The Indiscreet Letter - by Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

I ran across The Indiscreet Letter (- UK edition no longer available-) by chance and was struck by the rave reviews.  As the book was published in 1915, I do not think the reviews were planted by the author’s relatives!

5.0 out of 5 stars Possibly the most adorable story I've ever read: The Traveling Salesman, The Young Electrician and the Youngish girl meet on a train from Halifax to Boston and discuss life, love, and indiscreet letters.  I don't know if I can convey quite how cute this is, but I've just reread it after reading it for the first time about a year ago, and I have no doubt I'll be reading it again sometime

5.0 out of 5 stars A lovely little story!: What a great little story. Times may change but human nature doesn't. I wish the story continued!

Who could resist such enthusiasm!  (I salute  the first reviewer, re-readers are rare these days; but many of you here are giving books a second look.)

“The voice of the Railroad Journey was a dull, vague, conglomerate, cinder-scented babble of grinding wheels and shuddering window frames; but the voices of the Traveling Salesman and the Young Electrician were shrill, gruff, poignant, inert, eternally variant, after the manner of human voices which are discussing the affairs of the universe.

"Every man," affirmed the Traveling Salesman sententiously—"every man has written one indiscreet letter during his lifetime!"

"Only one?" scoffed the Young Electrician with startling distinctness above even the loudest roar and rumble of the train.

With a rather faint, rather gaspy chuckle of amusement the Youngish Girl in the seat just behind the Traveling Salesman reached forward then and touched him very gently on the shoulder.

"Oh, please, may I listen?" she asked quite frankly.

With a smile as benevolent as it was surprised, the Traveling Salesman turned half-way around in his seat and eyed her quizzically across the gold rim of his spectacles.

"Why, sure you can listen!" he said.”

Let’s listen, too!

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

Moby Dick - by Herman Melville

Moby Dick is a great book, but not an easy book. (US Edition) (UK edition)  You can see why in this extract.  Melville had been a whaler and he was trying to minutely recreate that way of life; but as the passage continues, you see the narrative moves on with an accident and attempted rescue.  (You will have to download the book to find out what happens. I never disclose the plot!)

"Nimble as a cat, Tashtego mounts aloft; and without altering his erect posture, runs straight out upon the overhanging mainyard-arm, to the part where it exactly projects over the hoisted Tun. He has carried with him a light tackle called a whip, consisting of only two parts, travelling through a single-sheaved block. Securing this block, so that it hangs down from the yard-arm, he swings one end of the rope, till it is caught and firmly held by a hand on deck. Then, hand-over-hand, down the other part, the Indian drops through the air, till dexterously he lands on the summit of the head. There—still high elevated above the rest of the company, to whom he vivaciously cries—he seems some Turkish Muezzin calling the good people to prayers from the top of a tower. A short-handled sharp spade being sent up to him, he diligently searches for the proper place to begin breaking into the Tun. In this business he proceeds very heedfully, like a treasure-hunter in some old house, sounding the walls to find where the gold is masoned in. By the time this cautious search is over, a stout iron-bound bucket, precisely like a well-bucket, has been attached to one end of the whip; while the other end, being stretched across the deck, is there held by two or three alert hands. These last now hoist the bucket within grasp of the Indian, to whom another person has reached up a very long pole. Inserting this pole into the bucket, Tashtego downward guides the bucket into the Tun, till it entirely disappears; then giving the word to the seamen at the whip, up comes the bucket again, all bubbling like a dairy-maid's pail of new milk. Carefully lowered from its height, the full-freighted vessel is caught by an appointed hand, and quickly emptied into a large tub. Then remounting aloft, it again goes through the same round until the deep cistern will yield no more. Towards the end, Tashtego has to ram his long pole harder and harder, and deeper and deeper into the Tun, until some twenty feet of the pole have gone down.

