"The corsair; or, the little fairy at the bottom of the sea : A new Christmas…" by William Brough is a comic burlesque pantomime from the mid-19th-century Victorian era. Built on the popular ballet Le Corsaire and winking at Byron’s pirate romance, it mixes fairy spectacle, slapstick, and melodrama. Its likely topic is a swashbuckling pirate story turned into a playful Christmas entertainment in which love and magic try to reform a notorious corsair. The plot follows Conrad, a moody pirate, whose fate becomes the business of sea-fairies led by Serena, who vows to redeem him through love. On shore he rescues the vivacious Medora from a slave market, then survives a fairy-made shipwreck, only to be betrayed by his lieutenant Birbanto, who helps the renegade Yussuf abduct Medora. Serena thwarts a mutiny, and Conrad infiltrates the Pasha’s harem in disguise, duels Birbanto, and is captured. To save him, Medora pretends to accept the Pasha’s proposal, while Gulnare cunningly marries the Pasha herself under a veil. Medora frees Conrad and they escape; the Pasha discovers he is wed to Gulnare; in the woods Birbanto’s coup collapses as guards arrive and Serena grants mercy to the reformed lovers. A general reconciliation follows: the pirate vows domestic respectability, Gulnare secures her marriage, even the villains promise reform, and the piece ends in a sparkling Peri-led transformation to harlequinade. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

"The ghost of Charlotte Cray, and other stories" by Florence Marryat is a collection of short stories written in the late 19th century. The tales lean toward the supernatural and domestic melodrama, exploring jealousy, guilt, and the persistence of wronged affections beyond the grave. Early standouts feature a complacent publisher haunted by a former lover he mistreated, and a London doctor whose rural retreat turns into a study in uncanny repetition and family tragedy. The opening of this collection follows Mr. Sigismund Braggett, a newly married publisher who once encouraged the hopes of an eager “authoress,” Charlotte Cray. After Charlotte dies, Braggett’s clerks, his household, and finally his wife encounter her presence; the apparition appears in his office before dissolving, prompting him to abandon business, knowing Charlotte has kept her vow to “see” his wife. The next story begins with a physician seeking rest at the isolated Rushmere, where he, his wife Jane, and their servants hear creeping footsteps, sobs, and the phantom crack of a gun; terror drives them to an inn. There, the landlord’s wife reveals the house’s past: an asthmatic master, Greenslade, shot his estranged daughter Emily on the stairs and hanged himself, and the nightly sounds are the fatal scene replaying itself. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

"Maugis, ye sorcerer : from ye ancient French : a wonderful tale from ye…." by Lord Gilhooley is a chivalric adventure novel written in the late 19th century. Framed as a found manuscript unearthed in the old city of Mouzon, it retells the Charlemagne-cycle legend of Maugis and the four sons of Aymon—combining battles, betrayal, and courtly love with “sorcery” rationalized as learned occult science. The tale follows the towering warrior-mage Maugis, his loyal brothers, the magnanimous yet wrathful Charlemagne, the treacherous Ganelon, and Yolande, whose secret bond with Maugis threads through the conflict. The opening of the novel sets a modern frame: a narrator in Mouzon meets a haunted hermit, Charles Voudran, who claims to have found and burned ancient manuscripts about Maugis, yet hands over his own synopsis under oath to publish it outside France; he argues Maugis’s wonders sprang from Eastern occult training, not demons. The narrative then shifts to Charlemagne’s court: after a war triumph, the emperor sends his son Lothaire to summon the defiant Duke d’Aigremont, who kills the prince, prompting war, a royal victory, and then an astonishing imperial pardon—later undercut by Ganelon’s treacherous slaying of d’Aigremont. At court, Maugis demands justice, is rebuked, and—goaded during a chess match—kills Prince Berthelot; he escapes through Yolande’s chamber, and with his brothers raises the rock-fast Château Montfort on the Meuse. Charlemagne besieges it; Maugis burns the royal camp, withstands months of pressure, foils a midnight betrayal, then evacuates under fire, fights a rearguard pursuit, and escapes across a flood before the emperor razes Montfort—the opening closing as the brothers confront their father’s forces demanding their surrender. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

"The man who saved New York by Ray Cummings" is a science fiction short story written in the mid-20th century. Blending wartime adventure with speculative fantasy, it follows a man whose roaming ego can possess other beings, culminating in an extraordinary intervention that thwarts a Nazi attack on New York. The narrator’s friend Porky discovers he can slip his consciousness into strangers and control them, a power he nervously demonstrates by making an old woman direct traffic. Seeing a chance to help the war effort, the group schemes to have Porky possess a U-boat commander and sabotage enemy submarines. On a moonlit beach, as an air raid approaches, Porky instead slips into a colossal green sea giant that rises offshore and destroys several Nazi bombers, saving the city. Afterward, Porky and Lisbeth fall in love, and his strange ability vanishes, ending any hope of using it to end the war, even though it has already averted disaster for New York. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

