John Sutherland

Offers an informative study of the art of reading fiction, examining the reasons why we read fiction and supplying readers with different questions to ask about what they read while discussing such key aspects of novels as plot, character, and pace.

"The narrator is an American writer living in London who has had writer's block for twenty years and is now terminally ill. The other main characters are a bored and wealthy banker, a small-time criminal, and Nicola Six, a young woman who knows she will be murdered a few minutes after midnight on November 5, 1999, and who goes in search of her killer. Set ten years in the future, against a backdrop of environmental and social degradation and the looming...

In The Sea-Wolf, London's most gripping novel, Humphrey Van Weyden is rescued from the freezing waters of San Francisco Bay by a demonic sea captain and introduced to fates far worse that death. Through this story London recalls his own adventures on a sealing vessel at the age of seventeen. John Sutherland's notes include a history of pelagic seal hunting and an account of the many cinematic versions of this novel.

In fifteenth-century England, when his father's murderer is revealed to be his guardian, seventeen-year-old Richard Shelton joins the fellowship of the Black Arrow in avenging the death, rescuing the woman he loves, and participating in the struggle between the Yorks and Lancasters in the War of the Roses.

The story begins with a brief prologue describing how the famous yellow diamond was captured during a military campaign in India by a British officer in 1799. The action moves quickly to 1848 England, where, according to the British officers will, the diamond has been given to one of the soldiers young relatives, Rachel Verinder. Yet only hours after the diamond arrives at the Verinder estate, it disappears. Was it stolen by a relative? A servant?...

The story begins with an eerie midnight encounter between artist Walter Hartright and a ghostly woman dressed all in white who seems desperate to share a dark secret. The next day Hartright, engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie and her half sister, tells his pupils about the strange events of the previous evening. Determined to learn all they can about the mysterious woman in white, the three soon find themselves drawn into a...

Examines Britain's grand literary masterpieces including the times and conditions they came from and the diverse issues with which their writers grappled.