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Wieland

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

The Powerhouse

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

Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle

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

Tarzan and the Ant Men

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

Emily of New Moon

Emily of New Moon, like Anne of Green Gables, follows the life of an orphan, Emily Byrd Starr, who was raised by her relatives after her father’s death. Emily, with her vivid imagination, lives on a farm on Prince Edward Island called New Moon. There, she befriends the children Ilse, Teddy, and Perry, each possessing special talents.

L. M. Montgomery · Drama · 31 ch

Death Comes for the Archbishop

Set in the 1850s, this short novel is about the struggles and triumphs of a bishop, Jean Marie Latour, and his loyal friend and vicar, Father Joseph Vaillant. They have been sent to reawaken and spread the Roman Catholic faith in an area where it has grown weak: New Mexico, recently annexed by the United States. Desolate and remote, the territory is home to many diverse groups: Mexicans, including those on ranches established for hundreds of years; Indians, who have been there much longer and who are divided by language and customs into thirty nations; and newcomers—hunters, fur trappers, and those seeking gold.

Willa Cather · Drama · 10 ch

The Book of Khalid

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

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

Look Homeward, Angel

Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe’s debut novel, is a coming-of-age novel that follows the life of Oliver Gant and his family in the fictional town of Altamont, North Carolina. The story begins with Oliver’s early years, capturing the struggles of post-Civil War Southern life. Later, the focus shifts to Eugene, Oliver’s son, an aspiring writer torn between his artistic ambition and his small-town roots.

Thomas Wolfe · Drama · 42 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

Democracy

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

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

The History of Mr. Polly

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 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

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

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