Classic Fiction

Classic Fiction

The Moon Pool
By: Abraham Merritt
Dubbed 'The Shining One' by terrified Pacific natives, an evil mass of energy, powered by the full moon, roams the night seeking victims to kidnap. When an anthropologist falls into the clutches of the Shining One, he is whisked into the bowels of titanic caverns, where others are imprisoned, and finds himself engaged in a desperate attempt to save the sunlit world above.
Ponape and Nan-Matol are still mysterious islands in the South Pacific - despite much archaeological speculation, Easter Island is too! This wild tale combines the mystery of these islands with hollow-earth theory and techno-occultism to produce a fantasy epic only Abraham Merritt could conceive.


The Black Tulip
By: Alexandre Dumas
Alexandre Dumas proves again his ability to mix adventure and romance to create an exciting and romantic tale. Although Dumas may have distorted history significantly in this story, the image of late 17th century Holland which he presents is accurate and vivid enough to give the reader a lasting impression of society and culture in this period.
The execution of Jann and Cornelius De Witte and the romance between Van Baerle and Rosa are portrayed with such detail that readers are not likely to forget this book.


The Count of Monte Cristo
By: Alexandre Dumas
The hero of the novel, Edmond Dantes, is a young sailor who is unjustly accused of aiding the exiled Napoleon. As punishment he is sentenced to life imprisonment in a French island fortress. After 14 years, Dantes makes a daring escape by taking the place of a dead companion; he is sewn into a burial shroud and thrown into the sea. Having learned from his dead prison mate of a vast treasure on the island of Monte-Cristo, Dantes eventually makes his way there to uncover and claim it. Adopting the persona of the Count of Monte Cristo, Dantes becomes a powerful, shadowy figure who eventually avenges himself on those who wronged him.


The Three Musketeers
By: Alexandre Dumas
A young man named D'Artagnan, travels to Paris from Gascony. He arrives with no horse and few worldly goods. Despite that he still wants very badly to join the King's Guards, an elite group of warriors. It's not long before he meets three musketeers whose names are, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. They are known as the most famous fighters of the day. D'Artagnan joins them and in the process enters into many adventures as they fight for the honor of their queen against the infamous Cardinal Richelieu. Drama, intrigue and romance follow in this wonderful swash buckler.
Kate Halleron contributed this book.


Twenty Years After
By: Alexandre Dumas
Two decades have passed since the famous swordsmen triumphed over Cardinal Richelieu and Milady in The Three Musketeers. Time has weakened their resolve, and dispersed their loyalties. But treasons and strategems still cry out for justice: civil war endangers the throne of France, while in England, Cromwell threatens to send Charles I to the scaffold. Dumas brings his immortal quartet out of retirement to cross swords with time, the malevolence of men, and the forces of history. But their greatest test is the titanic struggle with the son of Milady who wears the face of evil.


The Arabian Nights Entertainments
By: Andrew Lang
Shahrazad tells stories for one-thousand one nights, in order to save her life. This collection is a real treasure and not necessarily a children's book.


The Schoolmistress and Other Stories
By: Anton Chekhov
This collection will expose you to not only some of the best short stories by Anton Chekhov, but some of the best stories ever written in any language. Chekhov's sense of mood and characters overrides his need to provide a predictable plot. He is the forerunner for America's beloved Hemingway, Raymond Carver, and may others in between. People may criticize some of Chekhov's romantic devices and tendencies, but no one can deny the exactitude of his writing. His work is simple and does not rely heavily on existential characters and events, creating a timeless air.


Beyond the City
By: Arthur Conan Doyle
Two sisters, new neighbors (young men all) and a curiosity that can't be beat. Doyle tells this great story and throws in a mystery to boot. Of course!


Tales of Terror and Mystery
By: Arthur Conan Doyle
Here are eleven stories of terror and of mystery. If you read them on a dark night you may just find yourself looking back over your shoulder, or starting at that sound. It's only the wind... Isn't it?


The Adventures of Gerard
By: Arthur Conan Doyle
Brigadier Gerard is an officer in Napoleon?s army ? recklessly brave, engagingly openhearted, and unshakable, if not a little absurd, in his devotion to the enigmatic Emperor. The Brigadier?s wonderful comic adventures, long established in the affections of Conan Doyle?s admirers is second only to those of the incomparable Holmes.


The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Vol 1
By: Arthur Conan Doyle
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Volume I. Here are the stories that we all remember reading collected now into one volume. The Red-headed League, The Adventure of the Speckled Band, The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb and nine other stories of the famed detective. So come on down to Baker St. and spend some time with Holmes.


The Captain of the Polestar
By: Arthur Conan Doyle
The Captain of the Pole Star and other stories is an excellent collection of short stories by Conan Doyle. Not the typical Sherlock Holmes mystery, but, instead, stories that excite the mind and the soul. You will freeze in the pack ice as you read the first story in this collection.


The Hound of the Baskervilles
By: Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle's told a friend marvelous local legends about escaped prisoners and a 17th-century aristocrat who fell afoul of the family dog. Doyle transmogrified the legend: generations ago, a hound of hell tore out the throat of devilish Hugo Baskerville on the moonlit moor. Poor, accursed Baskerville Hall now has another mysterious death: that of Sir Charles Baskerville. Could the culprit somehow be mixed up with secretive servant Barrymore, history-obsessed Dr. Frankland, butterfly-chasing Stapleton, or Selden, the Notting Hill murderer at large? Someone's been signaling with candles from the mansion's windows. Nor can supernatural forces be ruled out. Can Dr. Watson--left alone by Sherlock Holmes to sleuth in fear for much of the novel--save the next Baskerville, Sir Henry, from the hound's fangs?


The Scarlet Pimpernel
By: Baroness Orczy
First published in 1905, this magnificent historical adventure is filled with colorful characters, hairbreadth escapes, and heart-stopping intrigue. In 1792, the French Revolution gives way to a Reign of Terror, and the condemned nobility has only one vestige of hope--rescue by the elusive Scarlet Pimpernel.
The Scarlet Pimpernel brings adventure and romance to the French Revolution. It is the story about how the Scarlet Pimpernel was the only hope for people being sent to the guillotine. The Scarlet Pimpernel's identity, however, is only known to his loyal followers. There are many twists in the story that kept the reader interested and wanting to read more. The characters had many different characteristics, which added to the book's suspense. The book is well written, it thoroughly describes what it was like to live during the French Revolution.
This book was contributed by Kate Halleron.


The Alchemist
By: Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson, although modern audiences find him difficult to read, played an important role in the development of the English comedic play. The Alchemist, although the most difficult of Jonson's plays to read, is worth the effort, as it explores the questions of knowledge, ownership of knowledge, and abuse common in today's world.


Dracula
By: Bram Stoker
The story is timeless. though over one hundred years old it is still frightening and thrilling. Here is the chilling, gruesome tale of the un-dead. Told from the perspective of a number of people through journals and letters it brings the story of Dracula alive. Bram Stoker's classic vampire story has haunted and disturbed the modern imagination for a hundred years. Blood, information, and hypnotic energy circulate furiously among the characters until the tale reaches its violent climax.


A Christmas Carol
By: Charles Dickens
That miserly man, Ebenezer Scrooge, so cheap he won't even paint out the name of his dead partner, Marley, from the company sign, though he has been dead these many years. The old penny-pincher is about to come face to face with the reality of the world.
Or as Charles Dickens himself wrote, 'I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.'


A Tale of Two Cities
By: Charles Dickens
Dr. Alexander Manette is freed from his unjust imprisonment in the Bastille and is reunited with his long lost daughter, Lucie, in England. They are called as witnesses at the treason trial of Charles Darnay, a dashing young Frenchman. Darnay too is falsely accused, but he is saved, in part by his resemblance to a law clerk named Sydney Carton. Darnay and Lucie eventually marry, though not before the wastrel Carton declares his love for her and his unworthiness of her. He pledges that one day he will prove himself worthy by doing her a service. That opportunity comes when Darnay is condemned to death by a French tribunal and sentenced to the guillotine.


David Copperfield
By: Charles Dickens
Narrated in the first person, it tells the story of a fatherless boy whose happy life with his mother and their doting servant Clara Peggoty is cruelly ended when his mother remarries. His stepfather, Mr. Murdstone, first sends him away to school (Salem House), where he is abused, then, after David's mother dies, puts him to work gluing labels on bottles. Eventually he runs away and is adopted by his stern but loving aunt, Miss Betsey Trotwood. She sends him to a better school (Dr. Strong's) and he is launched on a career that will see him become a law clerk, a reporter and ultimately a successful novelist. He marries Dora, the pretty but insipid daughter of Mr. Spenlow, for whom he clerked. She falls ill and dies after an unsuccessful childbirth and David marries Agnes Wickfield, who had been like a sister to him when he lived with her family while he was at Dr. Strong's school.


Great Expectations
By: Charles Dickens
This story concerns the young boy Philip Pirrip (known as ?Pip?) and his development through life after an early meeting with the escaped convict Abel Magwitch, who he treats kindly despite his fear. His unpleasant sister and her humorous and friendly blacksmith husband, Joe, bring him up. Crucial to his development as an individual is his introduction to Miss Havisham (one of Dickens? most brilliant portraits), a now aging woman who has given up on life after being jilted at the altar. Cruelly, Havisham has brought up her daughter Estella to revenge her own pain and so as Pip falls in love with her she is made to torture him in romance. Aspiring to be a gentleman despite his humble beginnings, Pip seems to achieve the impossible by receiving a fund of wealth from an unknown source and being sent to London with the lawyer Jaggers.


