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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Behind a Mask is a short novel published by Louisa May Alcott, writing as A. M. Barnard, in 1866.
Louisa May Alcott · Drama · 9 ch
Clyde Griffith’s parents are poor street-preachers, but Clyde doesn’t “believe,” and finds their work demeaning. At fifteen he gets a job and starts to ease out of their lives, eventually landing in some trouble that causes him to flee the town where they live. Two years later, Clyde meets his well-off uncle, who owns a large factory in upstate New York.
Theodore Dreiser · Drama · 100 ch
After learning of atomic physics, H. G. Wells began to think of its potential impact on human society.
H. G. Wells · Sci Fi · 7 ch
In The Golden Bowl, an impoverished Italian aristocrat comes to London to marry a wealthy American, but meets an old mistress before the wedding and spends time with her, helping her pick out a wedding gift. After their marriage, his wife maintains a close relationship with her father, while their own relationship becomes strained. Completed in 1904, Henry James himself considered The Golden Bowl one of his best novels, and it remains one of critics’ favorites.
Henry James · Drama · 42 ch
In Little Lord Fauntleroy, an American boy named Cedric is transported from the impoverished streets of New York City to the grandeur of his ancestral home, Dorincourt Castle. Here he learns how to become an English aristocrat from the Earl of Dorincourt, his cold and cynical grandfather. Frances Hodgson Burnett published this, her first children’s story, in St. Nicholas Magazine in 1885.
Frances Hodgson Burnett · Drama · 15 ch
William Morris is famous in no small part for his contributions to defining the genre of modern fantasy literature, and The Wood Beyond the World is a classic example of that influence. Written in a purposefully antiquated prose style reminiscent of Sir Thomas Malory or other aged fairy tales, The Wood Beyond the World can be difficult for some readers; but those who follow through will enjoy a charming and influential series of picaresque adventures. The book follows Golden Walter, a man leaving home who finds himself swept away to an enchanted land.
William Morris · Fantasy · 36 ch
Set in the Jim Crow South following World War I, The Fire in the Flint follows Dr. Kenneth Harper, a young, sometimes naive Black physician and war veteran. After graduating from a Northern medical school, he returns to his hometown of Central City, Georgia to start a practice. He arrives believing he can avoid discrimination by simply not getting involved with the town’s racial affairs—but he quickly finds out otherwise, and must confront the reality of living in a place where systemic racism and the Ku Klux Klan run rampant.
Walter White · Drama · 23 ch
Carol Milford grows up in a mid-sized town in Minnesota before moving to Chicago for college. After her education, during which she’s exposed to big-city life and culture, she moves to Minneapolis to work as a librarian. She soon meets Will Kennicott, a small-town doctor, and the two get married and move to Gopher Prairie, Kennicott’s home town.
Sinclair Lewis · Drama · 40 ch
John, a man who has spent the last thirty years in Tibet recovering from a head injury and totally unaware of his surroundings, regains consciousness and returns home, only to find that society has rapidly and drastically changed. The world as he knew it has become a feminist utopia, where civil rights, efficiency, and quality are of the utmost importance. The residents do their best to explain all of the societal changes that have happened in the past thirty years to John—who they consider to be a sociological dinosaur—while also pointing out all the flaws in the system they left behind.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman · Sci Fi · 13 ch
Following the events of The Princess and the Goblin, Curdie has returned to his provincial life of hard but satisfying work with his father in the king’s silver mines. When an act of youthful cruelty leads him to a meeting with Princess Irene’s great-great-grandmother, he’s charged with a mysterious quest—one that will require strength, wit, and courage. Bestowed with a supernatural ability to aid him on his mission, Curdie and a ferocious new companion must journey to the capital where Princess Irene and her father, the king, face a grave threat to the entire kingdom.
George MacDonald · Fantasy · 35 ch
One of Wilkie Collins’ shorter novels, The Haunted Hotel was published in 1878 as a monthly serial in six parts in Belgravia magazine. Most of the dramatic and sensational parts of the novel are set in Venice, and feature more of an emphasis on the supernatural than is usual in Collins’ work. The story deals with the death of the wealthy Baron Montbarry in a hotel in Venice.
Wilkie Collins · Drama · 29 ch
Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! was first published in June of 1913 by Houghton Mifflin to high praise. Cather was immensely proud of the work and considered it her first “true” novel, having discovered her own form and subject.
Willa Cather · Drama · 30 ch
The Beetle was published in 1897, the same year as Dracula —and outsold it six to one that year. Like Dracula, the novel is steeped in the evil mysteries of an ancient horror: in this case, a mysterious ancient Egyptian creature bent on revenge. The story is told through the sequential points of view of a group of middle-class Victorians who find themselves enmeshed in the creature’s plot.
Richard Marsh · Horror · 52 ch