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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

News from Nowhere

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

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 Confessions of Arsène Lupin

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

The Land That Time Forgot

The Land That Time Forgot opens with the discovery near Greenland of a floating thermos flask containing a manuscript by castaway Tyler Bowen, Jr. The document recounts a series of adventures that starts with a sea battle against a German U-boat and ends on a mysterious island populated by hostile prehistoric animals and people. The second part of the book, “The People That Time Forgot,” continues the story with the tale of Tom Billings, who has been sent on a mission to rescue Bowen after his manuscript was discovered.

Edgar Rice Burroughs · Sci Fi · 23 ch

813

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

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

The Way We Live Now

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

Ozma of Oz

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 Blood

Peter Blood, with experience as a soldier and sailor, is practicing medicine in Bridgewater, England, when he inadvertently gets caught up in a rebellion being waged by the Duke of Monmouth. After being convicted of treason, Blood and some of the rebels are sentenced to slavery in the Caribbean. The year is 1688.

Rafael Sabatini · Adventure · 31 ch

Waverley

Edward Waverley is a young English gentleman, the heir to his uncle, Sir Everard Waverley. After receiving a commission in the English army and being stationed in Scotland, he comes into contact with Jacobites, supporters of the pretender Charles Stuart, who seeks to reclaim the throne of England. After becoming enamored with the Jacobite cause and subsequently being suspected of treason, Waverley decides to openly join the uprising on the side of the rebels, during which his honorable conduct wins him favor on both sides of the conflict.

Walter Scott · Adventure · 77 ch

The Golden Triangle

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

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 Four Feathers

Recently engaged Harry Feversham, son of a soldier and descendant of a long line of soldiers, receives word that his regiment is going overseas. For complex reasons he suddenly resigns rather than be deployed. This action brands him a coward among his fellow officers and his fiancée, who present him with white feathers, a symbol of cowardice.

A. E. W. Mason · Adventure · 35 ch

Dombey and Son

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

The Roots of the Mountains

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

Martin Chuzzlewit

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

The Black Arrow

Richard “Dick” Shelton fights in the service of Sir Daniel, an unprincipled knight who continually changes sides in the War of the Roses. Dick helps a young lady, dressed as a man, who is escaping Sir Daniel’s attempt to marry her off. In the meantime, Dick suspects that the man he serves had a hand in killing his father, and must figure out who his real friends are.

Robert Louis Stevenson · Adventure · 33 ch

Suspense

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

The Rescue

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