Hard Times
By: Charles Dickens
Dickens' concern with social and environmental issues, urban crime, child abuse, poverty and exploitation makes him very much a writer for our own time, partly because he was so very much a writer of his time. His characters face many of the same problems that concern us today: problems of industrial and political change and dislocation. Whereas we are concerned at the introduction of computer technology, and the resultant loss of employment, the Victorians were concerned about the use of steam power and the decline of cottage craft industries. This novel describes the social problems caused by Britains nation's rapid industrialization. During this period working-class political agitation made many in England fear that revolution was imminent.


Hunted Down and The Wreck of the Golden Mary
By: Charles Dickens
Hunted Down: The sale of insurance is not the mundane thing we supose it to be. At least not for Mr. Sampson, the narrator of this little story of intrigue.
Wreck of the Golden Mary: This, as well as I can tell it, is the full and true account of how I came to be placed in charge of the lost passengers and crew of the Golden Mary, on the morning of the twenty-seventh day after the ship struck the Iceberg, and foundered at sea.


Illustrated Oliver Twist
By: Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist is a stinging commentary on the class system of Victorian England. The author uses the protagonist, a young orphan,as an archetypical victim of the growing influence of the middle class and its intolerance of the poor. Although Dickens's use of the novel as a vehicle to express his opinion of the social conditions of the time, his writings are extremely drawn out and can sometimes be difficult for the reader to comprehend the plot of the novel. Overall, Oliver Twist gives its readers a valuable insight into the author's view of Victorian England, but one should read the book thoroughly to understand its context.
Elegant Solutions proudly presents our first illustrated classic. Here is Oliver Twist with the original paintings by Donald Teague.
This book has been specifically formatted for the Pocket PC.


Oliver Twist
By: Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist is a stinging commentary on the class system of Victorian England. The author uses the protagonist, a young orphan,as an archetypical victim of the growing influence of the middle class and its intolerance of the poor. Although Dickens's use of the novel as a vehicle to express his opinion of the social conditions of the time, his writings are extremely drawn out and can sometimes be difficult for the reader to comprehend the plot of the novel. Overall, Oliver Twist gives its readers a valuable insight into the author's view of Victorian England, but one should read the book thoroughly to understand its context.


The Mystery of Edwin Drood
By: Charles Dickens
The story of a young man, on his own, who goes astray for all the right, or wrong, reasons. From a common and happy beginning, where will he end up?


The Old Curiosity Shop
By: Charles Dickens
Replete with the familiar Dickensian themes of poverty and gloom, this story takes place in cold and brutal 1840s London. Here the old codger Trent lives in the back of his curio shop with his adopted granddaughter Nell. He struggles to control his gambling habit, but his loan shark Quip, whose devotion to cruelty is almost religious, seems always on the verge of closing in. When Quip finally comes to collect his debts, Trent and the girl escape to the countryside to start their lives anew. Despite their good intentions, Trent's past, embodied by Quip, refuses to let them be. While this book was being written in serial form, it was so popular that sailors returning to port in England were known to shout to people on shore to ask what was going on with Little Nell.


The Pickwick Papers
By: Charles Dickens
The Pickwick Papers explores the perils, travels, and adventures of the Pickwick Club's members: the founding chairman, former businessman and amateur scientist Mr. Pickwick; his trusted companion Sam Weller; the sportsman Winkle; the poet Snodgrass; and the lover Tracy Tupman.
First published serially from 1836 to 1837 under the pseudonym Boz and in book form in 1837. This first fictional work by Dickens was originally commissioned as a series of glorified captions for the work of caricaturist Robert Seymour. His witty, episodic accounts of the kindly, naive Samuel Pickwick and his friends in the Pickwick Club were instantly successful in their own right, however, and made Dickens a literary sensation.


Jane Eyre
By: Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre a sweeping, disturbing, intense, thrilling, very romantic gothic love story, written in the voice a very intense, almost claustrophobically self-aware young heroine. Jane is no Ophelia - she's a complicated, remarkable character, and a very strong female character in a genre that usually draws women as beautiful victims at best.
There's something for everyone in this book: Windswept castles, difficult and neurotic family members, dark secrets about tragic former lovers, good triumphing over evil, all that good juicy stuff that makes a great romantic story. What elevates Jane Eyre is Bronte's remarkable style & skill and her sharp and complex characterizations.
Kate Halleron contributed this book.


A Voyage to Arcturus
By: David Lindsay
Lindsay takes us on a gripping journey through a planet where good and evil are not only locked in struggle, but cloaked in impenetrable disguise. It is the hero Maskull's task to unmask the truth, and thereby attain his own redemption. The real genius of this book lies in its ability to defy prediction. At no stage does the reader have the slightest inkling of where the narrative might be heading, or how the threads might eventually tie up; but one is nevertheless compelled to read on. A definite must-read for all sci-fi and fantasy buffs; would also be enjoyed by visual artists, psychoanalysts, anyone interested in pagan religion, or just anyone who likes great descriptive writing.


Messer Marco Polo
By: Donn-Byrne
A mixture of three elements give this simple tale a unique flavor. A modern Irishman tells the adventures of a Christian Italian in pagan China. Irish mysticism mingles with the mystery of the east for a romantic and tragic love story based upon the visit of Marco Polo to the court of Kubla Kahn. In one framework we have folk tale, history and imagination . His simple narrative style is a kind very rarely found among modern authors: it suggests the fireside stories and poems of the past which passed from generation to generation by word of mouth.


A Room With A View
By: E. M. Forrester
This is the tale of Lucy Honeychurch and her forbidden love for George Emerson, the unsuitable young man she meets in Italy. While social mores dictate that she make a match with the more proper gentleman, Cecil Vyse, who is courting her, Lucy is torn between passion and propriety. Ultimately, she chooses Emerson who reminds her of 'a room with a view' offering her a new vista on life.


Where Angels Fear to Tread
By: E.M. Forrester
'Let her go to Italy!' he cried. 'Let her meddle with what she doesn't understand! Look at this letter! The man who wrote it will marry her, or murder her, or do for her somehow. He's a bounder, but he's not an English bounder. He's mysterious and terrible. He's got a country behind him that's upset people from the beginning of the world.'
When a young English widow takes off on the grand tour and along the way marries a penniless Italian, her in-laws are not amused. That the marriage should fail and poor Lilia die tragically are only to be expected. But that Lilia should have had a baby -- and that the baby should be raised as an Italian! -- are matters requiring immediate correction by Philip Herriton, his dour sister Harriet, and their well-meaning friend Miss Abbott.
In his first novel, E. M. Forster anticipated the themes of cultural collision and the sterility of the English middle class that he would develop in A Room with a View and A Passage to India. Where Angels Fear to Tread is an accomplished, harrowing, and malevolently funny book, in which familiar notions of vice and virtue collapse underfoot and the best intentions go mortally awry.


Out of Time's Abyss
By: Edgar Rice Burroughs
This is the third in the of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Land That Time Forgot trilogy.
On Caprona, the Land that Time Forgot, all of the world's savage past still lives. Here are dinosaurs and flying reptiles, here are the most primitive of cavemen and the last of the Bronze Age barbarians. But there is one more secret that the claws and fangs and sharp-edged spears guard most of all. This is the story of the man who tried to find that final secret. When Bradley the adventurer dares to cross the last terrible barrier to the heart of Caprona, he enters a world of wonder, terror and danger beyond the imagination of any man - except the imagination of Edgar Rice Burroughs.


Tarzan of the Apes
By: Edgar Rice Burroughs
First published in 1914, Edgar Rice Burroughs's romance has lost little of its force over the years. Tarzan of the Apes is very much a product of its age: replete with bloodthirsty natives and a bulky, swooning American Negress, and haunted by what zoo specialists now call charismatic megafauna (great beasts snarling, roaring, and stalking, most of whom would be out of place in a real African jungle). Burroughs countervails such incorrectness, however, with some rather unattractive representations of white civilization--mutinous, murderous sailors, effete aristos, self-involved academics, and hard-hearted cowards. At Tarzan's heart rightly lies the resourceful and hunky title character, a man increasingly torn between the civil and the savage, for whom cutlery will never be less than a nightmare.
The passages in which the nut-brown boy teaches himself to read and write are masterly and among the book's improbable, imaginative best. How tempting it is to adopt the ten-year-old's term for letters--'little bugs'! And the older Tarzan's realization that civilized 'men were indeed more foolish and more cruel than the beasts of the jungle,' while not exactly a new notion, is nonetheless potent. The first in Burroughs's serial is most enjoyable in its resounding oddities of word and thought, including the unforgettable 'When Tarzan killed he more often smiled than scowled; and smiles are the foundation of beauty.'


The Chessmen of Mars
By: Edgar Rice Burroughs
Helium, a spoiled princess and John Carter's daughter, rejects Gahan, Jed of Gathol, as a suitor and foolishly flys off into a great storm. Gahan gives chase. By the time he finally catches up to Tara, she has forgotten who he is, and he assumes the name Turjun, a panthan mercenary. Together they challenge the power of O-Tar, Jeddak of Manator, whose barbaric nation of Red Men have preyed upon Gathol for centuries. The Manatorians have elevated Jetan, Martian chess, to an unprecedented level of skill and excitement: they use live chessmen who fight for live princesses. Gahan finds himself fighting for Tara on the chessboard of Manator, and haunting O-Tar's palace.


