Books in Summit Classic Large Print Editions series

This premium quality large print edition contains the complete and unabridged original classic version of The Idiot, printed on heavyweight, bright white paper in a large 7.44"x9.69" format, with a fully laminated full-color cover featuring an original design. Also included is authoritative introductory commentary discussing the life and work of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and The Idiot in particular, providing the modern reader with useful background information to enhance the enjoyment of this classic novel. "The Idiot" is Prince Lev Nikolaievich Myshkin, returning to Russia after a long stay at a Swiss sanitorium. Prone to blackouts and learning difficulties as a youth, he has been treated with some success, but the society of St. Petersburg scorns him, viewing as idiocy his simple honesty, trustful nature and naiveté. Finding himself at the center of an increasingly complex entanglement involving a beautiful kept woman and a virtuous and pretty young girl, both of whom win his affection, and the men who love - or desire - them, Myshkin's unfettered goodness precipitates a tragic chain of events with disastrous consequences. Beginning with the chance meeting of Myshkin, light-haired, blue-eyed, affable and unassuming and the dark and intense Rogozhin on the train to St. Petersburg, "The Idiot" is a study in contrasts, exploring themes of good and evil, honesty and deceit, passion and self-control, through the story of Myshkin, "a positively good man," thrust into a society which espouses as values the very qualities which it derides as "idiocy," and questioning whether human society has a place for the true and unflinching honesty and trust of a saintly man. Complex and dense with rich characters and evocative questions about human nature and society, ranked among the finest of Dostoyevsky's works, "The Idiot" is often considered one of the most brilliant literary achievements of the Golden Age of Russian literature. Like Dickens in England, Dostoyevsky was embraced by the masses about whom he wrote and to whom he spoke, despite criticism by contemporary "experts" who found his subject matter unsuitable for "literature" and his work lacking in style and technical merit. And like Dickens, Dostoyevsky has become an inextricable part of the culture of his country and the essential literature of the world.

This premium quality large print edition includes the unabridged classic version of Quo Vadis in a large 7.44"x9.69" format, printed on heavy, bright white 60# paper with a fully laminated full-color cover featuring an original design. Set against the backdrop of the madness of the blood-soaked reign of Emperor Nero, Quo Vadis tells the story of the epic moral clash between the debauched paganism of the mighty Roman Empire and the austere piety of Christianity in its infancy. Quo Vadis is also the story of the personal philosophical journey of a small group of individuals seeking to find their way among the conflicting ideas in a time of upheaval which would, in the end, change the course of human history. Written by Polish novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz, recipient of the 1905 Nobel Prize for Literature, the novel was first serialized in Polish periodicals in 1895, with the novel version published in 1896 and subsequently translated into some fifty different languages. Jeremiah Curtain's 1897 English translation was a huge best-seller, putting U.S. publishe Little, Brown on firm financial footing. By far the most widely-read translation, it has long been the "standard" version. While some commenters have argued that Curtain's translation is "stilted" or "dated", Sienkiewicz himself, who read and spoke English, after reading Curtain's translations of his works wrote, in 1898, "I admire not only the sincere conscientiousness and accuracy, but also the skill, with which you did the work. Your countrymen will establish your merit better than I; as to me, I can only desire that you and no one else should translate all that I write. With respect and friendship, Henryk Sienkiewicz."

