Wilhelmina Billie Bennett, red-haired daughter of American millionaire Rufus, loves golf, dogs and Tennyson and is to marry Eustace Hignett, the weak, poetry-writing son of Mrs. Horace Hignett, the famous English writer on theosophy. Enter Sam Marlowe, Eustace's cousin, who plays tournament golf, and Jane Hubbard... read more »
Mr. Neilson was determined to name his first child after his boyhood chum, William Henshaw. When the baby disappointed him by being a girl, he was consoled by naming her Billy. Miss Billy, now 18, orphaned and all alone in the world, takes her lawyer’s suggestion to ask her namesake to take her in. Only one little... read more »
Anne Elliot is one of Austen's quietest heroines, but also one of the strongest and the most open to change. She lives at the time of the Napoleonic wars, a time of accident, adventure, the making of new fortunes and alliances. A woman of no importance, she manoeuvres in her restricted circumstances as her long-time... read more »
The daughter of a Welsh gypsy and a crazy bee-keeper, Hazel Woodus is happiest living in her forest cottage in the remote Shropshire hills, at one with the winds and seasons, protector and friend of the wild animals she loves. But Hazel's beauty and innocence prove irresistible to the men in her orbit. Both Jack... read more »
Northanger Abbey tells the story of a young girl, Catherine Morland who leaves her sheltered, rural home to enter the busy, sophisticated world of Bath in the late 1790s. Austen observes with insight and humour the interaction between Catherine and the various characters whom she meets there, and tracks her growing... read more »
The fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when The New York Times noted "gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession," is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s. The mysterious Gatsby uses his fabulous wealth... read more »
The final volume of Wallace's, The Prince of India. The protagonist of this novel is "The Wandering Shoemaker" a figure from medieval Christian folklore whose legend began to spread in Europe in the 13th century. The original legend concerns a Jew who taunted Jesus on the way to the Crucifixion and was then cursed... read more »
The irreverent tale revolves around the exploits of Captain Jacques St. Ives who is captured by the British and thrown in jail. While there, he meets the droll Miss Gilchrist and her lovely niece, Flora, who takes an interest in the prisoner. For Jacques and Flora, it's love at first sight - although Major Chevening... read more »
This cheerful little road novel is about Claire Boltwood, who, in the early days of the 20th century, travels by automobile from New York City to the Pacific Northwest, where she falls in love with a nice, down-to-earth young man and gives up her snobbish Estate. read more »
Quo Vadis is a love story of Marcus Vinicius, a passionate young Roman tribune, and Lygia Callina, a beautiful and gentle Christian maiden of royal Lygian descent and a hostage of Rome, raised in a patrician home. At first Marcus, a typical aristocratic Roman libertine of his time, has no notion of love and merely... read more »
Lush with religious and metaphysical imagery, this is the story of three generations of the Brangwen family, set against the decline of the rural English midlands. It peers into a family's sexual mores, exposing the sexual dynamics of marriage and physical love. D.H. Lawrence explores the lives of three generations... read more »
All Ludstadt was in an uproar. The mad king had escaped. For ten years no man of them all had set eyes upon the face of the boy-king who had been hastened to the grim castle of Blentz upon the death of the old king, his father. Into this troubled country came Barney Custer of Beatrice, Nebraska, a virtual twin of... read more »
The sins of one generation are visited upon another in a haunted New England mansion until the arrival of a young woman from the country breathes new air into mouldering lives and rooms. Written shortly after The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables re-addresses the theme of human guilt in a style... read more »
A little New York clerk, full of dreams of travel, goes to London on a cattle steamer, has experiences with bohemianisms of a sort and returns joyfully to New York to find his real romance. Told with a true understanding and humour. read more »
Called the most widely-read English novel of the twentieth century, D. H. Lawrence’s largely autobiographical Sons and Lovers tells the story of Paul Morel, a young artist growing into manhood in a British working-class community near the Nottingham coalfields. His mother Gertrude, unhappily married to Paul’s... read more »
