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A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843 and the first edition, published on 19th December, was so successful that it sold out in just six days. The publishers had to produce two further editions between Christmas and the new year to meet the demand, and the novella has never been out of print. A Christmas Carol tells the story of a greedy money-lender, Ebenezer Scrooge, who is first visited by the ghost of his former business partner and then by three spirits—the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.

Charles Dickens · Fantasy · 6 ch

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is one of Mark Twain’s most enduring novels. During a stay at a modern-day English castle, the narrator meets a mysterious stranger. The stranger, Hank Morgan, is an engineer from Connecticut, and proceeds to weave a satirical, biting, and hilarious tale of how he traveled back in time to find himself in the court of the legendary King Arthur.

Mark Twain · Comedy · 47 ch

A Princess of Mars

In A Princess of Mars, John Carter is transported to a Mars inhabited by strange civilizations and embarks on various adventures on his quest home. Often held up as a seminal example of pulp science fiction, A Princess of Mars is the first entry in Burroughs’ epic Martian series, and the first to feature the character of John Carter. Though often categorized as just a pulp adventure tale, A Princess of Mars was hugely influential on many budding science fiction writers, professional scientists, and explorers of the day.

Edgar Rice Burroughs · Sci Fi · 29 ch

A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder

A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder is perhaps James De Mille’s most popular book; sadly, De Mille didn’t get to see this novel grow in popularity, as it was first serialized posthumously, in Harper’s Weekly. De Mille had written the novel before the “lost world” genre had become saturated, meaning many of the ideas were fresh and original for the time in which it was written. But, since he didn’t succeed in publishing it during his lifetime, by the time the novel was made public other authors like H.

James De Mille · Sci Fi · 33 ch

A Study in Scarlet

A Study in Scarlet is the novel which first introduced Arthur Conan Doyle’s iconic characters Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. It was published in 1887 in a popular magazine, Beeton’s Christmas Annual. It attracted little public attention at the time, but interest in Holmes continued to build with the subsequent series of short stories Doyle wrote featuring the austere, analytical detective—now one of the most well-known characters in all of English literature.

Arthur Conan Doyle · Mystery · 15 ch

A Tangled Tale

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

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Everyone’s familiar with Lewis Carroll’s famous children’s classic and the huge influence it’s had on modern culture. The Mad Hatter, the Duchess, the Cheshire Cat, the White Rabbit, the Caterpillar—all of these strange and familiar creatures appear in Alice, and the nonsensical style, memorable poems, and colorful set pieces are just as influential. The book was originally written as gift to Alice Liddel, the daughter of one of Carroll’s friends.

Lewis Carroll · Fantasy · 13 ch

Allan Quatermain

Allan Quatermain, the sequel to King Solomon’s Mines, was first serialized in Longman’s Magazine in the U.K. and subsequently published as a novel in 1887. In it we see the eponymous hero reunited with his companions to travel to Africa on a dangerous and adventuresome quest to try to find a legendary tribe of white-skinned people, the Zu-Vendi.

H. Rider Haggard · Adventure · 27 ch

An Antarctic Mystery

An Antarctic Mystery follows Mr. Jeorling, a wealthy American naturalist whose research has led him to the remote Kerguelen Islands, located in the southern Indian Ocean. Jeorling begins his adventure on the Halbrane after being admitted aboard by the reluctant captain Len Guy, who believes the events in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym to be true. In that novel, Pym persuades Len Guy’s brother, William Guy, to lead a voyage to the Antarctic.

Jules Verne · Adventure · 26 ch

Armageddon 2419 A.D.

Armageddon 2419 A.D. features the introduction of Buck Rogers, the famous sci-fi adventure hero of early comics and radio shows. Originally published in Amazing Stories in 1928, this novella was later combined with Nowlan’s sequel, The Airlords of Han, and re-published under this same title in the 1960s.

Philip Francis Nowlan · Sci Fi · 13 ch

Around the World in Eighty Days

Jules Verne’s most-acclaimed novel remains a cultural cornerstone to this day. The story of Phileas Fogg’s spectacular journey by then-novel technologies is a fast-paced, colorful, and thoroughly enjoyable portrait of the British empire at the height of its power. Originally published as a serial so believable that readers at the time placed bets on whether Fogg would succeed or not, Verne’s adventure epic continues to inspire travelers and adventurers even in modern times.

Jules Verne · Adventure · 37 ch

At the Back of the North Wind

As a poor cabbie and his wife eke out a meager existence in Victorian London, their little boy, Diamond—named after his father’s horse—is befriended by the North Wind. While Diamond learns much about life through his travels with North Wind, his visit to the country at her “back” proves to be transformative. As life in London grows especially hard, that moment provides Diamond with the resources to touch those around him with beauty and truth.

George MacDonald · Fantasy · 38 ch

At the Earth’s Core

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

At the Villa Rose

When the wealthy widow Madame Dauvray is found murdered at the Villa Rose in Aix-les-Bains, suspicion falls on her young companion Celia Harland, who has gone missing—along with Dauvray’s valuable jewels. The famous French detective Inspector Hanaud is called in to solve the mystery, which involves a séance, a missing chauffeur, and a web of deceit. A.

A. E. W. Mason · Mystery · 21 ch

Before Adam

In Before Adam, an unnamed narrator describes the life of one of his ancestors, who lived during the transition from ape to human being. Written and published in the early 20th Century, the novel presents ideas that were common for the period, like scientific racism and racial memory, and has elements of eugenic thought. This makes the work outdated both scientifically and socially.

Jack London · Adventure · 19 ch

Behind That Curtain

Behind That Curtain, published in 1928, finds Charlie Chan in San Francisco preparing to return to Honolulu after a working holiday. He meets a Sir Frederic Bruce from Scotland Yard, who is following the trail of a woman who disappeared fifteen years before. The two attend a dinner party together—where Sir Frederic is murdered.

Earl Derr Biggers · Adventure · 22 ch

Bellarion the Fortunate

Bellarion, a young orphan, leaves the abbey he was raised in to attend university and learn Greek. He quickly learns the dangers of life in fifteenth-century Italy, as he is robbed, caught in a riot, and chased through town by the authorities. He tangles himself in a plot against the local regent, plays one side against the other, and declares his service to the beautiful but uninterested Valeria.

Rafael Sabatini · Adventure · 47 ch

Blue Hand

Jim Steele, a clerk for a prominent London attorney, has the distasteful task of assisting a notorious client, Digby Groat, who stands to inherit the Jonathan Danton fortune. Danton’s infant daughter and closest heir, Dorothy, was thought to have died in a boating accident twenty years ago. Adding to the mystery, Dorothy’s mother, Lady Mary Danton, also disappeared around the same time.

Edgar Wallace · Adventure · 49 ch

Bulldog Drummond

Captain Hugh Drummond, D.S.O., M.C., is back from the war, and is bored. Seeking adventure, he places a newspaper advert with services offered in exchange for excitement, and a reply from a woman needing help piques his interest. What follows is a back and forth engagement with a shadowy criminal cabal determined to cause mayhem for the British establishment—and to profit from it.

H. C. McNeile · Adventure · 14 ch

Candide

Candide is the picaresque tale of the titular character’s fantastical journey from an insular, idealized life in a picturesque castle through the difficulties and evils of the real world. Satirical, comical, witty, and cutting, Candide was widely banned in its day for containing blasphemous and seditious concepts. Despite that, it survived controversy to become an important book in the Western literary heritage.

Voltaire · Comedy · 31 ch