A Journal of the Plague YearDaniel Defoe
A Journal of the Plague Year is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published in March 1722. The novel is a fictionalised account of one man's experiences of the year 1665, in which the Great Plague struck the city of London. The book is told roughly chronologically, though without sections or chapter headings. (source... read more »
A Journey to the Centre of the EarthJules Verne
As irascible scholar Professor Lidenbrock pores over a rare Icelandic tome, he discovers a scrap of parchment with cryptic writing tucked away between the ancient pages. And when his nephew, Axel, finally breaks the writing’s secret code, he learns of a hidden underground passageway that may lead deep into the... read more »
A Joyous AdventureEmma Orczy
Not a Scarlet Pimpernel novel, but one set in the same universe. Excerpt: This interview had occurred in May in the year 1800. A few months later half a dozen were gathered round a deal table in the low whitewashed room of the Cabaret du Pélican, a lonely house which stands at the extreme end of the village street... read more »
A Kidnapped Santa ClausL. Frank Baum
Santa Claus lives in the Laughing Valley. On one side of the Valley is the mighty Forest of Burzee, home of the fairies. At the other side stands a terrible mountain that contains the caves of the daemons: Selfishness, Envy, Hatred, and Repentance. The daemons, thinking they have great cause to dislike old Santa... read more »
Aladdin and the Magic LampAnonymous
When an evil magician tricks Aladdin, a young ne'er-do-well, into crawling into a cave and retrieving an old oil lamp, he little suspects that the young ruffian will outwit him and keep the magic lamp for himself. The boy discovers that by rubbing the side of the tarnished oil lamp, a gigantic fierce looking genie... read more »
A Lady of QualityFrances Hodgson Burnett
Being A Most Curious, Hitherto Unknown History, As Related To Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff But Not Presented To the World of Fashion ... and Now for the First Time Written Down by Frances Hodgson Burnett - the first of series of successful historical novels by Burnett. read more »
A LaodiceanThomas Hardy
Paula Power inherits a medieval castle from her industrialist father who has purchased it from the aristocratic De Stancy family. She employs two architects, one local and one, George Somerset, newly qualified from London. She is attracted to both men for their different virtues and is thrust onto the horns of... read more »
Alexander's BridgeWilla Cather
Bartley Alexander, an engineer famous for the audacious structure of his North American bridges, is at the height of his reputation. He has a distinguished and beautiful wife and an enviable Boston home. Then, on a trip to London, he has a chance encounter with an Irish actress he once loved. When their affair... read more »
AliceEdward Bulwer-Lytton
This is another outstanding occult, Rosicrucian, novel that emphasizes one of Lytton's famous esoteric principles-vibration A sequel to the disenchanted recluse poet Ernest Maltravers. Although Alice is by far more action-driven than its predecessor, there are still some wonderful reflective passages. After Florence... read more »
Alice in WonderlandLewis Carroll
Note: this is a shortened 1916 edition (under half the length). For the original book, which comes with 42 illustrations by John Tenniel, try Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Source of legend and lyric, reference and conjecture, it is for most children pure pleasure in prose. While adults try to decipher Lewis... read more »
Alice's Adventures in WonderlandLewis Carroll
Journey with Alice down the rabbit hole into a world of wonder where oddities, logic and wordplay rule supreme. Encounter characters like the grinning Cheshire Cat who can vanish into thin air, the cryptic Mad Hatter who speaks in riddles and the harrowing Queen of Hearts obsessed with the phrase "Off with their... read more »
Alice's Adventures Under GroundLewis Carroll
Note: This work is a transcript of the 1886 facsimile edition and is without illustrations. You may be more interested in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the original publication that was extended by Lewis with the addition of over 10,000 words, and comes with illustrations by John Tenniel. read more »
A Little Country GirlSusan Coolidge
Candace makes the first long trip of her young life alone. Everything is new, from the ocean views, to the fashionable people she encounters; from the museum-like home, to the unfamiliar cousins. How will she adapt to the new experiences and will she overcome the homesickness she feels? Will she adapt her country... read more »
A Little PrincessFrances Hodgson Burnett
Sara Crewe is a bright and charming student at Miss Minchin’s Select Seminary for Young Ladies. When her adoring father dies on the eve of her eighth birthday, Sara is devastated. Penniless, Sara is banished to the attic and forced to work as a serving girl at the school in which she was once a beloved student... read more »
Allan and the Holy FlowerH. Rider Haggard
Allan and the Holy Flower is a 1915 novel by H. Rider Haggard featuring Allan Quatermain. It first appeared serialised in The Windsor Magazine. Brother John, who has been wandering in Africa for years, confides to Allan a huge and rare orchid, the largest ever found. Allan arrives to England with the flower and... read more »
Allan and the Ice GodsH. Rider Haggard
Once more Quatermain takes the hallucinogenic drug and gets to see a previous incarnation of himself--a life he lived thousands of years ago, when he was Wi, a tribal leader during the last great ice age. read more »
Allan QuatermainH. Rider Haggard
Before there was Indiana Jones there was Allan Quartermain: the original explorer, treasure hunter, and adventurer. In this sequel to King Solomon's Mines, Allan Quatermain and his companions once more set out for Africa, this time in search of a white race reputed to live north of Mount Kenya. They survive fierce... read more »
Allan's WifeH. Rider Haggard
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 »
All Around the MoonJules Verne
Both From the Earth to the Moon and All Around the Moon ('Round the Moon) are available together, in a fully illustrated edition, here.
