The Pioneers is set against the background of pioneering life in the Gippsland region of Victoria in pre-Federation Australia. Mary and Donald Cameron are free-settlers who make a home in the wilderness and grow a prosperous cattle operation that establishes their position as prominent members of the new settlement.At first, the novel privileges Mary’s perspective as she encounters escaped convicts, bush fires, and raising a son in a remote community. Later, it follows her son, Davey, as he struggles for independence against his father’s harsh authority...

“Love!–A word by superstition thought a God; by use turned to an humour; by self-will made a flattering madness.” – Alexander and Campaspe. Lady Juliana, the indulged and coddled seventeen (”And a half, papa”) year old daughter of the Earl of Cortland, is betrothed by her father to a wealthy old Duke who can give her every luxury. She instead runs away and marries her very handsome but penniless lover. Very soon, they are forced to travel to Scotland to live with his quirky family in a rundown “castle” in the barren wilderness. Can this marriage survive?(Summary by P.Cunningham)

The Autobiography of a Slander exposes the consequences of reckless words or, even worse, intentionally disparaging words. In this moral tale, told from the point of view of "the slander", Edna Lyall (pseudonym used by Ada Ellen Bayley) reveals her ideals and goals in life and relationships.

This is a volume of original fairy tales by Loretta Ellen Brady.

LibriVox volunteers bring you 14 recordings of An Afternoon in July by Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for July 7, 2013.Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon, born Rosanna Eleanor Mullins, was a Canadian writer and poet. She was "one of the first English-Canadian writers to depict French Canada in a way that earned the praise of, and resulted in her novels being read by, both anglophone and francophone Canadians."Leprohon's novels were popular in both English and French Canada in the late 19th-century, and were still being reprinted in French in the mid-1920s...

May Wedderburn is a quiet provincial girl, living in small and seemingly boring Skernford. Underneath the dull exterior, there is mystery, suspicion and fear in this little town, surrounding the austere local wealthy landowner who is very interested in marrying poor May. It looks as though she will have to marry him whether she likes it or not until an unsuspected alliance is formed between her and a respected old lady. They both escape to Germany where music and excitement await them.

The Boys’ Life of Abraham Lincoln is a biography with many anecdotes that takes one deeper into the thoughts, personality, and beliefs of the man that was Lincoln. While the title indicates the book is about Lincoln’s life as a boy, the book is a full, if somewhat shortened biography. It is very well written and was a joy to record. One might ask, "Who was Helen Nicolay?" Her father, John George Nicolay, was Abraham Lincoln's private secretary and doubtless much of the material comes from his complete biography of Abraham Lincoln. (

This volume contains stories, poems, myths, and facts about lots of different birds, intended for teaching children. It is divided into nine parts, each covering a different type of bird.

Written just before Prohibition to entail the possible troubles that might happen en route. Both sides of the argument, or battle as the case may be, strike out with various over-top methods like legislating most fruits and vegetables as unsafe or intoxicating large groups with breathable alcohol.

Matilda Sophia Hanson, whose father has recently died in their country of Barbadoes in the West Indies, must live for a time with family friends in England. The Harewood family is astonished at how spoiled, rude, and uneducated the child is. However, with seemingly endless patience and love, they help Matilda work to conquer her bad temper, and become a sensible, good, and well-informed young lady. This story reminds children and adults alike, though you have many battles with yourself, you must never relinquish hope and be assured you will find every victory easier than the last...

Following a failed love affair in England, Lady Bridget O'Hara accepts an invitation to travel to colonial Australia as companion to Lady Rosamund Tallant, the wife of the newly-appointed governor of Leichardt's Land. In Leichardt's Town, Lady Bridget, also known as Biddy, is reunited with her old friend and collaborator, Joan Gildea, special correspondent for The Imperialist newspaper. While visiting Joan, Biddy meets Colin McKeith, a roughly-hewn, Scottish-born pioneer, drover, miner, sometime-politician, and magistrate in the north-eastern colony...