Now, the people of the Pequod had been baling some time in this way; several tubs had been filled with the fragrant sperm; when all at once a queer accident happened. Whether it was that Tashtego, that wild Indian, was so heedless and reckless as to let go for a moment his one-handed hold on the great cabled tackles suspending the head; or whether the place where he stood was so treacherous and oozy; or whether the Evil One himself would have it to fall out so, without stating his particular reasons; how it was exactly, there is no telling now; but, on a sudden, as the eightieth or ninetieth bucket came suckingly up—my God! poor Tashtego—like the twin reciprocating bucket in a veritable well, dropped head-foremost down into this great Tun of Heidelburgh, and with a horrible oily gurgling, went clean out of sight!

"Man overboard!" cried Daggoo, who amid the general consternation first came to his senses. "Swing the bucket this way!" and putting one foot into it, so as the better to secure his slippery hand-hold on the whip itself, the hoisters ran him high up to the top of the head, almost before Tashtego could have reached its interior bottom. Meantime, there was a terrible tumult. Looking over the side, they saw the before lifeless head throbbing and heaving just below the surface of the sea, as if that moment seized with some momentous idea; whereas it was only the poor Indian unconsciously revealing by those struggles the perilous depth to which he had sunk."

And next time you drink a Starbuck's, lift it in homage to Melville.  His character lent his name to the franchise.

"The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though born on an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being hard as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his live blood would not spoil like bottled ale. He must have been born in some time of general drought and famine, or upon one of those fast days for which his state is famous."

There is something Dickensian about that description . . .

Whether this book was rescued by post-World War I acclaim by the literary establishment or by the popularity of silent movie adaptations, one thing is certain - a top candidate for the Great American Novel was almost forgotten.  After the 1851 publication, it was largely ignored for almost a hundred years.  If Moby-Dick is on your "to read" list, don't neglect it any longer!

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

Persuasion - by Jane Austen

You can’t really talk about a neglected Jane Austen novel, but Persuasion (£0.86 UK Edition) (0,99 Deutsch Edition) is not her best known novel.  It is still a wonderful book.  The title refers to the problem of listening to friendly advice on an important matter where you should be the only authority.  (Think of Carla consulting her sous chef on what to cook during the finale of Top Chef a few years ago!)

Of course Austen’s heroine was not in a cooking competition, but I love this story of mistakes, broken hearts and second chances.

."I have no conception whom you can mean, Shepherd; I remember no gentleman resident at Monkford since the time of old Governor Trent."


"Bless me! how very odd! I shall forget my own name soon, I suppose. A name that I am so very well acquainted with; knew the gentleman so well by sight; seen him a hundred times; came to consult me once, I remember, about a trespass of one of his neighbours; farmer's man breaking into his orchard; wall torn down; apples stolen; caught in the fact; and afterwards, contrary to my judgement, submitted to an amicable compromise. Very odd indeed!"


After waiting another moment—


"You mean Mr Wentworth, I suppose?" said Anne.


Mr Shepherd was all gratitude.


"Wentworth was the very name! Mr Wentworth was the very man. He had the curacy of Monkford, you know, Sir Walter, some time back, for two or three years. Came there about the year ---5, I take it. You remember him, I am sure."


"Wentworth? Oh! ay,--Mr Wentworth, the curate of Monkford. You misled me by the term gentleman. I thought you were speaking of some man of property: Mr Wentworth was nobody, I remember; quite unconnected; nothing to do with the Strafford family. One wonders how the names of many of our nobility become so common."'

 Jane Austen, always so witty!

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

Brood of the Witch Queen - by Sax Rohmer

You have to love the preface to Brood of the Witch Queen! (£2.81 UK Edition)

                                                       PREFATORY NOTICE

"The strange deeds of Antony Ferrara, as herein related, are intended to illustrate certain phases of Sorcery as it was formerly practised (according to numerous records) not only in Ancient Egypt but also in Europe, during the Middle Ages. In no case do the powers attributed to him exceed those which are claimed for a fully equipped Adept."

You don’t read those sort of claims in Harry Potter!

If you are ready for a supernatural thriller written in 1918 with an Egyptian twist, pick up this novel by Sax Rohmer (the pen name of Arthur Henry Ward.