NOTE: this Edward Roth translation has been vilified by Verne scholars for the large amount of additional non-Verne material included.
After being fired out of the giant... read more »
All Cats Are GrayAndre Norton
Under normal conditions a whole person has a decided advantage over a handicapped one. But out in deep space the normal may be reversed--for humans at any rate. Steena is a computer programmer who spends her life in the background, a woman in plain gray clothing who speaks little but her knowledge of odd bits of... read more »
All Souls' NightHugh Walpole
Walpole's third collection of short fiction, sixteen stories, including several of his best supernatural tales. Walpole's two strongest stories in the genre are Tarnhelm; or, The Death of My Uncle Robert, a strangely moving and poignant werewolf tale told from the point of view of a sensitive little boy; and The... read more »
All's Well That Ends WellWilliam Shakespeare
Helena, a ward of the Countess of Rousillion, falls in love with the Countess's son, Bertram. Daughter of a famous doctor, and a skilled physician in her own right, Helena cures the King of France—who feared he was dying—and he grants her Bertram's hand as a reward. Bertram, however, offended by the inequality... read more »
All Things ConsideredG. K. Chesterton
All Things Considered features more than thirty columns that G. K. Chesterton wrote for the London Daily News in the years before World War I. Covering a variety of themes, each is written with the same high quality that readers have come to expect of Chesterton. In an essay on canvassing, Chesterton ponders some... read more »
Almayer's FollyJoseph Conrad
Lush prose and penetrating psychological insight infuse Conrad's first novel with the qualities that have made him one of the most popular and most studied writers in English literature. The novel chronicles the tragic decline of a Dutch merchant isolated in 19th-century Borneo, the machinations of his bitter... read more »
A Lodge in the WildernessJohn Buchan
An imaginary conference is arranged by a multi-millionaire, Francis Carey, at a lodge, Musuru, located on the East Kenyan Plateau some 9000 feet above sea level, to discuss Empire. The conference is made up of nine men and nine women, taken from the upper and professional classes. read more »
A Lost LadyWilla Cather
Marian Forrester is the symbolic flower of the Old American West. She draws her strength from that solid foundation, bringing delight and beauty to her elderly husband, to the small town of Sweet Water where they live, to the prairie land itself, and to the young narrator of her story, Neil Herbert. All are... read more »
A Man Could Stand UpFord Madox Ford
The third volume of Ford Madox Ford's highly-regarded tetralogy Parade's End, chronicles the life of Christopher Tietjens, "the last Tory", a brilliant government statistician from a wealthy landowning family who is serving in the British Army during World War I. The novel opens on Armistice Day and follows the... read more »
A Man's WomanFrank Norris
Our heroine is a girl decidedly out of the ordinary. Dramatic, and containing some tremendous descriptions of the daring of the men who are trying to reach the North Pole, but at the same time it's essentially a woman's book, and the story works itself out in the solution of a difficulty that is continually... read more »
A Martian OdysseyStanley G. Weinbaum
A four-man crew crash lands on Mars, and Dick Jarvis, who sets out on his own meets Tweel, a sympathetic creature who shows him the ways of the planet. A strange pyramid building creature, a tentacled 'dream beast', and broken record cart people. Check out for yourself why A Martian Odyssey came in 2nd in the best... read more »
The American CrisisThomas Paine
"The American Crisis was a series of pamphlets published in London from 1776-1783 during the American Revolution by revolutionary author Thomas Paine. It decried British actions and Loyalists, offering support to the Patriot cause. The first of these four pamphlets was published on December 23, 1776; the second on... read more »