The Land that Time Forgot
By: Edgar Rice Burroughs
Burroughs concocts a fabulous microworld, located somewhere in the South Pacific, called Caspak. On this mountainous island live winged, humanlike creatures, dinosaurs, ferocious beasts of prey, Neanderthals, 'wild ape-men,' and monstrous reptiles; they terrorize each other, to say nothing of the mixed crew of World War I-era adventurers who inadvertently land on a Caspakian beach and fight their way across the island, dining on Plesiosaurus steaks and having a grand old time in the company of a jungle princess. The story streaks onward like a bullet toward its surprise ending, and it's pure fun all the way.


The Lost Continent
By: Edgar Rice Burroughs
The year is 2137, over 160 years ago the 'Great War' was fought in Europe. The Western Hemisphere stayed out of the conflict, as much as possible, using the slogan: 'The East for the East...The West for the West'. For all this time the USA did not go past 30 degrees or 175 degrees latitude. Until...
The aero-submarine, 'Coldwater' in command of Lieutenant Jefferson Turck is blown past the 30 in a raging storm. Damaged, the ship landed in Europe only to find that it was not the enemy that was expected but something entirely different.


The Oakdale Affair
By: Edgar Rice Burroughs
With no disrespect meant, this story is somehow reminiscent of Scooby Doo! It has all the elements of the genre. The town of Oakdale is struck with a mystery involving robbery, marriage and the disappearance of a young girl. Things look one way, but are they really as they appear?


The People That Time Forgot
By: Edgar Rice Burroughs
This is the second segment of Edgar Rice Burroughs' 'Land That Time Forgot' trilogy and is considered the best of the three. ex-cowboy tom billings leads a rescue mission to save Bowen Tyler, the protagonist of the first novel of the series, 'Land That Time Forgot', and manages to have more trouble keeping his own hide intact than in finding his friend. Remember, this was written in the 1920s, but the adventure holds up even today. anyone not familiar with Edgar Rice Burroughs, prepare for a treat!


The Return of Tarzan
By: Edgar Rice Burroughs
Tarzan had renounced his right to the woman he loved, and civilization held no pleasure for him. After a brief and harrowing period among men, he turned back to the African jungle where he had grown to manhood. It was there he first heard of Opar, the city of gold, left over from fabled Atlantis. It was a city of hideous men -- and of beautiful, savage women, over whom reigned La, high priestess of the Flaming God. Its altars were stained with the blood of many sacrifices. Unheeding of the dangers, Tarzan led a band of savage warriors toward the ancient crypts and the more ancient evil of Opar.


Thuvia, Maid of Mars
By: Edgar Rice Burroughs
Thuvia, Maid of Mars, passes the torch from father to son as Carthoris, son of John Carter and Dejah Thoris, pursues the heart of the princess Thuvia. To her secret shame Thuvia returns Carthoris' love, but she is already promised to another. When a rival prince kidnaps Thuvia and frames Carthoris for the deed, the son of the Warlord of Mars sets out to rescue the woman he loves no matter what it will cost him.
Undoubtedly the most disturbing but tense part of the story falls in the city of Lothar, where Carthoris and Thuvia must do battle with ancient Barsoomians who possess incredible powers of the mind. And the most unlikely hero of all turns out to be a fignment of a character's imagination. This book is a good demonstration of how Burroughs' world of Barsoom was filled with its own stories, and not just a convenient backdrop for John Carter's adventures


Warlord of Mars
By: Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Rice Burroughs covers vast expanses of Barsoomian territory in John Carter's whirlwind pursuit of his beloved Dejah Thoris. The gentle pokes in the eye at religion, evolution, science, and even racism continue but do not impede the readability of the story. Burroughs demonstrates his superb grasp of story-telling and the construction of adventure settings with a flair unsurpassed by any other writer of the 20th century.
Carter finds himself charging headline into a myterious northern world where ancient and legendary yellow men have survived in the harshest Barsoomian environment imaginable. Coincidentally, in classic Burroughsian fashion, Carter uncovers an incredible weapon which could destroy the fragile alliance of Barsoomian nations he has assembled in his long battle with the evil Therns.


Stories of Horror and Mystery
By: edited by Julian Hawthorne
Here is a collection of spine chilling tales of horror and mystery from some of the best. You'll meet old friends like Poe here and perhaps even encounter a new friend or two. Enjoy these stories because they just don't write like this any more.
This series was indexed and annotated by Julian Hawthorne.


The Age of Innocence
By: Edith Wharton
Somewhere in this book, Wharton observes that clever liars always come up with good stories to back up their fabrications, but that really clever liars don't bother to explain anything at all. This is the kind of insight that makes The Age of Innocence so indispensable. Wharton's story of the upper classes of Old New York, and Newland Archer's impossible love for the disgraced Countess Olenska, is a perfectly wrought book about an era when upper-class culture in this country was still a mixture of American and European extracts, and when 'society' had rules as rigid as any in history.
This book was contributed by Kate Halleron.


Cyrano De Bergerac
By: Edmond Rostand
Cyrano -loosely based on the actual Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac, an early predecessor of science fiction- is a swordsman for the French King Louis XIII. He is also a man with an extraordinary gift for poetry and versification, as well as the owner of an extremely large nose. He is deeply in love with his cousin Roxanne, but she happens to love Cyrano's friend and colleague, Christian. So, being a good fellow and having a quixotic nature, Cyrano accepts to speak of love to Roxanne, impersonating Christian. Under her window, in the dark, Cyrano recites love poems so well crafted, that Roxanne falls even more in love with Christian, who is the supposed lover. After that, both men leave to fight at war. Roxanne shows up at the siege of Arras, to bring food to the soldiers. There, for reasons I won't spoil here, their love affair comes to an abrupt end, leaving their relationship unfulfilled. What comes next shows the true heroic nature of Cyrano, his strength of character, and his loyalty to his friend, but also to his eternal love for Roxanne. This play, which has originated at least a couple of good movies and several tv interpretations, is a homage to the Romantic spirit so rare in our greedy and selfish times. It is full of beautiful images and scenes, and Rostand's writing is perfect for the task.
This book was contributed by Kate Halleron


Looking Backward From 2000 to 1887
By: Edward Bellamy
Here is an interesting book which looks backwards from the year 2000 to the year 1887. It reports the history of the intervening time from the perspective of our present. But the book was written in the nineteenth century, and not the twentieth. Never the less the author, Bellamy, was prescient in many ways. It is told in the form of a narrative of a man who fell asleep in 1887 and woke in 2000. Similar to Rip Van Winkle, only moreso. Some of the imagry is almost chilling, and some os so far off it is humorous. All in all this book is an excellent read.


Flatland
By: Edwin A. Abbott
Subtitled A romance of many dimensions this book is a classic work. Science and math disguised as fiction. It is a joy to read and modern today, though it was written well over one hundred years ago. In this modern age of computers this book has almost become a cult classic. But even if you aren't interested in science or math (there are no formulae in this book) you will still enjoy it.


Puppy Love and An Immodest Proposal
By: Elizabeth Neff Walker and others
Two modern romance stories. Not being a romance reader, I'll be happy to print your synopsis, and credit you for it!


The Complete Wandering Jew
By: Eugene Sue
A labyrinthine novel in which seemingly unrelated people all over the world become the victims of a fiendish Jesuit plot. Sue's contraption feels like the blueprint for 20th-century conspiracy theories at their most paranoid


The Green Mummy
By: Fergus Hume
A tomb, a mymmy wrapped in green bandages, a manusctipt, a mystery and a discovery. The mummy of Inca Caxas, which was brought from Malta. What would the Professor find when he stripped the corpse of its green bandages? And where does this mysterious manuscript fit in. It keeps showing up again and again. An early Fergus Hume mystery, more popular than Sherlock Holmes, if you can imagine that!


The Secret Garden
By: Frances Hodgson Burnett
Mistress Mary is quite contrary until she helps her garden grow. Along the way, she manages to cure her sickly cousin Colin, who is every bit as imperious as she. These two are sullen little peas in a pod, closed up in a gloomy old manor on the Yorkshire moors of England, until a locked-up garden captures their imaginations and puts the blush of a wild rose in their cheeks; 'It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place any one could imagine. The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless stems of roses which were so thick, that they matted together.... 'No wonder it is still,' Mary whispered. 'I am the first person who has spoken here for ten years.'' As new life sprouts from the earth, Mary and Colin's sour natures begin to sweeten. For anyone who has ever felt afraid to live and love, The Secret Garden's portrayal of reawakening spirits will thrill and rejuvenate. Frances Hodgson Burnett creates characters so strong and distinct, young readers continue to identify with them even 85 years after they were conceived.
Kate Halleron contributed this book.


The Great War Syndicate
By: Frank Stockton
This science fiction novel is unique in that it consists of only one chapter. The plot centers on a group of twenty-three men, a War Syndicate who offer to assume the expense of a war for the United States after a gunfight erupts between two vessels off the Canadian coast. To say the least this is an interesting read.


Crime and Punishment
By: Fyodor Dostoevsk
Translated By Constance Garnett here is the definitive book of crime, passion, remorse and death. Waiting alone in an empty prison, Raskolnikov waits for the completion of his sentence for the crime of murder. But it may be the waiting that is the worst punishment of all.


