First published in "Cornhill Magazine" in 1878, "Daisy Miller" is Henry James' novella, which concerns the courtship of its titular character, the beautiful young American girl Daisy Miller. While travelling in Europe with her family, Daisy is taken by the delightfulness of the continent, which unlike her brother, she finds superior to their hometown of Schenectady, New York. Her brother introduces her to Frederick Winterbourne, whom she agrees to...

This enduring novel of crime and retribution vividly reflects the social and moral values of New England in the 1840s. Nathaniel Hawthorne's gripping psychological drama concerns the Pyncheon family, a dynasty founded on pious theft, who live for generations under a dead man's curse until their house is finally exorcised by love. Hawthorne, by birth and education, was instilled with the Puritan belief in America's limitless promise. Yet -- in part...

First published in 1903, "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" is the charming and classic children's novel beloved the world over. Written by the American author and educator Kate Douglas Wiggin, it is the story of young and poor Rebecca Rowena Randall, who goes to live with her spinster aunts in the town of Riverboro when she is ten years-old. Rebecca's father had died three years before and the family farm had become heavily indebted. In order to ease the...

Captain MacWhirr cannot fathom anything outside the facts of his own life. His first mate, Mr. Jukes, is the perfect contrast as an imaginative man prone to speaking in figurative language. Though they are opposites, MacWhirr and Jukes respect each other and run a tight ship, until the crew notices the barometer predicting a serve storm. Jukes and the crew suggest alternate paths to MacWhirr, but he is unconvinced. Since MacWhirr has not experienced...

Captains Courageous is a novel by Rudyard Kipling, that follows the adventures of fifteen-year-old Harvey Cheyne Jr., the spoiled son of a railroad tycoon, after he is saved from drowning by a Portuguese fisherman in the north Atlantic. The book's title comes from the ballad "Mary Ambree", which starts, "When captains courageous, whom death could not daunt". Kipling had previously used the same title for an article on businessmen as the new adventurers,...

This edition of Edgar Allan Poe's A Collection of Stories includes a Foreword, Biographical Note, and Afterword by S. T. Joshi.

Born and raised in the appalling deprivation of a Victorian-era London workhouse, the orphan Oliver escapes the drudgery of apprenticeship only to fall into the hands of the notorious Fagin and his gang of child thieves. But Oliver is an innocent at heart and the attempts by Fagin and the impudently witty Artful Dodger to teach the boy the trick of the pick-pocket's trade lead only to his almost immediate capture. Oliver's rescue by the kindly Mr....

The tale of Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bellringer of Notre Dame Cathedral, and his struggles to save the beautiful gypsy dancer Esmeralda from being unjustly executed.

"At the Back of the North Wind" is a classic children's story first serialized in England in 1868 and published into a book in 1871 by the Scottish author George MacDonald. This enchanting fairy tale follows Diamond, a sweet, innocent, and joyful young stable boy in Victorian London who goes on adventures with the majestic North Wind. The North Wind is personified as a lovely and mysterious woman, both severe and kind, who teaches young Diamond about...

This edition of Moll Flanders includes a Foreword, Biographical Note, and Afterword by Nancy Springer. The conditions of Moll Flanders' birth could not have been more depressing. Her mother was a petty thief who was caught and sent to the notorious Newgate prison in London. It was in that prison that Moll was born. Deemed an orphan, Moll was later sent to apprentice as a servant with a respectable family. Moll has designs on a life better than serving...