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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

A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843 and the first edition, published on 19th December, was so successful that it sold out in just six days. The publishers had to produce two further editions between Christmas and the new year to meet the demand, and the novella has never been out of print. A Christmas Carol tells the story of a greedy money-lender, Ebenezer Scrooge, who is first visited by the ghost of his former business partner and then by three spirits—the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.

Charles Dickens · Fantasy · 6 ch

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is one of Mark Twain’s most enduring novels. During a stay at a modern-day English castle, the narrator meets a mysterious stranger. The stranger, Hank Morgan, is an engineer from Connecticut, and proceeds to weave a satirical, biting, and hilarious tale of how he traveled back in time to find himself in the court of the legendary King Arthur.

Mark Twain · Comedy · 47 ch

A Hazard of New Fortunes

Basil March jumps at the chance to leave his boring job to become the founding editor of a new magazine. But this also means that he must leave comfortable Boston for the confusion and chaos of 1890s New York. As March and his wife try to find a decent place to live, he also struggles to find contributors and readers.

William Dean Howells · Drama · 68 ch

A Little Princess

Sara Crewe, the daughter of a widowed officer stationed in India, has come to London to attend a boarding school. A thoughtful and serious child, she is blessed with both an abundance of kindness and imagination, and her father’s wealth. But not everyone in her new life appreciates Sara for who she is, as she discovers when her circumstances abruptly change.

Frances Hodgson Burnett · Drama · 21 ch

A Pair of Blue Eyes

Young Elfride falls in love for the first time with an architect who is sent to make plans to renovate the local church. She supposes Stephen to be a professional man from London, but finds he comes from more humble origins. Stephen must go away and make something of himself before he can claim her.

Thomas Hardy · Drama · 42 ch

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is Joyce’s first novel, published after the previous success of his short story collection Dubliners. The novel is written in a modernist style, with dialog and narration blending together in a kind of stream-of-consciousness meant to invoke the blurriness of memory. Joyce originally planned writing a realist autobiographical novel of 63 chapters titled Stephen Hero.

James Joyce · Drama · 13 ch

A Princess of Mars

In A Princess of Mars, John Carter is transported to a Mars inhabited by strange civilizations and embarks on various adventures on his quest home. Often held up as a seminal example of pulp science fiction, A Princess of Mars is the first entry in Burroughs’ epic Martian series, and the first to feature the character of John Carter. Though often categorized as just a pulp adventure tale, A Princess of Mars was hugely influential on many budding science fiction writers, professional scientists, and explorers of the day.

Edgar Rice Burroughs · Sci Fi · 29 ch

A Sicilian Romance

A Sicilian Romance begins when a tourist meets a local monk at the crumbling ruins of the castle Mazzini. The monk invites her to the monastery to view a manuscript that records the mysterious happenings that occurred hundreds of years ago in the once-great castle. The manuscript tells of the plight of two sisters, Julia and Emilia Mazzini, who, after the return of their tyrannical father, witness supernatural phenomena around the castle’s neglected southern wing.

Ann Radcliffe · Drama · 17 ch

A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder

A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder is perhaps James De Mille’s most popular book; sadly, De Mille didn’t get to see this novel grow in popularity, as it was first serialized posthumously, in Harper’s Weekly. De Mille had written the novel before the “lost world” genre had become saturated, meaning many of the ideas were fresh and original for the time in which it was written. But, since he didn’t succeed in publishing it during his lifetime, by the time the novel was made public other authors like H.

James De Mille · Sci Fi · 33 ch

A Study in Scarlet

A Study in Scarlet is the novel which first introduced Arthur Conan Doyle’s iconic characters Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. It was published in 1887 in a popular magazine, Beeton’s Christmas Annual. It attracted little public attention at the time, but interest in Holmes continued to build with the subsequent series of short stories Doyle wrote featuring the austere, analytical detective—now one of the most well-known characters in all of English literature.

Arthur Conan Doyle · Mystery · 15 ch

A Tale of Two Cities

A doctor is released from the Bastille after being falsely imprisoned for almost eighteen years. A young woman discovers the father she’s never known is not dead but alive, if not entirely well. A young man is acquitted of being a traitor, due in part to the efforts of a rather selfish lout who is assisting the young man’s attorney.

Charles Dickens · Historical · 46 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

A Thief in the Night

“Bunny” Manders is drawn to fill the void left by A. J. Raffles’ absence at the end of The Black Mask with untold stories of the past adventures.

E. W. Hornung · Drama · 13 ch

Agnes Grey

Agnes Grey, published in the month of December, 1847, is the debut novel of Anne Brontë, writing under the pen name of Acton Bell. Written largely based on Anne’s own personal experiences as a governess, the novel tries to highlight what a governess’ work entailed in the 1800s and the consequences it had on the protagonist. Agnes, an eager young woman, tired of being treated as the youngest and filled with overwhelming ambition, takes on work as a governess for the rich and cruel Bloomfields.

Anne Brontë · Drama · 25 ch

Alice Adams

Alice Adams is Booth Tarkington’s second novel to win a Pulitzer Prize, just three years after his novel The Magnificent Ambersons won it. The novel tells the story of Alice, a Midwestern girl who grows up in a lower-middle-class family just after World War I. Alice meets a wealthy young man and tries to win his affection, despite her lower-class upbringing.

Booth Tarkington · Drama · 25 ch

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Everyone’s familiar with Lewis Carroll’s famous children’s classic and the huge influence it’s had on modern culture. The Mad Hatter, the Duchess, the Cheshire Cat, the White Rabbit, the Caterpillar—all of these strange and familiar creatures appear in Alice, and the nonsensical style, memorable poems, and colorful set pieces are just as influential. The book was originally written as gift to Alice Liddel, the daughter of one of Carroll’s friends.

Lewis Carroll · Fantasy · 13 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

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

An American Tragedy

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