E. E. Cummings, was an American poet, essayist, painter, author, and playwright. His body of work encompasses 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays and several essays, as well as numerous paintings and drawings. He is remembered as an unsurpassed voice of 20th century poetry, as well as one of the most popular, even today. Cummings attended Harvard, receiving both his bachelor's and master's by 1916. A year later, he enlisted in the...

This Eliot novel tells the story of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, a pair of siblings who grow up together on a river in early nineteenth century England. While Tom’s reserved nature and Maggie’s idealism produce differences that strain their love in times of hardship, the two ultimately reconcile when confronted with certain death. A powerful work on individual tenacity in the face of oppressive circumstance, The Mill on the Floss remains one of Eliot’s...

The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903) is a novel by Irish author Bram Stoker. Written during a period of increased interest in Egyptology across Europe, The Jewel of Seven Stars helped to establish the Irish master of Gothic horror's reputation as a leading writer of the early twentieth-century. In the middle of the night, a young lawyer is roused from sleep by Margaret Trelawny. At her urgent request, he accompanies her to the house of her father, Abel...

In this classic satire of small-town America, beautiful young Carol Kennicott comes to Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, with dreams of transforming the provincial old town into a place of beauty and culture. But she runs into a wall of bigotry, hypocrisy and complacency. The first popular bestseller to attack conventional ideas about marriage, gender roles, and small town life, Main Street established Lewis as a major American novelist.

Buck Duane is a famous gunfighter and outlaw, who's recruited by the Texas Rangers to help clean up a border town plagued by crime. It's a rare opportunity to do good in the eyes of the law and its people. The son of an outlaw, Buck Duane, unexpectedly follows in his father's footsteps when he kills a man in self-defense. Despite the context, he chooses to run from the authorities and goes into hiding. He encounters many dark and violent characters,...

After the tragic death of his son, Allan Quatermain's grief is inconsolable. Feeling that the only possible way to ease his pain is through an expedition, Quatermain seeks out Captain Good, Sir Henry Curtis, and the Zulu chief Umslopogaas, who all previously journeyed with him to King Solomon's Mine. After explaining his predicament, Quatermain persuades them to accompany him on one last journey-a search mission to find a lost city. Together they...

Carpenter Adam Bede is in love with the beautiful Hetty Sorrel, but unknown to him, he has a rival, in the local squire's son Arthur Donnithorne. Hetty is soon attracted by Arthur's seductive charm and they begin to meet in secret. The relationship is to have tragic consequences that reach far beyond the couple themselves, touching not just Adam Bede, but many others, not least, pious Methodist Preacher Dinah Morris. A tale of seduction, betrayal,...

The Last Trail celebrates the victory of the frontiermen by the wisdom of Lewis Wetzel and Jonathan Zane dealing with the outlaws and Indians in that region.

The Island of Doctor Moreau is a classic work of early science fiction and one of H. G. Wells' most visionary novels. It recounts the harrowing ordeal of Edward Prendick, an Englishman who survives a shipwreck in the southern Pacific Ocean. Rescued by a man named Montgomery, Prendick finds himself on an island belonging to Dr. Moreau, formerly an eminent physiologist in London who was expelled from his homeland for his cruel vivisection experiments. Prendick...

First published serially in 1861, Mary Elizabeth Braddon's "Lady Audley's Secret" is the wildly successful Victorian-era sensation novel. Sensation novels were very popular in English literature in the 1860s and 1870s. The novels were a combination of realism and romance and were usually tales of terrible crimes, such as murder, kidnapping, bigamy, adultery, and theft, occurring in otherwise normal, tranquil domestic settings. "Lady Audley's Secret"...