'"Walton is junior house-surgeon there," he said, "and he can arrange for you to see the case. She (the patient) undoubtedly died from some rare nervous affection. I have a theory," etc.; the conversation became technical.
Cairn went to the hospital, and by courtesy of Walton, whom he had known at Oxford, was permitted to view the body.

"The symptoms which Sime has got to hear about," explained the surgeon, raising the sheet from the dead woman's face, "are—"

He broke off. Cairn had suddenly exhibited a ghastly pallor; he clutched at Walton for support.

"My God!"

Cairn, still holding on to the other, stooped over the discoloured face. It had been a pretty face when warm life had tinted its curves; now it was congested—awful; two heavy discolorations showed, one on either side of the region of the larynx.

"What on earth is wrong with you?" demanded Walton.

"I thought," gasped Cairn, "for a moment, that I knew—"

"Really! I wish you did! We can't find out anything about her. Have a good look."

"No," said Cairn, mastering himself with an effort—"a chance resemblance, that's all." He wiped the beads of perspiration from his forehead.

"You look jolly shaky," commented Walton. "Is she like someone you know very well?"

"No, not at all, now that I come to consider the features; but it was a shock at first. What on earth caused death?"

"Asphyxia," answered Walton shortly. "Can't you see?"

"Someone strangled her, and she was brought here too late?"

"Not at all, my dear chap; nobody strangled her. She was brought here in a critical state four or five days ago by one of the slum priests who keep us so busy. We diagnosed it as exhaustion from lack of food—with other complications. But the case was doing quite well up to last night; she was recovering strength. Then, at about one o'clock, she sprang up in bed, and fell back choking. By the time the nurse got to her it was all over."

"But the marks on her throat?"

Walton shrugged his shoulders.'

More Bones than CSI, I would say . . .

Once again I am unable to account for such a high price for a book on Amazon UK that is free  I selected an edition for UK readers that includes two other novels. on Amazon US!

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

Cranford - by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

Some of you may have enjoyed a show on PBS Masterpiece (née Theater) called Cranford. (UK Edition)  (Deutsch edition) It was a story of genteel English countryside meets the modern age.  I enjoyed the show and was surprised to find out it was based on a novel.

"In the first place, Cranford is in possession of the Amazons; all the holders of houses above a certain rent are women.  If a married couple come to settle in the town, somehow the gentleman disappears; he is either fairly frightened to death by being the only man in the Cranford evening parties, or he is accounted for by being with his regiment, his ship, or closely engaged in business all the week in the great neighbouring commercial town of Drumble, distant only twenty miles on a railroad.  In short, whatever does become of the gentlemen, they are not at Cranford.  What could they do if they were there?  The surgeon has his round of thirty miles, and sleeps at Cranford; but every man cannot be a surgeon.  For keeping the trim gardens full of choice flowers without a weed to speck them; for frightening away little boys who look wistfully at the said flowers through the railings; for rushing out at the geese that occasionally venture in to the gardens if the gates are left open; for deciding all questions of literature and politics without troubling themselves with unnecessary reasons or arguments; for obtaining clear and correct knowledge of everybody’s affairs in the parish; for keeping their neat maid-servants in admirable order; for kindness (somewhat dictatorial) to the poor, and real tender good offices to each other whenever they are in distress, the ladies of Cranford are quite sufficient.  “A man,” as one of them observed to me once, “is so in the way in the house!”  Although the ladies of Cranford know all each other’s proceedings, they are exceedingly indifferent to each other’s opinions.  Indeed, as each has her own individuality, not to say eccentricity, pretty strongly developed, nothing is so easy as verbal retaliation; but, somehow, good-will reigns among them to a considerable degree."

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

The Odd Women - by George Gissing

George Gissing is certainly not a household name.  I saw his novel, The Odd Women (£0.70 UK Edition) (EUR 0,99 Deutsch edition) on a list of neglected books.  Since I have not read it, I have to reach out to Wikipedia for a description.  “In advance of their time, [Gissing's novels] variously deal with the growing commercialism of the literary market, religious charlatanism, and the situation of emancipated women in a male-dominated society.  This novel is the one about emancipated women.”

