A $10,000 prize lures Tom into competing at a local aviation meet at Eagle Park. Tom is determined to build the fastest plane around, but his plans mysteriously disappear, which means Tom must redesign his new airplane from the beginning.

The Pollard is about to be taken to Anapolis, where the United States Navy will train their midshipmen how to run the submarine. Jack, Hal and Eph are all to help with training and to see the sights in Anapolis. They might even persuade the Navy to buy the second submarine, the Farnum. (Ann Boulais)

Jack Benson and Hal Hastings arrive in Dunhaven, looking for adventure. But in a sleepy, little town, they might not find much. When they find out that there is a submarine in the shipyard, they decide that this is what they have been looking for.

The torpedo submarine's inventor, Jack Farnum, is looking for investors to help him kick his new shipyard into high gear. He already has his crew set, with sixteen year old Jack Benson as the captain, and his friend Hal Hastings running the engines. But, there may be some changes to the crew of the Pollard on the horizon.

Captain Jack Benson and Hal Hastings have been sailing in torpedo submarines a while now. But, there is new danger that they will have to get used to, having the actual torpedoes onboard! They will be trying out a new boat, named after Hal, with the Navy watching closely. But trouble is always close by. (Ann Boulais)

It is a wonderful December day in Spruce Beach, FL, and everyone is waiting, waiting for something special that has been promised. The "Benson", the fast submarine built by the Pollard Submarine Boat Company, is set to arrive. But, there are more people who are interested in the "Benson" than those picnicking on the beach. Who could they be? (Ann Boulais)

Victor Hugo's Les Misérables is a novel which tells the story of ex-convict Jean Valjean, his struggles and eventual redemption. It's hailed by many critics as not just Victor Hugo's finest work but also one of the best French novels of all time. Like most epic novels written in the 19th century, the storyline of Les Misérables spans through several decades beginning in the early 1800s and culminating in the 1832 June Rebellion in Paris. The events related to the lives of the central characters in the novel are also tied to the great historical events of the time from the French Revolution to the June Rebellion...

This is the story of a man’s monumental struggle against nature, to win the hand of the woman he loves, and surmount every difficulty that Nature puts in his path

The Man Who Laughs is a novel by Victor Hugo, originally published in April 1869 under the French title L'Homme qui rit. Also published under the title "By Order of the King". (Introduction by Wikipedia)

A man who has been condemned to death writes down his cogitations, feelings and fears while he is waiting for his execution. He does not betray his name to the reader or what he has done. He describes his life in prison, everything from what his cell looks like to the personality of the prison priest. (Introduction by Wikipedia)

Hans of Iceland was written in 1821 and is the very first novel written by young Victor, years before he became the great Hugo. It has all the ingredients of a gothic novel: dreadful murders by the hand of a human monster, a young hero in love with the destitute heroine, royal court-intrigues and rebellious uprising, all set in dungeons, dark towers and the untamed nature of Norway.This audio-book has been recorded as Dramatic Reading with all the voices performed by one single reader, including laughs, sobs, groans, occasional screams and a lot of growls. I hope you will enjoy listening to this adventurous journey just as much as I enjoyed recording it. - Summary by Sonia

An amusing but deeply poignant story, “The Last Ditch” describes the wartime experiences of a British aristocratic family who gradually realize that their old feudal perquisites are passing away in the trenches of the Great War and that unprecedented new forces are pushing out the comfortable old ways. Lady Arles is the matriarch determined to resist to her last breath. Her bohemian young daughter Venice is set on a career as a poet and even dallies with a Socialist lover, but in some ways is the family member who seems the most helpless without her old aristocratic privileges...

The Voyage Out is the first novel by Virginia Woolf, published in 1915 by Duckworth; and published in the U.S. in 1920 by Doran. One of Woolf's wittiest social satires.Rachel Vinrace embarks for South America on her father's ship and is launched on a course of self-discovery in a kind of modern mythical voyage. The mismatched jumble of passengers provide Woolf with an opportunity to satirize Edwardian life. The novel introduces Clarissa Dalloway, the central character of Woolf's later novel, Mrs...

The novel centers, in a very ambiguous way, around the life story of the protagonist Jacob Flanders, and is presented entirely by the impressions other characters have of Jacob [except for those times when we do indeed get Jacob's perspective]. Thus, although it could be said that the book is primarily a character study and has little in the way of plot or background, the narrative is constructed as a void in place of the central character, if indeed the novel can be said to have a 'protagonist' in conventional terms. Motifs of emptiness and absence haunt the novel and establish its elegiac feel.

Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929), with its famous dictum, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction...

In this sketch, called by Korolenko “a psychological study,” the author has attempted to analyze the inner life of the blind. He has undertaken to lay before the reader not only the psychological processes in the mind of the blind, but their suffering from the lack of sight as well, uncomplicated by any untoward circumstances. To accomplish this he has placed his hero in most favorable, nay, almost exceptional conditions. The subjects for this study are a blind girl, whom the author had known as a child; a boy, a pupil of his, who was gradually losing his sight; and a professional musician, blind from his birth, intellectually gifted, scholarly, and refined.

Zadig, ou La Destinée, (”Zadig, or The Book of Fate”) (1747) is a famous novel written by the French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire. It tells the story of Zadig, a philosopher in ancient Babylonia. The author does not attempt any historical accuracy, and some of the problems Zadig faces are thinly disguised references to social and political problems of Voltaire’s own day. The book is philosophical in nature, and presents human life as in the hands of a destiny beyond human control. It is a story of religious and metaphysical orthodoxy, both of which Voltaire challenges with his presentation of the moral revolution taking place in Zadig himself...

L’Ingénu is a satirical novella by the French writer Voltaire, published in 1767. It tells the story of a Huron Indian transported to the sophistication of eighteenth century Paris, and satirizes religious doctrine, as well as the folly and injustices of French society.

A well off English bachelor receives a legacy from his uncle. This includes the uncle's very large library and a box containing something that used to belong to his uncle. The box has air holes in it. It is not a rat or other small mammal for his collection, but it is something still alive; something very malevolent and something very evil.

Brief, and in some cases incomplete, stories of magic from ancient Egypt.

The Bab Ballads are a collection of light verse by W. S. Gilbert, illustrated with his own comic drawings. Gilbert wrote the Ballads before he became famous for his comic opera librettos with Arthur Sullivan. In writing the Bab Ballads, Gilbert developed his unique “topsy-turvy” style, where the humour was derived by setting up a ridiculous premise and working out its logical consequences, however absurd. The Ballads also reveal Gilbert’s cynical and satirical approach to humour. They became famous on their own, as well as being a source for plot elements, characters and songs that Gilbert would recycle in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas...

The Mikado is the ninth of the 14 Gilbert and Sullivan musical collaborations. It opened in 1885, had the second longest run for any work of musical theatre of the time, and remains the most frequently performed Gilbert and Sullivan. It was adapted as a children's book by W. S. Gilbert entitled The Story of The Mikado, which was Gilbert's last literary work (and published posthumously). It is a retelling of The Mikado, with various changes to simplify language or make it more suitable for children...

H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor, is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It opened in London, England, on 25 May 1878 and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical theatre piece up to that time. H.M.S. Pinafore was Gilbert and Sullivan's fourth operatic collaboration and their first international sensation. This is not that opera.It was adapted as a children's book by W. S. Gilbert entitled The Story of HMS Pinafore, or The Pinafore Picture Book, and includes some lovely illustrations by Alice B...

The Magician is a novel by British author W. Somerset Maugham, originally published in 1908. In this tale, the magician Oliver Haddo, a caricature of Aleister Crowley, attempts to create life. Crowley wrote a critique of this book under the pen name Oliver Haddo, where he accused Maugham of plagiarism. Maugham wrote The Magician in London, after he had spent some time living in Paris, where he met Aleister Crowley. The novel was later republished with a foreword by Maugham entitled A Fragment of Autobiography. (Wikipedia)

This Maugham classic is set in England and Hong Kong and in a cholera --ridden Chinese village in the 1920's. A committed, principled, epidemiologist, Dr. Fane, falls in love with the beautiful, but vain and foolish, Kitty Garstin. She agrees to marry him only because she wishes to beat her sister to the altar. She soon commits adultery with a British official in Hong Kong, where they have relocated. Dr. Fane decides that she must accompany him to a small village, deep within China, where cholera is rampant; otherwise, he will reveal the betrayal, with grave consequences for all...

"Canon Spratte saw himself as he thought others might see him: mediocre, pompous, self-assertive, verbose." Maugham could have added ambitious, hypocritical, and vain. In this engrossing social satire, Theodore Spratte, a cleric, motivated by an obsessive desire to be elevated to bishop, embellishes his family history and intrudes upon his son's and daughter's courtships. A reviewer in 1906 wrote, "The whole book is an admirable blend of cynical gaiety and broadly farcical comedy; it is the smartest and most genuinely humorous novel that the season has yet given us." -- Lee Smalley

“I thought it was you I saw coming up the hill,” she said, stretching out her hand. He stopped and shook it; the touch of his big, firm fingers made her tremble. His hand was massive and hard as if it were hewn of stone. She looked up at him and smiled. “Isn’t it cold?” she said. It is terrible to be desirous of saying all sorts of passionate things, while convention debars you from any but the most commonplace. (Excerpts from chapter 1.)