The Man Who Was Thursday
By: G. K. Chesterton
He came of a family of cranks, in which all the oldest people had all the newest notions. One of his uncles always walked about without a hat, and another had made an unsuccessful attempt to walk about with a hat and nothing else. His father cultivated art and self-realization; his mother went in for simplicity and hygiene. Hence the child, during his tenderer years, was wholly unacquainted with any drink between the extremes of absinthe and cocoa, of both of which he had a healthy dislike.... Being surrounded with every conceivable kind of revolt from infancy, Gabriel had to revolt into something, so he revolted into the only thing left--sanity.

This book was contributed by Kate Halleron.


The Devil's Disciple
By: George Bernard Shaw
An intesting book about the story of the narrow minded puritans fighting back against the british army ,once a great powerful one.


Adam Bede
By: George Eliot
Beautiful Hetty Sorell is led by her vanity to succumb to the temptations of the local squire. Those involved in her ensuing tragedy are sensitive, honest Adam Bebe, implicated by his simple idolatry and his fruitless struggles to redeem her, and Dinah, her devout and constant cousin, who comforts her when all appears to be lost. George Eliot adds a poignant, bitter edge to the age-old tale of a woman's destruction through a selfish man's passions, her own weakness and the condemnation of society itself.


Middlemarch
By: George Eliot
Dorothea Brooke can find no acceptable outlet for her talents or energy and few who share her ideals. As an upper middle-class woman in Victorian England she can't learn Greek or Latin simply for herself; she certainly can't become an architect or have a career; and thus, Dorothea finds herself 'Saint Theresa of nothing.' Believing she will be happy and fulfilled as 'the lampholder' for his great scholarly work, she marries the self-centered intellectual Casaubon, twenty-seven years her senior. Dorothea is not the only character caught by the expectations of British society in this huge, sprawling book. Middlemarch stands above its large and varied fictional community, picking up and examining characters like a jeweler observing stones. There is Lydgate, a struggling young doctor in love with the beautiful but unsuitable Rosamond Vincy; Rosamond's gambling brother Fred and his love, the plain-speaking Mary Garth; Will Ladislaw, Casaubon's attractive cousin, and the ever-curious Mrs. Cadwallader. The characters mingle and interact, bowing and turning in an intricate dance of social expectations and desires. Through them George Eliot creates a full, textured picture of life in provincial nineteenth-century England.


Silas Marner
By: George Elliot
Silas Marner is a devoutly religious weaver who is unjustly accused of theft. He moves to Raveloe where he becomes fairly reclusive both because he wishes it so and because the villagers find him odd. He devotes himself to the accumulation of wealth, but is once again devastated, this time when he is the victim of theft. Ultimately he is redeemed by a young girl who wanders up to his door. He raises the child and they come to love one another as Father and Daughter. The lesson being that neither religious fanaticism nor the love of filthy lucre will suffice to save a man's soul, but the basic love between two humans will do the trick.


At The Back Of The North Wind
By: George MacDonald
This is a story of a poor stable boy living in Victorian London in which everyday lives are mysteriously enveloped by a power and a glory, personified here as a beautiful woman known as the North Wind. She visits the small boy, Diamond, and takes him with her on her journeys, teaching him about herself. Through the eyes of an innocent and yet perceptive child, MacDonald explores North Wind as a way of exploring the place of death in our lives. He looks squarely at social injustice--he knew poverty and the poor first hand--and yet also sees that the deepest need we have is for love and forgiveness, which are rooted in eternity.
This book was contributed by Kate Halleron.


Phantastes
By: George MacDonald
'I was dead, and right content,' the narrator says in the penultimate chapter of Phantastes. C.S. Lewis said that upon reading this astonishing 19th-century fairy tale he 'had crossed a great frontier,' and numerous others both before and since have felt similarly. In MacDonald's fairy tales, both those for children and (like this one) those for adults, the 'fairy land' clearly represents the spiritual world, or our own world revealed in all of its depth and meaning. At times almost forthrightly allegorical, at other times richly dreamlike (and indeed having a close connection to the symbolic world of dreams), this story of a young man who finds himself on a long journey through a land of fantasy is more truly the story of the spiritual quest that is at the core of his life's work, a quest that must end with the ultimate surrender of the self. The glory of MacDonald's work is that this surrender is both hard won (or lost!) and yet rippling with joy when at last experienced. As the narrator says of a heavenly woman in this tale, 'She knew something too good to be told.' One senses the same of the author himself.


The Princess and Curdie
By: George MacDonald
This is the sequel to The Princess and the Goblin and takesplace about a year after the happenings with the goblins. Curdie hasgone back to his life as a miner and is slowing becoming nitwitted.One day he shoots a bird relizes that the bird probably belonged tothe princess's great-great grandmother (who has a major role in the first book). He starts to feel remorse and rushes to find the grandmother, they have a long chat. He learns that doing nothing wrong and nothing good is wrong in itself. The Grandmother sends him on a mission to help the King from an unknown danger. It is a great book and has a lot of good values in it, but is still adventureous and appealing to children.
This book was contributed by Kate Halleron.


Montezumas Daughter
By: H. Rider Haggard
Montezuma's Daughter is a story about love, adventure, war, hate, history and etc. I read this book when I was about 11 years old and I thought it was so amazing that I really would like to reread it again. The author also discribes the characters so clearly that you get an exact picture of who is it that you're reading about. I would recomend this book for everyone because it also has lots of historical facts to it too.
Within the first hundred pages, the hero has gone to Spain to avenge his mother's murder, learned how to be a doctor, helped drug a girl about to be walled in a convent cellar, held prisoner on a slave ship, thrown overboard, and is shipwrecked in Aztec Mexico. It gets better from there. And yet the hero is such a nice man: a novelty these days in adventure stories


Quartermain
By: H. Rider Haggard
After discovering the hidden mines of King Solomon, Allan Quartermain finds that life back in England is too sedate for his liking. With two travel companions he heads back to Africa in search of further adventure. Teaming up with a valiant warrior and a timid French chef, they enter the land of Paradise, Zu-Vendis. But paradise is not without its dangers, and Allan and his band find themselves at odds with the two beautiful sisters who rule Zu-Vendis.


The Wizard
By: H. Rider Haggard
The Wizard is a tale of victorious faith. Originally published as a short story and part of a collection it was part of a Christmas Annual. Like and yet unlike Haggards otehr works it is well worth reading.


The Yellow God
By: H. Rider Haggard
Here is Haggard's fantasy adventure which is set in both Africa and England. This book has it all, a magic mask and other weird fetish objects. A lost race of people, reincarnation, vampirism - an immortal woman's many husbands kept as mummies and so much more. This is extreme adventure!


The Time Machine
By: H.G. Wells
H.G. Wells's 1894 novel (his first) describes the adventures of his hero, the time-traveler, mostly in the year A.D. 802,701, when he encounters a class-ridden battle between the decadent Eloi and the primitive Morlocks. The Morlocks are nocturnal creatures who live underground and surface during the night, only to prey on the defenseless Eloi. The Eloi, once living comfortably as the ruling race, have degenerated into a simple group of beings that live life effortlessly and without substance. The time traveler describes his interactions with the Morlocks and the Eloi in a thought-provoking manner, creating a highly enjoyable novel.
The Time Machine suggests many controversial ideas such as the extreme degeneration of the human race. Not only is it interesting to learn Wells' theories, but his writing caused one to consider the possibilities of evolution. The open ending to the book also leaves a story for the mind to explore.


When The Sleeper Wakes
By: H.G. Wells
Written in the final years of the 19th century by an acknowledged scientific visionary, this book is stunning for its portrayal not just of 'modern techological' creations. First and foremost, this book hints at the dramatic societal changes that followed in the 20th century. Most readers will remember Wells' use of the airplane, television, radar, etc. in this novel written in the late 1890s. The conceptualization of these technological wonders for a 19th century inhabitant is remarkable, no doubt. True astonishment, however, arises from Wells' portrayal of societal conflict caused by the awakening of the 'Sleeper'. We now know, from our vantage point late in the 20th century, that this century will be remembered for pandemic social change, when a majority of mankind (in the many communist, nationalist, and independence movements) moved to a different drumbeat. In the course of these brief one-hundred years, masses have risen and elites fallen in societies on virtually all the continents. We know that redistributions of wealth and the power of mass education have been the historical catalysts. Wells uses the 'sleeper' as the agent of change in this wonderfully prophetic novel


Beyond the Wall of Sleep
By: H.P. Lovecraft
Of all the writers of the horror genre, none can come close to H.P. Lovecraft. This collection of tales is guaranteed to send more than a tingle down your spine. They might cause you to turn on a light before you go to bed.
Do you know what lies Beyond The Walls Of Sleep?Do you want to know?
Here are some of the best tales of horror for your reading pleasure. Just remember what I said about the light. Oh, you might also want to cover your ears. You don't want to know why Erich Zann played so madly all through the night.


Andersen's Fairy Tales
By: Hans Christiabn Andersen
Here are the stories that began my adventures in reading. They are still entertaining today for adults and children alike. Relive and remember these wonderful tales and fables from your childhood, or introduce them to a child you love.


The Tinder Box and Other Stories
By: Hans Christian Andersen
I remember reading The Tinder Box as a child, as well as the rest of these stories. They still delight both adult and child.


