A House of PomegranatesOscar Wilde
A House of Pomegranates is a collection of whimisical short stories by Oscar Wilde. This collections includes the following tales: The Young King, The Birthday of the Infanta, The Fisherman and his Soul, and The Star-child. Readers of all ages will be delighted by these fanciful tales. read more »
A Room With A ViewE. M. Forster
This Edwardian social comedy explores love and prim propriety among an eccentric cast of characters assembled in an Italian pensione and in a corner of Surrey, England. A charming young English woman, Lucy Honeychurch, faints into the arms of a fellow Britisher when she witnesses a murder in a Florentine piazza... read more »
Captains CourageousRudyard Kipling
Harvey Cheyne, spoiled millionaire's son, tumbles overboard from a luxury liner--only to be rescued by the crew of a Gloucester schooner. Thus begins the boy's second voyage into the rugged rites and ways of sailors. Like all Kipling's masterworks, Captains Courageous is an interweaving of art and moral purpose... read more »
The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington PlansArthur Conan Doyle
The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans is one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of eight stories in the cycle collected as His Last Bow. read more »
The Happy Prince and Other TalesOscar Wilde
This beautiful and remarkable little wonder of a book includes "The Happy Prince," "The Nightingale and the Rose," "The Selfish Giant," "The Devoted Friend," and "The Remarkable Rocket." Wilde is a man remembered for plays like "The Importance of Being Ernest," works like De Profundis and the scandal that attended... read more »
The Age of InnocenceEdith Wharton
Somewhere in this book, Wharton observes that clever liars always come up with good stories to back up their fabrications, but that really clever liars don't bother to explain anything at all. This is the kind of insight that makes The Age of Innocence so indispensable. Wharton's story of the upper classes of Old... read more »
The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain SingletonDaniel Defoe
The narrative describes the life of an Englishman, stolen from a well-to-do family as a child and raised by Gypsies who eventually makes his way to sea. One half of the book concerns Singleton's crossing of Africa and the later half concerns his life as a pirate. Defoe's description of piracy focuses for the most... read more »
Lord Arthur Savile's CrimeOscar Wilde
Lord Arthur Savile, about to be married to a sweetly innocent maiden, learns to his horror that a psychic can see a crime of violence in his palm. The clairvoyant tells Saville that before he can marry his beloved, he must murder a distant relative. What follows is a hilarious account of Lord Saville's various... read more »
The Picture of Dorian GrayOscar Wilde
When first published this unique novel evoked a tremendous amount of hostile criticism, in most part due to its immoral content. Oscar Wilde was identified with the "art for art's sake" movement of the nineteenth century which did not subordinate art to ethical instruction. However, this novel is indeed a morality... read more »
HeidiJohanna Spyri
One of the most charming tales in children's literature, Heidi is the story of a five-year-old orphan who goes to live with her grandfather in the mountains. She soon wins his heart and befriends the young goatherd, Peter. Her happiness ends, however, when her aunt takes her to the city to help take care of a sickly... read more »
The Underground CityJules Verne
The Underground City, by Jules Verne, is a novel about the fortunes of a mining community called Aberfoyle which is near Stirling, Scotland. Miner James Starr, after receiving a letter from an old friend, leaves for the Aberfoyle mine. Although believed to be mined out a decade earlier, James Starr finds a mine... read more »
Five Weeks in a BalloonJules Verne
The first Verne novel in which he perfected the "ingredients" of his later work, skilfully mixing a plot full of adventure and twists that hold the reader's interest with passages of technical, geographic, and historic description. The book gives readers a glimpse of the exploration of Africa, which was still not... read more »
HuntingtowerJohn Buchan
Dickson McCunn, a respectable, newly retired grocer of romantic heart, plans a modest walking holiday in the hills of south-west Scotland. He meets a young English poet and, contrary to his better sense, finds himself in the thick of a plot involving the kidnapping of a Russian princess, who is held prisoner in the... read more »
Under the Greenwood TreeThomas Hardy
One of the most popular of Hardy's novels, this charming pastoral idyll is a lightly humorous depiction of life in an early Victorian rural community. The story delicately balances the concerns of the Mellstock parish choir with a romance between a member of the choir and the village schoolmistress. read more »
Jude the ObscureThomas Hardy
Often thought of as Thomas Hardy's best work, not only for the elaborate structure of the plot, where small and subtle details lead to the character's ruin, but in the themes that range from how human loneliness and sensuality can stop a person from trying to fulfill his dreams; to how, when free from the trap of... read more »
In Search of the CastawaysJules Verne