An eerie supernatural story, The Monkey's Paw follows the White family as they come to realize that nothing in life comes without a price or at the simple push of a button. First published in 1902, the short story powerfully suggests that one should not interfere with the course of nature, as cheating fate can result in unforeseen consequences that leave one with more than they bargained for. Set in England, the tale opens on a dark and stormy night inside Laburnam Villa, home to Mr. and Mrs...

The Wound Dresser is a series of letters written from the hospitals in Washington by Walt Whitman during the War of the Rebellion to The New York Times, the Brooklyn Eagle and his mother, edited by Richard Maurice Burke, M.D., one of Whitman's literary executors.

This story ran as a serial in 1852 in the New York Sunday Dispatch, and for more than 160 years was buried in obscurity, unknown to the world as novel written by Walt Whitman. Zachary Turpin, a graduate student specializing in Whitman's works, had seen in his notes a sketch of a novel including the characters Covert, Wigglesworth, Smytthe and Jack Engle, but no work including these characters had ever been found. After poring over endless pages of newspapers of the era however, Turpin found this advertisement for an upcoming serial: “A RICH REVELATION...

The three charming stories contained in The Frog Prince and Other Tales include a less-known fairy-tale called Princess Belle-Etoile besides the title story and Alladin and the Wonderful Lamp. Published in 1874, the tales are re-told by the famous illustrator Walter Crane, who has also provided some of the most lovely illustrations in the book. The book makes an ideal gift and both parents and children will certainly enjoy it. It's perfect for bedtime story-reading sessions and kids would love gazing at the beautiful Greek-style illustrations that are scattered throughout the book...

Three monkey brothers, Thumb, Thimble, and Nod, are Mulla-mulgars or royal monkeys. As she dies, their mother gives them the enchanted Wonderstone for protection, and tells them to follow their father. They embark on a journey of fantastical adventure to find their father, who left years earlier in search of the kingdom of his brother, the Prince of the Valleys of Tishnar, promising to return for them after he had found the way.

A story of psychological horror, The Return explores ideas of identity, love, and alienation. Arthur grapples with the reactions of his family and community, and his own sanity, when he experiences a sudden and mysterious "transformation". (

These wonderful, whimsical poems from the incomparable Walter de la Mare describe the bliss of childhood, explore the marvel of a child's imagination and portray the intriguing landscapes of existences both lived and imagined by a young mind in a magical kingdom located somewhere between daydream and caprice. In these poems we experience aspects of a reality unencumbered by concern, unhindered by anxiety, and share an imagination free to wander, ponder, contemplate, envision and express itself in a marvelous mosaic of impression, inspiration and introspection...

Under the terms of a will, the Wildersham children have to relocate from the family house in the city to "Crossings" in the country, and to spend the first fortnight alone fending for themselves in the house. The children encounter interesting country neighbors, including ghosts and fairies. Or are they dreaming? Walter De La Mare was a poet, and we have a number of his poems available at. This is his only play: "Crossings was produced for the first time in 1919, at the Wick School, Hove, to celebrate the coming of Peace...

Marius the Epicurean is a philosophical novel written by Walter Pater, published in 1885. In it Pater displays, with fullness and elaboration, his ideal of the aesthetic life, his cult of beauty as opposed to bare asceticism, and his theory of the stimulating effect of the pursuit of beauty as an ideal of its own. The principles of what would be known as the Aesthetic movement were partly traceable to this book; and its impact was particularly felt on one of the movement’s leading proponents, Oscar Wilde, a former student of Pater at Oxford.

This biography of Johannes Kepler begins with an account of what the world of astronomy was like before his time, then proceeds to a look at his early years. Two chapters deal with his working relationship with Tycho Brahe. These are followed by a look at Kepler's laws and his last years.

Do remember reading a panic-mongering news story a while back about genetically engineered “Frankengrass” “escaping” from the golf course where it had been planted? That news story was foreshadowed decades previously in the form of prophetic fiction wherein a pushy salesman, a cash-strapped scientist, and a clump of crabgrass accidentally merge forces with apocalyptic consequences. A triple-genre combo of science fiction, horror, and satire, Greener Than You Think is a forgotten classic that resonates beautifully with modern times. This is a faithful reading of a 1947 first edition text.

