"Satan's Diary", Andreyev's last work, was completed by the great Russian a few days before he died in Finland, in September, 1919. But a few years ago the most popular and successful of Russian writers, Andreyev died almost penniless, a sad, tragic figure, disillusioned, broken-hearted over the tragedy of Russia. In "Satan's Diary", Andreyev summoned up his boundless disillusionment in an absorbing satire on human life. Fearlessly and mercilessly he hurled the falsehoods and hypocrisies in the face of life...

The story of a little girl in the village of Wildbach, who loved the roses, and how spreading both her roses and her love touched the hearts of the villagers.

Peggy Raymond and her friends, Amy, Priscilla and Ruth, encounter a new neighbour, Elaine, and her family. While Peggy, in her usual cheerful and practical manner, welcomes them into the neighbourhood of Friendly Terrace, a variety of mysteries slowly unfold about them and why they ended up moving there. (Harriet Lummis Smith later went on to write four sequels to Eleanor H. Porter's "Pollyanna" books.)

Fantastic and Sinister Are the Lowlands into Which Philip Grant Descends on His Dangerous Assignment.

Delany's first novel, from 1962, serves as a sort of prologue to the subsequent Captives of the Flame, 1963. Set several centuries after the Great Fire -- a nuclear holocaust -- a young woman seeks her destiny with the help of a four-armed youth.

George W. Peck was at times a writer, newspaper publisher and politician. Many of the Sunbeam essays had been published in Peck's paper, "The Sun", as amusing and often critical comments on social and political subjects, typically current in the beginning of the 1900's. Topics are often 'small town' United States, and Peck's gentle sarcasm or portrayals much resembles that of Twain. Listeners must be aware that the Spanish American War was a recent event, leading to the "Yankee" involvement in the Philippines...

A look at the year 1891 through literature and non-fiction essays first published that year, including works by Mary E Wilkins, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sara Orne Jewett, and Oscar Wilde.

The Friendly Terrace Quartette (or Peggy Raymond At The Poplars) published in 1920, finds Peggy and her friends preparing for The Great War. Young men they had known as boys are signing up to train and fight as soldiers, while the girls find themselves looking for what they can do to help. Priscilla, and Amy join Peggy in The Land Army to assist in agricultural labour usually left to men of the period. Ruth, of weaker health, must remain on Friendly Terrace but manages to find her own way to be useful...

"The People of the Black Circle" is one of the original novellas about Conan the Cimmerian, written by American author Robert E. Howard and first published in Weird Tales magazine in three parts over the September, October and November 1934 issues. It is set in the pseudo-historical Hyborian Age and concerns Conan kidnapping a regal princess of Vendhya (pre-historical India) and foiling a nefarious plot of world domination by the Black Seers of Yimsha. Due to its epic scope and atypical Hindustan flavor, the story is considered an undisputed classic of Conan lore and is often cited by Howard scholars as one of his best tales...

Conan finally meets his match in Belit, the fierce, bloodthirsty and scantily clad pirate Queen. She also is unable to resist the huge, blue eyed, iron thewed barbarian who literally sweeps her off her feet. Together they become pirates of legend and are the scourge of the Black Coast. They venture up the river of death where no one has gone in centuries and lived, in search of plunder, battle and adventure. And get get more of all three than they could wish for.

Despite a warning received in the Suq by an elderly desert nomad, Conan stays the night in a cheap tavern in Zamboula, run by Aram Baksh. As night falls, a black Darfarian cannibal enters to drag him away to be eaten. All of the Darfar slaves in the city are cannibals who roam the streets at night. As they only prey on travellers, the people of the city tolerate this and stay locked securely in their homes, while nomads and beggars make sure to spend the night at a comfortable distance from its walls...

In " Our Little Canadian Cousin," the author's intention is to tell, in a general way and in one defined local setting, the story of Canadian home life in the late 19th century. To Canadians, home life means not merely sitting at a huge fire-place, or brewing and baking in a wide country kitchen, or dancing of an evening, or teaching, or sewing ; but it means the great outdoor life — sleighing, skating, snow-shoeing, hunting, canoeing, and, above all, " camping out " — the joys that belong to a vast, uncrowded country, where there is " room to play."

In January of 1930 a new magazine with a flashy color cover appeared on newsstands, Astounding Stories of Super-Science. Filled with stories of adventure, sometimes with only a tinge of science, this magazine was to host and nurture many science fiction giants like Murray Leinster and Ray Cummings and would help inspire many of the writers of the "Golden Age of Science Fiction". This inaugural issue includes stories by Murray Leinster, Ray Cummings, S. P. Meek, Victor Rousseau and others.

A collection of twenty stories featuring ghoulies, ghosties, long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night. Expect shivers up your spine, the stench of human flesh, and the occasional touch of wonder.

The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth! Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local townspeople, a crackpot professor...

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, better known as H.P. Lovecraft, was an American author of horror, fantasy, poetry and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction and many feel he is the acknowledged master of creepy, weird and unsettling stories. These are seven stories by Lovecraft that literally span his career; some being written when he was barely a teenager and one (The Shunned House) only published after he had died. Each story is unique and strange in it's own way but all of them come from the same mind that gave us the Cult of Cthulhu and other wonderful tales that generations now have enjoyed for their strangeness that resonates with our own inner fears...