A message in a bottle is found from Captain Grant of the HMS Britannia. The ship has sunk but Captain Grant is alive. Only he is being held hostage. The children of Captain Grant set out to rescue their father. But to do this they face all kinds of dangers and must travel to the other side of the world. read more »
A Child's Garden of VersesRobert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson's venerated volume of children's poems has prospered during more than a century in print. Here is a comfortable world of sunny gardens and storybooks, where children play with toy soldiers and imaginary friends. You may remember some of these poems from your own childhood, such as "My Shadow... read more »
Chronicle Of The CidVarious
The heroic story of the King Arthur, or the Roland, of the Spaniards, less mythical but no less interesting. Robert Southey's "Chronicle of the Cid" is all translation from the Spanish, but is not translation from a single book. Its groundwork is that part of the Cronica General de Espana, the most ancient of the... read more »
The Trumpet-MajorThomas Hardy
Hardy distrusted the application of nineteenth-century empiricism to history because he felt it marginalized important human elements. In The Trumpet Major, the tale of a woman courted by three competing suitors during the Napoleonic wars, he explores the subversive effects of ordinary human desire and conflicting... read more »
The Master of the WorldJules Verne
It was seen first in North Carolina, or something was, smoking up from a mountain crater. With blinding speed, it roared past cars on a Pennsylvania road. It skimmed the Atlantic, then - the flick of its captain's will - dove beneath the waves...
It was the Terror - ship, sub, plane, and land vehicle in one, and... read more »
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Vol. 2Edward Gibbon
This is Volume 2 of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, written by English historian Edward Gibbon and published in six volumes, covering the period of the Roman Empire after Marcus Aurelius, from 180 to 1453, concluding in 1590. They take as their material the behavior and decisions that led to... read more »
Goody Two-ShoesAnonymous
Goody Two-Shoes is a children's story. The story is the origin of the popular phrase "goody two-shoes," often used to describe an overly virtuous person. Goody Two-Shoes is a variation of the Cinderella story. read more »
Salute to AdventurersJohn Buchan
Andrew Garvald is a young Scottish merchant who has bravely come to make his fortune in a newly colonised America. Outlawed from Virginian society for opposing the London traders' monopoly, his friends are Red Ringan, a pirate and gentleman adventurer and Shalah, an exiled Indian prince. When Garvald is faced with a... read more »
The Survivors of the ChancellorJules Verne
Mr. Kazallon thought that booking passage on a cargo ship from Charleston to Liverpool would be a charming way to return to his English homeland. If only he knew! A crazed sea captain, a disaster in the hold, storms, oppressive heat, sharks and starvation are just some of the many travails that will beset both... read more »
The Frog PrinceAnonymous
The Classic tale of the Frog Prince comes to life as originally published by George Routledge 1874. Included in this book are three books: The Frog Prince, Princess Belle-Etoile and Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp. Includes the original colorful illustrations of characters. read more »
The Man Who Would Be KingRudyard Kipling
Two former British soldiers who were sent in the early 19th century to British controlled India to search for adventure end up becoming kings of Kafiristan. This story is inspired by Josiah Harlan, an American adventurer who claimed the title of Prince of Ghor after leding a military force into Afghanistan in the... read more »
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Vol. 1Edward Gibbon
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was written by English historian Edward Gibbon and published in six volumes, covering the period of the Roman Empire after Marcus Aurelius, from 180 to 1453, concluding in 1590. They take as their material the behavior and decisions that led to the decay and... read more »
Soldiers ThreeRudyard Kipling
Soldiers Three is a collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling. The three soldiers of the title are Learoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris, who had also appeared previously in the collection Plain Tales from the Hills. Soldiers Three and other stories consists of three sections which each had previously received... read more »
The Brothers KaramazovFyodor Dostoyevsky
Dostoyevsky’s towering reputation as one of the handful of thinkers who forged the modern sensibility has sometimes obscured the purely novelistic virtues–brilliant characterizations, flair for suspense and melodrama, instinctive theatricality–that made his work so immensely popular in nineteenth-century... read more »
Grimm's Household TalesBrothers Grimm
Included here are fairy tales from "Children's and Household Tales" by the Brothers Grimm, translated by Margaret Hunt. The translation is based on the last edition of the book, featuring 200 fairy tales and 10 children's legends and includes such firm favourites as Rapunzel, The Goose Girl, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel... read more »