A great civilization’s fate lay in Dick Barrow’s hands as he led his courageous fellow engineers into a strange and unknown land. None of them knew what lay ahead–what dangers awaited them–or what rewards. But they did not hesitate because the first question asked them had been: “Are you a brave man?”

Apart from "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" - the pieces which made both Irving and The Sketch Book famous - other tales include "Roscoe", "The Broken Heart", "The Art of Book-making", "A Royal Poet", "The Spectre Bridegroom", "Westminster Abbey", "Little Britain", and "John Bull". His stories were highly influenced by German folktales, with "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" being inspired by a folktale recorded by Karl Musaus. Stories range from the maudlin (such as "The Wife" and...

This is a collection of essays, verbal sketches, and stories by Washington Irving. Irving lived at the Alhambra Palace while writing some of the material for his book. In 1828, Washington Irving traveled from Madrid, where he had been staying, to Granada, Spain. At first sight, he described it as "a most picturesque and beautiful city, situated in one of the loveliest landscapes that I have ever seen." He immediately asked the then-governor of the historic Alhambra Palace as well as the archbishop of Granada for access to the palace, which was granted because of Irving's celebrity status...

The Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle, Gent. (1824) is a compilation of eight humorous and observational letters written by American writer, Washington Irving, under the pseudonym, Jonathan Oldstyle. These eight letters and one additional were first published as a series of "Letters to the Editor" of the New York paper, The Morning Chronicle, between 1802 and 1803. In them Oldstyle skewered the local New York social scene on the topics of etiquette, marriage, fashion, and other particulars of human interaction...

STORIES OF LATER AMERICAN HISTORYBy WILBUR F. GORDYPREFACEThis book, like Stories of Early American History, follows somewhat closely the course of study prepared by the Committee of Eight, the present volume covering the topics outlined for Grade V, while the earlier one includes the material suggested for Grade IV. It was the plan of that committee to take up in these grades, largely in a biographical way, a great part of the essential facts of American history; and with this plan the author, who was a member of that committee, was in hearty accord...

A young woman who inherits a beautiful diamond known as The Moonstone on her eighteenth birthday becomes the center of this mystery story. The diamond is a gift from an uncle who once served as an army officer in British India. She proudly wears the jewel on her dress at her birthday party that night. The precious stone has a dark and sinister history, which will have a terrible impact on her life and the lives of those around her. You're about to read what's been termed the very first real detective story in the English language...

Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White tells the story of two half-sisters, Laura Fairlie and Marian Halcombe who were embroiled in the sinister plot of Sir Percival Glyde and Count Fosco to take over their family’s wealth. It’s considered to be one of the first “sensation novels” to be published. Like most novels that fall into this category, the protagonists here are pushed to their limits by the villains before they finally got the justice they deserved. The story begins with Walter Hartright helping a woman dressed in white who turned out to have escaped from a mental asylum...

A kind, good-hearted genteel young woman jilted, a suspicious death or two that only a few think could be murder, strange apparitions appearing in an hotel all combine to create a horrifying conundrum. Who was the culprit and will finding out finally put an end to the mystery?

The church has lost out on a valuable piece of land through wars and transfers. Father Benwell is determined to reclaim that property by the conversion of the owner, Lewis Romayne. Enter beautiful Stella, who captures the heart of Romayne. Should Stella capture the love and devotion of Romayne, Father Benwell's scheme would fail, and that is something that he can not allow. Complicating things is the fact that both Romayne and Stella are hiding their own terrible secrets.The Black Robe is an 1881 epistolary novel by famed English writer, Wilkie Collins. The book centers around the misadventures of Lewis Romayne, and is also noted for a perceived anti-Catholic bias

The story begins in 1846, at Combe-Raven in West Somersetshire, the country residence of the happy Vanstone family. When Andrew Vanstone is killed suddenly in an accident and his wife follows shortly thereafter, it is revealed that they were not married at the time of their daughters' births, making their daughters "Nobody's Children" in the eyes of English law and robbing them of their inheritance. Andrew Vanstone's elder brother Michael gleefully takes possession of his brother's fortune, leaving his nieces to make their own way in the world...

Valeria Brinton marries Eustace Woodville despite objections from Woodville's family leading to disquiet for Valeria's own family and friends.Just a few days after the wedding, various incidents lead Valeria to suspect her husband is hiding a dark secret in his past and she discovers that he has been using a false name. He refuses to discuss it leading them to curtail their honeymoon and return to London where Valeria learns that he was on trial for his first wife's murder by arsenic. He was tried in a Scottish court and the verdict was 'Not Proven' rather than 'not guilty' implying his guilt but without enough proof for a jury to convict him...

