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The Mysteries of Udolpho

The Mysteries of Udolpho is Ann Radcliffe’s fourth novel, first published in four volumes in 1794. It’s a typical gothic novel: set in a large castle which experiences supposedly supernatural events, a cruel and cunning villain is opposed by a young, virtuous heroine, who experiences great terror in the hands of her adversary. Emily St. Aubert, the novel’s protagonist, loses her parents and is placed in the care of her aunt, who unwittingly puts her in great danger.

Ann Radcliffe · Horror · 57 ch

The Mysterious Island

The Mysterious Island tells the tale of five Americans who, in an attempt to escape the Civil War, pilot a hot-air balloon and find themselves crashed on a deserted island somewhere in the Pacific. Verne had been greatly influenced by works like Robinson Crusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson, and that influence shines brightly in this novel of engineering ingenuity and adventure. Verne imparts the escapees with such over-the-top cleverness and so many luckily placed resources that modern readers might find the extent to which they tame the island comical.

Jules Verne · Sci Fi · 62 ch

The Mystery of Edwin Drood

Choirmaster John Jasper has two secrets: an addiction to opium, and a burning love for Rosa, the fiancée of his nephew, Edwin Drood. When Edwin vanishes without a trace one night, his uncle becomes just one of the suspects in Edwin’s disappearance, as it turns out that several other residents of the town of Cloisterham also seek Rosa’s affections. Who’s the real murderer?

Charles Dickens · Mystery · 24 ch

The Mystery of Orcival

A murder is discovered. The authorities quickly arrest an obvious suspect. A detective spends hours at the scene in disguise before making himself known, and proceeds to minutely examine the evidence with the assistance of a doctor, among others, before proclaiming the answer lies in a completely different direction.

Émile Gaboriau · Mystery · 34 ch

The Mystery of a Hansom Cab

The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, published in 1886, was the first novel by Fergus Hume. It begins with a sensational murder, as the body of a dead man is discovered in a hansom cab by the driver. Set in Melbourne, Australia, it presents an engaging story of crime and detection, with several unexpected twists and turns.

Fergus Hume · Mystery · 36 ch

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

Edgar Allan Poe is famed for his unsettling short stories, but he also wrote a full-length novel, his only one: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Framed as the recollections of an adventurous stowaway, Pym begins as a swashbuckling adventure novel, and after growing increasingly weirder, ends on a surreal note worthy of the best of Poe’s short stories. Despite Poe himself calling it a “a very silly book,” Pym went on to become one of his most-translated and influential works, coloring the themes of future adventure and weird fiction writers like Jules Verne and H.

Edgar Allan Poe · Adventure · 27 ch

The Night Land

The Night Land is science fiction ahead of its time. Published in 1912, the book introduces a 17th-century gentleman who loses his wife. He soon discovers himself somehow reanimated in Earth’s far future, millions of years from now, when the sun has died and the Earth has become a hellish waste.

William Hope Hodgson · Sci Fi · 30 ch

The Octopus

At the end of the nineteenth-century, a group of wheat growers in California’s San Joaquin Valley fights back when the railroad monopoly attempts to take possession of their farms. United in the local Farmer’s League, they try to retain the land that they’ve been improving for years, while the railroad company threatens them with increased shipping rates and eviction from their homes. When political opposition, court cases, and bribery all fail, the conflict comes to an explosive conclusion.

Frank Norris · Drama · 27 ch

The Old Curiosity Shop

Nell and her grandfather eke out a life of near-poverty in a small curiosity shop in London. Despite their narrow circumstances, their lives are happy ones, in which each takes care of the other. But Nell’s grandfather is hiding a secret, one which threatens their very survival.

Charles Dickens · Drama · 75 ch

The Old English Baron

The Old English Baron opens with Sir Phillip Harclay returning to England after years of foreign service to find his friend Arthur Lord Lovel dead, and the family castle sold to Baron Fitz-Owen. Among the baron’s children, Harclay takes notice of the adopted son Edmund, a peasant from the nearby village. The knight feels an immediate connection with the child and offers to adopt him as his own.