This is a delightful collection of 43 fairy tales (both old and new), folk lore, myths and real life stories by a variety of authors, brought together by writer Fanny E Coe. They are mostly short and are fun to listen to by children and adults and most teach valuable lessons about life. Some of the stories are: A Legend of the North Wind; How the Robin's Breast became Red; The Little Rabbits; St Christopher; The Necklace of Truth; A Night with Santa Claus; The Wolf-Mother of Saint Ailbe; Pocahontas and How Molly spent her Sixpence

A six year-old girl named Mary spends Christmas vacation with her parents in the Arizona desert of 1901 or thereabouts.

Davy's Bend was a dying, lonely, uncared for river town. So when a stranger showed up one day and bought the old unoccupied house called 'The Locks' one dreary day, the inhabitants of the town were naturally very curious about the stranger, and very curious about his reasons for buying the old house. The Locks had been known for years to display at nighttime a single light showing up in one room, and there was one room in the house which was strictly off-limits to anyone. What was the history behind...

Life in the Grey Nunnery was first published in Boston, in 1857 by Edward P. Hood, who was credited as the book's editor. It is likely that this account is by Sarah J. Richardson "as told to" Edward Hood, though it may in fact be completely fictional. It is clearly an anti-Catholic book, an example of the genre of fiction referred to as "the convent horror story."As this summary shows, it is not known if this book is fictional or a true account.(Summary by project Gutenberg and Elaine Webb)

Edward Povey had been a correspondence clerk for twenty-two years when he was summarily dismissed. So how did he find himself mixed up with an orphan girl, who was really a princess, as she sought to reclaim her throne from the man who had killed her parents? Well, however it had happened, it was romantic. And after two decades in the basement office of a shipping company, he was ready for a bit of romance. (Introduction by MaryAnn)

Ah, the wonderful adventures of Marian after she meets the strange Mr. Jugg. "And who are you, Mr Jugg?" she inquired. "I'm the King of the Bumpies," he replied. When Marian was puzzled there came a little straight line, exactly in the middle, between her two eyebrows. "What are bumpies?" she said. "My hat!" he gasped. "Haven't you ever heard of bumpies?" Marian shook her head. "Oh dear, oh dear!" he sighed. "Have you ever heard of angels?" "Well, of course," said Marian. "Everybody's heard of angels...

Strangers at Lisconnel is a sequel to Jane Barlow’s Irish Idylls. The locations and most of the characters are common to both. There is great humor and concomitantly a certain melancholy in most of these stories of the most rural of rural places in Ireland. Although of a higher social class than her characters, Our Jane seems to have a touch of softness in her heart for their utter simplicity, abject poverty and naiveté. From the following brief example of dialogue, can be seen that Ms Barlow could only have come to write these words after having heard them countless times in person: Mrs...

Cecelia Loring is alone in the world after the death of her mother and has come to the Kentucky mountains in search of work. Although very depressed from her loss she soon becomes caretaker of the garden at a school and not many days later finds herself quite busy as housemother to a group of energetic boys that keep running away from the school because of homesickness, especially Nucky, who seems to have the weight of the world on his shoulders, worrying about not being at home to help his brother Blant "keep lookout" for the Cheevers, who have been at war with the Marrses for years over a piece of land...

Play Ball!!! It's the start of another baseball season at Oakdale Academy. But there is a rivalry brewing between the pitchers. One wants to be a starting pitcher, but he is inconsistent. Another, a new kid from Texas, has been mentored by last year's starter, and is proving to have talent. And don't forget that starting pitcher from last season, he wants to continue to take the rubber for the team. This should prove to be an exciting season for the boys!

A charming collection of short stories and verses for young children. First published by the Bangor, Maine Kindergarten Association.

Young Adult historical fiction of a young man joining the Union Army and taking part in the Great Locomotive Chase.