Also from Wikipedia: “The novel's title is derived ostensibly from the notion that there was an excess of one million women over men in Victorian England. This meant there were "odd" women left over at the end of the equation when the other men and women had paired off in marriage. A cross-section of women dealing with this problem are described in the book and it can be inferred that their lifestyles also sets them apart as odd in the sense of strange.”

The first paragraph intrigued me . . .

"'So to-morrow, Alice,' said Dr. Madden, as he walked with his eldest daughter on the coast-downs by Clevedon, 'I shall take steps for insuring my life for a thousand pounds.'

It was the outcome of a long and intimate conversation. Alice Madden, aged nineteen, a plain, shy, gentle-mannered girl, short of stature, and in movement something less than graceful, wore a pleased look as she glanced at her father's face and then turned her eyes across the blue channel to the Welsh hills. She was flattered by the confidence reposed in her, for Dr. Madden, reticent by nature, had never been known to speak in the domestic circle about his pecuniary affairs."

 So this is now in my Kindle archive, and I recommend it to you too!

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

Little Dorrit - by Charles Dickens

I am fascinated by the Marshalsea debtors’ prison.  It is where Dickens’ own father was sent and that fall reverberated, sending young Charles from school to an ignominious job – an experience that can be seen to color the difficult lives of many of his young characters.

The Marshalsea itself is a character in Dickens’ Little Dorrit. (£0.69 UK edition) (EUR 0,99 Deutsch edition)  I think it is a somewhat overlooked novel.  It is not that I would tell people not to read his more famous works, but you have to read this novel too!

"There had been taken to the Marshalsea Prison, long before the day when the sun shone on Marseilles and on the opening of this narrative, a debtor with whom this narrative has some concern.


He was, at that time, a very amiable and very helpless middle-aged gentleman, who was going out again directly. Necessarily, he was going out again directly, because the Marshalsea lock never turned upon a debtor who was not. He brought in a portmanteau with him, which he doubted its being worth while to unpack; he was so perfectly clear—like all the rest of them, the turnkey on the lock said—that he was going out again directly.


He was a shy, retiring man; well-looking, though in an effeminate style; with a mild voice, curling hair, and irresolute hands—rings upon the fingers in those days—which nervously wandered to his trembling lip a hundred times in the first half-hour of his acquaintance with the jail. His principal anxiety was about his wife.


'Do you think, sir,' he asked the turnkey, 'that she will be very much shocked, if she should come to the gate to-morrow morning?'


The turnkey gave it as the result of his experience that some of 'em was and some of 'em wasn't. In general, more no than yes."

Oddly enough this book has been filmed twice and both times was marred by audio that could not be understood.  The actors talked in an undertone and mumbled all at once.  I think it was an effort to convey a tone from the book, which evokes so well the busy society of the prison.  

It is such an odd concept to us that people would be locked up for owing money – ensuring that they could not work to pay off their debts!  But odder still is that their families sometimes moved into the prison as well, but those people could go back and forth because they were not debtors.  So in a sense the Marshalsea was like a ghetto where some have access and egress during daylight hours.  Of course this brings about trading and scheming  in an effort to collect the money needed to leave. 

The prison was torn down before Dickens wrote the novel -I visited the site in London to see a massive brick wall that is still standing.  As Dickens says of its destruction in the foreword to this novel,  “ . . . the world is none the worse without it.”   

How ironic then that he re-created it as completely as Joyce did Dublin. The Marshalsea, with its sad and colorful inhabitants, will stand forever. 

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

Parnassus On Wheels - by Christopher Morley

I grew up in a home with very few adult books.  (That’s OK, I had a library card and my Mother wrote me a note giving me permission to use the adult section of the library.)

We had one novel which my father received as a prize from business school, .99 cent Parnassus on Wheels  (No UK edition) by Christopher Morley.  Of course I was drawn to this book and it was a great find for me, a funny romantic novel about selling books!