The Frozen Deep is a story of a love triangle between Clara, Frank and Richard, spiced up with dangerous expeditions, mysterious visions and life-threatening circumstances. The end is as surprising and unexpected as we are (or are not) accustomed to in Collins' books.

Ill feelings exist between the Meadowcroft sons and John Jago, the foreman of the Meadowcroft estate. Then, John Jago disappears, and a body is found in a kiln. The Meadowcroft brothers stand accused of the crime, but are they guilty? The Dead Alive is a novel written by Wilkie Collins based on the true-life Boorn Brothers murder conviction case of 1819. Jesse and Stephen Boorn were sentenced to death for the murder of their brother-in-law, but were they wrongly convicted?

Basil, son of a father who values the family pedigree and who would not let him marry below his station, falls in love at first sight with a girl he sees on a bus. He stalks her and discovers she is Margaret Sherwin, only daughter of a linen draper. He stalks her and persuades her father to let him marry her secretly. He agrees on the condition, that, as his daughter is only seventeen, they live apart for the first year. At first the secret works, but then the mysterious Mannion, whose emotions cannot be read in his face, returns from abroad. On the last night of the year Basil follows Margaret and Mannion and discovers them in flagrante delicto. (Wikipedia)

"Poor Miss Finch." That is what everyone calls the courageous protagonist of this book. In other words, "poor thing, she's blind, isn't it awful?" Ha! Lucilla Finch is the wisest of all the characters, in spite of, and perhaps because of, her blindness. This story is about her trials, tribulations and triumphs. She reminds me of myself. Not the falling recklessly in love and being pulled this way and that by foolish young men and mad old doctors. I mean that, like her, I'm blind and proud of it! (Introduction by Sandra G)

After his father’s death Gerard Roylake returns from Germany to take up his inheritance at Trimley Deen. On one evening he meets his childhood friend, Cristel Toller. They fall in love, but there is a crux. A deaf man, called The Lodger is obsessed with Cristel. He invites Gerard to tea with evil intentions… and Gerard accepts the invitation.The book is written in the first person and tells the story from Gerard's point of view.

"Everything in life has a price. May be, telling a Secret has the highest. However, not telling may be worse. What will Sarah choose? will she tell the Secret which destroyed her life?"

The artist Valentine Blyth has a very generous heart. He lovingly cares for his invalid wife, rescues a deaf orphan girl from maltreatment in a traveling circus and adopts her, and mentors a young man who gets in trouble with his tyrannical father. The girl, who received the nickname ‚Madonna’, falls in love with the young man, Zack. Because one of Valentine’s biggest fears is that Madonna’s blood relations will one day trace her and take her away from his home, he keeps the little that he knows of her origins a strict secret...

The elderly Brothers Owen, Morgan and Griffith live a quiet, retired life in the countryside, which is turned upside-down by Griffith's ward, the young Jessie Yelverton. Originally, her visit to them was to last only six weeks, but for a very certain reason, the gentlemen must find a way to prolong her visit and get Jessie to stay for ten more days. To make her stay, they promise to tell her an entertaining and exciting story each night...

This 1870 novel by Wilkie Collins centers around a peculiarity of Scottish law of that time, according to which any man and woman 'who were legally entitled to marry and who asserted that they were married before witnesses, or in writing, were regarded in Scotland as being married in law.' This strange law causes the characters Arnold and Geoffrey both possibly accidentally marrying Anne, though one is engaged to another woman and the other is searching for a more wealthy wife to accomodate his lifestyle. In these circumstances, Anne needs to catch an actual husband in order to save her reputation...

The Evil Genius, one of Wilkie Collins' last works, is subtitled "A Domestic Scene". It is the intriguing tale of family Linley, including the "evil genius", and their governess Sydney Westerfield. In colorful pictures, Collins presents the story of this family, which becomes entangled in the often hyprocritical Victorian perceptions of morality and decency.

Natalie Graybrooke is in love with her cousin Launcelot Linzie, but engaged to Mr. Turlington, an older man who covets her fortune and whom she detests. Turlington is the executor of Natalie's father's estate. When Natalie secretly marries her cousin, Turlington arranges to have Natalie's father murdered, to gain control of his fortune.

