In Before Adam, an unnamed narrator describes the life of one of his ancestors, who lived during the transition from ape to human being. Written and published in the early 20th Century, the novel presents ideas that were common for the period, like scientific racism and racial memory, and has elements of eugenic thought. This makes the work outdated both scientifically and socially.
Jack London · Adventure · 19 ch
Behind That Curtain, published in 1928, finds Charlie Chan in San Francisco preparing to return to Honolulu after a working holiday. He meets a Sir Frederic Bruce from Scotland Yard, who is following the trail of a woman who disappeared fifteen years before. The two attend a dinner party together—where Sir Frederic is murdered.
Earl Derr Biggers · Adventure · 22 ch
Behind a Mask is a short novel published by Louisa May Alcott, writing as A. M. Barnard, in 1866.
Louisa May Alcott · Drama · 9 ch
Georges Duroy returns to Paris from military service in Algeria penniless. After meeting up with an old friend, he finds journalism work at a renowned newspaper. He gradually climbs the ranks to chief-editor—but all this time, he hasn’t been using his wit as a writer, but rather the clever manipulation of the women around him, to get ahead.
Guy de Maupassant · Drama · 18 ch
Bellarion, a young orphan, leaves the abbey he was raised in to attend university and learn Greek. He quickly learns the dangers of life in fifteenth-century Italy, as he is robbed, caught in a riot, and chased through town by the authorities. He tangles himself in a plot against the local regent, plays one side against the other, and declares his service to the beautiful but uninterested Valeria.
Rafael Sabatini · Adventure · 47 ch
Judah and Massala are close friends growing up, though one is Jewish and the other Roman. But when an accident happens after Massala returns from five years in Rome, Massala betrays his childhood friend and family. Judah’s mother and sister are taken away to prison, and he is sent to a galley-ship.
Lew Wallace · Historical · 89 ch
Betty Zane, published in 1903, was Zane Grey’s first novel. It tells the romanticized story of Grey’s great-great-aunt, who made a miraculous dash under fire to save a frontier fort from Indian attack. Fort Henry sat on the site of present-day Wheeling, West Virginia.
Zane Grey · Historical · 18 ch
The best-selling novel Black Beauty by Anna Sewell was published in 1877. The story is a first person narrative told from the perspective of the horse Black Beauty. This unique narrative perspective enables readers to empathize with the lives of working horses and to reflect upon the cruel treatment that has been inflicted upon them.
Anna Sewell · Drama · 49 ch
Bleak House, completed by Dickens in 1853, tells several interlocking story-lines and features a host of colorful characters. Though very difficult to summarise, the novel centers around the decades-long legal case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, involving the fair distribution of assets of a valuable estate. The case is mired in the legal quagmire of the Court of Chancery, whose byzantine and sluggish workings Dickens spares no effort to expose and condemn.
Charles Dickens · Drama · 68 ch
Jim Steele, a clerk for a prominent London attorney, has the distasteful task of assisting a notorious client, Digby Groat, who stands to inherit the Jonathan Danton fortune. Danton’s infant daughter and closest heir, Dorothy, was thought to have died in a boating accident twenty years ago. Adding to the mystery, Dorothy’s mother, Lady Mary Danton, also disappeared around the same time.
Edgar Wallace · Adventure · 49 ch
Captain Hugh Drummond, D.S.O., M.C., is back from the war, and is bored. Seeking adventure, he places a newspaper advert with services offered in exchange for excitement, and a reply from a woman needing help piques his interest. What follows is a back and forth engagement with a shadowy criminal cabal determined to cause mayhem for the British establishment—and to profit from it.
H. C. McNeile · Adventure · 14 ch
Can You Forgive Her? is the story of Alice Vavasor and her cousins. On her father’s side are Kate and George Vavasor, brother and sister.
Anthony Trollope · Drama · 81 ch
Candide is the picaresque tale of the titular character’s fantastical journey from an insular, idealized life in a picturesque castle through the difficulties and evils of the real world. Satirical, comical, witty, and cutting, Candide was widely banned in its day for containing blasphemous and seditious concepts. Despite that, it survived controversy to become an important book in the Western literary heritage.
Voltaire · Comedy · 31 ch
Peter Blood, with experience as a soldier and sailor, is practicing medicine in Bridgewater, England, when he inadvertently gets caught up in a rebellion being waged by the Duke of Monmouth. After being convicted of treason, Blood and some of the rebels are sentenced to slavery in the Caribbean. The year is 1688.
Rafael Sabatini · Adventure · 31 ch
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
A lonely young woman in a Styrian castle befriends a beautiful stranger who arrives after a carriage accident nearby. A slow, dreamlike tale of fascination that turns toward dread.
J. Sheridan Le Fanu · Horror · 17 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
Flora de Barral is the daughter of a successful banker. When he’s tried and convicted of fraud, her prosperous life turns miserable. While on the brink of suicide, she meets an older sea captain and marries him as a means of escape.
Joseph Conrad · Drama · 18 ch
Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady is one of the longest novels in the English language. Written by Samuel Richardson over a period of several years and published in 1748, it is composed entirely of letters. Though this may seem daunting, the novel is highly regarded and is considered by many critics as one of the greatest works of English literature, appearing in several lists of the best British novels ever written.
Samuel Richardson · Drama · 540 ch
The first published novel by a black American author combines real-life stories, including his own story of escaping slavery and recollections he heard while helping others escape, with abolitionist agitprop, revealing ephemera from the newspapers of the time, and sympathetic (if somewhat melodramatic) characters. What emerges from this collage is an indictment of slavery and of American hypocrisy about liberty that found an enthusiastic and enraged audience when it was published in 1853. Clotel has a complex publishing history, with four separate editions published between 1853 and 1867.
William Wells Brown · Drama · 30 ch