Originally printed in The Morning Telegraph in New York, this is the story of Miss Sabrina, the show girl, and her ups and downs with the unpredictable theatrical industry and the Great White Way, the lights and glamour of Broadway. "In order to set myself right with both the public and the vast army of Sabrinas that add youth and beauty to our stage, and brilliancy and gaiety to our well known cafes, I wish to say that she is all that she should be...”- Kenneth McGaffrey

Marion Park, the daughter of missionaries, is sent to Miss Ashton's boarding school. There she meets with many young girls and together they learn not just lessons in German, Logic, Arithmetic, Latin and Rhetoric, but also life lessons of study habits, lady like manners, self control, thoughtfulness of others, truthfulness, and many other character traits. Join these girls of Montrose Academy as they plunge into the adventures of a secret society, fall into a scrape with the boys of Atherton Academy, and plan many Holiday festivities.

"The Short Line War is a story that will appeal more particularly to the sterner sex, and we take it that the hyphenated name, Merwin-Webster, stands for two healthy-minded young men who have put their heads together and who have mapped out this story of a railroad war, in which politics form a considerable part. Jim Weeks is the central figure in the fight, and we like him so much better for knowing of the romance in his early life. He was a man 'without much instinct or imagination; he took everything seriously and literally, he could not understand a whim'--therefore a very foolish little woman came into his life only to leave it desolate...

In Round the Block (1864), John Bell Bouton, a newspaper editor who later became a travel writer, stirs together comedy and pathos to explore the schemes and dreams of the average and extraordinary people inhabiting and intermingling on a single New York City block. In the path of the novel's circumambulation lie mystery, romance, and a murder trial, as love-matches and fortunes are made and lost through invention, speculation, and flimflam - plenty of flimflam. This richly-charactered novel, told with Dickensian brio, offers a fascinating slice of life, vivid in detail, of the bustling big-city habits and mores of America shortly before the Civil War. (Introduction by Grant Hurlock)

"I doubt that anyone who reads [Born Again] will ever forget it: it is quite singularly bad, with long undigestible rants against the evils of the world, an impossibly idealistic Utopian prescription for the said evils, and - as you will have gathered - a very silly plot." - oddbooks.co.ukAlfred Lawson was a veritable Renaissance man: a professional baseball player, a luminary in the field of aviation, an outspoken advocate of vegetarianism and economic reform, and the founder of a pseudo-scientific crackpot philosophy called Lawsonomy...

Science fiction (abbreviated SF or sci-fi with varying punctuation and case) is a broad genre of fiction that often involves sociological and technical speculations based on current or future science or technology. This is a reader-selected collection of short stories originally published between 1931 and 1963, that entered the US public domain when their copyright was not renewed. Summary by Cori Samuel, with Wikipedia input.

A treasure trove of more than two hundred poems, this gem of an anthology compiled by Mary E Burt is indeed a most valuable set of poems to read or listen to. Published in 1904, Poems Every Child Should Know contains some well-loved verses like Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Lewis Carroll's delightful parody Father William, Felicia Hemans' deeply-moving Casablanca and other favorites. It also has lesser-known but equally beautiful pieces like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Arrow and The Song, Robert Browning's The Incident of the French Camp, Eugene Field's nonsense lyrics Wynken, Blynken and Nod and a host of other wonderful verses...

The Short Ghost Story Collection contains ten classic spooky tales written by such master craftsmen as Algernon Blackwood, Charles Dickens, Bram Stoker and Saki among others. The stories range from haunted houses to reincarnation (as a predatory otter), ancient curses in which marble statues come alive and wreak a horrible revenge and a long narrative poem that describes a dialog between a ghost and a human being. This anthology features authors like Lewis Carroll and E Nesbit who are traditionally regarded as children's writers and other practitioners of the paranormal like American writer Mary E...

A collection of ten short essays or other short nonfiction works in the public domain.

Jack the Giant-Killer, Tom Thumb, Goldilocks and The Three Bears, Henny Penny, Dick Whittington, The Three Little Pigs, Red Riding Hood and a host of immortal characters are found in this delightful collection of English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs. The book made its first appearance in 1890 and has remained a firm favorite with both young and old ever since. Fairy tales have traditionally emanated from France and Germany. The famous compilations by La Fontaine and the Brothers Grimm have overshadowed children's literature for centuries...