One of the greatest American novels and a popular culture sensation, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz depicts the adventures of the young Dorothy Gale, who is swept away from her colorless farm home in Kansas by a cyclone, and winds up in the magical Land of Oz. Trapped in an unknown land, Dorothy must find a way back home and subsequently embarks on an adventure and meets a group of colorful characters along the way. Serving as an inspiration throughout generations, the children’s novel has been represented through various cinema adaptations and musicals...

Published in 1912, the fantasy novel focuses on the exciting adventures of Trot, Cap’n Bill and Button Bright, as they are accidentally transported to a mysterious island in the sky, where they encounter its eccentric residents, an unscrupulous ruler, and a strange set of laws. The story sets into motion when Trot, a little girl from the southern coast of California, and Cap’n Bill meet a peculiar young boy carrying a large umbrella. Introduced as Button Bright, the young boy reveals that...

A fairy has become bored with her life, and convinces some young girls to transform her into a human boy so she can go on adventures. The adventures come fast and furious, as the newly-named Prince Marvel explores the surrounding kingdoms. A masochistic squire accompanies Marvel, helping him with assorted kings, knights, dragons, and other medieval menaces along the way.

This collection of fantasy stories was originally serialized in regional newspapers, prior to being published as a complete volume. The stories, as critics have noted, lack the high-fantasy aspect of the best of Baum’s work, in Oz or out. With ironic or nonsensical morals attached to their ends, their tone is more satirical, glib, and tongue-in-cheek than is usual in children’s stories; the serialization in newspapers for adult readers was appropriate for the materials. (Introduction by Wikipedia and Matthew Reece)

Glinda of Oz is the fourteenth Land of Oz book and is the last one written by the original author L. Frank Baum, although the series was continued after his death by several other authors. Dorothy and Ozma discover that a war is brewing in a distant and unexplored part of Oz, between two mysterious races, the Flatheads and the Skeezers. The girls set out to try to prevent the fighting, not knowing what dangers await them.

The novel carries forward the continuing story of the three cousins Louise Merrick, Beth De Graf, and Patsy Doyle, and their circle. The title is somewhat misleading; it could more accurately have been called Aunt Jane's Nieces in Politics. (Uncle John Merrick tells his nieces that politics is "work," which yields the title.)The story begins three days after the end of the previous book, Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville; the freckled and red-haired Patsy still sports a sunburn from her summer in the Adirondacks...

The 10th and final book in the series for adolescent girls sees two of the three cousins react to atrocities in World War I by volunteering in the Red Cross. Written under the pseudonym of Edith Van Dyne, this is the 1915 version, which reflects United States' neutrality. A later version, published in 1918, differed significantly to reflect changes in the position of the United States.

This is another "TWINKLE TALE" from Mr. Baum (written under the pen name Laura Bancroft) and celebrates the further adventures of Twinkle and Chubbins as they magically become child-larks and live the exciting, and often dangerous, life of birds in the forest.

Written under pseudonym of Edith Van Dyne. The story continues the adventures of three cousins, Louise, Patsy and Beth,with their debuts in society and the appearance of suitors, one of whom is rejected and kidnaps Louise.

Mid-WWI, staid Englishwoman Miss Perdita Pim suffers a sunstroke gardening & gains the power of invisibility. She becomes a super-secret agent, going behind German lines, sometimes visible, sometimes not, witnessing atrocities & gleaning valuable war information.

Lady Sarah Isabella Augusta Wilson was the aunt of Winston Spencer Churchill. In 1899 she became the first woman war correspondent when she was recruited to cover the Siege of Mafeking for the Daily Mail during the Boer War. She moved to Mafeking with her husband at the start of the war, where he was aide-de-camp to Colonel Robert Baden-Powell. Baden-Powell asked her to leave Mafeking for her own safety after the Boers threatened to storm the British garrison. This she duly did, and set off on a...

