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Winesburg, Ohio

Winesburg, Ohio, is set in a fictional town in early 1900s America based on Anderson’s boyhood memories of his hometown of Clyde, Ohio. The novel is actually a series of interconnected short stories, with each one focusing on the life of a different resident of the sleepy, pre-industrial town. Though each story peers into the personal life of a different character, the common threads running through all of them are George Willard, the young reporter for the Winesburg Eagle —and a pervasive sense of loneliness, even despair.

Sherwood Anderson · Drama · 25 ch

Martin Eden

Martin Eden is a young, hard working man of the working class. After a chance encounter with a beautiful woman of the bourgeoisie, he finds himself in love. In order to win this woman’s approval he decides to educate himself: He corrects his speech, he learns proper manners, and he reads the classics of literature, philosophy, and science.

Jack London · Drama · 46 ch

The Well at the World’s End

The King of Upmeads has four sons who are tired of living in the peaceable kingdom, and yearn to adventure abroad. Three are sent out, but the fourth, Ralph, is chosen to stay home. He can’t stand being left behind, and so he runs away, wandering to the many lands beyond Upmeads.

William Morris · Fantasy · 119 ch

Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz

Dorothy Gale, accompanied by her cat, Eureka, is traveling to visit her Uncle Henry and her other relatives in California, when she encounters her second cousin, Zeb. While en route in a horse-drawn buggy, an earthquake strikes, creating a vast crevasse into which Dorothy, Zeb, Eureka, and a cab-horse named Jim fall. While underground, they encounter the Wizard, who was last seen flying off in a balloon at the end of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

L. Frank Baum · Fantasy · 21 ch

The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

A baby is deposited in the bed of Squire Allworthy, a wealthy widower in Georgian England. The baby is given the name of Tom Jones and given to Allworthy’s live-in sister to raise. She soon marries and has her own son, and the two boys are raised together, with the usual household rivalries and jealousies.

Henry Fielding · Comedy · 213 ch

Anne of Avonlea

Anne Shirley, now 16, is moving from childhood into adulthood. As she begins teaching at Avonlea school she is determined to treat the children as she wishes she had been treated, and has many theories as to how that should be accomplished. She also enters the grown-up world of Avonlea in typical Anne fashion by working to beautify the landscape, and helping to form the Avonlea Village Improvement Society.

L. M. Montgomery · Drama · 30 ch

The Hollow Needle

In this first full-length Arsène Lupin novel the gentleman-thief remains a shadowy figure for most of the novel, working two steps beyond the law with a hidden aim. To fight against this anti-hero, Leblanc introduces Isidore Beautrelet, the prodigious school-boy detective. Also making an appearance are old foes Detective Ganimard and (in a copyright-defeating name change) Herlock Sholmes.

Maurice Leblanc · Mystery · 10 ch

Dead Souls

Dead Souls is Nikolai Gogol’s last novel, and follows the tale of Pavel Chichikov, a down-on-his-luck gentleman determined to improve his lot in life. The story charts his scheme to purchase dead souls—the titles of deceased serfs—from wealthy landowners. The novel’s satirical take on the state of Russian society at the time leads Chichikov into increasingly difficult circumstances, in his attempts to cheat both the system and the cavalcade of townspeople he meets along the way.

Nikolai Gogol · Comedy · 20 ch

Dangerous Liaisons

Dangerous Liaisons ( Les Liaisons dangereuses ) is an early French novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, first published in four volumes in 1782. At the time of its publication novels were a new literary form, and Laclos chose to present his story in an epistolary style, composing the novel solely of a series of letters written by the major characters to each other. It was first translated into English in 1812 and has since become universally regarded as one the most significant early French novels.

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos · Drama · 179 ch

Erewhon

In a desire for better sheep-farming land on an unnamed British colony, Higgs decides to traverse the distant mountain range. On the other side he discovers not the empty rolling plains of his imagination but an entirely new civilization: the land of Erewhon. Inducted into the ways of their culture, he attempts to transcribe as best he can their thoughts on birth, death, machines, the production of food, their financial system, and many more subjects that on first glance seem absurd to the narrator but often end up revealing absurdity in his own thinking.

