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It deserves a prize for the best use of the internet ever!

If that's your definition of cerebral mysteries, you should try Edmund Crispin's classic The Moving Toyshop. It's set in Oxford, its characters are college students, literature teachers and poets (it's even dedicated to British poet Philip Larkin), and it's full of amusing literary allusions...

I wish I could give an original answer, but for me were the usual classic suspects: Poe's stories of ruthless criminals and logical puzzles, Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie's fast-paced mysteries.

I liked the idea of a man who creates and sells new pasts for people. It's a short and quick read, made faster by its use of the thriller genre to tell a story about identity. The ending really got to me, it left me in a brief state of sadness. I keep telling myself to read more by...

"The Book of Sand" is one of the best short-stories Jorge Luis Borges wrote. But it's also an example of how the master's life was an exercise in returning to and perfecting the way of expressing the same favorite themes. The idea of a space that contains all written possibilities, all letter...

During the Napoleonic Wars, a French officer participating in the conquest of Saragossa finds a diary. Shortly afterwards he’s captured. However one of the Spanish officers notices the diary and identifies himself as one of the descendents of the diary’s owner. He saves the Frenchman for having...

You mean an adaptation of Crime and Punishment?

What do you understand by a cerebral mystery and what novels would you give as examples?

I've read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea; Kim; King Solomon's Mines; Treasure Island; The Prisoner of Zenda; Robinson Crusoe; and Moonfleet from that list. Only J. Meade Falkner's book left me indifferent. All the other are remarkable adventures full of unforgettable characters.

The poet Richard Cadogan returns to Oxford, where he studied, in pursuit of adventure and excitement. Arriving late at night he is drawn to a toyshop whose door stands ajar. Inside he finds a dead woman. He runs for the police, but when they return the toyshop has disappeared and in its place...

This happened to me when I read Thoreau's Walden recently. It started well, he writes rather beautifully about nature and has some interesting ideas about living in autonomy. But for some reason I justy found the book dull and kept putting it off, reading very few pages each time I picked it up...

Deborah Davis’ Strapless tells the story of the creation of American painter John Singer Sargent’s most famous painting, Madame X. It’s a story that starts in antebellum New Orleans and ends in Bohemian Paris. Amélie Avegno is an American beauty who travels to Paris and quickly becomes one of...

G. K. Chesterton is a very special writer. He seems to write about the least important things: murders, anarchist conspiracies, kidnappings and all types of crimes imaginable. His ‘Father Brown’ stories chronicle the exploits of a detective priest. In The Man Who Was Thursday, a young man...

I'm glad you're excited about this :) But I think there are better comics that aren't mere adaptations of literary works waiting to be discovered.

This is an unfortunate list of misconceptions. In Europe and Japan people of all ages, of both genders, and from all social classes, read comics. The moribund American industry is hardly a portrait of the way comics are perceived in the world. And they not only foster reading (in my case I even...

Last place was Uncle Philip's home in London, where I had to perform in his life-sized creepy puppet show or else he'd probably throw me out.

Fifteen-year-old Melanie loses her parents when they’re travelling in America. Without resources, she and her younger brothers, Jonathon and five-year-old Victoria, move to London and get used to living in Uncle Philip’s home. This is Angela Carter’s basic plot for her novel about the...

I think it's still impressive that he had enough will power to put his thoughts and feelings on paper through all his work, after the way his father destroyed his self-esteem. Some people self-destruct with such a background of abuse, but he managed to find a creative channel for his suffering.

Funny, I've been bumping into Ligotti's name a lot today. I think that's a sign I must read him. I don't know about his style, for some good thinking man's horror: Gustav Meyrink:The Golem Vernon Lee: Hauntings Alfred Kubin: The Other Side William Hope Hodgson: The House on the...

I don't understand why reading for escapism must meaning reading garbage. I'm working on my MA right now and have many texts to read. I'm keeping up a job at the same time. And I still like to read for escapism. But I like to escape into the strange, intellectual worlds of Jorge Luis Borges...