Washington Square
By: Henry James
An excellent, short novel that probes the traditionally most important events of a woman's life -- her marriage opportunities. James portrays a woman who is as much the victim in society of her lack of beauty as she is of the two men in her life: a father who is at best negligent and often overtly cruel and a fortune-hunter who is breathtaking to behold but morally empty. James has the courage to demonstrate through Dr. Sloper's character (the father) the hardness and even abusiveness with which men treated women who lacked beauty or great wit. And he added a swain who pretended to treat the heroine in a finer manner, but who was merely after her money. Catherine Sloper learns her lessons slowly but seemingly well. Written beautifully, James has a small masterpiece of social commentary here, with a fair and objective presentation of one woman's life. Delightful to read, but sad that the heroine must cease to search for happiness merely because men have taught her not to trust their protestations of love.


Quo Vadis
By: Henryk Sienkiewicz
Historical novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz, published in Polish under its Latin title in 1896. The title means 'where are you going?' and alludes to a New Testament verse (John 13:36). The popular novel was widely translated. Set in ancient Rome during the reign of the emperor Nero, Quo Vadis? tells the story of the love that develops between a young Christian woman and a Roman officer who, after meeting her fellow Christians, converts to her religion. Underlying their relationship is the contrast between the worldly opulence of the Roman aristocracy and the poverty, simplicity, and spiritual power of the Christians. The novel has as a subtext the persecution and political subjugation of Poland by Russia.


Otto of the Silver Hand
By: Howard Pyle
This book is as captivating and beautiful as a knight in shining armor tale can be. It's a tale of love, courage, good and evil. The love begins between husband and wife with as much fervor and honesty. Conrad, the baron of the Castle Drakenhausen whose love is so great for the Baroness Matilda, takes their son Otto to the 'White Cross on the Hill' soon after his birth. There his good, holy and wise Uncle Otto (Abbot Otto) resides. You see, Baroness Matilda has died at Otto's birth and Baron Conrad knows his cold castle and his bitter feudal world are not suited for the raising of his child. Young Otto developes a pure, simple and docile attitude in the 12 years he lives at the monastery. His father comes to reclaim him at this point and here the story begins to unfold.
This is so beautifully written! It's wonderfully suspenceful (how Otto escapes from his cold, dark dungeon when he is near death; how his father gives his life in the end for that of his son and the 'faithful few' who remained with him till the bitter end.
The spirit of great love from a man to his wife, a father to his son was refreshing. The story was indeed uplifting to the mind, heart and soul. What better tale to tell...to teach love in its sometimes harsh reality!! Death because of love!!
This book is too beautiful to miss!!


Robin Hood
By: Howard Pyle
You who so plod amid serious things that you feel it shame to give yourself up even for a few short moments to mirth and joyousness in the land of Fancy; you who think that life hath nought to do with innocent laughter that can harm no one; these pages are not for you. Clap to the leaves and go no farther than this, for I tell you plainly that if you go farther you will be scandalized by seeing good, sober folks of real history so frisk and caper in gay colors and motley that you would not know them but for the names tagged to them. Here is a stout, lusty fellow with a quick temper, yet none so ill for all that, who goes by the name of Henry II. Here is a fair, gentle lady before whom all the others bow and call her Queen Eleanor. Here is a fat rogue of a fellow, dressed up in rich robes of a clerical kind, that all the good folk call my Lord Bishop of Hereford. Here is a certain fellow with a sour temper and a grim look-- the worshipful, the Sheriff of Nottingham. And here, above all, is a great, tall, merry fellow that roams the greenwood and joins in homely sports, and sits beside the Sheriff at merry feast, which same beareth the name of the proudest of the Plantagenets--Richard of the Lion's Heart. Beside these are a whole host of knights, priests, nobles, burghers, yeomen, pages, ladies, lasses, landlords, beggars, peddlers, and what not, all living the merriest of merry lives, and all bound by nothing but a few odd strands of certain old ballads (snipped and clipped and tied together again in a score of knots) which draw these jocund fellows here and there, singing as they go.


Adventure
By: Jack London
Jack London (1876-1916), at his peak, was the highest paid and the most popular of all living writers. Because of financial difficulties, he was largely self educated past grammar school. A large part of his knowledge was obtained from the Oakland Public Library.
London draws heavily on his life experiences in his writing. He spent time in the Klondike during the Gold Rush and at various times was an oyster pirate, a seaman, a sealer, and a hobo.
His first work was published in 1898. From there he went on to write such American classics as 'Call of the Wild', 'Sea Wolf', and 'White Fang'. Quiet Vision has published more than 20 of his works and is working to publish all his fiction.
The subject of Jack London's alleged racism comes up from time to time.But he lived in a racist time, and accepted contemporary views uncritically, neither promoting nor opposing them. One can easily assemble evidence either way. It is improbable that a real racist could have written stories showing empathy for the downtrodden in the way that London does in 'The Chinago,' 'Koolau the Leper,' and 'The Mexican.'
This being said, if one wanted to make Jack London out to be a racist, 'Adventure' would certainly be a good place to start. There are passages in it that are so dreadful that you don't know whether to laugh or to cry. One of the less offensive:
''Jump!' he shouted fiercely at the end, his will penetrating the low intelligence of the black with dynamic force that made him jump to the task of brushing the loathsome swarms of flies away.'
This may make it all that much more important to read what London has written.


Martin Eden
By: Jack London
Semiautobiographical novel by Jack London, published in 1909. The title character becomes a writer, hoping to acquire the respectability sought by his society-girl sweetheart. She spurns him, however, when his writing is rejected by several magazines and when he is falsely accused of being a socialist. She tries to win him back after he achieves fame, but Eden realizes her love is false. Financially successful and robbed of connection to his own class, aware that his quest for bourgeois respectability was hollow, Eden travels to the South Seas.


The Call of the Wild
By: Jack London
Jack London's Call of the Wild is a entertaining and fairly accurate depiction of the hostile environment that was the Yukon during the Gold Rush. London's vivid descriptions of the characters and environment are enough to hold the reader's interest until the storyline takes off. London states 'His eyes turned blood-shot and he was metamorphosed into a raging fiend.' This shows how Buck was already starting to revert to his race's old ways. The story follows Buck, a content farm-dog, to the Yukon. Once there, the book shows him change into a savage, primitive beast. Overall, The Call of the Wild is a gripping tale of reverting to savagery, set in a harsh climate at time.


The Jacket - Star-Rover
By: Jack London
For those of you who like London's ususal stuff (and those that don't) this book is NOT typical Jack London. It concerns the life of a prisoner around the turn of the century who spent much of his time in solitary confinement and how he dealt with the psychological strain of the experience. One coping mechanism was astral projection where he 'left the prison' in his mind. Quite an interesting tale. Synopsis by Terry A. Austin


Irish Fairy Tales
By: James Stephens
Stephens presents a voice, a carefully chosen, well modulated voice, to present the web of tales which comprise the Irish tradition. As in Crock of Gold, he does this with beautiful natural imagery, and references to the bays and rivers and isles of Ireland. Moreover, unlike much of literature considered adolescent fare,he encompasses adult virtues and vices including lust, envy and pride. This book is written with a compelling sense of humor, aimed not at the cute, but at the failings which each of us possess. it is a book worthy of reading by a person of any age.


Emma
By: Jane Austen
'I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like,' Jane Austen wrote of Emma, vastly underestimating her readers' good taste. The trick of adapting Emma is to recapture Austen's delicate balance, which allows us to see why the heroine still has friends and social influence, despite being the worst matchmaker and busybody in the village of Highbury.


Persuasion
By: Jane Austen
Persuasion is a simply structured novel, for its plot is concerned only with bringing Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth together. A major theme of the novel is Austen's examination of pride and vanity - pride in one's social position and vanity of one's personal appearance. The idea of persuadability is tied up with another major concern of the novel - the right quality of mind. As the novel develops, Austen strives to achieve a right balance between contrasting opposites.


Pride and Prejudice
By: Jane Austen
Elizabeth Bennet is the perfect Austen heroine: intelligent, generous, sensible, incapable of jealousy or any other major sin. That makes her sound like an insufferable goody-goody, but she is far from it. However if she provoked she is not above skewering her antagonist with a piece of her exceptionally sharp -- but always polite -- 18th century wit. You will spend the whole book absolutely fixated on the critical question: will Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy hook up? This book is riveting, it's fun, it's hysterical (wait for the rewarding confrontation between Lady Catherine deBourgh and Elizabeth...it's not only a battle of tongues, but a great clash of the 'refined' yet uneducated upper classes, and the middle classes of Regentry England.


Sense and Sensibility
By: Jane Austen
The story revolves around the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne. Whereas the former is a sensible, rational creature, her younger sister is wildly romantic--a characteristic that offers Austen plenty of scope for both satire and compassion. Commenting on Edward Ferrars, a potential suitor for Elinor's hand, Marianne admits that while she 'loves him tenderly,' she finds him disappointing as a possible lover for her sister:
Oh! Mama, how spiritless, how tame was Edward's manner in reading to us last night! I felt for my sister most severely. Yet she bore it with so much composure, she seemed scarcely to notice it. I could hardly keep my seat. To hear those beautiful lines which have frequently almost driven me wild, pronounced with such impenetrable calmness, such dreadful indifference!
Soon however, Marianne meets a man who measures up to her ideal: Mr. Willoughby, a new neighbor. So swept away by passion is Marianne that her behavior begins to border on the scandalous. Then Willoughby abandons her; meanwhile, Elinor's growing affection for Edward suffers a check when he admits he is secretly engaged to a childhood sweetheart. How each of the sisters reacts to their romantic misfortunes, and the lessons they draw before coming finally to the requisite happy ending forms the heart of the novel. Though Marianne's disregard for social conventions and willingness to consider the world well-lost for love may appeal to modern readers, it is Elinor whom Austen herself most evidently admired; a truly happy marriage, she shows us, exists only where sense and sensibility meet and mix in proper measure.