"[T]he story offers the faithful reflection of a very happy time in my past life. It was written at Paris, when I had Charles Dickens for a near neighbor and a daily companion, and when my leisure hours were joyously passed with many other friends, all associated with literature and art, of whom the admirable comedian, Regnier, is now the only survivor. The revising of these pages has been to me a melancholy task. I can only hope that they may cheer the sad moments of others. The Rogue may surely claim two merits, at least, in the eyes of the new generation—he is never serious for two moments together; and he "doesn't take long to read." W. C."

Mary Dermody is destined to be together with George Germaine one day, or so at least her grandmother prophesizes. Destiny at first doesn't seem to adhere to this plan, and the pair is separated and lose sight of each other. But when George saves a young woman from drowning, a strong connection seems to develop between them, which seems to be almost supernatural..

This 1923 Pulitzer Prize winning novel was written by Willa Cather. This work had been inspired by reading her cousin G.P. Cather’s wartime letters home to his mother. He was the first officer from Nebraska killed in World War I. Claude Wheeler, the subject of the novel, is a young man growing up on a Nebraska farm. The son of well to do parents, Claude is troubled by his apparent inability to find purpose with his life. Everything he does seems to turn out wrong, at least in his own mind. Although he is a skilled farmer, Claude believes his destiny lies elsewhere...

Stories and essays by Willa Cather

A portrait of Americas many social groups with the chief interest centered on a university professor and his family - Summary by Publishers Weekly September 5 1925

Set in the 1890s in Moonstone, a fictional place supposedly located in Colorado, The Song of the Lark is the self-portrait of an artist in the making. The story revolves around an ambitious young heroine, Thea Kronborg, who leaves her hometown to go to the big city to fulfill her dream of becoming a famous opera star. The novel captures Thea's independent-mindedness, her strong work ethic, and her ascent to her highest achievement. At each step along the way, her realization of the mediocrity of her peers propels her to greater levels of accomplishment, but in the course of her ascent she must discard those relationships which no longer serve her.

By Zorra, in the following sketches, is meant a little district in Oxford county, Ontario, some ten miles square, composed of part of East and part of West Zorra, and containing a population of about fourteen hundred. It was settled about the year 1830, chiefly by Highlanders from Sutherlandshire, Scotland.Within the last forty years there have gone from this district over one hundred young men who have made their mark in the world. With most of these it has been the writer's good fortune to be personally and intimately acquainted; and companionship with some of them has been to him a pleasure and a benefit...

The work was composed between 1790 and 1793, in the period of radical foment and political conflict immediately after the French Revolution. The title is an ironic reference to Emanuel Swedenborg's theological work Heaven and Hell published in Latin 33 years earlier. Swedenborg is directly cited and criticized by Blake several places in the Marriage. Though Blake was influenced by his grand and mystical cosmic conception, Swedenborg's conventional moral structures and his Manichean view of good...

A story about the Irish, just before the onset of the famine of 1847, with all the color and dialogue of a man who lived it.

Sailing adventure with storms, icebergs, shipwrecks, treasure, and the reawakening of a pirate frozen in suspended animation for nearly fifty years

This is a collection of short stories of mystery and romance, set at sea, in the times of the great sea voyages.

This is a sea-faring novel set in 1837. A wealthy former seaman from London and his daughter, who is engaged to be married, set sail on his newly restored schooner, headed for the equator for the purpose of restoring his health. Also aboard are a captain and crew. Soon, distractions, diversions, discontent and much more occur. William Clark Russell (1844–1911) was an English writer best known for his nautical novels. ~ Lee Smalley

“To bury these, to christen those, And marry such fond folks who chose To change the tenor of their life And risk the matrimonial strife.” This was the humdrum life of Dr. Syntax before he set out on his bizarre and hilarious adventures, presented here in the form of satirical poem in 26 cantos. It’s a lot of fun!

The Rise of Silas Lapham is the most widely read of W.D. Howells’ novels. An example of literary realism, the story is about a farmer (Silas Lapham) who launches a very successful paint business, and moves his family up the social ladder of Boston. Lapham, however, is not one of the new types of American businessman, the ruthless plutocrat, rather he is the old-fashioned trustworthy Yankee trader, and the story deals with how he fares in the industrial capitalist environment. It is also a novel of manners, telling the story of the courtship of a daughter, and the difficulties the family deals with in attempting to move from one social class to another.

Five short delightful stories for children, told in the voice of "the papa" to "the girl" and "the boy." William Dean Howells (March 1, 1837 – May 11, 1920) was an American realist author and literary critic. Nicknamed "The Dean of American Letters", he was particularly known for his tenure as editor of the Atlantic Monthly as well as his own prolific writings, including the Christmas story "Christmas Every Day" and the novel The Rise of Silas Lapham. (Reader’s Note for story 3: A pony engine is a small locomotive for switching cars from one track to another.)