This book is one of a series that aims at describing other cultures to children in an entertaining way that honors the culture, educates the child and keeps their minds open to the possibility of other people living wonderful lives in far off places. "Until very recently little has been known of the strange land in which the subject of this tale lives. Recent events have done much to introduce Korea and its people to the world at large. For this reason the story of Yung Pak's youthful days may be the more interesting to his Western cousins...

The Earl of Saxham was vastly annoyed when his son, Guy, fell in love with a “penniless nobody,” and announced that he would marry her against all opposition. He determined to separate the lovers; to which end he persuaded an influential friend in the Foreign Office to secure an appointment for Guy in the Embassy at Madrid. He little knew that he was sending his son into the centre of a hotbed of anarchism, that Guy’s footsteps were to be dogged by a vindictive and revengeful woman, that his life was to hold many a thrilling moment and not a few narrow escapes.

But he was afraid. He had failed twice already. He could not afford to fail a third time. If he failed ruin faced him, and disgrace. His father had warned him that the money he had saved for his education had come to an end. Ruin for his father and his little sister! He had no idea how deeply Rupert was in debt. Rupert himself had only just realised it. And in desperation he had gambled to save himself. (Excerpt from 1st chapter by Arthur Applin)

"Herbert West—Reanimator" is a story by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft that was first serialized in February through July 1922 in the amateur publication Home Brew. The story was the basis of the 1985 horror film Re-Animator and its sequels, in addition to numerous other adaptations in various media. You want zombies? Listen to this because Lovecraft was one of the very first and he got zombies right: scary, evil, implacable and out to get you.

This is what people were reading in 1903, short stories, poetry, and non-fiction articles.

In 1918, Anthony Trent, a well-educated young man in his late twenties, lives an unsatisfactory life in a New York boarding house. He writes successful crime fiction stories, but this doesn't pay enough for him to do the things he wants. Things change when he starts to put his knowledge of crime to a practical use... It gets him into serious trouble before long. (This work was first published in the USA in 1918, and falls under the Rule of the Shorter Term). The sequel to this book, The Secret of the Silver Car, is also available on Librivox.

Titus: A Comrade of the cross is a book full of suspense and drama, but more importantly truth. It is about Titus, a young man living in the time of Christ. He is a part of the lowest class of society, his father is a thief, and Titus' brother, whom He is very attached to, is a cripple. Titus and his brother, Stephen, abhor the life of their father, yet Titus has no choice but to join him and the rest of the group of law breakers and thieves occasionally. He yearns for somthing better. One day he hears of Jesus...

Student Lucile Tucker works part-time at the library of the large university she attends in Chicago to help pay her tuition. One night, while closing the library for the evening, she glimpses a small child – a girl – in the stacks. Carefully following her, Lucile can’t believe her eyes when the child, unaware that she has been seen, manages to steal a valuable book from the collection and practically disappear from the library right before Lucile’s eyes. This is only the beginning of her search for why this child took this book (and others)...

Originally entitled A frutefull pleasaunt, and wittie worke of the beste state of publique weale, & of the newe yle, called Utopia: written in Latine, by ... Syr Thomas More knyght, and translated into Englishe by Raphe Robynson ...The first book tells of the traveller Raphael Hythloday, to whom More is introduced in Antwerp. The second book consists of Hythloday's description of the island and people of Utopia, their customs, laws, religions, economy, language and relations with other nations. Hythloday...

What has Manton gotten himself into? His impersonation has broader implications -- and more dangerous ones -- than he had imagined.

Humans have expanded to myriads of worlds throughout the galaxies but they have found that the only way for colonies to be self sustaining, was to reproduce the total ecology of their home world; the original Earth. This meant bringing the entire ecosystem, the good, the bad and the ugly. Viruses as well as grass, goats as well as stink bugs and allowing the whole mixture to ultimately produce an inhabitable world for humans. But what happens when this system is not properly supervised? Moran and the others in the space yacht Nadine find a world where strange things have been brewing for over a hundred years and may or may not survive an environment gone mad.

Science fiction is a genre encompassing imaginative works that take place in this world or that of the author’s creation where anything is possible. The only rules are those set forth by the author. The speculative nature of the genre inspires thought, and plants seeds that have led to advances in science. Many people chose to become scientists because science fiction sparked their interest. It is a playing field to explore social perspectives, predictions of the future, and engage in adventures unbound into the richness of the human mind.-

A collection of twenty stories featuring ghoulies, ghosties, long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night. Expect shivers up your spine, the stench of human flesh, and the occasional touch of wonder.

A dark tale of adventure, piracy, murder, and revenge set on a rugged Cornish island in the mid-1700s. Told with the literary excellence to be expected from the author of The Four Feathers, the tale begins with a dangerous youth who sat in the stocks, and a girl named Helen, and a gang of men watching a granite house at the edge of the sea. NOTE: Contains some language that would be considered offensive to the modern ear. (Christine Dufour)

Taken from Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes, Switzerland and Austria: Vol. XVI, edited by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Eleven stories of war by the author of The Red Badge of Courage. Stephen Crane was an American author. He is recognized by modern critics as one of the most innovative writers of his generation. Crane's writing is characterized by vivid intensity, distinctive dialects, and irony. Common themes involve fear, spiritual crises and social isolation. His writing made a deep impression on 20th-century writers, most prominent among them Ernest Hemingway, and is thought to have inspired the Modernists and the Imagists.