Clara Reeve · Drama · 7 ch

The Old Man in the Corner

Polly Burton, a journalist, sits at the same table as an old man over tea. He has an interest in the sensational local crimes that have left the police baffled. Over the course her visit, the old man explains his crime-solving methods, which are based primarily on reading newspaper accounts, crime scene visits, courtroom observation, and logical deduction.

Baroness Orczy · Adventure · 36 ch

The Old Wives’ Tale

The Old Wives’ Tale, considered to be one of Bennett’s finest works, begins in the 1860s, in the industrial “Five Towns” of the English Midlands, where he set many of his partially autobiographical stories. The novel follows the prosperous Baines family, who live above the successful clothing shop they own in the town of Bursley (based on Burslem, in Staffordshire). Even when the two Baines daughters were still young, their characters are already formed.

Arnold Bennett · Drama · 107 ch

The Outlaw of Torn

In 13th century England, Norman of Torn is trained by his father, a French swordmaster with a grudge, in the art of swordsmanship—and to hate the English. He also befriends the priest Father Claude, who teaches him to respect the poor and the weak. As he comes of age, he becomes known as the “Devil of Torn,” the powerful leader of a band of outlaws that terrorizes the aristocracy and protects the poor.

Edgar Rice Burroughs · Adventure · 19 ch

The Phantom of the Opera

“When I die and am in Heaven,” Christine Daaé’s father said, “I will send the Angel of Music to you.” It is with these words still in her ears years later that Christine accepts the disembodied voice that speaks to her to claim that divine title, and to give her singing lessons within her dressing room at the Paris Opera, as the fulfillment of her beloved father’s promise. And when those lessons lead her to a performance that astonishes the whole city, who could doubt but that the Angel had indeed come? Yet there is another, more sinister presence stalking about the Opéra Garnier: the Opera Ghost.

Gaston Leroux · Mystery · 28 ch

The Phoenix and the Carpet

Like other E. Nesbit stories, The Phoenix and the Carpet was initially published in The Strand Magazine. While The Railway Children or Five Children and It proved more popular, Phoenix has still been adapted into three BBC TV series and a film.

E. Nesbit · Fantasy · 13 ch

The Pickwick Papers

In The Pickwick Papers, the wealthy and amiable Mr. Pickwick and his friends—calling themselves the “Pickwick Club”—wander around England out of curiosity and an interest in human nature. On the way, they have many loosely related comic adventures. Mr. Pickwick eventually employs a cockney man-servant, Sam Weller, whose fractured language and forthright attitude adds a great deal of amusement.

Charles Dickens · Comedy · 58 ch

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray was first published as a serial in Lippencott’s Monthly Magazine, and the publishers thought it would so offend readers that they removed nearly 500 words without Wilde’s approval. Wilde soon expanded it and republished it as a novel, including a short preface justifying his art. Even though his contemporaries considered it so offensive that some argued for his prosecution, Dorian Gray today survives as a classic philosophical novel that explores themes of aestheticism and double lives.

Oscar Wilde · Horror · 21 ch

The Pit

Laura Dearborn says she’ll never marry. Living with her sister and aunt in turn-of-the-century Chicago, she’s content with her comfortable, studious life. But with three suitors eager to win her love, Laura must decide between the disparate futures each could provide her—and as speculators struggle for control of the market in the wheat pits of the Chicago Board of Trade, each of those futures hangs in the balance.

Frank Norris · Drama · 13 ch

The Portrait of a Lady

The Portrait of a Lady is widely held to be the outstanding work of Henry James’s “early” period, and among the finest novels of his entire career. When the eccentric Mrs. Touchett “takes up” her charming American niece, Isabel Archer, and returns with her to England, her husband and son, the invalid Ralph, are first mystified, then bemused. Soon, however, they are smitten, as also is their aristocratic neighbor, Lord Warburton.

Henry James · Drama · 56 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