Modern library

The Boni and Liveright edition of 1918 introduced by G.K. Chesterton and translated by J.M. Shirazi contains five stories - 'Creatures that once were men', 'Twenty-six men and a Girl', 'Chelkash', 'My Fellow Traveller', and 'On a Raft'.

That old bell, presage of a train, had just sounded through Oxford station; and the undergraduates who were waiting there, gay figures in tweed or flannel, moved to the margin of the platform and gazed idly up the line. Young and careless, in the glow of the afternoon sunshine, they struck a sharp note of incongruity with the worn boards they stood on, with the fading signals and grey eternal walls of that antique station, which, familiar to them and insignificant, does yet whisper to the tourist the last enchantments of the Middle Age.

"In a small town in Ohio, a dreamy, rather stupid 'poor white' boy suddenly becomes a rich and famous inventor. This classic novel of Americana, first published in 1920, tells the story of the power unleashed by that happenstance-- a force that overnight dotted a vast valley with cities, built a network of industry, made quick men rich and fearful men poor. In telling of the 'poor white's' love, it shows how the forces that twist men made the boy's story a wild and terrible one, bigger than the mere story of one person."--P. of cover.

The Big Sleep (1939) is a hardboiled crime novel by Raymond Chandler, the first to feature the detective Philip Marlowe. It has been adapted for film twice, in 1946 and again in 1978. The story is set in Los Angeles. The story is noted for its complexity, with characters double-crossing one another and secrets being exposed throughout the narrative. The title is a euphemism for death; it refers to a rumination about "sleeping the big sleep" in the final pages of the book. In 1999, the book was voted 96th of Le Monde's "100 Books of the Century". In 2005, it was included in Time magazine's "List of the 100 Best Novels".

Existential novel focusing on the ethical and moral conflicts in the philosophy and life of a French professor.