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
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
Lord Tarzan makes it his job to know who comes and goes in his jungle; James Blake and Wilbur Stimbol’s safari and Ibn Jad’s troupe are no exception. Blake and Stimbol, on safari for photographs, are on the verge of parting ways after vehement disagreement, while Ibn Jad’s people are searching for the fabled city of Nimmir, yearning for its riches. Allowing passage to some and not to others, Tarzan gains new enemies and new friends as the different parties seek their treasures among the wilds of his jungle—a beautiful jungle, but one fraught with danger from men, beasts, and the elements.
Edgar Rice Burroughs · Adventure · 24 ch
Attempting his first solo airplane flight, Tarzan, Lord Greystoke, crashes in the unknown land of Minuni, surrounded by an impenetrable forest of thorns. After first encountering a group of slow, speechless giants, he escapes to discover a civilization of city-states inhabited by a people one quarter his size. As he is caught up in the wars they fight among themselves, he is captured, and must escape both the city and the land to return home.
Edgar Rice Burroughs · Adventure · 22 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
The Return of Tarzan was first published in the pulp New Story Magazine between June and December of 1913, and later published as a novel in 1915. The story picks up shortly after the events in the first book as Tarzan is traveling to France from the United States. While on the ship, he intervenes in the plots of a man named Nikolas Rokoff and his companion Alexis Paulvitch.
Edgar Rice Burroughs · Adventure · 26 ch
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
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
Greenmantle is the second of John Buchan’s novels to feature Richard Hannay, a Scottish intelligence office in the British army, and as such is the sequel to The Thirty-Nine Steps. The book gives the account of Hannay and his associate’s separate journeys through war-torn Europe to Constantinople to thwart an uprising that is poised to throw the Middle East, India, and North Africa into disarray, changing the course of the war. The book was popular when first published and although it has never been made into a film, the director Alfred Hitchcock was said to prefer Greenmantle to The Thirty-Nine Steps, and considered filming it on several occasions.
John Buchan · Adventure · 23 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
The Beasts of Tarzan, the third book in the Tarzan series, was first published in All-Story Cavalier magazine in 1914. It was later published as a novel in 1916. Tarzan’s old enemy, Nikolas Rokoff, escapes prison and plans his revenge by kidnapping the Tarzan’s son, the heir of Greystoke.
Edgar Rice Burroughs · Adventure · 21 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
After being shipwrecked in the South Pacific, cousins Dick and Emmeline Lestrange are stranded upon an island, fortunately populated with plentiful resources and the beauty of nature. With the guidance of the ship’s cook, the only other survivor, they learn how to live off the land, foregoing their civilized upbringing and adopting a more primitive way of life. Of course, with this environment and its pleasures come a great number of dangers, from animal attacks to hazardous weather, and as Dick and Emmeline mature they experience one of the strongest forces of nature: love.
H. de Vere Stacpoole · Adventure · 49 ch
Tom and fellow sailor Toby escape from their duties onboard a whaling ship and fall in with savages on Nukuheva (Nuku Hiva) of the Marquesas Islands. The islanders welcome them to their tropical paradise, but the two runaways must remain on guard to find out if these savages are truly friends or foes. Typee was Melville’s first novel, written after his own voyages and experiences on a whaling ship to the Marquesas and beyond.
Herman Melville · Adventure · 38 ch
After discovering an injured squirrel, young Tommy Stubbins is introduced to Doctor Dolittle. Enamored by the Doctor’s ability to speak with animals and his wonderful house full of creatures from around the world, Tommy convinces the Doctor to take him as an apprentice. Together with Polynesia the parrot, Jip the dog, and an African prince named Bumpo, they set out in search of the famed naturalist Long Arrow, son of Golden Arrow, who has gone missing.
Hugh Lofting · Adventure · 61 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
As a new bacteria strain emerges and causes the collapse of the world’s food supply, wealthy and powerful Stanley Nordenholt steps forward with a plan to try to save a small, select portion of the British population. Sequestered in Scotland, he leads the group in a race between their dwindling food supply and their effort to reverse the damage caused by the bacteria as the outside world descends into chaos and starvation. Blending ecological disaster and science fiction with psychological and sociological exploration, Nordenholt’s Million asks the reader how far might they be willing to go—and at what cost—to save humanity from total disaster.
J. J. Connington · Sci Fi · 20 ch
The Wonderful Visit is an early work by H. G. Wells, published in the same year as The Time Machine.
H. G. Wells · Fantasy · 53 ch