Louise de la Valliere is the middle section of The Vicomte de Bragelonne or, Ten Years After. Against a tender love story, Dumas continues the suspense which began with The Vicomte de Bragelonne and will end with The Man in the Iron Mask. It is early summer, 1661, and the royal court of France is in turmoil. Can it …Read More »
Little Women is an American classic, adored for Louisa May Alcott's lively and vivid portraits of the endearing March sisters: talented tomboy Jo, pretty Meg, shy Beth, temperamental Amy. Millions have shared in their joys, hardships, and adventures as they grow up in Civil War New England, separated by the war fr…Read More »
Maid Marian, an orphaned heiress, struggles against scheming, duplicitous relatives for the right to her own lands. A medieval romance featuring Robin Hood, Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, and Prince John. Lampoons institutions such as the monarchy and the church in the post-Napoleonic era.
The sixth book of Tarzan, King of the Jungle. This is actually a collection of several short stories all about the times when Tarzan was a young boy and a teenager being raised by the great apes. The young Tarzan was unlike the great apes who were his only companions and playmates. Theirs was a simple, savage life, …Read More »
Romantic melodrama or feminist classic, Jane Eyre is one of the most enduringly popular and compelling novels in the literary canon. Overlooked or dismissed by critics in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it first began to attract serious critical attention in the 1970s as New Critical, formalist and fem…Read More »
In Conrad's haunting tale, Marlow, a seaman and wanderer, recounts his physical and psychological journey in search of the enigmatic Kurtz. Travelling to the heart of the African continent, he discovers how Kurtz has gained his position of power and influence over the local people. Marlow's struggle to fathom his ex…Read More »
Coketown is dominated by the figure of Mr Thomas Gradgrind, school headmaster and model of Utilitarian success. Feeding both his pupils and family with facts, he bans fancy and wonder from any young minds. As a consequence, his obedient daughter Louisa marries the loveless businessman and 'bully of humanity' Mr Boun…Read More »
Shipwrecked and cast adrift, Lemuel Gulliver wakes to find himself on Lilliput, an island inhabited by little people, whose height makes their quarrels over fashion and fame seem ridiculous. His subsequent encounters - with the crude giants of Brobdingnag, the philosophical Houyhnhnms and brutish Yahoos - give Gulli…Read More »
Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death is widely considered to be one of the top 100 greatest books of all time. For many, Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death is required reading for various courses and curriculums and for others, who simply enjoy reading timeless pieces of classic literature, this gem by Patrick Henry is hi…Read More »
A monster assembled by a scientist from parts of dead bodies develops a mind of his own as he learns to loathe himself and hate his creator. Shelley's suspenseful and intellectually rich gothic tale confronts some of the most important and enduring themes in all of literture–the power of human imagination, the pote…Read More »
Robert Louis Stevenson's Fables was published in New York by Longmans, Green in 1902. Previously, the thirteen fables had been published with other works. Stevenson had a long-standing fascination with the fable as a literary form. In 1888, he approached his publisher with a collection of fables that he had composed…Read More »
Emma Woodhouse is the lovely, lively, willful, and fallible heroine of Jane Austen's fourth published novel. Confident that she knows best, Emma schemes to find a suitable husband for her pliant friend Harriet, only to discover that she understands the feelings of others as little as she does her own heart. As Emma …Read More »
The fourth book in Baum's Oz series, Dorothy returns to lands of magic and fantasy with her cousin Zeb, kitten Eureka, and a cab-horse named Jim. They encounter vegetable people living under the world, and Dorothy is reunited with the Wizard of Oz when he floats down in his hot air balloon. They later are aided by i…Read More »
On vacation from school, Denis goes to stay at Crome, an English country house inhabitated by several of Huxley's most outlandish characters–from Mr. Barbecue-Smith, who writes 1,500 publishable words an hour by "getting in touch" with his "subconscious," to Henry Wimbush, who is obsessed with writing the definitiv…Read More »
Lost in her day dreams, Cinderella imagines a new life far far way from the evils of her stepsisters and stepmother. But when the prince announces a ball is to be given and Cinderella's terrible stepsisters refuse to let her attend, Cinderella's dreams are crushed. That is until her fairy godmother appears and waves…Read More »
Judah Ben-Hur lives as a rich Jewish prince and merchant in Jerusalem at the beginning of the 1st century. His old friend Messala arrives as commanding officer of the Roman legions. They become bitter enemies. Because of an unfortunate accident, Ben-Hur is sent to slave in the mines while his family is sent to lepro…Read More »
A beautiful daughter dreams of meeting a handsome prince, but in order to save her father's life, she leaves home to live with a terrible, frightening beast. Though her patron is hideous, his disarming generosity slowly leads to a surprising connection. Generations of children have been fascinated by the story of th…Read More »
Through her great capacity to love, a kind and beautiful maid releases a handsome prince from the spell which has made him an ugly beast. Generations of children have been fascinated by the story of the girl named Beauty, who grows to love a fearsome beast by learning to see and cherish his kindness, generosity, and…Read More »
David Innes is a young man who has just inherited a large mining company. An eccentric inventor, Abner Perry, convinces Innes to underwrite a project to build an 'iron mole', claiming it will make them both wealthy. The mechanical beast works well, actually too well. On the maiden voyage, instead of digging for a …Read More »
Verne's most outrageous "voyage extraordinaire" - a hasty world tour taken up on a gentlemen's club wager! Mr. Phileas Fogg, master of precision, enters into the strangest wager ever made over the whist table - that he will circle the globe in 80 days. The news astounds Jean Passepartout, sometime wandering minstrel…Read More »
When Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert of Green Gables send for a boy orphan to help them out at their farm, they mistakenly get Anne Shirley, a feisty, independent but warm-hearted 11 year-old girl. Fortunately her sunny nature and quirky imagination win the hearts of her reluctant foster parents and everyone in the com…Read More »
Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales are like exquisite jewels, drawing from us gasps of recognition and delight. Andersen created intriguing and unique characters — a tin soldier with only one leg but a big heart, a beetle nestled deep in a horse’s mane but harboring high aspirations. Each one of us at some time, …Read More »
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 amo…Read More »
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 wor…Read More »
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 m…Read More »
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 i…Read More »
The fables of Aesop have become one of the most enduring traditions of European culture, ever since they were first written down nearly two millennia ago. Aesop was reputedly a tongue-tied slave who miraculously received the power of speech; from his legendary storytelling came the collections of prose and verse fab…Read More »
The "two cities" are Paris in the time of the French Revolution, and London. Dr. Manette, a French physician, having been called in to treat a young peasant and his sister, realizes that they have been cruelly abused by the Marquis de St. Evremonde and his brother. To ensure Dr. Manette's silence, the Marquis has hi…Read More »
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. With…Read More »
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 centr…Read More »