"The Magnificent Possession" by Isaac Asimov is a science fiction short story first published in 1940. Walter Sills, a struggling New York chemist, believes he's discovered a revolutionary metal plating process using pure ammonium. His promising invention attracts unwanted attention from gangsters and corrupt politicians eager to exploit his discovery. As complications mount and he pursues a deal with a steel magnate, Sills faces an unexpected problem that threatens everything. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

"The spirit-rapper; an autobiography" by Orestes Augustus Brownson is a fictional autobiography written in the mid-19th century. It examines the rise of mesmerism and modern Spiritualism through the first-person account of a scientifically minded New Yorker who is drawn from curiosity into clairvoyance, spirit-rapping, and table-turning. Alongside ministers, reformers, and social radicals, he probes the claims and perils of these phenomena, weighing science, faith, and moral consequences. The opening of the narrative presents a prefatory statement that the work blends fact with fictional “machinery” to scrutinize spirit-manifestations and their links to reformist enthusiasms. The narrator then recounts his sober scientific education and early scepticism, his introduction to a French mesmerist’s convincing demonstrations, and a circle of interlocutors debating whether the effects arise from imagination, a human “demonic” force, or something darker. As mesmerism spreads, a lighthearted practitioner, Jack Wheatley, kills his fiancée by overusing it and is haunted by her apparition, while the narrator himself develops an intense desire for hidden power. Moving among Philadelphia reformers, he witnesses and conducts experiments that surpass mere suggestion—remote mesmerism, magnetized objects inducing trance, and clairvoyance that exceeds any “rapport.” He learns automatic speech and writing under a foreign will, then shifts to using objects as instruments, producing table movement and coded raps, and is told he can gain greater knowledge only if he purifies his motives—just as the excerpt breaks off. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

I, Mars by Ray Bradbury is a science fiction short story written in the mid-20th century. The story centers on isolation and self-inflicted psychological torment as a stranded colonist on Mars confronts his own voice preserved in machines. Emil Barton, left alone on Mars after an atomic war recalls Earth’s colonists, survives by wiring the planet with telephones and tapes of his younger self to simulate companionship. Decades later, now old and frail, those recordings begin to taunt him, reminding him of youth and hope while exposing his present despair. He once tried to animate empty towns with sounds, scents, and even robots—only to drown the robots when the delusion became unbearable. Lured by a fake call from a “rocket captain,” he drives across Mars hoping for rescue, finds only empty tarmacs and more machines, and in a final rage smashes phones until his heart fails. The last voices left are two youthful Bartons, mechanically linked, cheerfully talking and laughing, oblivious to the real man’s death. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

"This star shall be free by Murray Leinster" is a science fiction short story written in the mid-20th century. It follows an alien ecological experiment imposed on prehistoric humans, using advanced tools and a compulsion device to explore how abundance and technology might reshape a species and its future, with themes of unintended consequences and cultural acceleration. A young cave-dweller named Tork is drawn by an alien ship’s mind-urge to its landing site, where water-dwelling Antareans gift him a device that summons living creatures and simple but transformative weapons like flint-tipped spears, knives, and bows. The tribe feasts, spreads the tools, and chaos follows as others covet the new power. When theft hits home, Tork cleverly retunes the summoning device to the aliens themselves by drawing their likeness on cave walls, trapping the ship until it trades more tools for the destruction of those images—accidentally launching the tradition of cave art and cementing humanity’s rapid rise. Millennia later, the aliens return to colonize Earth’s oceans, only to be annihilated by the now spacefaring descendants of those cave-folk, revealing the long arc of consequences set in motion by one “kind” experiment. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

