Four years after writing his immensely popular The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum returned to the Land of Oz in this second book of fourteen he wrote about the magical country. Like its predecessor, The Marvelous Land of Oz has delighted children through the years, and has been adapted into stage plays, films, and comics.
L. Frank Baum · Fantasy · 25 ch
Two idlers in London are sauntering in the streets when they pick up a coin dropped by a fleeing man. They keep meeting three persons, each time in a different disguise, who recount lurid tales. They seem to be looking for a spectacled man who regrets working with them, and has run away with a valuable coin … This novel is a Gothic horror classic, and takes the form of an episodic novel, with each chapter containing a story recounted by one of the three impostors.
Arthur Machen · Horror · 11 ch
At the Earth’s Core, published in 1914, is the first of a series of science fiction novels written by Edgar Rice Burroughs set inside a hollow earth with a central “sun,” a land called Pellucidar. However unlikely this scenario, it allowed Burroughs free play to create heroic adventures in yet another alien environment in addition to his fantastic version of Mars in his Martian series. The story’s hero, David Innes, is recruited by an old man, Perry, to help fund his invention, a “mechanical subterranean prospector,” and then to test it out.
Edgar Rice Burroughs · Sci Fi · 16 ch
William Guest wakes up to find himself transported to a future utopian society. This bucolic society functions despite the absence of private property, marriage, prisons, courts, schools, and central government. The people are happy, healthy, and hard working.
William Morris · Sci Fi · 32 ch
The Night Land is science fiction ahead of its time. Published in 1912, the book introduces a 17th-century gentleman who loses his wife. He soon discovers himself somehow reanimated in Earth’s far future, millions of years from now, when the sun has died and the Earth has become a hellish waste.
William Hope Hodgson · Sci Fi · 30 ch
The gentleman-thief Arsène Lupin returns in this set of ten short stories to confess—or perhaps boast about—his crimes to the unnamed narrator. Mostly set around Lupin’s attempts to frustrate Chief-Inspector Ganimard and pocket some cash in the process, they also show off his knack for escaping from seemingly impossible situations, and even playing the role of the master detective. In the chronology of Arsène Lupin, these tales were published after, but set before, the darker stories of The Hollow Needle and 813.
Maurice Leblanc · Mystery · 10 ch
When Arsène Lupin disappeared at the end of The Hollow Needle the public and police assumed he was dead; but it turns out he was just biding his time and waiting for the right opponent to face off against. Luckily, a secret involving a stash of hidden papers and Europe’s aristocratic families is more than enough to pique the interests of Lupin and his unknown competitor. This novel is told more from Lupin’s point of view than the previous stories, and that reduces some of the omnipotence bestowed upon him by Leblanc while highlighting his more emotional qualities.
Maurice Leblanc · Drama · 18 ch
The Way We Live Now is Anthony Trollope’s longest novel, published in two volumes in 1875 after first appearing in serial form. After an extended visit to Australia and New Zealand in 1872, Trollope was outraged on his return to England by a number of financial scandals, and was determined to expose the dishonesty, corruption, and greed they embodied. The Way We Live Now centers around a foreign businessman, Augustus Melmotte, who has come to prominence in London despite rumors about his past dealings on the Continent.
Anthony Trollope · Drama · 100 ch
Three years after the publication of The Marvelous Land of Oz and encouraged by young fans’ letters, L. Frank Baum once more returned to write about lands full of magic and wonder. On a ship on her way to Australia for a holiday with Uncle Henry, Dorothy Gale gets tossed overboard during a storm.
L. Frank Baum · Fantasy · 22 ch
Captain Belval, learning of a threat to his beloved nurse Little Mother Coralie, rescues her from her would-be assailants and is promptly dragged into a plot involving her husband and millions of francs worth of gold. As layer upon layer of conspiracy emerges with no obvious thread to follow, there’s only one man who can be counted on to uncover the truth. The Golden Triangle (also known as The Return of Arsène Lupin ) was published in 1917 in both the original French and this English translation.
Maurice Leblanc · Mystery · 19 ch
Barnaby Rudge opens in the English village of Chigwell in 1775, where an unsolved double murder casts a long shadow over the local community, and in particular Barnaby Rudge, the son of one of the victims. Five years later, London is consumed by the Gordon Riots of 1780, when Lord George Gordon led the Protestant Association in a protest against increased rights for Catholics that descended into days of mob violence. Into this maelstrom wanders Barnaby, a guileless young man with an intellectual disability, recognized across the countryside by his eccentric dress and by Grip, the raven riding on his shoulder.
Charles Dickens · Historical · 83 ch
The fictional Dombey and Son is a prominent mercantile “house” in England, and as Dombey and Son the novel opens, the third generation “and Son” has just been born. For Paul Dombey, the proud second “and Son” to graduate to “Dombey,” this moment has been the focus of his life to this point. So much so that he barely knows his six-year-old daughter Florence exists.
Charles Dickens · Drama · 64 ch
Immediately after the publication of The House of the Wolfings in 1889, William Morris set to work on its successor. This story would move on in time from its predecessor, and adopt a slightly different style: less poetic and less overtly Germanic, but retaining the vaguely medieval setting, and the heroic, saga-like tone. The result was The Roots of the Mountains.
William Morris · Fantasy · 61 ch
Old Martin Chuzzlewit is a wealthy old man beset with health problems, who sees everyone around him—family, friends, and strangers—as after his money. He has isolated himself from society, keeping with him only a young woman, Mary, whom he raised as an orphan. He has told her she will inherit nothing from him, to ensure that her service is purely for service’s sake.
Charles Dickens · Drama · 56 ch
Cosmo Latham is a young Englishman travelling in Italy. The year is 1815, Napoleon is exiled on Elba, and the Congress of Vienna is still in session. Hoping to glimpse the exiled emperor himself, Cosmo arrives in Genoa, where he finds both political intrigue and a young woman—the Countess de Montevesso, whom he had known in England as Adèle d’Armand, and who is now unhappily married.
Joseph Conrad · Historical · 18 ch
Tom Lingard, captain of the vessel Lightning, is returning to the Malaysian Archipelago to fulfill his promise to an exiled Malaysian prince and princess to help them retake control of their kingdom. Lingard’s plans are interrupted when his ship encounters a small boat that’s stranded on the same island that Lingard is to rendezvous with the prince. Upon arriving Lingard meets the boat’s passengers: Mr. Travers, a successful businessman and the boat’s owner, his wife Edith, and Mr. d’Alcacer, a Spanish acquaintance of theirs.
Joseph Conrad · Drama · 43 ch
Behind a Mask is a short novel published by Louisa May Alcott, writing as A. M. Barnard, in 1866.
Louisa May Alcott · Drama · 9 ch
Clyde Griffith’s parents are poor street-preachers, but Clyde doesn’t “believe,” and finds their work demeaning. At fifteen he gets a job and starts to ease out of their lives, eventually landing in some trouble that causes him to flee the town where they live. Two years later, Clyde meets his well-off uncle, who owns a large factory in upstate New York.
Theodore Dreiser · Drama · 100 ch
After learning of atomic physics, H. G. Wells began to think of its potential impact on human society.
H. G. Wells · Sci Fi · 7 ch
In The Golden Bowl, an impoverished Italian aristocrat comes to London to marry a wealthy American, but meets an old mistress before the wedding and spends time with her, helping her pick out a wedding gift. After their marriage, his wife maintains a close relationship with her father, while their own relationship becomes strained. Completed in 1904, Henry James himself considered The Golden Bowl one of his best novels, and it remains one of critics’ favorites.
Henry James · Drama · 42 ch