) but Mr. DeVere considers that business to be common and cheap. However, when they receive an eviction notice, and local shops refuse to extend credit, Mr. DeVere may have no choice ... and where he goes, his daughters will follow. Summary by Cori Samuel....

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Teen/Young adult, Fiction

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The Rise of Silas Lapham is the most widely read of W.D. Howells’ novels. An example of literary realism, the story is about a farmer (Silas Lapham) who launches a very successful paint business, and moves his family up the social ladder of Boston. Lapham, however, is not one of the new types of American businessman, the ruthless plutocrat, rather he is the old-fashioned trustworthy Yankee trader, and the story deals with how he fares in the industrial capitalist environment. It is also a novel of manners, telling the story of the courtship of a daughter, and the difficulties the family deals with in attempting to move from one social class to another. (Summary by Margaret Espaillat)...

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Fiction

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This short story by Anna Katharine Green revolves around a plot to steal some goods secured safely within an impenetrable vault within the confines of Mr. Stoughton's business concern. Nobody seems to have any clue as to how the vault can be accessed, and yet access is gained once a day by person or persons unknown, by a means not known to anyone, apparently Mr. Stoughton himself included! Every clerk in the office is suspect, as the devious plot to plunder the vault's contents unfolds. (Introduction by Roger Melin)...

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Mystery, Fiction

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In the High Valley is the fifth and last book of the popular What Katy did series by Susan Coolidge. The story starts out with Lionel Young and his sister, Imogen who set out for the picturesque but remote High Valley (America), leaving their hometown Devonshire (England) behind. Lionel wants to take the share in Geoffrey Templestowe's cattle business. Imogen, owing to her prejudices against America and the American way of life, finds it hard to adjust to life over there. Clover Templestowe, now happily married and living in the High Valley, at first finds it very trying to get on with Imogen. A lot of events ensure in the course of which we meet again with Rose Red, get news from Cousin Helen and of course meet Katy again... until it all finally ends in a lovely double wedding! (Summary by Elli)...

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Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance, a short volume, published by Sheldon & Co., NY in 1871, is Mark Twain's third book. It consists of two stories - First Romance, which had originally appeared in The Express in 1870, and A Burlesque Autobiography (bearing no relationship to Twain's actual life), which first appeared in Twain's Memoranda contributions to the Galaxy. Rather, the content consists of a few short stories of fictional characters who are supposedly part of Twain's lineage. In the final passage, Twain develops the story to a point of crisis, and then abruptly ends the tale, saying: “The truth is, I have got my hero (or heroine) into such a particularly close place, that I do not see how I am ever going to get him (or her) out of it again—and therefore I will wash my hands of the whole business, and leave that person to get out the best way that offers—or else stay there. I thought it was going to be easy enough to straighten out that little difficulty, but it looks different now. ” With that, Twain's Autobiography ends. The illustrations form an interesting aspect of this book. They have no relationsh...

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Comedy, Fiction

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An old theatre under new management; a diva who thinks she can sing; a young ingenue who really can; a masked man who wreaks havoc if he doesn't get his own way. Secrets, intrigues, falling chandeliers! The Phantom of the Opera is here! (Summary by Karen Savage)...

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Horror/Ghost stories, Tragedy, Romance

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One of James’s early novels, The American plunges right in to one of the writer’s most enduring subjects, that of the innocent, or at least inexperienced, American abroad, seeking to come to terms with the social customs and conventions of an old European aristocracy (think of Daisy Miller, Portrait of a Lady, The Wings of the Dove and others). The aptly named Christopher Newman, having made a small fortune from business in California, has come to the Old World for the first time, determined to enlarge his experience by learning all he can of it. In Paris he meets an old acquaintance, Tom Tristram, who (though he himself has little interest in educating himself about Europe) shows him around, and introduces him to the young widow Claire de Cintre, whose family – the aristocratic de Bellegardes – distrust his American brashness and commercialism. Claire, nonetheless, agrees to marry him, thus pulling Newman, rather more deeply than he is prepared for, into a society that closely guards its secrets, and forcing him to face new and quite unexpected questions. (Introduction by Nicholas Clifford)...

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Fiction, Literature

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An extremely wealthy but reclusive man has died, leaving an eccentric will which hints at great riches hidden somewhere in the house. Most of the people at the reading of the will did not know the deceased in person, but had received kindnesses from him, for instance by the payment of school and university fees. The principal beneficiary, a great-nephew, also did not know him. The only two people who really knew him were the old lawyer who dealt with his affairs, and an old Indian servant. Yet when the will had been read, and they all went to where the treasure--gold, jewels and bank-notes--were supposed to be hidden, nothing could be found. There are an unusual number of deaths, by murder and in self-defence, as the story unfolds, and we are left in total suspense until the very end of the very last chapter. The person who works out where the treasure must be, and how it got there, does not come on the scene until almost the last chapter, and even then he has to go on business to America before he can come in and explain his theory, which proves to be right. (Summary by Gutenberg)...

