Lighthouse Books for Translation and Publishing: The Grand Babylon Hotel (ePub)

The Grand Babylon Hotel is an exclusive London establishment, and American millionaire Theodore Racksole, visiting the hotel with his spirited 23-year-old daughter Nella, decides to buy the place. What he hasn't counted on is having to deal with a criminal conspiracy whose purposes are not at all clear, and events take an unexpected turn as Theodore and Nella play detective. Replete with evil villains, physical dangers, and secret passages, The Grand Babylon Hotel is a mesmerizing thriller that will be enjoyed by mystery lovers everywhere. Newly designed and typeset in a modern 6-by-9-inch format by Waking Lion Press.

Arnold Bennett, in full Enoch Arnold Bennett, (born May 27, 1867, Hanley, Staffordshire, England-died March 27, 1931, London), British novelist, playwright, critic, and essayist whose major works form an important link between the English novel and the mainstream of European realism.

Bennett's father was a self-made man who had managed to qualify as a solicitor: the family atmosphere was one of sturdy respectability and self-improvement. Arnold, the eldest of nine children, was educated at the Middle School, Newcastle-under-Lyme; he then entered his father's office as a clerk. In 1889 he moved to London, still as a solicitor's clerk, but soon gained a footing in literature by writing popular serial fiction and editing a women's magazine. After the publication of his first novel, A Man from the North (1898), he became a professional writer, living first in the Bedfordshire countryside, then, following his father's death, moving to Paris in 1903. In 1907 he married a French actress, Marguerite Soulié; they separated in 1921.

Bennett is best known for his highly detailed novels of the "Five Towns"-the Potteries, since amalgamated to form the city of Stoke-on-Trent, in his native Staffordshire. As a young writer he learned his craft from intensive study of the French realistic novelists, especially Gustave Flaubert and Honoré de Balzac, who emphasized detailed description of people, scenes, and events. He also owes an immediate debt to George Moore, who was influenced by the same writers. Bennett's criticism was of such high calibre that, if he had never written fiction, he would rank as an important writer. He was less successful in his plays, although Milestones (1912), written with Edward Knoblock, and The Great Adventure (1913), adapted from his novel of five years earlier, Buried Alive (1908), both had long runs and have been revived.

Arnold Bennett, drawing by Walter Ernest Tittle, 1923; in the National Portrait Gallery,

As early as 1893 he had used the "Five Towns" as background for a story, and his major novels-Anna of the Five Towns (1902), The Old Wives' Tale (1908), and Clayhanger (1910; included with its successors, Hilda Lessways, 1911, and These Twain, 1916, in The Clayhanger Family, 1925)-have their setting there, the only exception being Riceyman Steps (1923), set in a lower-middle-class district of London.