I read it a couple of times decades ago, but not recently.  However, I think this is a book that will hold up.  It has never completely disappeared because it is a quirky little book for book lovers.

"Andrew and I were wonderfully happy on the farm until he became an author. If I could have foreseen all the bother his writings were to cause us, I would certainly have burnt the first manuscript in the kitchen stove.

Andrew McGill, the author of those books every one reads, is my brother. In other words, I am his sister, ten years younger. Years ago Andrew was a business man, but his health failed and, like so many people in the story books, he fled to the country, or, as he called it, to the bosom of Nature. He and I were the only ones left in an unsuccessful family. I was slowly perishing as a conscientious governess in the brownstone region of New York. He rescued me from that and we bought a farm with our combined savings. We became real farmers, up with the sun and to bed with the same. Andrew wore overalls and a soft shirt and grew brown and tough. My hands got red and blue with soapsuds and frost; I never saw a Redfern advertisement from one year's end to another, and my kitchen was a battlefield where I set my teeth and learned to love hard work. Our literature was government agriculture reports, patent medicine almanacs, seedsmen's booklets, and Sears Roebuck catalogues. We subscribed to Farm and Fireside and read the serials aloud. Every now and then, for real excitement, we read something stirring in the Old Testament—that cheery book Jeremiah, for instance, of which Andrew was very fond. The farm did actually prosper, after a while; and Andrew used to hang over the pasture bars at sunset, and tell, from the way his pipe burned, just what the weather would be the next day.

As I have said, we were tremendously happy until Andrew got the fatal idea of telling the world how happy we were."

 Since I am talking about books about books, here is something I saw that amused me:  How To Make A Kindle Cover From A Hollowed Out Hardback Book Guess this is as good a use as any for a DTB (Dead Tree Book.)


I am starting to make serious sweeps of my bookshelves for books I am unlikely to read if they are not on my Kindle.  I am downloading so many books in the course of doing this blog, that I am now willing to let go of DTB's, knowing I will not read them.  I am either sending them to http://www.PaperBackSwap.com (tell them marilyn at marilynlitt dot com sent you) where they can be swapped for DVDs that I can send to military serving overseas or I am donating them to my local library.  (Spring Branch, TX)


Happy Reading!  I hope you will think Parnassus is the gem that I do!

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

The Turn of the Screw - by Henry James

Here is on of the reasons why I do this blog.  I decided to download Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw. (UK edition) (Deutsch edition)  Searching Amazon for this title, the first page showed 12 versions and none were free.  On page four, after innumerable “turns,” I finally found the free copy I knew had to be out there.  (It has a linked table of contents, by the way.)

It is just not as easy as it should be to download the free classic works.  Before I got to the 44^th title, which is the free title linked above, I passed up a perfectly good version published by the trustworthy mobi for .89, innumerable copies under $5.00, books that were NOT even this title and a copy inexplicably offered for $44.99!  I guess if you sell just one copy at this outrageous price, it was worth the trouble to convert it to the Kindle format and upload it.

The book starts with a story telling session, as this novella is a story narrated by a house guest:

'I can see Douglas there before the fire, to which he had got up to present his back, looking down at his interlocutor with his hands in his pockets. "Nobody but me, till now, has ever heard [this story]. It's quite too horrible." This, naturally, was declared by several voices to give the thing the utmost price, and our friend, with quiet art, prepared his triumph by turning his eyes over the rest of us and going on: "It's beyond everything. Nothing at all that I know touches it."


"For sheer terror?" I remember asking.


He seemed to say it was not so simple as that; to be really at a loss how to qualify it. He passed his hand over his eyes, made a little wincing grimace. "For dreadful--dreadfulness!"


"Oh, how delicious!" cried one of the women.


He took no notice of her; he looked at me, but as if, instead of me, he saw what he spoke of. "For general uncanny ugliness and horror and pain." '

The Turn of the Screw is a truly creepy story.  Some of the pre-copyright books surprise us by just how up-to-date they seem.  This story of mysterious evil just seems to get more puzzling and disturbing and I’m sure it will be giving chills in 2111.

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.