Arsène Lupin’s attempted robbery of the deputy Daubrecq has gone horribly wrong, leaving behind a murdered man and two of his accomplices in the hands of the police. Now he finds himself pulled into an ever more conspiratorial spiral as he attempts to gain leverage over the people who can free his men. Set before the events of the preceding 813, this again portrays Lupin in a much different light to the earlier books.
Maurice Leblanc · Drama · 13 ch
Barchester Towers, published in 1857, is the sequel to Trollope’s The Warden and continues the story of the clerical doings in the fictional cathedral town of Barchester. As this novel opens, the old Bishop of Barchester lies dying, and there is considerable doubt as to who will replace him. The Bishop’s son Dr. Grantly, the Archdeacon, has high hopes of succeeding him, but these hopes are dashed and a new Bishop, Dr. Proudie, is appointed.
Anthony Trollope · Drama · 53 ch
Germinal, named after the spring month in the French Republican Calendar, is often considered to be Zola’s masterpiece. The book follows Étienne Lantier, a young man whose career as a railway worker is abruptly cut short after he attacks a superior. He arrives in Montsou, a coal mining town in the north of France, to begin a new life in a different industry.
Émile Zola · Drama · 41 ch
Basil, published in 1852, is Wilkie Collins’ second novel. In writing it, Collins took a very different approach from his first novel, a historical romance: Basil is his first venture into “sensation fiction.” It features themes of adultery, fraud, betrayal, and vengeance; themes certainly sensational by the standards of the early Victorian era in which it was written. The novel begins with Basil, an aristocratic young man who sees a beautiful young woman on an omnibus, and instantly falls in love with her.
Wilkie Collins · Drama · 30 ch
Wieland, the first novel by Charles Brockden Brown, is set in the years following the French and Indian War on the Pennsylvania frontier. Clara Wieland recounts the experiences of her close-knit family on their secluded estate near Philadelphia, where, in the shadow of their father’s strange and unexplained death, they attempt to build a life shaped equally by religious devotion and Enlightenment rationalism. Their domestic tranquility begins to unravel when members of the household have unsettling encounters with disembodied voices.
Charles Brockden Brown · Horror · 28 ch
Edward Leithen is a young M.P., barrister, and rising man in London society. When one of his old friends goes missing, Leithen decides to investigate. He discovers that some element of danger was involved in his friend’s flight, and from that point events spiral beyond his control.
John Buchan · Mystery · 11 ch
Emily of New Moon, like Anne of Green Gables, follows the life of an orphan, Emily Byrd Starr, who was raised by her relatives after her father’s death. Emily, with her vivid imagination, lives on a farm on Prince Edward Island called New Moon. There, she befriends the children Ilse, Teddy, and Perry, each possessing special talents.
L. M. Montgomery · Drama · 31 ch
Set in the 1850s, this short novel is about the struggles and triumphs of a bishop, Jean Marie Latour, and his loyal friend and vicar, Father Joseph Vaillant. They have been sent to reawaken and spread the Roman Catholic faith in an area where it has grown weak: New Mexico, recently annexed by the United States. Desolate and remote, the territory is home to many diverse groups: Mexicans, including those on ranches established for hundreds of years; Indians, who have been there much longer and who are divided by language and customs into thirty nations; and newcomers—hunters, fur trappers, and those seeking gold.
Willa Cather · Drama · 10 ch
After being turned out by his parents for his disobedience, a Maronite teenager named Khalid scrapes up the funds to emigrate to the United States of America by working as a muleteer. Crossing the Atlantic with his friend Shakib, Khalid sets himself up in New York city as a peddler of counterfeit trinkets “made in the Holy Land.” He quickly loses interest in peddling and develops eccentric philosophical views as he immerses himself in various turn-of-the-century subcultures, including the freethought movement, Bohemianism, and Tammany Hall. Spurred on by his love for his cousin Najma, Khalid returns to his Lebanese hometown, Baalbek, where his iconoclastic philosophy earns him the enmity of the religious and secular authorities.
