Books with title Candles

In 1690s Massachusetts, as many are accused and hanged for witchcraft, 17-year-old Leah Sabin numbs her confusion by embarking on an affair with Caleb Mather, the charismatic minister of her small village. Having lost his faith in the wake of tragedy, Caleb invites the curious Leah to join his plans of revolutionizing the minds of their conservative neighbors through freedom and pleasure. Yet, as the madness of the witch trials hits closer to home, Leah's romantic enchantment slowly fades, setting off a series of ripples that alter her perception of the world forever.

Mystery novella set in Honolulu, "a story that stretches over twenty years, all the way from that bare Honolulu court room to a night of fog and violence in San Francisco." However, the novel does not feature Biggers' famous Honolulu-based detective Charlie Chan! "A murder mystery told in short space in a masterly manner." (The Outlook, 7 April 1926)

From the records of the district court at Honolulu for the year 1898 you may, if you have patience, unearth the dim beginnings of this story of the fifty candles. It is a story that stretches over twenty years, all the way from that bare Honolulu court room to a night of fog and violence in San Francisco. Many months after the night of the tule-fog I happened into the Hawaiian capital, and took down from a library shelf a big legal-looking book, bound in bright yellow leather the color of a Filipino house-boy's shoes on his Saturday night in tow

From the records of the district court at Honolulu for the year 1898 you may, if you have patience, unearth the dim beginnings of this story of the fifty candles. It is a story that stretches over twenty years, all the way from that bare Honolulu courtroom to a night of fog and violence in San Francisco. Many months after the night of the tule-fog, I happened into the Hawaiian capital and took down from a library shelf a big legal-looking book, bound in bright yellow leather the color of a Filipino houseboy's shoes on his Saturday night in town. I found what I was looking for under the heading: "In the Matter of Chang See."The Chinese, we are told, are masters of indirection, of saying one thing and meaning another, of arriving at their goal by way of a devious, irrelevant maze. Our legal system must have been invented and perfected by Chinamen — but is this lèse majesté or contempt of court or something? Beyond question the decision of the learned court in the matter of Chang See, as set down in the big yellow book, is obscured and befuddled by a mass of unspeakably dreary words. See 21 Cyc., 317 Church Habeas Corpus , 2d Ed., Sec. 169. By all means consult Kelley v. Johnson, 31 U. S. (6 Pet.) 622, 631-32. And many more of the same sort. Here and there, however, you will happen on phrases that mean something to the layman; that indicate, behind the barrier of legal verbiage, the presence of a flesh-and-blood human fighting for his freedom — for his very life. Piece these phrases together and you may be able to reconstruct the scene in the courtroom that day in 1898, when a lean impassive Chinaman of thirty stood alone against the great American nation. In other words, Chang See v. U. S.