Sevastopol Sketches are three short stories written by Leo Tolstoy and published in 1855 to record his experiences during the Siege of Sevastopol (1854–1855) in the Crimean War (1853-1856). The name originates from Sevastopol, a city in Crimea. These brief "sketches"...

Triplanetary (1948 NOVEL version) is a science fiction novel and space opera by American author E. E. ”Doc” Smith. It was first serialized in the magazine Amazing Stories in 1934. The novel covers several episodes in an eons-long human breeding project by the...

Oscar Wilde supposedly said that these fables were "intended neither for the British child nor the British public". A follow-up to his first popular fairy-tale collection (‘The Happy Prince and Other Tales’), ‘A House of Pomegranates’ (1891) is indeed decidedly...

In a time when poor Irish families struggled to feed their children, Jonathan Swift wrote an essay, which he published anonymously, making a few suggestions. He called it ‘A Modest Proposal’ (1729) or ‘A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People...

Dracula's Guest" follows an Englishman (whose name is never mentioned but is presumed to be Jonathan Harker) on a visit to Munich before leaving for Transylvania. It is Walpurgis Night, and in spite of the hotelier's warning to not be late back, the young man later...

Star Hunter is a science fiction novel written by Andre Norton. Somewhere in the jungle world of Jumala, there was a man in hiding—a man whose mind had been reconditioned with another's brain pattern and for whom there was a fabulous reward. Star Hunter is a...

The Angel of the Revolution: A Tale of the Coming Terror is a science fiction novel by the English writer George Griffith. It was his first published novel and remains his most famous work. A lurid mix of Jules Verne's futuristic air warfare fantasies, the utopian...

Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress (full title: The Fortunate Mistress: Or, A History of the Life and Vast Variety of Fortunes of Mademoiselle de Beleau, Afterwards Called the Countess de Wintselsheim, in Germany, Being the Person known by the Name of the Lady Roxana, in the...

When his wife cheats on him, Golden Walter leaves his mundane life to start a new one at sea. Horrific news forces him to turn around, however, but before he can reach home, a storm carries his ship to a faraway country. A country inhabited by people he has seen before....

Antony and Cleopatra is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The plot is based on Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Lives and follows the relationship between Cleopatra and Mark Antony from the time of the Sicilian revolt to Cleopatra's suicide during the Final War...

Jude the Obscure is the last completed of English writer Thomas Hardy's novels, began as a magazine serial in December 1894 and was first published in book form in 1895. Eleven-year-old Jude Fawley, inspired by his teacher Mr. Phillotson, who leaves Marygreen for...

The Mad Planet is a science fiction novel by Murray Leinster first published in 1920. It is 30,000 years following dramatically changed climate conditions on earth which had let massive amounts of carbon dioxide belch from the interior of the planet into the...

The Golden Bowl is a 1904 novel by Henry James. Set in England, this complex, intense study of marriage and adultery completes what some critics have called the "major phase" of James' career. The Golden Bowl explores the tangle of interrelationships between a father and...

In a city full of androids – humanoid robots indistinguishable from their flesh and blood counterparts — Kate joins the resistance to fight a world ruled by machines. She wants freedom. No surveillance cameras. No random interrogations by the security forces. Then...

Master and Man is a short story by Leo Tolstoy, first published in 1895. In this story, a land owner named Vasili Andreevich Brekhunov takes along one of his peasants, Nikita, for a short journey to the house of the owner of a forest. He is impatient and wishes to get to...

When Harvey, the spoiled fifteen-year-old son of a railroad tycoon, falls overboards, he is saved by a fishing boat. The gruff and hearty crew teach him about fishing and life on the boat. A fun, thrilling adventure on the sea, "Captains Courageous" from 1897 is...

The House Without a Key is a novel that was written in 1925 by Earl Derr Biggers. It is the first of the Charlie Chan mysteries. The novel, which takes place in 1920s Hawai?i, spends time acquainting the reader with the look and feel of the islands of that era from the...

The Escape is a science fiction novella by Poul Anderson first published in 1953.  The effect of the Change was actually rather small— but great enough to make foxes open locked doors, turn a moron into a super-moron, and give Earth a galaxy while its own system fell...

A Story of the Stone Age is a science fiction novella by H. G. Wells, first published in 1897. This story is of a time beyond the memory of man, before the beginning of history. . . The story is set during the Stone Age, and tells of a caveman named Ugh-lomi, who bonds...