After 11 years in Rome, Annie Kilburn returns home to the US after the death of her father. But the home she knew is dramatically changed in many ways. She starts to work with sick children, and finds herself attached to them, and to the minister who helps her, Mr. Peck.

Howell’s novel is set in New York of the late nineteenth century, a city familiar to readers of Edith Wharton and Henry James. Basil March, a businessman from Boston of a literary bent, moves with his family to New York to edit a new journal founded by an acquaintance. Its financial support, however, comes from a Mr. Dryfoos, a Pennsylvania Dutch farmer suddenly become millionaire by the discovery of natural gas on his property, and now living in New York with his family in a style he hopes will befit his new wealth...

William Dean Howells is at his iconoclastic best in this exploration of bourgeois values, particularly in the clash between respectable society and the dubious bohemian world of Art and Poetry. Cornelia Saunders has everything going for her in her middle-class world: comfort, good looks, attentive young men. She seems willing to risk it all for the sake of what might be an artistic Gift, venturing with great trepidation to put her foot over the line into Bohemia to see if it might be the thing for her. Skewering the conventions of sentimental literature as usual, Howells keeps the reader guessing to the end as to the fate of Cornelia and her Gift.

Set in Florence's Anglo-American colony in the late 19th century, this is a romantic story of a middle-aged man, returning to the scene of his first but disappointed love twenty years earlier. The doings of Americans abroad were staples of the fictions of Henry James and Edith Wharton, but Howells’s view is rather different. As John Updike has said of it, “the felicity of the writing makes us pause in admiration….A midlife crisis has rarely been sketched in fiction with better humor, with gentler comedy and more gracious acceptance of life’s irrevocability.” ( Nicholas Clifford)

A 1908 NaNoWriMo forerunner, told in twelve chapters, each with a different author. The basic plot was to show how an engagement or marriage would affect and be affected by an entire family. The project became somewhat curious for the way the authors' contentious interrelationships mirrored the sometimes dysfunctional family they described in their chapters. The collaboration may have been an uncomfortable one, but a final product did emerge with some clever and entertaining contributions from its often squabbling authors.

The Quest of the Silver Fleece is a story of romance, race economics and politics set around the 1900s. Here, a traditionally educated boy and an unschooled “swamp girl” each begin a journey toward love, ambition and redemption in the “Old South.”

William Elliot Griffis born in Philadelphia in 1843, was an educator, author and Congregational minister. In 1870 he was invited to go to Japan in order to modernize the school system and became the Superintendent of Education in the Province of Echizen. Whilst there he became interested in the folk lore, legends and stories of the East and began to collect tales from the story tellers that he met with and the literature that he found there. The thirty four wonderful stories in this collection are some of the ones that he found and fortunately decided to share with us...

A fine adventure set in 10th-century England at a time when everyday life in north was made hazardous by wars and shifting alliances among Saxon, British and Norse rulers. Thorstein, like his father Swein before him, is a peaceful Norse settler but brave and ready for battle when the time comes. His adventures as child and man will appeal to younger listeners, while older listeners can enjoy a history lesson into the bargain. W. G. Collingwood, artist and antiquarian, set the story in his adopted...

The novel describes the downfall of Ferdinando Falkland, a British squire, and his attempts to ruin and destroy the life of Caleb Williams, a poor but ambitious young man that Falkland hires as his personal secretary. Caleb accidentally discovers a terrible secret in his master’s past. Though Caleb promises to be bound to silence, Falkland, irrationally attached (in Godwin’s view) to ideas of social status and inborn virtue, cannot bear that his servant should possibly have power over him, and sets out to use various means–unfair trials, imprisonment, pursuit, to make sure that the information of which Caleb is the bearer will never be revealed...

A Crystal Age is a utopian novel written by W. H. Hudson, first published in 1887. The book has been called a "significant S-F milestone" and has been noted for its anticipation of the "modern ecological mysticism" that would evolve a century later.

“Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest” is a narration of his life story by Abel, a Venezuelan, to a comrade. Once a wealthy young man, he meddled in politics to the extent of provoking a revolution… which failed.Escaping into the tropical forests of Guyana Abel takes up gold hunting, then journal-writing, and fails at both. Now with no aim for his life, he drifts until he takes up residence with a remote Indian tribe. Soon he learns of a wood the Indians avoid, as it is inhabited by a dangerous Daughter of the Didi, who, they say, slew one of them with magic...