Samuel Butler · Comedy · 32 ch

The Home and the World

The wealthy Bengali zamindar Nikhil has spent his last nine years of marriage trying to modernize and westernize his wife Bimala. But when he invites his friend Sandip, a fiery pro-Swadeshi activist fighting for Indian independence, to his home, Bimala becomes enraptured by the nationalist cause—and by the fascinating figure himself. The Home and the World is a complex exploration of the contradictions of the anti-British Swadeshi movement in the early 1900s.

Rabindranath Tagore · Drama · 12 ch

Jacob’s Room

In her third novel, Virginia Woolf departs from conventional narrative and explores storytelling through discordant scenes and impressions. Jacob Flanders’ life story is told through the perspectives of the people in his life. In Jacob’s Room, we see Jacob grow from a young boy to an ardent student of Classical culture while the world around him moves closer to an impending war.

Virginia Woolf · Drama · 14 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

The Return of the Native

The Return of the Native opens with Thomasin Yeobright returning from her wedding, which was aborted because of an error on the marriage license. She was supposed to wed Damon Wildeve, who seems ambivalent about the marriage, and still secretly longs for Eustacia Vye, a former lover. Eustacia imagines a better life than that of a lonely young woman living with her grandfather in the rural southwest of England.

Thomas Hardy · Drama · 49 ch

The First Men in the Moon

Mr. Bedford, an aspiring playwright, moves to the British countryside in hope of writing a successful play that will cure his financial troubles. There, he becomes acquainted with Mr. Cavor, an eccentric and reclusive scientist, who hopes to create an anti-gravitational material. After the two men accidentally create the material, they decide to use it to land on the Moon—Cavor motivated by expanding the realms of knowledge, and Bedford by the prospective mining of lunar minerals.

H. G. Wells · Sci Fi · 26 ch

Nicholas Nickleby

The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby tells the story of the eponymous hero and his sister Kate after the death of their father leaves them and their mother destitute and dependent on the support of their uncle Ralph Nickleby. The latter is a cold, hard man whose only interest is in amassing money and influence, and who has no empathy for the plight of his brother’s wife and children. Though he is very rich, Ralph offers them almost nothing, other than arranging for Nicholas and Kate to be employed in degrading jobs and for their mother to live in a near-derelict house he owns.

Charles Dickens · Drama · 67 ch

Sons and Lovers

Sons and Lovers, a story of working-class England, is D. H. Lawrence’s third novel.

D. H. Lawrence · Drama · 17 ch

The Enchanted April

Four strangers, each enchanted by an advertisement addressed “To Those who Appreciate Wistaria and Sunshine,” impulsively pool their savings to lease a medieval Italian castle for the month of April. All are deeply dissatisfied with life and in need of escape: awkward Mrs. Wilkins, increasingly resentful of a husband who largely ignores her; proper Mrs. Arbuthnot, whose own marriage seems headed toward estrangement; beautiful and unmarried Lady Caroline Dester, tired of men constantly “grabbing” at her; and elderly Mrs. Fisher, widowed and walled off in memories of the past. As they come to know one another, each woman finds herself gradually transformed by the beauty of San Salvatore—a magical place where conflict just might turn to friendship, and even the most soured relationship has a chance of being salvaged.

Elizabeth von Arnim · Drama · 22 ch

Captains Courageous

Fifteen year old Harvey Cheyne is heir to a vast fortune. He’s also a spoiled, obnoxious brat, well on his way to becoming a spoiled, obnoxious adult. But Harvey’s fate is changed forever during a trans-Atlantic ocean voyage with his parents when he falls overboard and, against all odds, is rescued by a fishing boat on the Grand Banks.

Rudyard Kipling · Adventure · 10 ch

Anne of the Island

Anne Shirley leaves home to attend Redmond College and pursue a degree. Some of her classmates are going with her, including her childhood enemy turned friend Gilbert Blythe, while other childhood friends are staying in Avonlea to work, get married, and start families. She is also leaving behind her friends and family, but will stay in touch with them through letters and visits home during winter breaks and summer vacations.

L. M. Montgomery · Drama · 41 ch