Set in 1679 during the Scottish populist rebellion known as the Covenanter uprising, The Tale of Old Mortality is one of the outstanding historical fictions of the nineteenth century. Henry Morton of Milnewood is compelled to take up arms against the royalists, who are led by Claverhouse, a true villain in Scottish …Read More »
Having achieved international fame with The Jungle Book, Captains Courageous, Kim, and his Just So Stories, in 1905 Kipling serialized a thrilling science fiction novella, With the Night Mail: A Story of 2000 A.D, in which the reader learns — while following the exploits of an intercontinental mail dirigible battlin…Read More »
It is 1984. The world is in a state of perpetual war and Big Brother sees and controls all. Winston Smith, a member of the Outer Party and propaganda-writer at the Ministry of Truth, is keeping a journal he should not be keeping and falling in love with Julia, a woman he should not be seeing. Outwardly compliant, Wi…Read More »
Narnia…the land beyond the wardrobe, the secret country known only to Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy…the place where the adventure begins. Lucy is the first to find the secret of the wardrobe in the professor's mysterious old house. At first, no one believes her when she tells of her adventures in the land of …Read More »
In 1912, D. H. Lawrence left England for the first time visiting Germany, the Alps, and Italy. Although Twilight in Italy, about his experiences on his voyage, was his first travel book, Anais Nin said it 'cannot be read as an ordinary travel book, for his voyage is philosophic, as well as a symbolic and sensuous on…Read More »
In this chief of his works, Jules Verne has set himself to tell the story of all the most stirring adventures of which we have any written record - to give the history, 'from the time of Hanno and Herodotus down to that of Livingstone and Stanley,' of those voyages of exploration and discovery which are among the mo…Read More »
For William, Lord Dawlish, it seemed the realization of his dreams. He could marry the girl he loved. Of course, things are not quite so simple. The famous Wodehouse humour, which has no equal, sees to that, in a transatlantic cocktail of breathtaking ingenuity.
This volume presents some of Conan Doyle s unduly neglected masterworks. Each begins in a quietly factual way, making all the more dramatic the crescendo of fear and puzzlement that ensues as each new circumstance is revealed. Even without his supremely logical brain child, Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle shows that hi…Read More »
The Circle is set in the fashionable drawing room of Aston-Adey, the Champion-Cheneys’ house in Dorset. Maugham's plot, which may be unfamiliar, contains two triangles, each of a husband, wife, and lover. The first of these includes Clive, a cuckolded husband, Lady Kitty, his ex-wife, and Lord Porteous, her second h…Read More »
This classic short story from sci-fi luminary Harry Harrison offers a sympathetic glimpse into the inner lives of robots. In the future, society has grown ever more dependent on these super-intelligent machines, but despite their increasing autonomy, robots are still looked down on as second-class citizens. _The Vel…Read More »
Nobody blends satire and science fiction like renowned luminary of the genre Philip K. Dick. This short but utterly memorable tale tells the story of a man who is utterly convinced that the world is being overrun by aliens. Is he correct, or wildly off-base?
