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The Blue Lagoon

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

The Financier

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

Typee

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

Night and Day

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

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

Bel Ami

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

The Blithedale Romance

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 Voyages of Doctor Dolittle

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

My Brilliant Career

My Brilliant Career is a classic Australian work published in 1901 by Stella Miles Franklin, with an introduction by Henry Lawson. A thinly veiled autobiographical novel, it paints a vivid and sometimes grim picture of rural Australian life in the late 19th Century. Sybylla Melvyn is the daughter of a man who falls into grinding poverty through inadvised speculation before becoming a hopeless drunk unable to make a living from a small dairy farm.

Miles Franklin · Drama · 40 ch

Almayer’s Folly

Kaspar Almayer is a Dutch trader whose career has stalled. He finds himself in a riverside village in the jungles of East Borneo with his estranged Malay wife, their beautiful daughter Nina, and a lavish but unfinished house the village has dubbed “Almayer’s Folly.” Kaspar dreams of becoming rich enough to free himself from the backwater village and take Nina to Europe. Rumors of gold deposits in the depths of the jungle delude him into thinking he’s close to achieving that dream, and with the arrival of a rajah’s son who’s willing to join Kaspar in his get-rich-quick scheme, the plot is kicked into motion.

Joseph Conrad · Drama · 13 ch

Nordenholt’s Million

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

Tom Brown’s School Days

Tom Brown’s School Days is a seminal novel of Victorian literature that immerses readers in the turbulent world of 19th-century English boarding schools. The novel follows Tom Brown, a spirited and good-hearted boy from the countryside, as he navigates life at Rugby School, an institution renowned for its strict traditions and emphasis on character-building. Through Tom’s eyes, the story explores the challenges of adolescence—bullying, loyalty, and moral growth—against the backdrop of a school culture defined by the reforming influence of its real-life headmaster, Dr. Thomas Arnold.

Thomas Hughes · Drama · 18 ch

The Amateur Cracksman

A. J. Raffles and his friend “Bunny” Manders are the quintessential rich young socialites; but behind the high-living façade, they’ve exhausted their funds.

E. W. Hornung · Drama · 8 ch

Scaramouche

Scaramouche tells the tale of André-Louis Moreau, a young lawyer in Brittany. When his friend is killed by an unremorseful landowner, Moreau swears revenge and begins a life of adventure on the run. His travels lead him to joining a traveling theater troupe, becoming a master swordsman, and even to revolution.

Rafael Sabatini · Drama · 38 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

The Son of Tarzan

Following the events in The Beasts of Tarzan, Tarzan and his wife, Jane, return to England to raise their infant son, Jack. Now, ten years later, Jane has refused to allow Tarzan to share his past in the jungles with their son for fear of awakening a desire in him to follow in his father’s footsteps. Unfortunately, Jack is already feeling drawn to Africa, and when one of Tarzan’s old friends surfaces, Jack is quick to set out on his own adventure.

Edgar Rice Burroughs · Adventure · 27 ch

The Shadow Line

The unnamed narrator, a young seaman, is the first mate on a ship in Southeast Asia. Despite being satisfied with his position, he decides, on a whim, to end his career and head back to Europe. As he awaits for passage in the port of Singapore, he’s offered his first command: the captaincy of a ship left stranded in a nearby port without its commanding officer.

Joseph Conrad · Drama · 6 ch

In Search of the Castaways

Following the clues found in a bottle cast into the ocean, Lord and Lady Genarvan set off for South America and Australia in their ship Duncan to search for the shipwrecked Captain Grant. Their eventful and perilous journey gives Verne the opportunity to describe a variety of exotic places. Originally titled Les Enfants du Capitaine Grant (“The Children of Captain Grant”), the story has inspired several movie adaptations.

Jules Verne · Adventure · 67 ch

The Leavenworth Case

Horatio Leavenworth, a wealthy and widowed philanthropist, raises his two beautiful orphaned nieces, Mary and Eleanore. One of the cousins, Mary, is his designated heir. When Mr. Leavenworth is murdered in mysterious circumstances, a young lawyer is called upon to support the distraught cousins.

Anna Katharine Green · Mystery · 40 ch

The Coming Race

An engineer encounters a strange sight while exploring a mine, and reluctantly reports it to the narrator. The two descend into the mine together, but an accident causes the narrator to fall through a crevice and into a secret subterranean world. The inhabitants seem to be an offshoot of an ancient human race who have been living and evolving underground.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton · Sci Fi · 29 ch