"Landscape with figures" by Ronald Fraser is a novel written in the early 20th century. It follows a circle of European “Seven Sages” led by the industrial magnate Lord Sombrewater, whose minute-writer Ambrose Herbert narrates their voyage into an idealized China where art, landscape, and philosophy blur. Blending travel fantasy with philosophical comedy, it contrasts Western power, science, and appetite with ancient Chinese poise, with Lychnis—Sombrewater’s vivid, questing daughter—at the emotional center. The opening of the novel presents a preface framing the tale as a mind’s encounter with Chinese art, then shifts to Ambrose’s calm diary of the Sages aboard the yacht Floating Leaf in eastern waters. After lyrical sea scenes and sharp portraits of the party—Lord Sombrewater, Lychnis, Ruby, Terence, Quentin, Sir Richard, Fulke, Sprot, and the ascetic Blackwood—a threatened mutiny and a storm push them to a river mouth amid fantastical hills. Guided by Terence’s vision of “Peach-blossom People” and the inscrutable Chinese steward they nickname Such-a-one, they abandon the yacht, don Chinese dress, and pole upstream. Along the way, Quentin’s brashness startles villagers until Such-a-one’s words disperse the crowds, Fulke privately declares his hopeless love for Lychnis, and a night sighting of a silent “dragon” (perhaps an aircraft) heightens the sense of myth. They work through a warm, intricate gorge, swim, and enter a serene valley of willows, blossoms, and lotus-lakes dominated by a rocky “Dragon Island.” Finally, they install themselves in exquisite pavilions—Lord Sombrewater, Lychnis, Ruby, Sir Richard, and Ambrose in the “Pavilion of the Yellow Emperor”—to begin their sojourn in this cultivated dream-land. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

The sociable ghost : Being the adventures of a reporter who was invited by the…. by Olive Harper is a satirical supernatural novel written in the early 20th century. Set in and beneath New York’s Trinity Churchyard, it follows a young newspaper man and a loquacious “Sociable Ghost” through a night of ghostly revels—banquets, dances, and conventions—used to lampoon high society, publishers, and pious pretenses. The tone is comic and irreverent, mixing urban history with witty afterlife etiquette and class commentary. The opening of the novel finds a heartbroken reporter brooding in Trinity churchyard, where the graves stir and a sardonic ghost borrows his pipe and whiskey, then guides him through a cemetery tour laced with jokes about epitaphs, cherub carvings, “passports” for the dead, and the folly of memorial sentiment. The ghost explains this is the one night ghosts may freely walk, previews an underground convention and ball, mocks mediums, and gossips about the famous (including a vignette of John Jacob Astor’s spirit happily working an old baling press). Led through the Lawrence tomb into a vast, flower-lit hall curated by a grand social impresario, the reporter witnesses a chaotic card-room episode where a hulking professional gambler unwillingly teaches six lady ghosts poker with beans, and then hears a “mended ghost” recount the brutal mishandling of remains during a church vault relocation. The section closes as a sumptuous banquet begins, the reporter is welcomed to a prime seat, and a spirited quarrel over manners—knives, saucers, and “civilization”—sets the satirical tone for what follows. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

"La chasse au météore" by Jules Verne is a novel written in 1901 and published posthumously in 1908. The story follows two rival amateur astronomers in a small American town who both claim discovery of a new meteor. When the meteor proves to be made of solid gold, their competition intensifies. Meanwhile, an eccentric inventor develops a device capable of controlling where the precious celestial object will fall. More social satire than science fiction, the novel lampoons human greed, obsession, and vanity. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

"Return to Earth by Willis Knapp Jones" is a science fiction short story written in the early 20th century. It follows a resurrected pilot who returns to his hometown with an alien guide, aiming to prove his interplanetary voyage, and probes the clash between advanced beings and a fear-driven, war-prone humanity. Told by the alien Usru, the tale recounts how Henry Sanborn comes back to the small town he left eighteen years earlier, expecting glory for his achievement. Instead, he meets scorn: a former sweetheart flees, his wealthy friend Todd Van Horne spits on him for deserting wartime duty, and a cobbler denounces him as a coward. Hoping for validation, Henry appeals to the local asylum’s physician, Dr. Bender, explaining his anti-gravity ship inspired by the patient Menkowitz and insisting that Usru and the invisible craft are nearby. Skeptics fail to see the G-ray-hidden ship, mockery mounts, and Usru briefly reveals superior powers to drive home the truth. Concluding that Earth’s emotions and violence make contact dangerous, Usru immobilizes the situation, retrieves the terrified Henry—whose life Urcanus science restored after his fatal crash—and departs, resolving that their world will not communicate with humanity. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

