The Noble Prize for Literature was awarded to Henryk Sienkiewicz. Kirjasto calls him a “Polish novelist, a storyteller, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1905.” Also, “His strongly Catholic worldview deeply marked his writing.” He wrote the historical fiction novels With Fire and Sword, The Deluge, Pan Michael, and Quo Vadis?.

Fiction Bestsellers:
1. Mary Augusta Ward, The Marriage of William Ashe Love and marriage in British society turns into disgrace and death as William Ashe and his nineteen year old bride, Kitty, wreck their marriage with jealousy and bad decisions.
2. Alice Hegan Rice, Sandy
3. Robert Smythe Hichens, The Garden of Allah A Trappist monk runs away from his vows into the North African desert.
4. Thomas Dixon Jr., The Clansman This book was the inspiration for DW Griffith’s 1915 silent movie The Birth of a Nation. It was a novel (and a movie) that glorified white supremacy, racial segregation, and the Ku Klux Klan.
5. George Barr McCutcheon, Nedra
6. Katherine Cecil Thurston, The Gambler
7. Katherine Cecil Thurston, The Masquerader (alternate title: John Chilcote)
8. Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth I think Edith Wharton is almost as good a writer and observer of human nature as Jane Austen. Here are my thoughts on House of Mirth.
9. C. N. and A. M. Williamson, The Princess Passes
10. Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rose o’ the River

Critically Acclaimed and Historically Significant:
Albert Einstein, Special Theory of Relativity
Lincoln Steffens, Shame of the Cities
Mary Chesnut, Diary from Dixie I have Ms. Chesnut’s diary, but I haven’t read it. Ken Burns quoted from Mary Chesnut’s diary extensively in his Civil War series, and she seems to have been a keen observer of the Southern civilian experience during the war.
The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Because fans were reluctant to let him go, this collection of short stories about the famous detective resurrects him from the dead and brings him back to entertain more readers.
Baroness Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel This one is really fun. Set during the French revolution, the novels chronicles the adventures of a British lord who goes undercover to rescue French nobles who are bound for the guillotine. Read with A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens for a taste of the British perspective on those crazy “Frenchies.”

“We seek him here, we seek him there,
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven? — Is he in hell?
That damned, elusive Pimpernel.”

G.K. Chesterton, Heretics and Orthodoxy. Semicolon thoughts on Orthodoxy and G.K. Chesterton.