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Fiction, Mystery

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The plot centers on Anna Tellwright, daughter of a wealthy but miserly and dictatorial father, living in the Potteries area of Staffordshire, England. Her activities are strictly controlled by the Methodist church. Having escaped her father by marrying the respectable and attractive Henry, she attempts in vain to help Willy, son of a drunken and bankrupt business associate of her father's....

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Literature, Fiction, Romance, Satire, Teen/Young adult

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Phineas Taylor Barnum (July 5, 1810 – April 7, 1891) was an American showman, businessman, and entertainer, remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and for founding the circus that became the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. His successes may have made him the first show business millionaire. Although Barnum was also an author, publisher, philanthropist, and for some time a politician, he said of himself, I am a showman by profession...and all the gilding shall make nothing else of me, and his personal aims were to put money in his own coffers. (Reference: Wikipedia.org)...

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Biography

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Excerpt: It was a foggy day in London, and the fog was heavy and dark. Animate London, with smarting eyes and irritated lungs, was blinking, wheezing, and choking; inanimate London was a sooty spectre, divided in purpose between being visible and invisible, and so being wholly neither. Gaslights flared in the shops with a haggard and unblest air, as knowing themselves to be night-creatures that had no business abroad under the sun; while the sun itself when it was for a few moments dimly indicated through circling eddies of fog, showed as if it had gone out and were collapsing flat and cold....

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Charles Dickens the author of Dombey and Son, originally wrote the book in installments which were published from October 1846 to April 1848 under the title Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail and for Exportation. The story centers around Paul Dombey, the stern owner of the Firm. He is totally immersed in having his newly born son continue the business, and entirely neglects his daughter Florence. Tragedy occurs, and Florence’s plight worsens. As the years go by, Mr. Dombey sees to it that the man she loves, his employee, is sent far away. Mr Dombey remarries, but his marriage is eventually destroyed, his fortune gone, he becomes destitute. Finally he accepts help from his daughter, and life changes for him. Many wonderful characters interweave the tale, as in all Dickens literary masterpieces. (Summary by Mil Nicholson)...

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Fiction

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volunteers bring you 17 recordings of Business by Ambrose Bierce. This was the weekly poetry project for August 2nd, 2009.

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Satire, Poetry

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Harold Bindloss, while born in England, based most of his novels in western Canada, and The Protector is based primarily in and around Vancouver and Victoria. There is often danger involved in the mining and timber industries north of Vancouver, and there is also danger in the trust given to people who own and operate these mines and timber lands. And finding one's way in locating them can be equally as difficult as well. Wallace Vane and his trusted friend Carroll seemed to encounter these dangers in a seemingly endless journey both for business purposes and for adventure in their search for adequate timber land which they had inadvertently heard of. What is the driving force behind Wallace Vane? Did he regret leaving his home country and the people he knew when he left England, therefore had something to prove, but didn't even realize it himself? Was it simply a secret joy that he received whenever he observed the beauty of his adopted country with its mountains, forests, and crystal clear water? Perhaps it was his reasonable success in the lumber industry? Or was it something deeper within him? Something, perhaps, that he didn't ...

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Fiction

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Subtitled, The principles on which a firm parental authority may be established and maintained, without violence or anger, and the right development of the moral and mental capacities be promoted by methods in harmony with the structure and the characteristics of the juvenile mind. This book gives practical advice on how to raise children using gentle measures that do not damage the children's emotions or self esteem. Most of the information is as relevant and practical today as it was when published in 1871. (Summary by TriciaG)...

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Instruction

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Randall Clayton was surrounded by enemies. His father’s business partner had looked after him in the years since his father’s death. But Hugh Worthington’s motives were not altruistic – he had a secret to hide and a scheme to bring to fruition that would make him millions at Clayton’s expense. Clayton’s roommate, Arthur Ferris, had his own schemes, including stealing the affections of Worthington’s daughter away from Clayton. Clayton worked for a pittance in New York, where he was watched day and night by Worthington’s spies, and by the ruthless Fritz Braun, who plotted to rob Clayton of the large deposit that he daily carried for his employer. It seemed that Jack Witherspoon was his only friend, the only one he could trust. But Jack was sailing for Europe and neither man fully comprehended the danger that was closing in on Randall. (Summary by MaryAnn)...

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Mystery

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Excerpt: DEDICATION. The word lorette is a euphemism invented to describe the status of a personage, or a personage of a status, of which it is awkward to speak; the French Academie, in its modesty, having omitted to supply a definition out of regard for the age of its forty members. Whenever a new word comes to supply the place of an unwieldy circumlocution, its fortune is assured; the word lorette has passed into the language of every class of society, even where the lorette herself will never gain an entrance. It was only invented in 1840, and derived beyond a doubt from the agglomeration of such swallows? nests about the Church of Our Lady of Loretto. This information is for etymoligists only. Those gentlemen would not be so often in a quandary if mediaeval writers had only taken such pains with details of contemporary manners as we take in these days of analysis and description....

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Parnassus on Wheels is about a fictional traveling book-selling business. The original owner of the business, Roger Mifflin, sells it to 39-year-old Helen McGill, who is tired of taking care of her ailing older brother, Andrew. (summary from wikipedia)...