Historical Tales, The Romance of RealityBy CHARLES MORRISPREFACE.It has become a commonplace remark that fact is often stranger than fiction. It may be said, as a variant of this, that history is often more romantic than romance. The pages of the record of man's doings are frequently illustrated by entertaining and striking incidents, relief points in the dull monotony of every-day events, stories fitted to rouse the reader from languid weariness and stir anew in his veins the pulse of interest in human life...

Volume VII of a series containing anecdotes and stories, some well-known, others less so, of particular countries. This seventh volume covers the history of Spain from before the Moorish conquest to the loss of overseas territories at the end of the 19th century, describing history for children and young adults in an exciting and novel manner. - Summary by Kalynda

These Russian tales span the time of Russia's founding in the 800s-900s all the way to the early twentieth century and are factually based, although particularly the older tales have become legendary.

Published in 1899, The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line is a collection of narratives that addresses the impact of Jim Crow laws on African Americans and white Americans of the South. Many of Chesnutt's characters are of mixed-race ancestry which sets them apart for a specific yet degrading kind of treatment from blacks and whites. These stories examine particularly how life in the South was informed through a legacy of slavery and Reconstruction—how members of the “old dominion” desperately struggled to breath life into the corpse of an antebellum caste system that no longer defined the path and direction in which this country was headed...

In this novel, Chesnutt described the hopelessness of Reconstruction in a post-Civil War South that was bent on reestablishing the former status quo and rebuilding itself as a region of the United States where new forms of "slavery" would replace the old. This novel illustrated how race hatred and the impotence of a reluctant Federal Government trumped the rule of law, ultimately setting the stage for the rise of institutions such as Jim Crow, lynching, chain gangs and work farms--all established with the intent of disenfranchising African Americans.

The novel formally inverts Don Quixote: as the don mistakes himself for the knightly hero of a Romance, so Arabella mistakes herself for the maiden love of a Romance. While the don thinks it his duty to praise the platonically pure damsels he meets (such as the woman he loves), so Arabella believes it is in her power to kill with a look and it is the duty of her lovers to suffer ordeals on her behalf.

When his father dies, Lucius Lepine goes to Spain as a clerk. His fellow clerk, Don Aguilera, doesn't come to work one day. Lucius is worried, he has heard rumors of what has happened to Aguilera. What has happened? Can Lucius find out?