Poo-Poo and the DragonsC. S. Forester
Forester came up with the premise for the book while he was at home in the Berkeley hills, minding his two boys while his wife Kathleen was away. The younger of the two, 8 year old George, went on a hunger strike; he refused to eat. Forester made up the stories to tell during dinnertime, but would only tell them if... read more »
Poor FolkFyodor Dostoyevsky
Poor Folk is an epistolary novel -- that is, a tale told as a series of letters between the characters. And oh, what characters these are! Makar Dievushkin Alexievitch is a copy writer, barely squeaking by; Barbara Dobroselova Alexievna works as a seamstress, and both face the sort of everyday humiliation society... read more »
The Portrait of a LadyHenry James
When Isabel Archer, a young American woman with looks, wit, and imagination, arrives in Europe, she sees the world as 'a place of brightness, of free expression, of irresistible action'. She turns aside from suitors who offer her their wealth and devotion to follow her own path. But that way leads to disillusionment... read more »
Portrait of a Man with Red HairHugh Walpole
This is Hugh Walpole's most venturesome, most exciting romance. Down to the town of Treliss on the Cornish coast came Harkness, a your American of Puritan cutlture and ideal, there to find the adventure and the love of his life, and pain the like of which he had never dreamed. Here the skill of Walpole turns to a... read more »
Post HasteR. M. Ballantyne
This tale is founded chiefly on facts furnished by the Postmaster-General's Annual Reports, and gathered, during personal intercourse and investigation, at the General Post-Office of London and its Branches. It is intended to illustrate--not by any means to exhaust--the subject of postal work, communication, and... read more »
PostsingularRudy Rucker
It all begins next year in California. A maladjusted computer industry billionaire and a somewhat crazy US President initiate a radical transformation of the world through sentient nanotechnology; sort of the equivalent of biological artificial intelligence. At first they succeed, but their plans are reversed by... read more »
The PothuntersP. G. Wodehouse
When someone breaks into the cricket pavilion and steals two silver cups, the whole school is agog. Could it possibly be an inside job? Nothing less than the honour of St Austin's is at stake, not to mention the reputation of Jim Thomson, an excellent athlete with a talent for being in the wrong place at the wrong... read more »
The Power-HouseJohn Buchan
When his friend Charles Pitt-Heron vanishes mysteriously, Sir Edward Leithen is at first only mildly concerned. But a series of strange events that follow Pitt-Heron’s disappearance convinces Leithen that he is dealing with a sinister secret society. Their codename is ‘The Power-House’. The authorities are... read more »
Precious BaneMary Webb
Narrated by the central character Prue Sarn, whose life is blighted by having a harelip. Only the weaver, Kester Woodseaves, perceives her inner beauty but Prue cannot believe herself worthy of him. Prue is wrongly accused of murder and only one man can save her and take her away to the happiness she believes she... read more »
The Premature BurialEdgar Allan Poe
Poe's short horror story on the theme of being buried alive, which was a common fear in this period and Poe took advantage of the public interest. The first-person unnamed narrator describes his struggle with "attacks of the singular disorder which physicians have agreed to term catalepsy," a condition where he... read more »
Prester JohnJohn Buchan
Nineteen-year-old David Crawfurd travels from Scotland to South Africa to seek his fortune as a store-keeper. On the voyage he encounters John Laputa, the celebrated Zulu minister, of whom he has strange memories. In his remote store David finds himself with the key to a massive uprising led by the minister, who has... read more »
Pride and PrejudiceJane Austen
Elizabeth Bennet is Austen's most liberated and unambiguously appealing heroine, and Pride and Prejudice has remained over most of the past two centuries Austen's most popular novel. The story turns on the marriage prospects of the five daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet: Elizabeth forms a prejudice against the proud... read more »
The Prince and The PauperMark Twain
Rich with surprise and hilarious adventure, The Prince And The Pauper is a delight satire of England's romantic past and a joyful boyhood romp filled with the same tongue-in-cheek irony that sparked the best of Mark Twain's tall tales. Two boys, one an urchin from London's filthy lanes, the other a prince born in a... read more »
Prince CaspianC. S. Lewis
The Pevensie siblings travel back to Narnia to help a prince denied his rightful throne as he gathers an army in a desperate attempt to rid his land of a false king. But in the end, it is a battle of honor between two men alone that will decide the fate of an entire world. Prince Caspian is the fourth book in C. S... read more »
The Prince of India (Volume 1)Lew Wallace
Volume one of Wallace's, The Prince of India; recounting the events leading to the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. The legendary wandering jew, in the guise of a Prince of India aids in bringing about the downfall of the city and its empire by aiding and advising the Turkish Sultan Mehmed II. A glowing... read more »