"Clicking red heels by Paul Ernst" is a pulp horror short story written in the late 1930s. It follows a wealthy young man whose affair with a cobbler’s daughter turns deadly and whose guilt—or a curse—begins to stalk him in the form of phantom footsteps. The likely topic is the collision of calculated murder with supernatural retribution, blurring the line between psychological torment and an actual haunting. Eldon Gruin, fearing scandal from his obsessive lover Maria José, engineers her death by sending their car over a Palisades cliff while he clings to a tree branch. Publicly, it looks like an accident, but Maria’s father curses him to be forever accompanied by her presence. Eldon soon hears unseen steps—echoes of Maria’s red heels—matching his every move; traces of her appear in his room, and even others catch the faint clicking. Spiraling into terror and isolation, he returns to the cliff and finally rams his car through a new concrete barrier to his death. Afterward, investigators discover tiny sliding weights hidden in his shoe heels, suggesting a possible trick behind the sounds, yet the lingering signs of Maria and the uncanny precision of the footsteps keep the story’s haunting power disturbingly unresolved. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Heu-Heu, or The Monster by H. Rider Haggard is a novel written in the early 20th century. It plunges Allan Quatermain into a supernatural-tinged African adventure sparked by a terrifying cave painting of an ape-like “Monster-god” and the call of a hidden people guarded by legend and fear. With his crafty companion Hans and the enigmatic wizard Zikali, Quatermain is drawn toward a lost land, forbidden rituals, and a threat that blurs the line between myth and reality. The opening of the novel finds Allan Quatermain, prompted by friends at his Yorkshire home, recounting an episode that begins on the Drakensberg slopes when a colossal storm forces his wagon party—himself, Hans, and two Zulu hands—into a vast cave. There, after a perilous crawl past a death-chasm full of ancient bones, moonlight reveals a Bushman painting of a monstrous, half-human figure called Heu-Heu. Haunted by the image, Quatermain treks into Zululand, witnesses a grim royal execution at Nongela Rock, and reaches Zikali in the Black Kloof. The wizard conjures a fiery vision of the same creature, offers replacement oxen, and unfolds a legend: a cruel northern ruler slain by his people returns as Heu-Heu to haunt a volcano-ringed land, abduct women, and sire the savage Heuheua; in that hidden country, a rare “Tree of Visions” grows—its leaves the key to Zikali’s magic and the bait that sets Quatermain’s road toward Heu-Heu, and possibly diamonds and ivory. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

"The carnal god by John R. Speer and Carlisle Schnitzer" is a weird‑fiction pulp horror novelette written in the late 1930s. The story centers on an occult cult in London led by a mesmerizing countess who serves an alien deity, and on the struggle to save a young woman marked for sacrificial rites. A disfigured scientist, Pierre Soret, warns Dr. Carl Fielding that his fiancée Ruth has been ensnared by the Countess Moonard’s cult of Moonere, which draws unearthly power from Sudre, a moon of a distant planet. Pierre reveals the temple’s star-glass that focuses deadly rays and an idol that becomes animate during rites. Using telepathy, a scrying “bowl,” and a counter‑ray, Pierre battles the cult from his hidden laboratory while Inspector Chadwick briefly falls under the countess’s spell. As the sacrificial night peaks, Pierre—dying under Sudre’s rays—guides Carl to the temple with a silver disk that reflects a fatal beam, melting the golden idol and driving the countess to destruction in her own fire. The temple collapses, the enthralled women are freed and age to their true years, and Ruth is saved. Pierre perishes, his voice fading after one last aid from beyond, and Carl and Ruth return to ordinary life. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

"The story hunter : or, Tales of the weird and wild" by Ernest R. Suffling is a collection of short stories written in the late 19th century. Framed by a narrator who lives alone in a caravan and hypnotizes chance acquaintances, it gathers weird, speculative, and adventurous tales told first‑hand by his guests. The opening of the volume introduces the narrator’s Bohemian life and his method, leading into “The Strange Discovery of Doctor Nosidy,” where a fervid experimenter claims the soul is “brain‑ether” and builds an electrical device to read thoughts from skulls; failed trials with a mummy and a Saxon king, a quarrelsome modern skull, and bold theorizing culminate in his ethical dread of revealing the secret. The frame then shifts to a storm on the Cornish coast and “Two Ruined Towers”: a wealthy stranger recalls, as a young artist, rescuing a mysterious elder who proves to be the Wandering Jew; together they hide a pump and diving gear, excavate a riverbed between two ancient towers, and, after weeks of night work, recover a vast hoard of gold and gems that the artist later uses for philanthropy as his immortal guide disappears. The section closes by introducing another source, Billy Flowerdue on the Norfolk coast, whose hypnotic reminiscence begins with his Yarmouth youth, an apprenticeship to sea, and a bar‑parlour encounter with a travelling showman and his giant, setting up the next tale. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