Three Englishmen, marooned on a mysterious South Sea island, learn of the islanders' powerful god Oro, who has been sleeping for 250,000 years. They manage to wake him, along with his beautiful daughter, who is the spitting image of the hero's dead wife, while he is a ringer for her lost love. Other residents of an …Read More »
One of the first sword and sorcery fantasy classics written by Robert E. Howard featuring Conan the Barbarian, this thrilling tale centers around a regal queen who rules over a small nation – and her ruthless twin sister, who will do anything to usurp the leadership role. Can Conan, the chief of the queen's guard…Read More »
A collection of short stories by Robert W. Chambers, author of The King in Yellow. A collection of light romantic tales in which Chambers' love of fishing and hunting and natural scenery prevails. The stories are all set in America. A Young Man in a Hurry brings together some of Chambers' most engrossing shorter…Read More »
Written after the First World War when he was living in Sicily, Sea and Sardinia records Lawrence's journey to Sardinia and back in January 1921. It reveals his delighted response to a new landscape and people, and his ability to transmute the spirit of place into literary art. Like his other travel writings, the bo…Read More »
Axel Heyst, a dreamer and a restless drifter, believes he can avoid suffering by cutting himself off from others. Then he becomes involved in the operation of a coal company on a remote island in the Malay Archipelago, and when it fails he turns his back on humanity once more. But his life alters when he rescues a y…Read More »
James's subtle mastery of the art of fiction is nowhere more evident than in The Beast in the Jungle, regarded by many as his greatest achievement in short fiction, a gripping portrait of a man alienated from life and love. The author's uncanny ability to communicate the inner lives of his characters is also richl…Read More »
Sidney Trefusis is a proselytizing socialist. Armed with irony and paradox, he is determined to overthrow a society riddled with class and sexual exploitation. Henrietta, his adoring wife, 'loves' him: he must abandon her. Son of a millionaire, he gives up everything to pose as an 'umble peasant'. But when this unso…Read More »
The legends of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table have inspired some of the greatest works of literature–from Cervantes's Don Quixote to Tennyson's Idylls of the King. Although many versions exist, Malory's stands as the classic rendition. Malory wrote the book while in Newgate Prison during the last th…Read More »
Take an intergalactic trip with renowned science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. In The Gun, the crew of a spaceship are sent out to recover a remarkable weapon that seems to be capable of causing nearly inconceivable levels of damage. How will they protect humanity from the deadly device?
The House of the Dead is a fictionalized memoir of a man serving a ten-year prison sentence for murdering his wife. Dostoyevsky drew heavily from his own four-year prison internment in a Siberian prison to draw attention to the dehumanizing, deadening effects of the modern prison system and invoke his philosophies…Read More »
Shadows in the Moonlight is full of barbarian craftiness, magic, fierce fighting, and Conan's incredible strength. The story begins with Conan and his companions trapped and slaughtered by the merciless Shah Amurath, the great Lord of Akif. Conan is one of the very few who escapes. A lucky break allows him the chanc…Read More »
Ruthless criminal masterminds, deliciously devious villains, last-minute escapes, mysterious figures lurking in the shadows, a spunky female detective – when it comes to classic detective novels, Edgar Wallace's The Clue of the Twisted Candle definitely hits all of its marks. Fans of the genre will adore this fas…Read More »
Louis Trevelyan seems the most fortunate of mid-Victorian gentlemen: young, rich, well-educated, handsome, and with a beautiful wife. But his life is ruined by ungrounded jealousy. In the later mad scenes, in which the unlucky hero has been utterly consumed by an obsession with his wife's imaginary infidelity, Troll…Read More »
Known for a series of wildly popular, action-packed romance adventure novels such as Scaramouche and Captain Blood, Rafael Sabatini's work deftly combines the sensuality of his Italian heritage with the more mannered approach to life inculcated in him by his British upbringing. The Snare, set against the dramatic ba…Read More »
The Republic is a Socratic dialogue by Plato, written in approximately 360 BC. It is one of the most influential works of philosophy and political theory, and arguably Plato's best known work. In it, Socrates and various other Athenians and foreigners discuss the meaning of justice and whether the just man is happie…Read More »
Despite premiering the next year to negative reviews, the play since been hailed as a classic work of realism, with the character Hedda being considered by some critics as one of the great dramatic roles; a female Hamlet. Gabler is actually the character's maiden name rather than her name by marriage (which is Hedda…Read More »
What if you were involved in the theft of one of the legendary jewels of all time – and you didn't even know it? That's exactly what happens to the innocent damsel at the center of Robert W. Chambers' The Dark Star. She prays for a strong, silent savior to extract her from the mess she's in – but will she recogniz…Read More »
Charles Darwin's groundbreaking work of evolutionary biology, The Origin of Species introduces the scientific theory of evolution, which posits that species evolve over a period of many generations through a process of natural selection. Darwin's theories have been widely embraced by the scientific community as fa…Read More »
In the twelfth Oz story, the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow meet Woot, a Gillikin boy. The Woodman tells him how the Wicked Witch of the East (punishing him for falling in love with her ward, Nimmie Amee) enchanted his axe, which then compelled him to chop off every part of his body. The tinsmith Ku-Klip replaced the…Read More »