A rich and complex Gothic-Romance centring on the murky deeds of an ancient family. It is a wonderfully atmospheric piece that combines narrative, poetry, song, and descriptive writing to great effect. The character of Dick Turpin that we know today – the dashing highwaymen and unmatched horseman – can be said to stem directly from this novel, as the most famous part of the book (often published on its own in the past), Turpin’s Ride To York, is devoted to him. Although seemingly little known to a modern audience, Ainsworth’s ‘Rookwood’ gave the world the image of the highwayman with which we are all so familiar.

Book 1 - Ann Boleyn. The focus of the novels is on the events surrounding Henry VIII's replacing Catherine of Aragon with Anne Boleyn as his wife. During Henry's pursuit of Boleyn, the novel describes other couples, including the Earl of Surrey and Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald, a match Henry does not support. However, some of the individuals oppose Henry and his desires for Boleyn, including Thomas Wyat who wants her for himself and Cardinal Wolsey, who uses his own daughter, Mabel Lyndwood, to lure Henry away from Boleyn...

The Plain Speaker: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things is a posthumous collection of essays by William Hazlitt, organized by his grandson, William Carew Hazlitt. The book contains some of Hazlitt's more famous essays that hadn't been previously published in book format.

300+ short stories of how smart and savvy various individual animals have been seen to be, and in most cases a little moral is drawn from the story.

Canadian journalist William Jarvis' gently fictionalized work recounts many of the countless fascinating tales of the Klondike Gold Rush in Canada's Yukon. (Introduction by Cathy Barratt)

When the veteran captain of the St. Mary's baseball team is forced to resign at the beginning of the season, the choice for his replacement falls quickly upon the star pitcher. But can the new captain manage to rally the team, cope with detractors, and win the coach's confidence--all while still keeping his pitching arm in shape? And when fresh disasters threaten to wreck the big game, is there anything he can do to save it?

In 1877, two gentlemen, Messrs Tonnison and Berreggnog, head into Ireland to spend a week fishing in the village of Kraighten. While there, they discover in the ruins of a very curious house a diary of the man who had once owned it. Its torn pages seem to hint at an evil beyond anything that existed on this side of the curtains of impossibility. This is a classic novel that worked to slowly bridge the gap between the British fantastic and supernatural authors of the later 19th century and modern horror fiction. Classic American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft lists this and other works by Hodgson among his greatest influences.

Thomas Carnacki was a detective of the supernatural, created for a series of short stories by Wiliam Hope Hodgson. Hodsgon, also a noted photographer and bodybuilder, might have created more stories for this intrepid sleuth of the occult, but he unfortunately died at the youthful age of 40 in World War I. (Introduction by Samanem)

The sudden death of wealthy and prominent financier, Pennington Lawton from an apparent heart attack, followed by the shocking revelation of his impending bankruptcy, leaves his sole heir and only daughter, Anita, distraught and nearly penniless. Nonetheless, she is determined to unravel the mystery surrounding her father’s death and the loss of his great fortune. To this end she engages the famous detective, Henry Blaine who is determined to unravel the tangled web of deception and restore both her father’s reputation and Anita’s inheritance...

The Moral Equivalent of War, the last public utterance of William James, is significant as expressing the opinions of a practical psychologist on a question of growing popular interest. For the past fifteen years the movement for promoting international peace has been enlisting the support of organizations and individuals the world over. That this is a question on which much may be said for the opposition, James, though a pacificist, admits with his usual fair-mindedness, pointing out that militarism...

Set during WWI in England, The Red Planet is a rich tale about the life in a little English town from the point of view of Major Duncan Meredyth, a disabled veteran of the Boer Wars. As he struggles to keep his life and the lives of those he cares for in harmony, he must also shelter a dark secret regarding one of the village's favorite sons.The Red Planet was the third bestselling novel in the United States for 1917.

Paul is a poor boy who grew up in London, in the household of his mother and stepfather. His journey to greatness is the subject of our story. But his desired success comes at a very high price.

ENGLISH LITERATUREBY WILLIAM J. LONG, PH.D.PREFACEThis book, which presents the whole splendid history of English literature from Anglo-Saxon times to the close of the Victorian Era, has three specific aims. The first is to create or to encourage in every student the desire to read the best books, and to know literature itself rather than what has been written about literature. The second is to interpret literature both personally and historically, that is, to show how a great book generally reflects not only the author's life and thought but also the spirit of the age and the ideals of the nation's history...

This is an essay on decision biases and a critique on prejudices, neatly written and thought provoking.