Fanny Hill
By: John Cleland
The memoirs of a lady of pleasure. 'Fanny Hill has been frequently suppressed since its initial publication in 1749. This story of a prostitute is known both for its frank sexual descriptions and its parodies of contemporary literature... The U.S. Supreme Court finally cleared it from obscenity charges in 1966. ' Quote Courtesy Banned Books On Line


A Journey in Other Worlds
By: John Jacob Astor
A Journey In Other Worlds is the tale of travel to the other planets in our solar system. Even more remarkable than the story is the author, John Jacob Astor.
Colonel John Jacob Astor was an American financier who, among other things developed several mechanical devices including a bicycle brake (1898), helped to develop the turbine engine, and invented a pneumatic road-improver.
In 1912 he and his wife Mary sailed on the Titanic. Mary, his wife, survived but Astor went down with the ship. His body was found three days later.


The King of the Golden River
By: John Ruskin
This is a wonderful fable of good and evil. It is a short work, but an excellent introduction to John Ruskin.


20000 Leagues Under The Seas
By: Jules Verne
Meet Captain Nemo as he rescues shipwrecked survivors and takes them on the most fantastic journey under the sea. A classic tale that never grows old.
Note that this is the original title, somehow the word 'seas' got reduced to 'sea' in later publications.


The Mysterious Island
By: Jules Verne
Here is the classic tale of castaways on an island in the South Pacific. Verne is always great reading.


The Underground City
By: Jules Verne
What lies beneath the hills of Scotland and the Aberfoyle mines? This is not Journey to the Center of the Earth but it is dark down there. Make sure that you have plenty of light -and rope! This is classic Jules Verne.


Wind In the Willows
By: Kenneth Grahame
'Mole thought his happiness was complete when, as he meandered aimlessly along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river. Never in his life had he seen a river before--this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again.' Such is the cautious, agreeable Mole's first introduction to the river and the Life Adventurous. Emerging from his home at Mole End one spring, his whole world changes when he hooks up with the good-natured, boat-loving Water Rat, the boastful Toad of Toad Hall, the society- hating Badger who lives in the frightening Wild Wood, and countless other mostly well-meaning creatures.


The Ninth Vibration and Other Stories
By: L. Adams Beck
Ms.Beck's short stories deal with paranormal subjects such as life after death, the power of meditation, and ESP. The things she wrote about in her book are now commonly known about but at the time her subject matter was surely not broached too often and if written about, not with any factual basis. Her theories on the paranormal seem to agree with what the experts in the field believe today. Much of her wisdom came from travelling to places like India and China and picking up some of their spiritual beliefs. Most of the stuff we call 'x-file'type occurences have been explained for years in Eastern religions. A highly recommended book.


Alice's Adventures In Wonderland
By: Lewis Carroll
This perennial favorite of young and old alike is back once again. Carrolls stories entertain children but can also give pause to think to adults as well. So welcome back to Wonderland!


Through the Looking-Glass
By: Lewis Carroll
Alice's adventures continue is this tale of fantasy and adventure. Carrolls stories entertain children but can also give pause to think to adults as well. So welcome back to Wonderland! Beware the Jabberwok!


Poe's Tales of Terror
By: London
One of the greatest masters of horror presents three of his greatest tales just for you. Make sure you have plenty of light when you read the Cask of Amontillado.


Little Men
By: Louisa May Alcott
This book follows the adventures of Jo March and her husband Professor Bhaer as they try to make their school for boys a happy, comfortable, and stimulating place. Kate Halleron contributed this book.


Little Women
By: Louisa May Alcott
The Marches are a picture of a happy home - with brave and moral Father, who has gone into the army to do what he can for the North's cause, and kind, caring Marmee, who watches over her girls with gentleness and love. Then, there's the little women: sixteen-year-old Meg, who's pretty and mature; rough-and-tumble Jo, determined to become a famous writer; timid Beth, always putting others before herself; and spoiled Amy with her artistic talents. There's also their amiable neighbor, Theodre Laurence (Laurie). Join in on the fun and read all about Amy's trouble at school, Jo's precious book being burned, Meg going to 'Vanity Fair,' Beth's tragedy, and so much more! I highly recommend this book for guys and girls of all ages!
Kate Halleron contributed this book.


The Lodger
By: Marie Belloc Lowndes
This is the story of a mysterious lodger in a rooming house in 19th century London. Shortly after he moves in a series of murders takes place and the landlady links two and two, or does he? An excellent read!


The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn
By: Mark Twain
The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn is really a continuation of the telling of the story of Tom Sawyer, save it is told from the point of view of Huck Finn, who if possible, is from an even lower status than Tom himself. Here is a story of adventure and at the same time raw courage against the reality of slavery in the deep American South as it comes head to head with friendship.


The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
By: Mark Twain
Does anybody need an introduction to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer? One of the reasons I converted this book was so that I could read it once again. This is the story of a Mississippi boy in the mid 1800's, as he discovers the world for himself. Here there is laughter, danger, boyhood pranks and fun. At the same time this is the telling tale of 'life as it was' in that ear, and some of what Mark Twain tells us is not as we find life today. That's why he tells it to us, in hopes that he, and we, can make a difference.


The Prince and the Pauper
By: Mark Twain
Twain's classic story has been told so many times in television, movie and stage. But it is good to read the original from which all sprang. Join Tom, from Offal Court, as he trades places with a prince. And see the consequences.


Tom Sawyer Abroad
By: Mark Twain
Join Tom, Huck and Jim as they venture in a balloon across the Atlantic. As they float over Aftica Tom tells stories and Jim... well you just have to read this long neglected work. Tom Sawyer Abroad is a companion work to Tom Sawyer Detective. You'll enjoy them both.


Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus
By: Mary Wollestonecraft Shelly
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is one of the masterpieces of nineteenth-century Gothicism. While stay-ing in the Swiss Alps in 1816 with her lover Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and others, Mary, then eighteen, began to concoct the story of Dr. Victor Frankenstein and the monster he brings to life by electricity. Written in a time of great personal tragedy, it is a subversive and morbid story warning against the dehumanization of art and the corrupting influence of science. Packed with allusions and literary references, it is also one of the best thrillers ever written. Frankenstein; Or, the Modern Prometheus was an instant bestseller on publication in 1818. The prototype of the science fiction novel, it has spawned countless imitations and adaptations but retains its original power.


The Seventh Man
By: Max Brand
After Vic Gregg Kills Blondy Hansen, he takes off for the hills with a posse in hot pursuit. But 'Whistling Dan' Barry thinks Gregg is innocent and acts to prevent his capture, putting himself on the wrong side of the law.
Barry holds onto his belief, despite Gregg's malodorous history (six other killings). A seventh dead man finally tips the balance, leading Barry to fresh calculations.
'A heart-stopping sequel to Max Brand's 'The Untamed and The Night Horseman.'


Don Quixote
By: Miquel de Cervantes
This literary masterpiece, part parody and part cautionary tale, describes adventures of a middle-aged gentleman from La Mancha, who one day decides to set out into the world to do good deeds in the name of his ladylove, Dulcinea. In his many adventures, he mistakes inns for castles, windmills for giants and flocks of sheep for opposing armies. Though he is out of place, often ludicrous and considered profoundly mad by all who know him, Don Quixote maintains his innate goodness and unwavering commitment to chivalry.
This synopsis submitted by Romuald (George) Czajkowski


The Scarlet Letter
By: Nathaniel Hawthorne
The story of a woman persecuted by the narrow Calvinist-Puritan Boston society that was the author's own heritage. The book examines the circumstances of Hester's illegitimate pregnancy, reveals the shocking identity of the father, and attacks this society for blaming the innocent.


Bardelys the Magnificent
By: Rafael Sabatini
Being an Account of the Strange Wooing pursued by the Sieur Marcel de Saint-Pol, Marquis of Bardleys, and of the things that in the course of it befell in in Languedoc, in the year of the Rebellion is seen here in a Grosset and Dunlap reissue from 1905 Arthur Pearson plates. The tale features a hero who is 'a handsome, reckless favorite of Louis XIII' but who sews seeds of rebellion against his monarch. Beautiful maidens, castles, swordfights, everything Sabatini promises.


Captain Blood
By: Rafael Sabatini
Wronged from the moment this book begins Doctor Peter Blood sees his life deteriorate before his very eyes. From being a respected physician he finds himself called a pirate and a murderer. And this by the very lady whom he loves.
Here is the greatest of all swash buckling tales of the high seas. Sabatini, in his inimitable style combines blood curdling adventure with romance, humor and more to make your blood hot in your veins. You won't put this book down!
Kate Halleron contributed this book.


Scaramouche
By: Rafael Sabatini
Scaramouche tells the exciting story of a young aristocrat thrust by chance into the turbulent politics of the French Revolution. His successive endeavors as a lawyer, politician, actor, lover, and buffoon lead his enemies to call him 'Scaramouche' - the clown - but he fights on, dazzling the world with his elegant orations and precision swordsmanship. This delightful classic overflows with memorable escapades and begins with an unforgettable first line: He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.


St. Martin's Summer
By: Rafael Sabatini
The life of an heiress is in jeopardy and her only hope is to place her trust in the wiles of a middle-aged swordsman with no use for 'women's troubles.' As the plots of the conspirators converge it will take all the wiles and accumulated wisdom of Martin Marie Rigobert de Garnache to uncover their identity, to save Valerie de La Vauvraye and keep his promise to his Queen.


