検索キーワード： 制作 "Jimcin Recordings" 文芸小説

A motley crew, banished from a Western town, find strength, and weakness, in each other.

Les Miserables is set in the Parisian underworld. The protagonist, Jean Valjean, is sentenced to prison for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread. After his release, Valjean plans to rob monseigneur Myriel, a saint-like bishop, but cancels his plan. However, he forfeits his parole by committing a minor crime, and for this crime Valjean is haunted by the police inspector Javert. Valjean eventually reforms and becomes a successful businessman, benefactor, and mayor of a northern town.

Professor Van Dusen solves a variety of different mysteries together with his friend, Hutchinson Hatch, a reporter for a fictional newspaper called The Daily New Yorker. The professor is known as the "Thinking Machine", and he solves problems by the remorseless application of logic. In this story, he thinks his way out of a maximum-security prison.

The story takes place in Salem, Massachusetts, part of Puritan New England, which was a common setting for Hawthorne's work. Its theme is one often used by Hawthorne: the conflict between good and evil in human nature and, in particular, the problem of public goodness and private wickedness.

When Walter Hartright encounters the "solitary figure of a woman, dressed from head to foot in white garments" on a lonely road, he is haunted by her. He falls in love with his employer's niece, Laura, because she resembles the mysterious woman. Laura, however, is betrothed to the evil Sir Percival, who wishes to marry her for her money. The woman in white, it turns out, is Anne Catherick, who was confined in an asylum by the evil Sir Percival because she knew a devastating secret about him.

Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman (October 31, 1852¿March 13, 1930) was a prominent 19th century American author. Up until recently she was known primarily as a "feminist" writer, for her classic stories like "A New England Nun" and "The Revolt of Mother". However, she also wrote many well-crafted supernatural stories which have only recently begun to attract appreciative critical attention. These stories combine pragmatism and supernaturalism and are very much in the tradition of an "Americanized" Gothic.

Called by Lord Byron, "The most exquisite of all romances in miniature," The Vicar of Wakefield is the story of a simple reverend who, losing his fortune, moves his family to a new part of the country and tries to live according to his beliefs. He and his family make an Arcadian picture of affectionate accord. That is, until the idyll is rudely disturbed by a notorious seducer. The book is a classic comedy of manners and a satire on the moralistic tales of the period.

W. H. Hudson was born in 1841 in Buenos Aires and seems to have been a sort of permanently displaced person. He moved to London in 1869 and wrote a series of remarkable books, most with a wilderness setting. In 1904, when he was 63, he focused on an Indian legend for Green Mansions, a memorable romance of the jungle for which he is now chiefly remembered. His epitaph reads, "He Loved Birds and Green Places and the Wind on the Heath, and Saw Brightness of the Skirts of God."

C. Auguste Dupin is a Frenchman who decides to solve the mysterious brutal murder of two women in Paris. Numerous witnesses are quoted in the newspaper as having heard a suspect, though the witnesses each think it was a different language. As the first true detective in fiction, the Dupin character established many literary devices which would be used in future fictional detectives including Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.

First published in 1888 in France, this novel is usually considered Maupassant's best. It is a piercing study of jealousy and suspicion. Pierre and Jean are the sons of a retired Parisian jeweler, M. Roland, living at Le Havre. Pierre is a doctor, whose temperament is somewhat nervous and unsteady. Jean, the younger, has a placid nature and is a lawyer. Both love the widowed young Mme. Rosemilly, who seems to prefer Jean. When Jean inherits a fortune from M. Marechal...

While Robert Louis Stevenson is most famous for novels like Treasure Island and Kidnapped, he also wrote a number of excellent stories of the supernatural. "Markheim" is one of his best.

Northanger Abbey certainly contains some elements of 18th century Gothic “potboilers” but with a satiric slant. It has the overbearing father who was “not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters”, although her mother does not die giving birth to her, and the “heroine”, Catherine Morland, prefers playing cricket with her brothers to any girlish pastimes like watering rose bushes or feeding canaries. The book is a hilarious parody and certainly the most lighthearted of Austen's novels.

In its oppressive atmosphere of fog, mist, and mud, nothing conjures up the dreary days of November and its "implacable" weather like the celebrated opening of Bleak House. The plot concerns a long-running legal dispute (Jarndyce and Jarndyce) that has far-reaching consequences for all involved. Dickens' assault on the flaws of the British judiciary system is based in part on his own experiences as a law clerk.

This collection consists of the following nine stories: "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment", "The Great Stone Face", "My Kinsman, Major Molinaux", "The Minister's Black Veil", "Mr. Higgonbotham's Catastrophe", "The Ambitious Guest", "The Birthmark", "The Minotaur", and "Young Goodman Brown".

The hit on the head that sends Hank Morgan back through 13 centuries does not affect his natural resourcefulness. Using his knowledge of an upcoming eclipse, Hank escapes a death sentence, and secures an important position at court. Gradually, he introduces 19th century technology and soon has an easy life. He becomes "The Boss" of the Kingdom, second only to the King.

Two colonial officers extol the benefits they are bringing to an African village in the form of "quays and warehouses, and barracks-and billiard-rooms". A French republican who has fathered three idiot sons makes his peace with the Church: only to have an idiot daughter. A woman chooses not to leave her husband...but he leaves her. Such are the ironies of Conrad's earliest short stories.

The real Jonathan Wild, born about 1682 and executed at Tyburn in 1725, was one of the most notorious criminals of his age. His resemblance to the hero in Fielding's satire of the same name is general rather than particular. The real Jonathan (whose legitimate business was that of a buckle-maker) like Fielding, won his fame, not as a robber himself, but as an informer, and a receiver of stolen goods.

Raffles is Sherlock Holmes' polar opposite, a foil for great detectives and a man with all the immoral charms of a hero-thief, plus a remarkable ability at cricket. Raffles is the godson of Robin Hood, the model for Cary Grant in "To Catch a Thief," and the inspiration of Leslie Charteris' "The Saint." As the great reinvention of the trickster for the 20th century, Raffles convinces readers to throw away their scruples and follow along for wit, bold adventures, and thrilling suspense.

Rule by head or rule by heart? Elinor Dashwood is a great believer in "sense," while her exuberant younger sister Marianne feels keenly that only "sensibility" (what today we'd call passion) serves to guide the heart. Through vicissitudes and, in the case of Marianne, outright betrayal by her lover, these two women learn the value in the other's outlook, and thereby prepare themselves for later domestic bliss that is the hallmark resolution of Jane Austen's novels.

Henry James wrote many excellent ghost stories, his most famous being, The Turn of the Screw. In The Ghostly Rental a newcomer in town, who loves to walk for exercise, comes upon a deserted rural road. He follows the road and comes upon a house that immediately strikes him as "simply haunted." He is determined to get into the house and find out the truth about it. What he finds out turns out to be quite different than what he expected.