Ameen Rihani · Comedy · 33 ch
Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe’s debut novel, is a coming-of-age novel that follows the life of Oliver Gant and his family in the fictional town of Altamont, North Carolina. The story begins with Oliver’s early years, capturing the struggles of post-Civil War Southern life. Later, the focus shifts to Eugene, Oliver’s son, an aspiring writer torn between his artistic ambition and his small-town roots.
Thomas Wolfe · Drama · 42 ch
At age thirty, Madeleine Lee, a wealthy, wellborn widow, has tired of Gilded Age New York and its shallow society. She decides to spend the winter in Washington with her sister, renting a house on Lafayette Square, within easy reach of all the intense partying, horse-trading, and other activities that politics requires. As she makes friends (and enemies) with the locals, one question remains uppermost in Madeleine Lee’s mind: “Who, then, is right?
Henry Adams · Comedy · 14 ch
Trapped in a failing shop and a loveless marriage, Mr. Polly stages his own death and walks away to start life over. Wells turns one man’s comic rebellion into a warm story about courage and second chances.
H. G. Wells · Comedy · 10 ch
In the late 19th century, Lewis Carroll —better known these days as the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland —was also an established mathematician who had published many books and papers in the fields of algebra and logic. His mathematical interest extended to the setting of puzzles for popular consumption. The stories collected here cover varied subjects including the cataloguing of paintings, the number of times trains will pass each other on a circular track, the most efficient way to rent individual rooms on a square, and many more.
Lewis Carroll · Comedy · 14 ch
Frank Cowperwood is a teenager living in Philadelphia when he comes across a lobster kept in a tank. As the lobster lunges at and devours the other sea creatures helplessly trapped with it, Frank decides that this pitiless example of nature red in tooth and claw is the most effective way of advancing in wealth and human affairs. After making some easy money acting as a middleman for a castile soap distributor, Frank quickly finds himself amassing a fortune in business and investments as the Civil War tears across America.
Theodore Dreiser · Drama · 61 ch
Although known for her later experiments with style and structure, Virginia Woolf set out in her early novels to master the traditional form. Her second novel, Night and Day, presents itself as a seemingly conventional marriage plot, complete with love triangles, broken engagements, and unrequited affections. Beneath these conventional trappings, however, the book’s deeper concerns are resolutely subversive.
Virginia Woolf · Drama · 34 ch
The Wings of the Dove is perhaps the most well-received of Henry James’s novels. First published in 1902, it follows Kate Croy and Merton Densher, an engaged couple in late-Victorian London, who meet Milly Theale, a wealthy American heiress. Milly, though young and lively, is burdened with a fatal disease.
Henry James · Drama · 38 ch
Georges Duroy returns to Paris from military service in Algeria penniless. After meeting up with an old friend, he finds journalism work at a renowned newspaper. He gradually climbs the ranks to chief-editor—but all this time, he hasn’t been using his wit as a writer, but rather the clever manipulation of the women around him, to get ahead.
Guy de Maupassant · Drama · 18 ch
Miles Coverdale is a young poet who goes to work on a communal farm in New England. He joins other idealists who seek to leave behind what they see as a corrupt society, and to live off the land by honest work. They will escape the world, and at the same time improve it by their example.
Nathaniel Hawthorne · Drama · 30 ch
The House of the Wolfings tells the tale of a band of German Goths living in a wood they call the Mark. Their lives are idyllic until the long shadow of the Roman Empire threatens the peace in their land. Thiodolf, the leader of the Wolfings and a descendant of the ancient gods, must rally the surrounding tribes to defend their home and way of life.
William Morris · Fantasy · 32 ch
Thuvia, Maid of Mars moves the focus of Burroughs’ Martian series to Carthoris, the son of the human John Carter and Martian Dejah Thoris and the prince of Helium. Princess Thuvia of Ptarth and Prince Carthoris of Helium are in love. Fate, however, is against them: the princess is promised to another, the Jeddak of Kaol, Kulan Tith.
Edgar Rice Burroughs · Fantasy · 14 ch