This quality large print volume includes the complete text of Louis Tracy's vintage mystery tale in a freshly edited and newly typeset edition. With a large 7.44"x9.69" page size, this Summit Classic edition is printed on heavyweight bright white paper with a fully laminated cover featuring an original full color design. Page headers and footers and unobtrusive original annotations explicating unusually obscure terms exemplify the attention to detail given this volume. By increasing the page size along with the font size we are able to reduce printing costs and make this complete, unabridged large print edition available at reasonable cost. The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley... Mortimer Fenley, London financier and banker, lay dead at the very doorstep of his country home, shot from ambush while lighting his morning cigar. The local constable, by mere coincidence, arrived quickly at the scene and organized a search of the surrounding area, concluding that the shot could only have come from one vantage point, a high rocky crag opposite the house. The only clue turned up by the search, a clear set of footprints found in a shady wet area near the rocks, is carefully preserved when the constable closes the area and puts it under police guard. It falls to the famed Scotland Yard duo of Winter and Furneaux to unravel a mystery that begins with the realization that had the shot actually come from the only possible spot the marksman would have been clearly visible from the house, that the Fenley mansion hides ugly secrets in stark contrast to its idyllic setting, and that the only person who could have committed the murder could not have fired the shot. Louis Tracy (1863-1928) was a prolific British writer of both fiction and nonfiction. Despite his large body of work, comparatively little is known about Tracy's life. The author of numerous mysteries, Tracy's works are characterized by a straightforward narrative style, well-developed background stories, interesting characters and complex plots. Offered a job as a reporter in response to a letter he submitted to a local paper Tracy became a newspaperman, eventually serving as editor of the English-language Morning Post in Allahabad, India. Between 1885 and 1895 Tracy wrote and edited a series of nonfiction books and short stories, based for the most part on his experiences in India. In 1895 he outlined his first novel, about a European conflict in which America would come to the aid of Britain in a great war which would be the end of all war, was published as a serial in "Pearson's Weekly" and later in book form. "The Final War" was quite successful and is a pioneering example of the "Future War" or "Future History" sub-genre of science fiction and fantasy literature. Tracy actually wrote this novel in separate episodes as they became due, rather than submitting portions of a finished work. By 1900 Tracy was producing straightforward mystery novels on a regular basis, and with the exception of 1917-1919, when he was rousing support for the war effort in America, he continued to publish an average two or three novels per year through the 1920's, and a collection of his works was reissued after his death. A few of his novels are still fairly well-known, and many of his mysteries, especially those featuring Reginald Brett and Winter & Furneaux, are still read and enjoyed by mystery fans today.

This premium quality large print edition contains the complete and unabridged original text of Carolyn Wells' vintage mystery, the first of her tales featuring the popular detective "Pennington Wise", first published in 1918, in a newly edited and freshly typeset version. With a large 7.44"x9.69" page size, this Summit Classic Press edition is printed on heavyweight bright white paper with a fully laminated cover featuring an original full color design. Also included are footnotes, added sparingly, to aid the modern reader with especially obscure or archaic terms without interfering with the story and an original, detailed biography discussing the life and work of the author. The Room With the Tassels... “And you propose to find out who and how?” said Braye. “If I live up to my reputation, I must do so. There are but two kinds of detectives. Effective detectives and defective detectives. It is the aim of my life to belong to the former class, and here’s my chance to make good." Thus the reader is introduced to Pennington "Penny" Wise ("Every possible joke regarding my name has already been made...") and his teenaged sidekick, the enigmatic Zizi, a girl with a quirky sense of humor and a mysterious background. When a group of friends decides to go "ghost hunting" and rents an abandoned country manor house with a history of hauntings, they quickly begin to wonder if they have gotten more than they bargained for. Strange sounds, objects moved from room to room... and soon, a menacing apparition that visits any who occupy "the room with the tassels," where a murder is said to have occurred years before, and the corpse is said to have vanished while locked in that room. But when death strikes - precisely at 4:00, as the ouija board predicted - the little group divides over whether something supernatural - or something sinister but quite mortal - is at work, help arrives, in the form of Pennington Wise and Zizi, his indispesable little assistant. Wells' mysteries sometimes involved an occult or macabre element, and an almost Gothic tone and The Room With the Tassels is an example, featuring - apparently - a murderous ghost in a remote, long-empty country manor-house with a history of the corpses of murder victims vanishing from a securely locked room. It falls to Pennington Wise and Zizi to solve the triple mystery: who is the murderer, how was it done, and how does a body disappear from a locked room? Carolyn Wells... Carolyn Wells (1862–1942) was a prolific writer of poems, mysteries, children’s literature, and humor. Born in Rahway, New Jersey, she suffered from hearing loss caused by scarlet fever when she was six, but went on to graduate high school as class valedictorian. Wells’ early publications were mainly humorous verse, but in 1909 she published the first of her 82 detective and mystery novels, while continuing to publish humor, verse, and producing two popular series of novels intended for girls, the "Marjorie Maynard" and "Patty Fairfield" stories. Her "Technique of the Mystery Story" (1913) remains a well-regarded study of the genre, considered the first "how to" guide to writing myseteries, and in 1937 she published an autobiography, "The Rest of My Life". Wells died in New York City in 1942.