Fiction

The third installment in H. Rider Haggard's Zulu trilogy, Finished is a detailed historical account of the decline of the once-mighty Zulu nation, recounted from the perspective of globe-trotting adventurer Allan Quatermain. From the thrill of the safari to battlefield play-by-plays, this novel will not disappoint fans of the classic action-adventure genre.

The Rainbow is a 1915 novel by British author D. H. Lawrence. It follows three generations of the Brangwen family living in Nottinghamshire, particularly focusing on the individual's struggle to growth and fulfilment within the confining strictures of English social life.  The Rainbow tells the story of three generations of the Brangwen family, a dynasty of farmers and...

Quentin Durward is a historical novel by Walter Scott, first published in 1823. The story concerns a Scottish archer in the service of the French King Louis XI (1423–1483). The age of feudalism and chivalry was passing away, and the King of France was inciting the wealthy citizens of Flanders against his own rebellious vassal the Duke of Burgundy. Quentin Durward had come to Tours, where...

This book is a compilation of interviews, the author Max Miller tells us about his first serious assignment in New York. They present his first professional work as a journalist. Max Millard went to New York City in November 1976, when he was 26 years old. He went with the intention to become a full-time writer. For his articles and columns written for small local papers were not paid. He was...

The House of the Dead (Russian: Записки из Мёртвого дома, Zapiski iz Myortvogo doma) is a semi-autobiographical novelpublished in 1861 in the journal Vremyaby Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky, which portrays the life of convicts in a Siberianprison camp. The novel has also been published under the titles Memoirs from the House of The...

Kenilworth. A Romance is a historical novel by Sir Walter Scott, first published on 8 January 1821. Giles Gosling, the innkeeper, had just welcomed his scape-grace nephew Michael Lambourne on his return from Flanders. He invited the Cornishman, Tressilian, and other guests to drink with them. Lambourne made a wager he would obtain an introduction to a certain young lady under the steward...

The White Peacock is a novel by D. H. Lawrence published in 1911. Lawrence started the novel in 1906 and then rewrote it three times. The early versions had the working title of Laetitia. Maurice Greiffenhagen (1862-1931)'s 1891 painting, 'An Idyll', inspired D H Lawrence's novel The White Peacock. The painting had "a profound effect" on the author, who wrote: "As for Greiffenhagen's 'Idyll', it...

Sons and Lovers is a 1913 novel by the English writer D. H. Lawrence. The Modern Library placed it ninth on their list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century. While the novel initially incited a lukewarm critical reception, along with allegations of obscenity, it is today regarded as a masterpiece by many critics and is often regarded as Lawrence's finest achievement.

The Making Of A Saint, published in 1898, was W. Somerset Maugham's second novel. He always regarded it as his black sheep, even tried to suppress its republication. His disaffection is not easy to understand. The book enjoyed a good reception and continues to be well reviewed. It remains today, as it was on publication, an intense and highly colored novel of plot and counterplot, passion and...

Mansfield Park is the third novel by Jane Austen, written at Chawton Cottage between February 1811 and 1813. It was published in May 1814 by Thomas Egerton, who published Jane Austen's two earlier novels, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. When the novel reached a second edition in 1816, its publication was taken over by John Murray, who also...

"The Canterville Ghost" is a popular short story by Oscar Wilde, widely adapted for the screen and stage. It was the first of Wilde's stories to be published, appearing in the magazine The Court and Society Review in February 1887. It was later included in a collection of short stories entitled Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories in 1891.  The...

The Romance of Lust, or Early Experiences is a Victorian erotic novel written anonymously in four volumes during the years 1873–1876 and published by William Lazenby. Henry Spencer Ashbee discusses this novel in one of his bibliographies of erotic literature. In addition the compilers of British Museum General Catalogue of Printed Books list this book. The novel is told in first person,...

Redgauntlet (1824) is a historical novel by Sir Walter Scott, set in Dumfries, Scotland in 1765, and described by Magnus Magnusson (a point first made by Andrew Lang) as "in a sense, the most autobiographical of Scott's novels." It describes the beginnings of a fictional third Jacobite Rebellion, and includes "Wandering Willie's Tale", a famous short story which frequently appears in...

A Doll's House (Bokmål: Et dukkehjem; also translated as A Doll House) is a three-act play in prose by Henrik Ibsen. It premiered at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month. The play is significant for its critical attitude toward 19th-century marriage norms. It aroused great controversy at the time, as it concludes with the...

Villette is an 1853 novel by Charlotte Brontë. After an unspecified family disaster, the protagonist Lucy Snowe travels from England to the fictional French-speaking city of Villette to teach at a girls' school, where she is drawn into adventure and romance. Villette was Charlotte Brontë's fourth novel. It was preceded by the posthumously published The Professor, her first, and then by...

Saint Ronan's Well is a novel by Sir Walter Scott. It is the only novel he wrote with a 19th-century setting. Valentine Bulmer and his half-brother Francis Tyrrel had been Mrs Dods' guests at Cleikum Inn when they were students from Edinburgh, and she gladly welcomed Francis when he arrived, some years afterwards, to stay at the inn again, to fish and sketch in the neighbourhood. A mineral...

Those who read this romance for the sake of what history it may contain will find the histories from which I have helped myself more profitable. Those antiquarians who hunt their hobbies through books had best drop the trail of this book at the preface, for they will draw but a blank covert in these pages. Better for the antiquarian that he seek the mansion of Sir William Johnson, which is still...

Being Boston girls, of course they got up a club for mental improvement, and, as they were all descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers, they called it the May Flower Club. A very good name, and the six young girls who were members of it made a very pretty posy when they met together, once a week, to sew, and read well-chosen books. At the first meeting of the season, after being separated all summer,...

Of Human Bondage (1915) is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. It is generally agreed to be his masterpiece and to be strongly autobiographical in nature, although Maugham stated, "This is a novel, not an autobiography, though much in it is autobiographical, more is pure invention." Maugham, who had originally planned to call his novel Beauty from Ashes, finally settled on a title taken from a...

The Captain of the Polestar and Other Tales is a volume collecting 10 short stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle and first published by Longmans, Green & Co., 6th march 1890.