It may be remembered that in the last pages of his diary, written just before his death, Allan Quatermain makes allusion to his long dead wife, stating that he has written of her fully elsewhere. When his death was known, his papers were handed to myself as his literary executor. Among them I found two manuscripts... read more »
A robbery, marriage, and disappearance of a young girl have struck the town of Oakdale, but are things as they really seem? The beautiful young daughter of a wealthy family is robbed of her money and jewels, and she herself disappears; A young man fleeing a band of murderous hoboes becomes the target of a lynch mob... read more »
Siegmund, a musician at the local opera house, has fallen in love with a former pupil, Helena. She persuades him to go with her to the Isle of Wight for a few days, but happiness eludes them. Helena, dreaming of a great union of minds, rejects the physical intensity of Siegmund's love. read more »
The time and scene of the noble story are laid in the middle ages during the conquest of Pagan Lithuania by the military and priestly order of the "Krzyzacy" Knights of the Cross. And the story exhibits with splendid force the collision of race passions and fierce, violent individualities which accompanied that... read more »
Allan Quartermain -- our hero -- and Ayesha (that is, She Who Must Be Obeyed) share the limelight in this great adventure, but oddly enough considering the stars on stage, it's Umslopogaas the Zulu who steals the show. A supernatural fantasy thriller featuring a magic token, telepathy, powers of the occult, and a... read more »
A sequel to Lawrence's earlier novel The Rainbow, it continues the story of the Brangwen sisters in the coal-mining town of Beldover. Based in part on Lawrence's own stormy marriage to German aristocrat Frieda von Richthofen, the tale is charged with intense feelings and psychological insights as it focuses on the... read more »
Born in 1862 into an exclusive New York society -- against whose rigid mores she often rebelled -- Edith Wharton bridged the literary worlds of two continents and two centuries in her rich and glamorous life. The House of Mirth, her tenth book, is the story of young Lily Bart and her tragic sojourn among the upper... read more »
The fragility-and the durability-of human life and art dominate this story of American expatriates in Italy in the mid-nineteenth century. Befriended by Donatello, a young Italian with the classical grace of the "Marble Faun," Miriam, Hilda, and Kenyon find their pursuit of art taking a sinister turn as Miriam's... read more »
Ligeia is a book written by Edgar Allan Poe and widely considered to be one of the top 100 greatest books of all time. This great novel will surely attract a whole new generation of readers. For many, Ligeia is required reading for various courses and curriculum's. And for others who simply enjoy reading timeless... read more »
On the death of his father, Stephen Stratton writes a long and deeply personal letter to his son, hoping that, as his son becomes a man, he can benefit from Stephen's experience and wisdom. As Stephen sets down his life’s history, he tells the remarkable story of his former lover, Lady Mary. With a lust for... read more »
Two scientists devise a compound that produces enormous plants, animals — and humans! The chilling results are disastrous. First published in 1904, this gripping, newly relevant tale of science fiction combines fast-paced entertainment with social commentary as it considers the ethics involved in genetic engineering. read more »
The Efficiency Expert, an often overlooked by Burroughs' fans, is a cracking tale of young Jimmy Torrance, an upstanding college graduate in post-World War I Chicago who inadvertently rubs shoulders with mobsters and ends up framed for murder. Jimmy Torrance was a hero in college. A champion boxer, star of the... read more »
The adventures of Billy Byrne, thug and gunman, in the underworld of Chicago and San Francisco, and on his mysterious cruise to the unexplored islands of the Pacific, make a yarn as strange and as vivid as even the famous Tarzan tales. A woman--"one o' them high-brow skirts"--taught Billy the real meaning of the... read more »
When Emma Rouault marries Charles Bovary she imagines she will pass into the life of luxury and passion that she reads about in sentimental novels and women's magazines. But Charles is a dull country doctor, and provincial life is very different from the romantic excitement for which she yearns. In her quest to... read more »
Stong-willed, reckless and fiercely independent, Ann Veronica Stanley is determined to be a Person, to work, love and, above all, to live. Walking away from her stifling father and the social conventions of her time, she leaves drab suburbia for Edwardian London and encounters an unknown world of suffragettes... read more »