The Lion's Skin
By: Rafael Sabatini
Since childhood and his mother's cruel death, young Caryll had been bred in France by his guardians for one purpose -- to wreak their vengeance on the father who had never known him. But Caryll did not complete his mission. Instead, he sailed for England and plunged into a maelstrom of dissension and revolt that teemed with danger for his -- and for beautiful Mistress Winthrop who loved him. But, in the end the hunter failed, and in this case, the lion was generous.


The Snare
By: Rafael Sabatini
This is a novel of murder and intrigue set in the Napoleonic wars, specifically in Portugal. Una O'Moy must save her brother from the firing squad, while her husband, Sir Thomas must fulfill the dictates of his office. But when he kills a man in a duel his whole world falls apart. This delightful novel is full of twists and turns, never dull! If you enjoyed Captain Blood you will enjoy The Snare.


The Tavern Knight
By: Rafael Sabatini
What happens when father and son both vie for the hand of the same fair maiden? Here is an early Sabatini. It shows that the man was destined for greatness and also shows that an average Sabatini work is better than much of what is written today. The plot twists are interesting if contrived and predictable. Still a fun read.


The Trampling of the Lilies.
By: Rafael Sabatini
When La Boulaye recovered consciousness he was lying on his back in the middle of the courtyard of the``Chateau de Bellecour. From a great stone balcony above, a little group, of which Mademoiselle de Bellecour``was the centre, observed the scene about the captive, who was being resuscitated that he might fittingly``experience the Seigneur's vengeance.


Under the Andes
By: Rex Stout
Lured by the legends of Inca gold, a beautiful dancer and two brothers enter a mysterious cave. What they don't realize is that others live there, protecting the gold of their ancestors; others, now misshapen after generations of living underground.


The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
By: Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson originally wrote Dr. Jekyll And Mr Hyde as a 'chilling shocker.' He then burned the draft and, upon his wife's advice, rewrote it as the darkly complex tale it is today. Stark, skillfully woven, this fascinating novel explores the curious turnings of human character through the strange case of Dr. Jekyll, a kindly scientist who by night takes on his stunted evil self, Mr. Hyde. Anticipating modern psychology, Jekyll And Hyde is a brilliantly original study of man's dual nature -- as well as an immortal tale of suspense and terror. Published in 1866, Jekyll And Hyde was an instant success and brought Stevenson his first taste of fame. Though sometimes dismissed as a mere mystery story, the book has evoked much literary admirations


Treasure Island
By: Robert Louis Stevenson
The names Long John Silver and Jim Hawkins are destined to remain pieces of folklore for as long as children of all ages want to read Robert Louis Stevenson's most famous book. With it's dastardly plot and motley crew of rogues and villains, it seems unlikely that children will ever say no to this timeless classic. Anyone who thinks this book is boring has to have a screw loose! From the arrival of the mysterious Billy Bones, to the attack on the inn, to the sea voyage, to the mutiny, to the battle for the island, to the treasure hunt, even to the final fate of John Silver, this book is a stunning rollercoaster of suspense and adventure!
Here's a bit of information you might enjoy: the meaning of the pirates' song--
Fifteen men on a dead man's chest Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
The real-life pirate, Edward Teach (Blackbeard the Pirate) once marooned 15 of his men on a small island named Dead Man's Chest. He put them ashore with no weapons, equipment or supplies--just a bottle of rum.
This book was contributed by Kate Halleron


The Jungle Book
By: Rudyard Kipling
Here are the stories of Mowgli and his friends in the jungle. It will bring back memories, and remind you of the real stories behind the classic movie.


Quest of the Sacred Slipper
By: Sax Rhomer
Sax Rhomer is back with the Quest for the Sactred Slipper. Here is murder, mayhem and intrigue at its finest. Here is a a relic of the Near East. But weird, supernatural horrors followed the theft and movement of this relic of the Near East to a London museum. Was that the reason those warned been singled out for mutilation - and death ?


Vikram and the Vampire
By: Sir Richard R. Burton
The Baital-Pachisi, or Twenty-five Tales of a Baital is the history of a huge Bat, Vampire, or Evil Spirit which inhabited and animated dead bodies. It is an old, and thoroughly Hindu, Legend composed in Sanskrit, and is the germ which culminated in the Arabian Nights, and which inspired the 'Golden Ass' of Apuleius, Boccacio's 'Decamerone,' the 'Pentamerone,' and all that class of facetious fictitious literature.
The story turns chiefly on a great king named Vikram, the King Arthur of the East, who in pursuance of his promise to a Jogi or Magician, brings to him the Baital (Vampire), who is hanging on a tree. The difficulties King Vikram and his son have in bringing the Vampire into the presence of the Jogi are truly laughable; and on this thread is strung a series of Hindu fairy stories, which contain much interesting information on Indian customs and manners. It also alludes to that state, which induces Hindu devotees to allow themselves to be buried alive, and to appear dead for weeks or months, and then to return to life again; a curious state of mesmeric catalepsy, into which they work themselves by concentrating the mind and abstaining from food - a specimen of which I have given a practical illustration in the Life of Sir Richard Burton.
The following translation is rendered peculiarly; valuable and interesting by Sir Richard Burton's intimate knowledge of the language. To all who understand the ways of the East, it is as witty, and as full of what is popularly called 'chaff' as it is possible to be. There is not a dull page in it, and it will especially please those who delight in the weird and supernatural, the grotesque, and the wild life.


Ivanhoe
By: Sir Walter Scott
The epitome of the chivalric novel, Ivanhoe sweeps readers into Medieval England and the lives of a memorable cast of characters. Ivanhoe, a trusted ally of Richard-the-Lion-Hearted, returns from the Crusades to reclaim the inheritance his father denied him. Rebecca, a vibrant, beautiful Jewish woman is defended by Ivanhoe against a charge of witchcraft--but it is Lady Rowena who is Ivanhoe's true love. The wicked Prince John plots to usurp England's throne, but two of the most popular heroes in all of English literature, Richard-the-Lion-Hearted and the well-loved famous outlaw, Robin Hood, team up to defeat the Normans and reagain the castle. The success of this novel lies with Scott's skillful blend of historic reality, chivalric romance, and high adventure.


The Lady of the Lake
By: Sir Walter Scott
The scene of the poem, The Lady of the Lake is laid chiefly in the vicinity of Loch Katrine, in the Western Highlands of Perthshire, Scotland. The time of Action includes Six Days, and the transactions of each Day occupy a Canto.
The Lady of the Lake was first published in 1810, when Scott was thirty-nine, and it was dedicated to 'the most noble John James, Marquis of Abercorn.'
This poem, the action of which lay among scenes so beautiful was a labour of love by Scott, and it was no less so to recall the manners and incidents introduced. It was the frequent custom of King James IV., and particularly of James V., to walk through their kingdom in disguise, which afforded Scott the hint of an incident which never fails to be interesting if managed with the slightest address or dexterity.
Here is Sir Walter Scott's epic poel, The Lady opf the Lake, with notes and anotations.


Tess of the d'Urbervilles
By: Thomas Hardy
The tragic story of a young woman in Victorian England. Get out your hankies.


Leaves of Grass
By: Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman is perhaps the finest American poet ever as well as the most quintessentially American poet. His poetry never dates itself. It is as contemporary as if he just wrote it last week. Walt Whitman's poems overflow with life and energy, pulsate with excitement, and contain deep though simply-told truths that rival those of any wise man in history. Much maligned during life and after for the eroticism of his writing, he never let his inhibitions hold back his writing and thus it sparkles with honesty. Walt Whitman was also a great patriot, who loved America in a way modern Americans would do well to emulate. He sought it out on its own terms and recorded what he saw in his poetry. His war poems, written during the American Civil War, are some of the best war poems existing in literature. Whitman knew his subject, having spent much time caring for the wounded soldiers in the hospitals and visiting battlefields. His poems create vivid pictures, richly textured, as real as you read them as if you were seeing the scene yourself. And the dialog he carries on with the reader makes the reader feel that Whitman, if he were still alive, would like nothing more than to sit down and discuss life. He is one of the few poets who manages to establish a rapport with his reader, to anticipate his reader's reactions and talk to each one through the poem. Walt Whitman should be read by any and every literate American. 'Leaves of Grass' will change anyone who dares to read it.


After Dark
By: Wilkie Collins
The Author himself writes, 'I have taken some pains to string together the various stories contained in this Volume on a single thread of interest, which, so far as I know, has at least the merit of not having been used before.
'The pages entitled 'Leah's Diary' are, however, intended to fulfill another purpose besides that of serving as the frame-work for my collection of tales. In this part of the book, and subsequently in the Prologues to the stories, it has been my object to give the reader one more glimpse at that artist-life which circumstances have afforded me peculiar opportunities of studying, and which I have already tried to represent, under another aspect, in my fiction, 'Hide-and-Seek.' This time I wish to ask some sympathy for the joys and sorrows of a poor traveling portrait-painter--presented from his wife's point of view in 'Leah's Diary,' and supposed to be briefly and simply narrated by himself in the Prologues to the stories. I have purposely kept these two portions of the book within certain limits; only giving, in the one case, as much as the wife might naturally write in her diary at intervals of household leisure; and, in the other, as much as a modest and sensible man would be likely to say about himself and about the characters he met with in his wanderings. If I have been so fortunate as to make my idea intelligible by this brief and simple mode of treatment, and if I have, at the same time, achieved the necessary object of gathering several separate stories together as neatly-fitting parts of one complete whole, I shall have succeeded in a design which I have for some time past been very anxious creditably to fulfill.'


