A man of unusually large stature and dexterity arrives at a boardinghouse on the wind—literally—while its unsuspecting lodgers look on in shock. The man, Innocent Smith, performs comic, eccentric, and dastardly acts which are examined and put to trial by the residents and renowned experts. Lawyers on both sides of the question of Innocent Smith’s guilt bring revelatory correspondence to the trial.
G. K. Chesterton · Comedy · 10 ch
Though published in 1766, The Vicar of Wakefield was one of the most popular and widely read books of the Victorian era. References to Vicar in Victorian literature abound: George Eliot, Austen, Dickens, Mary Shelly, Charlotte Brontë, Alcott, Goethe, and many more famous writers all mention Vicar in their books. The plot concerns the titular vicar, Charles Primrose, a mild-mannered and forgiving man who lives with his family in a country parish.
Oliver Goldsmith · Drama · 33 ch
Robert Lewis Stevenson continues the story of David Balfour, starting directly where Kidnapped left off. Compared to Kidnapped, Catriona is much more of a comedy of manners, politics, and romance than a simple action-adventure story, but it still has several of Stevenson’s trademark escapades, imprisonments, and daring escapes. The title character David Balfour attempts to navigate, to his own peril, his apparent role in the Appin murder, the subsequent trial of James of the Glens, life among high society, and the machinations of James Macgregor Drummond, the father of David’s great love, Catriona.
Robert Louis Stevenson · Adventure · 33 ch
In a small Mormon community in southern Utah, Jane Withersteen, a young, unmarried Mormon woman faces growing pressure to marry a local elder of her church. Elder Tull, a polygamist, already has two wives and seeks to marry Jane not just for her beauty, but to take control of the ranch her late father passed on to her. Jane’s resistance to marriage only serves to increase the mounting resentment against “Gentiles” (non-Mormons) in the area.
Zane Grey · Adventure · 23 ch
Claude Wheeler is the son of a successful Nebraskan farmer and a very devout mother. He’s sent to a private religious college because his mother feels it’s safer, but he yearns for State college where he might be able expand his knowledge of the real world. Claude doesn’t feel comfortable in any situation, and almost every step he takes is a wrong one.
Willa Cather · Drama · 72 ch
In Three Lives are the stories of three working-class woman from Bridgepoint—a town loosely based on Baltimore—in the early twentieth century. Each story tells of the hopes, loves, romances and sadnesses of the women as they live their lives. Written in a unconventional style, the lives of the three women are uncovered through their layered conversations and interactions more than through detailed depictions.
Gertrude Stein · Drama · 14 ch
The Law and the Lady by Wilkie Collins was published in 1875. As in many of Collins’ novels, it deals with themes considered sensational or scandalous by Victorian society, and features a strong-willed, intelligent woman unwilling to be bound by society’s conventional attitudes. It also treats the subject of disability with some compassion, featuring a man born without legs as a major character.
Wilkie Collins · Drama · 51 ch
Confident of a son, Sir Philip and Lady Anna Gordon plan to name their first child Stephen. Instead they receive a daughter—but they decide to keep the name anyway. Young Stephen Gordon continues to surprise her parents with her boisterous play, demands for shorter hair, and insistence on riding her horse astride.
Radclyffe Hall · Drama · 214 ch
Not content with having hollowed out the center of the Earth in his earlier novels At the Earth’s Core and Pellucidar, in The Moon Maid Edgar Rice Burroughs has his hero voyage to the Moon, which also turns out to be hollow and inhabited on the inside by human-like creatures. The hero and his companion have a series of adventures there, and discover both the sophisticated Va-gas and the malevolent Kalkars. Time passes, and we turn to following the hero’s descendants as they fight against an invasion of the Earth by the Kalkars.
Edgar Rice Burroughs · Sci Fi · 15 ch
The titular Vathek is a powerful caliph who, though intelligent and capable, has a tendency to indulge in sensuality. A mysterious traveler arrives in his kingdom and mesmerizes Vathek with a promise of dark powers and hedonism beyond imagination. Vathek becomes obsessed with the supernatural possibilities, and, goaded on by his power-hungry mother, embarks on a journey of blasphemy and debauchery.
William Beckford · Fantasy · 6 ch
Doctor Thorne is the third book in Trollope’s Chronicles of Barsetshire series, which is set in the fictional county of Barsetshire, somewhere in England’s West Country. Unlike the two earlier novels in the series, Doctor Thorne isn’t set in the cathedral city of Barchester, but in the small village of Greshamsbury and the estate of the local squire, Greshamsbury Park. Doctor Thorne is a middle-aged medical practitioner in Greshamsbury, a friend of the local squire Mr. Gresham, who is deeply in debt because of ill-advised attempts to gain a seat in Parliament.
Anthony Trollope · Drama · 48 ch
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
An ancient Roman hilltop fort proves an irresistible draw to Lucian Taylor, but what awaits at the top isn’t just a view of the surrounding Welsh landscape but a bacchal experience his young soul isn’t ready for. This experience sets his path as he attempts to transcribe his increasingly elaborate visions into the perfect book; the book that will actually mean something more than the banal novels he sees the publishing houses push out. The Hill of Dreams is a semi-autobiographical work, with Arthur Machen following a similar physical journey to the novel: a childhood in rural Wales followed by attempts to become an author in London.
Arthur Machen · Drama · 8 ch
No Name is set in England during the 1840s. It follows the fortunes of two sisters, Magdalen Vanstone and her older sister Norah. Their comfortable upper-middle-class lives are shockingly disrupted when, after the sudden deaths of their parents, they discover that they are disinherited and left without either name or fortune.
Wilkie Collins · Drama · 114 ch
Charlie Chan of the Honolulu Police Department makes his second appearance when a Honolulu widow is forced to sell her pearl necklace. She persuades Charlie to convey the necklace to its new owner, a famous businessman. Chan teams up with the son of a prominent jeweler handling the sale.
Earl Derr Biggers · Adventure · 22 ch
Published in 1924, The Three Hostages is the fourth of John Buchan’s novels to feature Richard Hannay. Following the conclusion of the Great War, Hannay has retired from British intelligence. He is coaxed from retirement to aid in the rescue of three prominent hostages held by an international criminal organization bent on controlling the disturbed minds of those affected by the Great War.
John Buchan · Adventure · 24 ch
Pellucidar, the sequel to At the Earth’s Core, was published in 1915. It continues the adventures of David Innes as he returns to the hollow interior of the Earth in search of his friend Perry and his lost love Dian the Beautiful. He takes with him many tools and weapons, intent on bringing civilization to the savage world within, which is populated with dinosaurs and neolithic creatures.
Edgar Rice Burroughs · Sci Fi · 16 ch
Tono-Bungay, published in 1909, is a semi-autobiographical novel by H. G. Wells.
H. G. Wells · Drama · 96 ch
In Sylvie and Bruno, the titular characters serve as the connection between the novel’s two settings: Outland, a fictional land in which the children’s father is the Warden, and the real world, Victorian England. After their father is betrayed by their uncle, the family leaves their home and travels to different places to meet interesting and unusual characters. The part of the story set in England is social commentary, with the characters discussing philosophy, religion, morals, and economics.
Lewis Carroll · Fantasy · 26 ch
Higgs has made his fortune with sales of his original travelogue Erewhon. When his wife dies, his long-held desire to return to the country overwhelms him, and even his friends agree that a change of scenery would be a good idea. Soon after his departure he returns back home to England unexpectedly early and deeply unwell, and so it’s down to his son John to piece together what happened during his fleeting visit to Erewhon.
Samuel Butler · Comedy · 29 ch