Carrying out the last wishes of a comrade, mercenary Eric John Stark takes on the task of returning a stolen talisman to a walled city near the Martian pole; a city that guards the mysterious Gates of Death. Now all he has to do is get past the brutal clans of Mekh and the shadowy Lord Ciaran to get to Kushat where they’ll probably attempt to kill him. All while he tries to hold on to a talisman that imprints ancient memories of the Gates in his mind. That’s not easy for a human raised by Mercurian aborigines...

The Dark is a novella about a desperate young man, a “terrorist and nihilist”, trying to avoid arrest by taking refuge in a brothel. The story focuses on his unfolding relationship with a prostitute in the brothel and the internal conflict which torments him. The author, Leonid Andreyev, an acclaimed Russian playwright and writer of short fiction, was noted for the darkness in his work. This book was published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf. ( Lee Smalley)

Ben-Hur is a story of two very different heroes. Judah Ben-Hur, a prince of Jerusalem, is involved in an accident to the Roman procurator which is taken to be intentional. He is seized and sent to the fleet as a galley-slave, while his family is imprisoned and the family goods confiscated. When Ben-Hur saves the fleet captain from drowning after his ship is sunk in a fight with pirates, that officer adopts him as son and heir. With Roman training, Ben-Hur distinguishes himself in the arena and the palistrae and appears to be on the way to high military command...

An acclaimed children’s classic depicting the odd, but riveting journeys of the curious Alice as she explores the surreal world of Wonderland. Written by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson or better known under his pseudonym Lewis Caroll, this episodic novel is assembled in twelve chapters each containing a prominent adventure. The departure from logic and its embracement of pure imagination is what makes Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland a model for fantasy novels and a timeless classic. The novel begins when the self-aware young Alice, who grows bored of sitting by the river with her sister, and spots a peculiar looking rabbit, dressed in a waistcoat...

If you've read and loved Alice in Wonderland, you wouldn't want to miss reading about her further adventures, the strange and fantastical creatures she meets and the delightful style and word-play that made the first book so appealing. Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll is thematically much more structured and cleverly constructed as compared to the earlier Alice book but still retains its childhood elements of wonder, curiosity and imagination. Lewis Carroll was the pseudonym of Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a gifted mathematics professor at Oxford during the late 19th century...

An atomic bomb explodes in the mountains of Montana. But was there really a bomb? And was it really in Montana, or in Tokyo? Are Liz and Elizabeth the same woman, is she married with children, is her husband a spy?

These are the last four Cantos of his mock epic that Byron completed in the year before his death at the age of 36 in Messolonghi, Greece, where he had gone to fight for the nationalists against the Ottoman Empire. Juan, now in England, is invited to spend the autumn with a hunting party at the ancient country seat of Lord Henry and Lady Adeline Amundeville. There, he meets the most intriguing of the Byronic heroines, Aurora Raby, and is visited by a ghost with ample breasts (!). That is the narrative outline but hardly the focus of the last Cantos...

"The Giaour" is a poem by Lord Byron first published in 1813 and the first in the series of his Oriental romances. "The Giaour" proved to be a great success when published, consolidating Byron's reputation critically and commercially.

Written late in his career, Byron's narrative poem The Island tells the famous story of the mutiny on board the Bounty, and follows the mutineers as they flee to a South Sea island, "their guilt-won Paradise."

This two volume work is the autobiography of Lord Cochrane, a naval captain of the Napoleonic period. His adventures are seminal to the development of naval fiction as a genre. Marryat sailed with Cochrane, while later writers borrowed incidents from this biography for their fictions. Most notable among these is Patrick O'Brian, three of whose novels have clear parallels to incidents in the life of Cochrane. This first volume covers Cochrane's earlier life, during which he is most active militarily. (Introduction by Timothy Ferguson)

The Motor Boat Boys, by Louis Arundel, is a series of adventure books for boys The series featured six teen-aged boys of the Motor Boat Club, and their adventures on various waterways. This is the sixth book in the series.