"Karl Grier : The strange story of a man with a sixth sense" by Louis Tracy is a novel written in the early 20th century. It follows Karl Grier, a vigorous, big-hearted man endowed with a “sixth sense” he and his friend dub telegnomy—an ability to see and hear events at a distance and to intuit the meanings behind animal and human sounds. Told by a close confidant in a brisk, semi-scientific tone, the story blends adventure, detection, and speculative psychology. Early episodes span India, the sea, and Oxford, as Karl’s gift draws him toward Maggie Hutchinson, the Armenian Constantine, and a shady New York agent named Steindal. The opening of the novel frames Karl’s uncanny faculty and its first proofs: as a child in India he “knows” of a planned tea-garden raid and saves the Hutchinsons, and later on a homeward voyage he pinpoints an overboard passenger, Constantine, for rescue. A sympathetic doctor, Macpherson, muses on Karl’s abnormal sensory power, while schooling in Britain dulls it until a menagerie brawl and other triggers revive it. At Oxford, with his American friend Frank Hooper observing, Karl’s trances sharpen: he glimpses Manhattan Beach and a storm-tossed liner, the Merlin, likely carrying Maggie Hutchinson. Testing himself again, he “travels” to New York, watches Constantine with the theatrical agent Steindal, deciphers a coded cable meant to snare Maggie with a concert offer, and—when a restaurant band begins to play—finds he can hear across the ocean as well as see. The tension peaks when Karl’s focused attention seems to spark Constantine’s shark-vision panic, echoing his earlier near-drowning. The narrator then reveals his long-standing tie to Karl’s family, foreshadowing his role in the unfolding account. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Murder mask by Edgar Daniel Kramer is a short piece of weird/crime fiction written in the late 1930s. Centered on a cursed medieval-style silk mask, it explores how jealousy, inheritance, and a high-society masquerade collide when the wearer is fated to kill the one they love before dawn. Antonio Colletti, embittered after Nita Tosca marries his cousin Tomaso Romani, returns with the ominous mask and a warning verse, secretly prepared to use poison if needed. At their all-night masque, Romani dons the mask and grows violently jealous, dragging Nita into an alcove where, in a frenzy, he stabs her. Horrified, he forces Colletti to put on the mask; compelled to slay whom he loves best—himself—Colletti drinks his own poison and dies. Romani then kills himself beside Nita as the revelry ends and morning breaks. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

"The strange transfiguration of Hannah Stubbs" by Florence Marryat is a novel written in the late 19th century. It blends domestic realism with occult intrigue, following an exiled Italian aristocrat in London, a pragmatic young doctor, and a country maid whose uncanny mediumship draws them into séances and supernatural tests. Expect a tale of jealousy, guilt, and the thirst for answers beyond the veil, with the title character’s latent powers promising unsettling transformations. The opening of the novel introduces Signor Ricardo, a reserved Italian language teacher in a Soho lodging-house, secretly using a black-draped room for occult experiments. Visited by Dr. Karl Steinberg, he confesses he is Paolo, Marchese di Sorrento, who killed his wife Leonora in a jealous rage and now longs to learn if she was guilty or innocent by summoning her spirit. After an unnerving séance that spooks Steinberg, the men discover their landlady’s new maid, Hannah Stubbs, an ingenuous village girl whose presence triggers poltergeist-like activity. They strike a deal to “treat” her, hold sittings, and hear a controlling voice called James speak through her, promising guidance and hinting that Leonora is near; soon Hannah herself reports seeing a veiled, black-eyed lady on the stairs and by her bed, setting the stage for deeper—and riskier—experiments. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

"Tuhatvuotinen valtakunta : Nelinäytöksinen näytelmä Upton Sinclairin romaanin…" by Heikki Välisalmi is a four-act play written in the early 20th century. Set in a gaudy pleasure-palace of the third millennium, it satirizes plutocratic power and spiritual emptiness as a scientific super-weapon imperils humanity. The drama centers on engineer Billy Kingdon, the oligarch Lumley-Gotham, his daughter Helena, and the cynical statesman Granville, fusing futuristic spectacle with class struggle and moral choice. Expect a dystopian political allegory where survival, love, and the collapse of social conventions collide. The opening of the play unfolds in the Huvipalatsi: Billy, undercover as an airship captain, reunites with Helena and urges a clandestine escape, but Granville intercepts them; she prevents Billy from shooting him, and Billy is jailed. Amid a parade of vain guests, the frail magnate Lumley-Gotham frets over security and a new element, “radiumiitti”; when word arrives that its inventor might unleash it, panic erupts. The party stampedes onto a giant aircraft Billy can pilot, abandoning others as an unseen catastrophe wipes out life below. Six hours later the survivors return to a silent, frozen palace dotted with ash, discover there are no servants or systems to rely on, and watch the butler Tuttle turn mutinous while Granville drinks and jeers. Billy scouts the dead city, confirms the emptiness, proclaims a “year one” without property or old marriages, and publicly claims a future with Helena as the scene breaks off. (This is an automatically generated summary.)