Coming Attraction is a science fiction short story by Fritz Leiber originally published in the second issue (November 1950) of Galaxy Science Fiction. The story was nominated for a Retro Hugo Award in 2001. The story is set in Manhattan during a protracted war between...

No Strings Attached is a science fiction short story by American author Lester del Ray, first published in 1954.  Poor Henry was an unhappy husband whose wife had a habit of using bad clichès. Alféar was a genii who was, quite like most humans, a creature of...

Underground Man is a science fiction novel by Gabriel Tarde first published in 1896. The plot is a post-apocalyptic story of an Earth destroyed by a new Ice Age. Humanity must rebuild a new civilization underground. The choice is made to lay the foundation of their...

The Night of the Long Knives is a science fiction novel by Fritz Leiber published in 1960. "I was one hundred miles from Nowhere—and I mean that literally—when I spotted this girl out of the corner of my eye. I'd been keeping an extra lookout because I still expected...

King Richard the Second is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in approximately 1595. It is based on the life of King Richard II of England (ruled 1377–1399) and is the first part of a tetralogy, referred to by some scholars as the...

With Fire and Sword is a historical novel by the Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz, published in 1884. It is the first volume of a series known to Poles as The Trilogy, followed by The Deluge (1886) and Fire in the Steppe (also published under the title Sir Michael, or...

The Forgotten Planet is a science fiction novel by Murray Leinster first published in 1954. The "forgotten" planet had been seeded for life, first with microbes and later with plants and insects. A third expedition, intended to complete the seeding with animals, never...

Cousin Phillis (1864) is a novel by Elizabeth Gaskell about Paul Manning, a youth of seventeen who moves to the country and befriends his mother's family and his second cousin Phillis Holman, who is confused by her own placement at the edge of adolescence. Most critics...

Titus Andronicus is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1588 and 1593. It is thought to be Shakespeare's first tragedy, and is often seen as his attempt to emulate the violent and bloody revenge plays of his contemporaries, which were...

The Game is a 1905 novel by Jack London about a twenty year-old boxer Joe, who meets his death in the ring. London was a sports reporter for the Oakland Herald and based the novel on his personal observations. Joe Fleming earns his livelihood as a sailmaker and supports...

The dead body of a strange woman is found in an empty house next door to Amelia Butterworth, a single old lady with a formidable curiosity and lots of free time. When Detective Gryce gets on the case, he has a hard time persuading her to mind her own business, but soon...

The wealthy businessman Horatio Leavenworth is found dead in his private library with a bullet in his head. Nothing in the house is broken. Nothing is stolen. All signs point to an inside job. But who did it? With the help of the young lawyer, Everett Raymond,...

Tales of the Jazz Age (1922) is a collection of eleven short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Divided into three separate parts, according to subject matter, it includes one of his better-known short stories, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button". All of the stories had...

In Chancery, first published 1920, is the second novel in the trilogy The Forsyte Saga, a series of three novels and two interludes published between 1906 and 1921 by Nobel Prize-winning English author John Galsworthy. In 2003, The Forsyte Saga was listed on the BBC's...

The Scarlet Plague is a post-apocalyptic fiction novel written by Jack London and originally published in London Magazine in 1912. The story takes place in 2073, sixty years after an uncontrollable epidemic, the Red Death, has depopulated the planet. James Howard Smith...

Timon of Athens (The Life of Tymon of Athens) is a play by William Shakespeare, published in the First Folio (1623) and probably written in about 1605–1606. It is about the fortunes of an Athenian named Timon (and probably influenced by the philosopher of the same...

King John, is a history play by William Shakespeare, that dramatizes the reign of John, King of England (ruled 1199–1216), son of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine and father of Henry III of England. It is believed to have been written in the mid-1590s but...

Two Poets (1837) is the first book in Balzac’s Lost Illusions trilogy, which is part of his sweeping set of novels collectively titled La Comédie Humaine. The story is set in post-Napoleonic France, when the new bourgeoisie was jostling for position alongside the old...

Lone Star Planet is a Science fiction novel by H Beam Piper and John J McGuire first published in 1958. In 1999, the novel won the Prometheus Award, Hall of Fame Award for Best Classic Libertarian SF Novel. The story of a junior diplomat and his first posting to a planet...