Understanding that his beauty will fade, Dorian Gray expresses the desire to sell his soul, to ensure that his picture, rather than he, will age and fade. The wish is granted, and Dorian pursues a libertine life of varied and amoral experiences, while staying young and beautiful; all the while his portrait ages and records every sin.

The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service enjoyed immense popularity in the years before World War I. It is an early example of the espionage novel and was extremely influential in the genre of spy fiction.

Through the eyes of the other guests, Christie explores themes of identity, hidden pasts, and the blurred boundaries between what appears to be and reality.

The second book of Sherlock Holmes adventures. Yellow fog is swirling through the streets of London, and Sherlock Holmes himself is sitting in a cocaine-induced haze until the arrival of a distressed and beautiful young lady forces the great detective into action. Each year following the strange disappearance of her father, Miss Morstan has received a present of a rare and lustrous pearl. Now, on the day she is summoned to meet her anonymous benefactor, she consults Holmes and Watson.

The Stowmarket Mystery is a mystery novel written by Louis Tracy and first published in the United States in 1904 (it was published a year earlier in England).

The novel introduces us to Reginald Brett, a lawyer by profession but an amateur detective. Reginald is a keen investigator who works alongside Inspector Winter.

Both take notice of the David Hume-Frazer case. This man was accused of the murder of his cousin but was acquitted when no conclusive evidence was found. However, the shadow of suspicion haunts David and affects his personal relationships and the wedding with his fiancée.

A remote estate, two eerie children, and whispers of ghosts. When a young governess arrives at Bly Manor, she begins to see shadowy figures watching from the dark. As fear and doubt consume her, she must uncover the truth, if she can trust her own mind.

Conan Doyle explores themes of crime, revenge, and the eternal struggle between good and evil. Through Holmes’s analytical mind and cunning, the complexities of a case that challenges conventions are unveiled.

THE POLICEMAN’S DISCOVERY “Eleven o’clock and a windy night!” might have been the cry of a mediæval watchman at that hour on the 24th July 19–. Constable Mulligan was more reticent, as it formed no part of his duties to intimate publicly the time or the state of the weather. Nevertheless the bells of the Anglican Church, Troy, London, S.W., chimed the hour through the clamour of a high wind; and those people who were not in bed must have decided to retire. Not that any one appeared to be stirring. The lights were extinguished in all windows within the range of Mulligan’s vision, and the flashing of his lantern on the doors and gates in Achilles Avenue showed that they were discreetly closed. Not even a tramp or a cat enlivened the roadway. Mulligan was apparently the sole waking person in a sleeping world. Troy was a bran-new suburb, built by a jerry-builder, who knew Greek history through the medium of Lempriere’s Dictionary.

Through The Magic Door is an essay written by Arthur Conan Doyle and first published in 1907. The author narrates the books that he has in his library and that have influenced his writing.

Conan Doyle exposes his memoirs and begins with a review of his beginnings as a reader and as a writer. He explains the concerns of his youth and that he would later shape in his work.

Conan Doyle goes on to openly show his library, detailing each shelf and the authors that are part of his collection and his life. The order is made by the physical place they occupy, and so he goes from row to row highlighting the works and authors in it. Among them are Scott, Stevenson, Maupassant, Kipling, Melville…

While some authors have their own section of their own, other books are simply listed in chronological order.