The Moonstone
By: Wilkie Collins
The Moonstone is a cleverly contrived tale of a stolen Indian dimond which becomes the dangerous inheritance of Rachel Vendier. When the incredible dimond is stolen, for the second time, the seemimly simple case becomes a masterpiece of mystery and suspense. The novel entangles us in every page. We become lost in the emotions of the 19th century characters. When the mystery begins to unfold, we delieghtedly press on, only to find that Collins has outwitted us again. Collins has an amazing talent for assuming a variety of narrative voices, which keep the reader envolved with the individual characters. Each new clue elicits thousands of questions, arousing in the reader, a desire to read on and on. The Moonstone is the most outstanding cassic detective mystery novel ever written.


Alexander's Bridge
By: Willa Cather
This novella is a charming period piece, a love story, and a fatalistic fable about a doomed love affair and the lives it destroys. Bartley Alexander's accidental meeting with the Irish actress he loved as a young man seems full of promise but leads instead to dishonesty and betrayal.
The metaphor of the bridge--the conduit to both the past and the future--figures prominently in this story of a Boston architect torn between his ongoing 'mid-life' crisis and his energetic, passion-filled past.
The story moves along well, and there is an interesting Henry James-like contrast of Europe and America. The beginning nicely portrays the Boston upper class, and the dramatic conclusion includes passages of great strength and imagination.


My Antonia
By: Willa Cather
First published in 1918, and set in Nebraska in the late 19th century, this tale of the spirited daughter of a Bohemian immigrant family planning to farm on the untamed land comes to us through the romantic eyes of Jim Burden. He is, at the time of their meeting, newly orphaned and arriving at his grandparents' neighboring farm on the same night her family strikes out to make good in their new country. Jim chooses the opening words of his recollections deliberately: 'I first heard of ?ntonia on what seemed to be an interminable journey across the great midland plain of North America,' and it seems almost certain that readers of Cather's masterpiece will just as easily pinpoint the first time they heard of ?ntonia and her world. It seems equally certain that they, too, will remember that moment as one of great light in an otherwise unremarkable trip through the world.
?ntonia, who, even as a grown woman somewhat downtrodden by circumstance and hard work, 'had not lost the fire of life,' lies at the center of almost every human condition that Cather's novel effortlessly untangles. She represents immigrant struggles with a foreign land and tongue, the restraints on women of the time (with which Cather was very much concerned), the more general desires for love, family, and companionship, and the great capacity for forbearance that marked the earliest settlers on the frontier.
As if all this humanity weren't enough, Cather paints her descriptions of the vastness of nature--the high, red grass, the road that 'ran about like a wild thing,' the endless wind on the plains--with strokes so vivid as to make us feel in our bones that we've just come in from a walk on that very terrain ourselves. As the story progresses, Jim goes off to the University in Lincoln to study Latin and learns Virgil's phrase 'Optima dies ... prima fugit' that Cather uses as the novel's epigraph. 'The best days are the first to flee'--this could be said equally of childhood and the earliest hours of this country in which the open land, much like My ?ntonia, was nothing short of a rhapsody in prairie sky blue.


One of Ours
By: Willa Cather
Willa Cather's One of Ours follows the life of Claude Wheeler, a Nebraska farm boy who is searching for some meaning to his existence. With his study at the university stripped away because of his father's farm, he bitterly drives himself into the monotony of farm life, establishes himself, and weds a woman who has little affection for him. Claude is searching for some kind of sustenance to create a life that has more meaning than chopping wood and mending fence. WWI comes along and Claude enthusiastically enlists in a cause he can be proud of, and finds a sense of purpose in the trench warfare, feeling a brotherhood among his fellow soldiers. To any reader interested in the Modern Period of American Literature, this novel pounds home the common themes of that period. Cather's description is adept as usual, while her plot is somewhat predictable. Nonetheless, it's a solid novel for readers to sink their teeth into.


Vanity Fair
By: William Makepeace Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray subtitled 'Vanity Fair', his masterful comic novel, 'A Novel Without a Hero'. But while this big, baggy eight-hundred page monstrosity of comic characters and situations may lack a hero, it has two of the most memorable characters in English literature: Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp. The contrapuntal, shifting fortunes of these two women drive the narrative of this big book, painting, along the way, a brilliant satirical portrait of English and European society at the time of the Napoleonic wars. We first meet Amelia and Becky in the opening pages of the novel, leaving Miss Pinkerton's School for the wider world of fortune, love and marriage. Amelia Sedley, the naive, sheltered daughter of a rich London merchant whose fortunes will dramatically change over the course of her life, 'was a dear little creature; and a great mercy it is, both in life and in novels, which (the latter especially) abound in villains of the most sombre sort, that we are to have for a constant companion so guileless and good-natured a person.' In contrast, Becky Sharp, the impoverished orphan of an artist and a French opera singer of dubious repute, was a calculating, amoral social climber. 'Miss Rebecca was not, then, in the least kind or placable . . . but she had the dismal precocity of poverty.' From the opening pages, Thackeray captures the reader's interest in these two characters and carries the reader through marriages, births, deaths, poverty, misfortune, social climbing . . . even the Battle of Waterloo! While Amelia and Becky wind like a long, contrasting thread from the beginning to the end of this story, there are also plots and subplots, intrigues and authorial asides, and one character after another, all of this literary invention keeping the reader incessantly preoccupied and enthralled. Reading 'Vanity Fair' is the furthest thing from 'killing time' (as the dusty, misguided literary critic F. R. Leavis once said); it is, rather, the epitome of the nineteenth century English comic novel, a masterpiece in every sense of the word. Courtesy: Gary Jakaitis


The House of the Wolfings
By: William Morris
The House of the Wolfings is set in a land which is threatened by an invading force of Romans. Written partly in prose and partly in verse, it centers on a House or family-tribe that dwells by a great river in a clearing of the forest named Mirkwood, a name taken from ancient German geography and legend.... Its style is highly idiosyncratic, heavily laden with archaisms and poetic inversions in an attempt to recreate the aura of ancient legend. Morris's aptitude, despite the vagueness of time and place in which the story is set, for describing with great precision the details of his imagined landscape.


The Well at the World's End
By: William Morris
This is a beautiful story, a rich fantasy, a vibrant fairy-tale with no fairies. Strictly speaking, as regards genre, it is a 'romance'. The chivalric, bardic story of Ralph of Upmeads, the least likely of the King's four sons, who devotes his life to the quest of the Well at The World's End, a fabled well which promises to reward its discoverer with perpetual youth.
Morris' calm mastery of invention is like a slow intoxication, lifting you up one deceptively simple phrase at a time, until you are passed through his stained glass window of clear prose and a fresh new world is revealed, full of bloodshed and beauty. One comes to realize this book was not meant as mere allegory or escapist adventure, but as a True Quest, with nuggets of eternity scattered throughout, and a great Sunrise welling up in the near distance


Wood Beyond the World
By: William Morris
The language, style and story of this novel lend it an aura of antiquity, as if it too was merely a translation of some medieval romance. The hero of the story, Golden Walter, flees his home upon realizing that his new bride hates him. Sailing forth on one of his merchant father's ships, his fate becomes intertwined with a mysterious trio: a splendid lady, her evil dwarf servant and a young maiden whom the lady has enslaved. Walter pursues the trio beyond the reaches of his own world to The Golden House, governed by the lady, known only as The Mistress. There he will battle the dwarf, free the maiden, with whom he has fallen in love, and together they will flee the Mistress.


The Crossing
By: Winston Churchill
There is a common misconception about this book that many commonly fall into. This book was not written by the Brittish Prime Minister Sir Winston S. Churchill but rather by an american authour named Winston Churchill who was very popular at the turn of the century but now is sadly forgotton. This Winston Churchill wrote several novels at the turn of the century.
The Crossing is a tale of US western expansion, especially the crossing over the mountains into Kentucky, and much of the story is told through the eyes of a rather wide-eyed young man.


Desert Gold
By: Zane Grey
As the tide of revolution rises, Texas Ranger, Richard Gale must rescue a beautiful Spanish woman, Mercedes, from the clutches of the notorious and murderous bandit Rojas and his band of cutthroats. Along the way Gale finds love and uncovers a long-buried secret.


Heritage of the Desert
By: Zane Grey
Published in 1910, this was Zane Grey's first western novel. It received wide and unanimous praise for its powerful portrait of the land and the men and women of the Southwest. Full of action and romance, this timeless novel helped create Grey's reputation as a classic author of the American West.


Riders of the Purple Sage
By: Zane Grey
The novel that set the pattern for the modern Western, Riders of the Purple Sage was first published in 1912, immediately selling over a million copies. In the remote border country of southern Utah, a man is about to be whipped by the Mormons in order to pressure Jane Withersteen into marrying against her will. The punishment is halted by the arrival of the hero, Lassiter, a gunman in black leather, who routs the persecutors and then gradually recounts his own history of an endless search for a woman abducted long ago by the Mormons. Secrecy, seduction, captivity, and escape: out of these elements Zane Grey fashioned his magnificent classic of the American West.


The Last of the Plainsmen
By: Zane Grey
In a classic western tale, the last of the plainsmen, Buffalo Jones, goes on his final mission to track buffalo, mustang, cougar, and bring them back alive.