Prince of PerilOtis Adelbert Kline
Through the discoveries of the scientist, Dr. Morgan, a young Martian's astral body is projected into the body of one Harry Thorne on Earth, and from Earth to Venus, or Zarovia, where the man of Mars becomes Prince Zinlo of the mighty empire of Olba. Zinlo is instructed by Morgan's fellow-scientist Vorn Vangal in... read more »
Privy SealFord Madox Ford
The tumultuous relationship between Katharine Howard and England's King Henry VIII was inextricably entwined with the rise to power and eventual fall of Thomas Cromwell, who served as the Lord Privy Seal. In this fictionalized account from Ford Madox Ford, the once-innocent Katharine begins to be swept up in the... read more »
Proserpine and MidasMary Shelley
An auspicious verse drama is presented here that Shelley based on the ancient myths. Wrought upon the Roman myth of the abduction of Proserpine from Ceres by Pluto and the Greek myth of greedy emperor Midas, who was granted the quality of an alchemist, these are engrossing literary works. Her creative genius for... read more »
Psmith in the CityP. G. Wodehouse
Psmith in the City was originally released as a serial in The Captain magazine, between October 1908 and March 1909, under the title The New Fold. It continues the adventures of cricket-loving Mike Jackson and his immaculately-dressed friend Psmith, first encountered in Mike. Mike Jackson, cricketer and scion of a... read more »
Psmith, JournalistP. G. Wodehouse
Continuing the adventures of the silver-tongued Psmith, one of Wodehouse's best loved characters, and his friend Mike Jackson. The story begins with Psmith accompanying his fellow Cambridge student Mike to New York on a cricketing tour. Through high spirits and force of personality, Psmith takes charge of a minor... read more »
Puck of Pook's HillRudyard Kipling
In the perfect bedtime reading, a mischievous imp called Puck delights two precocious youngsters with 10 magical fables about the hidden histories of Old England. Written especially for Kipling's own children, each enchanting myth is followed by a selection of the master storyteller's spirited poetry. read more »
The Purloined LetterEdgar Allan Poe
The Purloined Letter is the third of the three stories featuring the detective C. Auguste Dupin, the other two being The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Mystery of Marie Roget. These stories are considered important forerunners of the modern detective story. The method Poe's detective, Dupin, uses to solve the... read more »
PygmalionGeorge Bernard Shaw
This play is based on the Greek myth of Pygmalion. It tells the story of Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics (based on phonetician Henry Sweet), who makes a bet with his friend Colonel Pickering that he can successfully pass off a Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, as a refined society lady by teaching her... read more »
Pygmalion's SpectaclesStanley G. Weinbaum
Dan Burke steps out of a stuffy New York City party hoping to get some air and peace in Central Park, but instead he meets a gnomelike man who asks him, "But what is reality?". Sci-fi luminary Stanley G. Weinbaum first broke through with the hugely influential story A Martian Odyssey, one of the first to depict an... read more »
Quality StreetJ. M. Barrie
This four-act comedy is an adult fairy tale of sorts, brought to life by Barrie's charming imagination and ability to weave between reality and fantasy. Pheobe Throssel and Valentine Brown are a young couple separated by the Neopoleonic wars for ten years, only to find themselves the unfortunate victims of time and... read more »
Queen of the Black CoastRobert E. Howard
Queen of the Black Coast is one of the original short stories about Conan the Cimmerian, written by American author Robert E. Howard and first published in Weird Tales magazine. It is set in the pseudo-historical Hyborian Age and concerns Conan becoming a notorious pirate and plundering the coastal villages of Kush... read more »
Queen of the DawnH. Rider Haggard
The last book published in Haggard's lifetime is a standalone ancient-Egyptian fantasy. It opens at an almost breakneck pace, with Pharaoh deposed and killed, his wife and child in hiding, and the goddesses stirring. A secret religious order raises the Pharaoh's daughter, and she meets and falls in love with the... read more »
The Queen Who FlewFord Madox Ford
An intriguing fairy tale about an innocent Queen of a remote kingdom, who befriends and spends much of her time, talking to a bat. The bat tells her that he was once unable to fly, and convinces her that a magic flower will give her the power to fly. An adorable tale for young readers, and a great bedtime story as... read more »
Queer Little FolksHarriet Beecher Stowe
Once there was a nice young hen that we will call Mrs. Feathertop. She was a hen of most excellent family, being a direct descendant of the Bolton Grays, and as pretty a young fowl as you could wish to see of a summer's day. She was, moreover, as fortunately situated in life as it was possible for a hen to be. She... read more »
Quo VadisHenryk Sienkiewicz
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 »