Summary:

Emma Woodhouse and her invalid father mourn the loss of Miss Taylor, Emma's companion and former governess, to marriage. Emma cheers herself up by taking the orphan Harriet Smith under her wing. Emma discourages Harriet's interest in the farmer Robert Martin, cultivating for her instead the attentions of the minister Mr. Elton (who is actually trying to woo Emma) or the eligible visiting bachelor Frank Churchill, while failing to see Harriet's feelings for Emma's brother-in-law Mr. Knightley. Emma herself flirts with the idea of loving Frank Churchill, until she discovers that he has been secretly married to the aloof Jane Fairfax. Mr. Knightley sets all straight by arranging Harriet's engagement to Robert Martin and marrying Emma himself.

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Summary:

Warren here supposedly presents the papers of a late friend, detailing the interesting cases he had encountered as a physician. In fact, the "cases" are sensational short stories, presented as a novel due to the framing chapter introducing the narrator's "Early Struggles" to make a living as a physician. Other stories investigate typically Gothic themes like ghosts, duels, graverobbing, elopements, and broken hearts, with other scandalous problems like gambling, dissipation, murder, domestic abuse, and suicide. Medical topics include mental illness, epilepsy, hysterical paralysis ("catalepsy"), cancer, toothache, consumption, syphilis, heart disease, alcoholism, disease of the spine, gout, amaurosis (blindness), puerperal hemorrhage, measles, and stroke ("apoplexy").

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Summary:

The narrator, a writer, prides himself on his astute review of Hugh Vereker's latest novel. Vereker dismisses his efforts, explaining that all critics have "missed my little point," "the particular thing I've written my books most for," "the thing for the critic to find," "my secret," "like a complex figure in a Persian carpet." The narrator racks his brains and, in desperation, tells his friend Corvick of the puzzle. Corvick and his novelist fiancée, Gwendolyn, pursue "the trick" without success until Corvick, traveling alone in India, wires Gwendolyn and the narrator "Eureka! Immense."

He refuses, however, to divulge the secret to Gwendolyn until after they are married, and then dies in a car crash. Since Gwendolyn refuses to share her knowledge, the narrator speculates, "the figure in the carpet [was] traceable or describable only for husbands and wives--for lovers supremely united." She marries Drayton Deane, and after her death, the narrator approaches Deane to discover the secret. But Deane is surprised and humiliated by the news of his wife's great "secret," and he and the narrator conclude by sharing the same throbbing curiosity.

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