This is the second book in the Lone Wolf series. Michael Lanyard had turned his back on his career as gentleman-thief and started a respectable life, when World War I wrecks his life. With his family dead and the spy Ekstrom alive after all, his special skills as the Lone Wolf are needed once more, this time in the war behind enemy lines. But again, there is a mysterious woman involved...

In the beginning of his career, Michael Lanyard alias The Lone Wolf, the most talented thief of his day, made the acquaintance of the beautiful Princess Sofia, but he also made an enemy of her husband, Prince Victor. Years later, Lanyard's daughter gets into the crossfiere... Red Masquerade is the third book in the Lone Wolf Series.

Set in nineteenth century New England, Little Women follows the lives of the four March sisters-Jo, Beth, Amy and Meg. The novel is a classic rites of passage story, that has often split literature critics but has been adored by many over the years. Intended as a book for young girls, the book is too sentimental for some but plenty of adults and young men have Little Women firmly featured in their best books of all time. The pace of the novel can be slow at times and the language almost too perfect but the overall sympathetic tone of Alcott wins over the reader...

The endeavour of small Greek historians to add interest to their work by magnifying the exploits of their countrymen, and piling wonder upon wonder, Lucian first condemned in his Instructions for Writing History, and then caricatured in his True History, wherein is contained the account of a trip to the moon, a piece which must have been enjoyed by Rabelais, which suggested to Cyrano de Bergerac his Voyages to the Moon and to the Sun, and insensibly contributed, perhaps, directly or through Bergerac, to the conception of Gulliver’s Travels. The Icaro-Menippus Dialogue describes another trip to the moon, though its satire is more especially directed against the philosophers.

Charlemagne's nephew Orlando (AKA Roland) is driven insane by the infidelity of his beloved Angelica. Angelica's relationship with him and others loosely unifies multiple story lines to produce a rich tapestry of romance, fictionalized history, and pure fantasy. This romance-epic is a sequel to the less distinguished and unfinished romance Orlando Innamorato, by Mattteo Maria Boiardo.

Fantômas is the first of 32 novels penned from 1911 to 1913 by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre. The title character is a ruthless thief and killer, a bloodthirsty successor to LeBlanc's Arsène Lupin. The first five novels were made into silent film serials. The character and the movies caught the eye of the French Surrealists who admired the primal violence of Fantômas, as well as his portrayal in the films, which are considered landmarks in French Cinema. In Fantômas, the Marquise de Langrune is savagely murdered and Inspector Juve, who is obsessed with capturing Fantômas, arrives to solve the murder.

Fantômas was introduced a few years after Arsène Lupin, another well-known thief. But whereas Lupin draws the line at murder, Fantômas has no such qualms and is shown as a sociopath who enjoys killing in a sadistic fashion.He is totally ruthless, gives no mercy, and is loyal to none, not even his own children. He is a master of disguise, always appearing under an assumed identity, often that of a person whom he has murdered. Fantômas makes use of bizarre and improbable techniques in his crimes, such as plague-infested rats, giant snakes, and rooms that fill with sand...

The series continues. Dorothy Dale and the girls of Glenwood enjoy a break from school, with adventures over the Christmas holidays.

At one time Race Cargill had been the best Terran Intelligence agent on the complex and mysterious planet of Wolf. He had repeatedly imperiled his life amongst the half-human and non-human creatures of the sullen world. And he had repeatedly accomplished the fantastic missions until his name was emblazoned with glory. But that had all seemingly ended. For six long years he’d sat behind a boring desk inside the fenced-in Terran Headquarters, cut off there ever since he and a rival had scarred and ripped each other in blood-feud...

Regarded as the pride and joy of American literature, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a picturesque novel depicting Huck’s epic journey from boyhood to manhood and the struggles he must face living in a corrupt society. The novel serves as a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, another famous work by Mark Twain. The plot unfolds in several locations sometime before the Civil War. The book opens with a description of Huck’s new life as he undergoes a process of “civilization” while living with the Widow Douglas and her sister Miss Watson...